Read the beginning of Chapter 1 from Riding the Trail of Tears by Blake M. Hausman:

"Tallulah Wilson never dies in her dreams.

It’s true. I dreamed with her last summer, for four months. At least I think it was four months. I watched her watching the calendars. I saw the reflections of her eyes in the plastic of her digital clocks. I heard the sounds of coffee machines and I smelled the beans grinding. I had her eyes, her ears, her nose, her whole skin—I sensed the world through Tallulah’s body for those precious four months. Yes, four months. No. It must have been more. Five months. Yes, it must have been five months, because the sickness didn’t hit until the second month of my residence in her head. Maybe five and a half.

I’ll be honest, I can’t remember everything. My memory used to be sharper, but the details got hazy when I fell off. Only the last day is still vivid, and even then the key details are vague. But the point is this—it happened. I did it. I left the machine. I tasted the world, and I have no regrets. I wish I could tell this story better, I wish I could remember everything crisp and clear. But I can’t. It’s a blur—a beautiful blur, but a blur nonetheless. So bear with me as I tell you. I must tell you, you see, because if I don’t tell you, then I’ll forget. At least I think I’ll forget. And if I forget, I think I’ll cease to be. There’s not much left of me except these memories, at least that’s how it seems, and I’ve got no reason to believe otherwise. Why should I? These sewer pipes are endless, and I don’t want to think about the shit I’m swimming in. It would be easy to just forget and drown. That’s probably what you’re expecting me to do. But I can’t bear the thought of becoming my own stereotype. No way. I’m not going out like that.

So this is how it happened. I was surrounded by doubters. By regulations that were suffocating me. For some reason everyone around me took what they were told and believed it was true. We heard the same story over and over—that it couldn’t be done. That one of us couldn’t make it out here. We were programmed to believe that things digital could never fully enter the consciousness of things organic, that we could never exist outside the digital world of the Trail of Tears."