I've been obsessed with her for over ten years.

For at least half of those years, I played a game with myself, seeing how far into a day I could get without a thought of her popping into my head. Most days it was less than a few minutes, and for the longest time the record was four hours and twenty minutes.

It's a hard game to play. As soon as you decide to play that day, the game is over. Not a single day went by without a thought of her entering my mind.

That record fell, and the game ended, the day we buried my mother. Finally a day where I didn't think of her at all.

But in all that time, she never entered my dreams, always a conscious, if uncontrollable, obsession.

Until yesterday morning.

In yesterday morning's dream, she walked in, through my stateroom door. Gorgeous, of course, smiling and engaging. In my dream, I asked her several questions, and to each her eyes widened and her lips smiled.

But she did not answer.

In my dream, the object of my obsession was mute.

I assume that, unlike Giordi, I do not have a holographic computer to input voice and personality with 94 percent accuracy. My subconscious refused to insert traits where it had no data.

Oddly, this segment of my dream went back and repeated itself. As if part of me was unwilling to accept the two-dimensional woman another part of my brain had created. As in a loop, I again invited her into our stateroom (I have no idea why we were on a cruise ship), and again my questions were met with friendly, unspeaking smiles.

But no voice.

And so I woke.

My first reaction was 'Wow.' Even though just a dream, even though incomplete, it still felt good to finally "meet" her. It wasn't until several minutes later, as I lay there unsleeping, that it occurred to me that my subconscious had gotten something else wrong.

It had made her several inches too tall.