Asleep, he went all the way out, floating above thousands of tiny mirrors in an ocean of surveillance.

He plunged into cloud layers.

"I COULD BE DEAD ALREADY. AM I DEAD? I'M DEAD, THEREFORE I AM."

He was suddenly sitting in the cabin of a private jet. On a table, he saw a team of small glass angels, a silver cup, and a framed photo of Al Capone sitting on the toilet in his Palm Springs suite.

And then identity shattered into a thousand pieces. The lights of an enormous city loomed up under him, pulling the fragments down into liquor stores, newspaper racks, alleys, hotel rooms.

A news screen stood out in the black sky. A local anchor, her eyes bright with contempt, relayed the story of a man who had just died falling from an escarpment above the Chicago Loop while attempting to set up a sniper's nest and kill shoppers in the indoor-outdoor Langland Mall.