Every night you get to dream whatever you want, and every dream lasts seventy-five years.

The first nights go to pleasure. You grant yourself every wish you’ve ever had, until even that gets dull. Then you ask for adventure, with long journeys and enemies strong enough to beat you. A few months later you’re bored again, so you ask for meaning. You dream stories that break your heart, and you leave pieces of yourself behind in exchange for lessons you could only learn by losing.

The last dream is the one where you forget you’re dreaming.

That, the story says, is you. The universe got so caught up in living your life that it forgot it was the universe. You are the dream of the dreamer.