"I dreamed last night, Ray."
"That'll happen."
"I dreamed that I wasn't real. Or, to be more precise, I dreamed that we were not real--you and I, Diefenbaker, Captain Welsh, Francesca, Elaine, Inspector Thatcher--"
"I'm gettin' the trend here, Fraser."
"Yes, of course. Well, it was a disturbing dream, Ray. It's true that a man will often question the nature of his existence. One might call it a fundamental need of the human mind--"
"Like baseball."
"--to establish one's place in the universe and by extension the universe itself, and in fact the earliest Greek thinkers devoted much of their philosophy to the subject. The word 'ontology,' or 'the study of being,' derives from the Greek *logos* and *ontos*."
"I tried some ontos once. Not bad. Kinda salty."
"The philosopher Leibniz called it, 'the science of something and of nothing, of being and not-being, of the thing and the mode of the thing, of substance and accident.' It has a kind of poetry, don't you think?"
"I've read better poems on bathroom doors, Fraser."
"Ah."
"Let's get one thing straight. I'm real. I'm sitting here and I'm driving this car, which is also real by the way, and so's the hot dog I had for lunch and so's that jaywalker and so's your old man. Got that?"
"Strictly speaking, my father is dead, Ray. Though I have often thought--well, never mind. That's not important."
"It's just an expression."
"Ah. Well, I have no doubt whatsoever that *you* are real." Pause. "Of course, I would have to believe that, if I shared the same inexistential plane as you."
"Plane? What plane? There is no plane. Is this a trick?"
"I apologize. I only meant--"
"You know what? I don't care what you meant, Fraser. You're real, I'm real, and I know Dief's real because I can feel his hot, doggy breath on my ear--*stop that!*. So stop trying to argue yourself out of existence. You're giving me a very real headache."
"Understood."
