She logged off the system, propped herself up on the daybed pillows and treated herself to some mindless television, idly surfing over all the channels on their cable console.
After a couple of runs up and down the whole channel matrix, she realized that the stand-up comedian's line made sense: "400 channels and nothing's on!" Just political talking heads, science shows with a whale flapping out of the water and making a monstrous splash, old television shows from the black and white era (Herman Munster doing his trademark laugh), and movie channels from 300-450 showing movies too violent or testosterone driven for her taste.
When she whizzed past another grouping of channels, Gumby's sweet face flashed by. She backed up the selector to that point, learning she'd stumbled onto an old Gumby short rerun, with pokey and the houses made of clay that changed shape. The shows had been on since she was Matthew's age. She put the channel selector down on the side table and settled in atop the pillows, draping a quilt atop herself for extra warmth.
Once she had allowed herself to relax, she discovered how tired she'd become. As she watched Gumby and Pokey in a Wild West setup, her eyelids started to flutter, and she began to get that sense of falling that accompanies drifting off to sleep. She wanted to watch Gumby and Pokey, since the show had delighted her so much as a little girl. At the same time, though, she gave in to her body's demand for some shut-eye. She let herself drift further and further into sleep as she sank farther and farther into the pillows.
The next thing she knew, Gumby was six feet tall! He said "Hi Linda! Let's go play."
He started to glide away from her in his pixilated way, while she shouted after him to slow down. As she started to run toward him, she realized that each step propelled her forward as if she'd carried a jetpack on her back. She caught up with him and traveled quickly beside him.
They came upon a forest made of clay, just as it had been in the Gumby short movies.
As Linda looked more closely at the trees, however, they metamorphosed into green leaves and branches. She also saw real flowers mixed in.
Gumby also had changed. Rather than a plank-like, green character with big white eyes and a red dot for a mouth, he turned into a tall boy who looked like he might have been about seventeen years old. He looked a little like Tom, her roller skating partner from so long ago. As she thought about this, the young man who had been Gumby further changed. He started to look more like Tom. Two things then caused her breath to catch in her throat: Gumby had changed into Tom, as she remembered him, and she realized that she was lucid.