"I see that very little of your memory has returned yet," Tournay said. "In a short while, everything—all your past—will come back to you. Until then, perhaps I had better explain to you who you are. My words will help trigger your returning memory, and speed up the process."
"Please do," Bennett begged.
"You are Benn Ett, Le Roy of the city-state of Thone, in the year 4526 A. D. Six months ago, the strain of governing the city began to undermine your health. Acting under my advice, you decided to take a somno-rest cure.
"This rest cure," the doctor continued, "is quite standard practice in our time. We had a little difficulty bringing you out of it at the end of six months. Evidently your somno-existence must have been very pleasant."
"Do you mean that the existence I remember was merely an induced figment of my imagination?"
"Yes. You see, the best rest that can be given a mind is to give it not sleep, but pleasant work. Therefore, under my manipulation, you were given a pseudo-existence in a past era of history. You were led to conceive yourself as occupying a position, which, after close study, I deduced would be the most suitable and relaxing for you."
"But if that is true, why did my dream have to end so unpleasantly—I might say, so nearly fatally?" Bennett demanded.
"The more successful I am in choosing a pleasant existence for a patient in the somno, the more difficult it is to bring him out of it," the doctor replied. "Your unconscious mind, realizing how happy you were in your simulated existence, and how it would have to return to the rigor and stress which unnerved it before, fought with all its strength to remain where the somno had placed it.
"The usual practice in bringing a patient back to reality is for the doctor to enter the dream and convince him, by whatever means may be necessary, to return. Sometimes, however, the patient is so firmly tied to his somno-existence that drastic measures must be used. This is usually done by means of making the somno-existence so anxiety-producing that the patient is glad to return.
"Your particular release was one of the most difficult that I have ever encountered. In fact, I was unable to bring you back myself, and asked your wife, Lima, to enter the somno with me and help force you to return."