An only child in a typical middle-American, nuclear family, T.'s first love is money. Specifically, it's the faces on the bills Jackson, Hamilton, and Lincoln. He seems to miss out on childhood as his peers go through teen crises, T. plays the responsible capitalist individual. Intent on his own advantage, financially and personally, he begins to accumulate money and status, calmly extorting his friends and their parents along the way. By age twenty he is set up as a property developer in a plate glass office with secretaries, clients and money rolling in. Then one day he runs down a coyote, and as he watches it die by the roadside, suddenly realises how cold his material life is. Little by little, he looks to build personal, emotional attachments. But everyone who he brings close his beloved dog, a new, beautiful girlfriend, his newly unbalanced mother, even his clients seem to either go missing, die, or screw him over. Isolated and unravelling, T starts climbing into zoos at night, hoping that perhaps, if people won't, then animals might accept him IHow the Dead Dream/I addresses themes of the loneliness of humanity, individually and as a species, our relationship to the built and natural environment, and the nature of desire, with unique and visionary imagination.
