There are days I'd like to awaken...

There are days I'd like to awaken into an entirely different reality. To whit: Lauded as the next Terry Southern, I'd be plugging my latest book (In Her Sensible Shoes) on TV, delighting viewers with witty anecdotes while irritating Oprah by chain-smoking. Of course, I'd also have beautiful groupies and be obscenely rich. Unfortunately, unreality isn't always what it's cracked up to be, particularly if your loved ones think you've cracked up. Take the case of Tom Baldwin, who wakes up one morning to find Kyle full of joy, Maia a doting grandmother and the 4400 nonexistent. Tom can't believe it, and Diana can't believe him. "You sound delusional," she says, reminding Tom that he was tortured by a terrorist to such an extent that she can't tell if he woke up on the up and up. Maybe so, but these twists to his sanity are getting him down. Tom is in the same house and still works for NTAC, but the scenario is all "tweaked." The reason? He's married to voluptuously vulnerable Alana, a 4400 who has the unconscious ability to induce virtual realities on unsuspecting minds. Theirs is a pretty blissful place, so much so that Tom (note the Reed Richards gray at his temples) and Alana spend eight years together as man and wife. The premise recalls that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Picard spends 20 minutes in a coma living another man's entire life. But Jean-Luc didn't have to enter a spooky room full of drones like the one in the Collier Museum (the 4400 center in TomWorld) where Tom learns that this heaven on Earth was actually a "sanctuary" designed as a rest stop to prepare him for the trials he'll face as the point man for the future of the human race. At least he got to hook up with Alana in the real world at the end. I'm stuck with being irritated by Oprah.