I quit my job today. I've put in seven years with the Task Force and I'm thirteen months past the usual burnout point, but today I finally had my fill. So I quit.

I work for the Arcane Task Force, a section of the FBI specializing in vice that falls outside the abilities of regular law enforcement.

The best example of this is illegal child oneirography. In 1964, the first device appeared, though we've never been able to establish who created it. The very term "oneirograph" doesn't even make sense, not really, since you're not actually making a record or a duplication. Still, somebody in the media invents a word and it sticks.

The device severs a child from their dreams. Not the dreams they have when they go to sleep, mind you--which would be a blessing, actually...after the procedure there's nothing but raw, dark nightmares in store--but their hopes and fears, their aspirations. A pervert abducts a child, performs the procedure (an hour back in 1964, fifteen minutes today), then deposits the child back in the world again.

The children rehabilitate fairly quickly. They eventually forget what it was like to have them and go on with their lives.

The pervs to this day maintain they're not doing anything wrong. They're not molesting the kids, for one thing. No oneirographer has ever been found to also have a sexual attraction to the kids themselves. The fetish doesn't work like that.

In fact, when the cases first sprung up, cops weren't sure what to charge the pervs with: stealing dreams? Illegal surgery? Abduction was the only thing they could get to stick until 1969, when the devices were declared illegal in all forty-eight states.

Adults lose their dreams naturally as they get older. The oneirophile wants to return to that feeling, and the only way to do so is to take the dreams of others. Children's dreams, of course, are pure and vibrant, relatively unblemished in their youth.

Once they have the dream removed and the children discarded (not fatally, though--thankfully these monsters are not murderous in nature), they are free to use the dream however they wish. Some simply drape it over themselves--the touch of a dream to your skin is like nothing else. One oneiro in Montana was stretching them thin to use as canvas for his paintings. Another had made a suit of more than one, stitching them together like one would any other type of fabric.

They collect them. No two are exactly the same just as no two children are exactly the same. Even my twin brother and I...No, I'm sorry. I don't think I should talk about that.

In recent years, we've had to deal with dream-swapping over the internet. We've stopped many shipments across country and from overseas.

When you find a dream, once you brush away the dust and lint, it's easy to ascertain who they belong to. We have a database with victims' information and usually one of the first sensations you get while holding a stolen dream is a picture of the child it belonged to. Flickering on the surface, as though on a television screen smudged by too many alien hands. You do the match, then you return the stolen property.

There's no way to reattach a dream once it goes. Kids reunited with theirs react differently depending on how long the separation was. If we can return it quickly, they're filled with happiness. The longer it takes, the more the return is met with sadness.

Since it can now be carried, they carry it. They carry it everywhere they go, like a beaten up teddy bear that they don't know what to do with anymore.

Yesterday we found a rusty oil drum filled with them. We have no idea whose stash it was, but the drum was filled to the rim with five stolen dreams.

This morning, we returned one to Richard Nelson, 45. We drove over to the construction site that he manages, and he led us back to his office once he we showed him our badges.

"Did you catch the guy?" he asked, even though I think he already knew why we were there.

When we didn't answer, his eyes went to the metal case I was carrying. "No," he said. "You found it. You brought it back."

When he removed it from the case, he looked it over and then brushed a hand over it. Being left for untold years in an oil drum had worn the dream down considerably. But after a moment, Curtis clutched it slowly to his chest, and the dead eight year old inside him said in a hoarse whisper, "Oh, that's right. I was going to be a veternarian."

And that's what made me quit today. A forty-five-year-old gruff and grizzled construction foreman sobbing behind his desk.

You see, I've quit this job every single day for seven years. So tomorrow will be no exception.