Mikhail slowly opened his eyes.

The terrain was impossible. Atoms drifted down like snow. Moments collided whenever he blinked. His whole life played out before him in jerking echoes.

He shut his eyes and counted down from a hundred. They should never have landed here.

Aimee was still out there. The second they’d hit the surface she’d started to suck her thumb, regressing on the spot. She left the Exo-suit in the hanger and took to the sand barefoot. There was no trace of her now.

Mikhail blinked and took a deep, but cautious, breath. He had to apply reason; he had to try. The planet was a grotesque. If he ever got back home he’d designate it freak-class and do seminars and talks. Back in the ship they were taking photographs no one would ever believe, collecting samples everyone would doubt. Despite himself, a shiver raced through him, this would at least be an exhilarating way to die.

He called out her name, the air tasted dense in his throat. It felt like bile forcing itself past a gag, he doubled over and violently spat up something violet.

The lurid gobbets bisected and danced, they spun towards each other, as if drawn in the pull of some strange immediate gravity. They suddenly collided and merged. A new colour was born, as the liquid seemed to writhe and explore.

Everything here was a mistake waiting to happen. Mikhail stepped away from the rudimentary lifeform he may or may not have just created, then looked around.

How far could she have gone?

He saw rolling grass, floating stones. It was a holiday resort for physics. Mikhail laughed; it was as good a response as any. He doubled over again. The laughter was vibrating up his throat like it was giving him birth pains.

How far was it back to the ship? He wasn’t sure anymore. Would Aimee be missed, did she have family? He thought about leaving her behind, but all he could think of was that trusting smile she’d given him on the first day. The day he said he’d look after her.

Why had he said that?

He started to walk, the direction didn’t matter. There was no matter, not truly. This world was some sort of abomination, something the universe was trying to reject.

It had looked so nice from orbit.

He walked on. At times he lurched, slipped, as if the world was trembling around him.

“Aimee?”

Across the landscape before him he found the ground dipped away, revealing a small grove of frightened trees.

They were singing to the sky.

He listened. Somewhere something on the wind was trying to join the song, but it despaired of its existence and fell silent. Mikhail nodded, then went forward.

Walking to the centre of the grove, he looked around for Aimee.

He called out her name again, and suddenly there she was. Sitting up a tree. It was blackened, burnt to a crisp by a fire that had grown on the tallest branch. He stood beneath her and called out again, but she didn’t look down.

He told her they had to go, that this world was insane, an aberration. Mother Nature was giving her children a kicking, and they had to start moving.

She dropped a blue apple. Mikhail picked it up and saw two bites had been taken out of it. “Never blame the planet,” she said, calling down with a voice that seemed abnormally distant. “It was still before it had people on its back...”

Mikhail turned the apple over and over. Were they bites, or kisses? He supposed on this world every interaction was new, altered, explored differently. Wasn’t that almost liberating? He looked up at Aimee. Her lips were stained blue, her eyes were dancing with lights previously uncategorised. As he watched, her mouth opened and she retched a lullaby that unravelled away from her like a tumbleweed made of bone.

It was beautiful. She was beautiful too.

“Absolute sanity corrupts absolutely,” she giggled. She looked delirious, overjoyed, and then suddenly sad. “I wasted my life on a dream, because I thought I was awake.” She muttered something more; was it brave new world, or grave? The words left her, then future ones failed her.

Reality was a broad church in need of consecration. Or was it desecration? Mikhail pondered these thoughts, teasing them, turning them, until he couldn’t remember the context that gave them any sense. He couldn’t even remember the beginning of a thought as he thought it. It felt like an abstract weight was slipping away from him. He bit the apple, chewing thoughtfully as he tasted the dreams of the trees.

He wondered what his name was and then he wondered what a name was? It wasn't clear what was real, or if it mattered. He hadn't left her. Whatever that meant, it comforted him.

Mikhail looked around in desperation, where were they? How long had this derangement been going on for? Had they even left Earth? Or had that been another dream?

If you dreamed a world, would you even remember?

He sat at the base of the tree, and started to suck his thumb.