He dozed on a float in an expansively luxurious beachside swimming pool, listening to ocean waves curl under the hotel's overhanging platform, when his mind's eye saw that a car had — upon having climbed round and round the outside of a hill — taken a sudden right, away from garden-variety views and towards an ancient "white city" of broken stone that shone in the sun.  This image came to him first, and he then saw a young boy (whom he felt sure was him) walk its crumbled streets, stepping beside or around collapsed columns and walls to escape a brutal sun, recognizing the city from storybook pictures of how it looked in the long ago of fairy tale times.  These two images came in succession to his floating self — and were followed by a memory of the boy wondering if the newer city he lived in would also, after a while, become a broken ancient city nobody lived in.  Could it be that he was living in what would be a fairy tale for a boy like him from the future?  The boy hadn't answered himself back then, or since, which is why he, drowsy on the float, tried to open his eyes, to look around and answer the question once and for all, but he felt himself too close to sleep to muster the strength.