Simon goes missing

It has happened to him often enough. In the early morning half-state between waking and opening his eyes Simon often finds himself not knowing where he is. His sense of disorientation is centered mainly on the relationship of his bed to the door. Because he doesn't know where he is, he can't remember where the door is. Then, as he rises to the surface of consciousness he feels the room realigning itself around him, until things snap into place with an almost audible click and he knows that he is in his own bedroom.

But this morning the feeling of disorientation went further than that. This morning Simon woke up not knowing who he was. There was none of that "oh, today's Saturday . . . I need to get to the post office before noon . . . I'll stop at the library . . . and there's a party this evening" that usually runs through his head when he wakes up. There was no thought but "who am I?" He seemed to be in a bare white room, and there was no question of finding the door because this room had no door at all. He lay in bed in the white room for seconds . . . maybe minutes. Then the white walls slowly took on color; the familiar objects of his bedroom slowly appeared, and Simon remembered that he was Simon.

And the strangest part of it all is that never during the experience did he feel at all alarmed.