Ack, why is my mind wandering again? Must be those weird dreams I've been having. Anyway, no time to space out; I've got a job to do.
Amy Rose tried to stop wobbling on her skates. The manager would never forgive her if she made a fool of herself. "I'm sorry, could you repeat your order, sir?"
Amy worked as a carhop at Burgertopia, the local burger joint. Right now, though, her weird dreams were giving her a hard time, and she didn't like the look on her customer's face. His sunglasses lowered and he repeated his order slowly and condescendingly: "Just. Fries."
She resisted the urge to throw up her hands, roll her eyes, and say, "Fine. Whatever." Instead, she smiled, nodded, and skated in the opposite direction as fast as she could. Anything to get away from that customer.
"I need one bag of fries, thanks in advance," she said to the cook at the window of the joint. While the cook went to prepare her fries, the substitute cook filled in the empty space. His name was Silver, and not only was he Amy's coworker, he was also a good friend of hers.
"Hey, Amy, what's up? You look annoyed," Silver said.
"No reason, just the butt-ugly customer I'm dealing with. My mind's been off-track for a while now, and I don't know why."
"Been having weird dreams?" Silver joked.
"Huh? …No, not at all. Why?" Amy asked, not really sure why she was lying. Well, no reason for him to suggest she take a day off. She had a date with Sonic coming up, and she felt like treating him.
Silver shook his head. "Just something Blaze has been talking about lately." Blaze was Silver's pen pal, whom he talked about often.
"Yeah, well, I'll tell you if I end up with those," Amy laughed, while the cook came back.
Maybe I should have just invited him over to my house, Amy thought. What if he doesn't like the movie?
Their fancy dinner reservations had gone out the window somehow—she'd checked and double-checked them, how it went wrong she had no clue—and so, Amy had taken Sonic to a movie. Good thing he was flexible. If anything, he'd relaxed when she told him about the plan change. Even so, a movie and popcorn seemed a little insincere to her, and she hoped he didn't think of it that way.
Sonic gently wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "You look tense. Chill out, stop worrying," he smiled. "I hear it gives you wrinkles."
Feeling comforted, Amy leaned back in her chair. There were very few people in the theater at the moment, so she felt safe talking just above a whisper. "Like you would know," she teased.
Sonic looked mock-offended. "For shame, Ames! I am, as you know, the utmost expert on wrinkles, being the top skin doctor in my profession—"
Amy snorted. "Yeah, just hearing you talk about it makes my skin crawl." They both cracked up while the actor on the screen ran from a haunted chainsaw.
Miles Prower, M.D., was very hopeful about his second patient that week. "Amy, great to see you again."
"Am I glad to be here!" she smiled. "Rough day at work, stuff like that."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Tails said. "Rough how?"
"Nothing terribly unusual. I spaced out for a second and all of a sudden there's another customer who thinks I'm a dope. Speaking of which, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"About dope?"
"No, my dreams." Tails didn't see how that related, but he let her continue: "My dreams are distracting me, Mr. Prower."
"Tails," he corrected.
"Right. Tails, sorry."
"What kind of dreams are these dreams?" Tails asked, not wanting to give away his suspicions about them prematurely.
"Well, it's like this…"
"What is this place, anyway?" Amy asked Sonic, who shrugged.
"No idea. All I know is, that looks like a very comfortable and conveniently-placed rock, and my legs need a rest." Sonic laughed and led her over to the aforementioned rock, where they took a seat.
The atmosphere was…well, if the 'real world' was tinted normally, this world had a nice tinge of orange and purple. The sun was setting, or at least that's how it looked. Regardless of whether she was sleeping or not, it was a nice place to talk to Sonic.
"So…is this real?" Amy asked.
"It's real to me if it's real to you," Sonic replied casually. "Personally, I wouldn't mind being faster than the speed of sound either, but having a date is next on my list."
"Gee, what a charmer. I'm second-best on your list," Amy said. There was a short pause, a break in the jokes. Sonic could tell something else was coming.
"What's the matter?"
Looking back, it was a dream, so it was a little weird to say what she said. "Actually, I was going to ask about you," she said.
"About me? What about me?"
"You were a lot of fun on our date, but after it was over, you just seemed relieved," Amy said, sounding a little hurt. Well, she couldn't deny it.
"Oh, that," Sonic said. "It wasn't you, if that's what you thought. 'Twan got jumped the other day, and—that was when you dropped me off, right?" Amy nodded, so he continued: "I was just glad to see all my friends safe."
Suddenly, her boyfriend's eyes widened. "Ames," he warned, "you're going to want to start running, as fast as you can."
After Amy left that evening, Tails pulled out a small memo pad. Jotting down the date—10/15/68, he wrote beside it a reminder to check out this mystery.
Tails was convinced that Amy and Sonic were sharing dreams, regardless of what Amy might think about it. Telling either of them would be breaking patient confidentiality, but it was so fascinating that he had to tell someone…
…and these dreams were so weird that he was almost worried someone was going to get hurt.
