I awoke this morning to a distinct buzzing sound, some sort of mechanical device operating at high speed. It was loud, but not too loud, like it was being muffled by a wall. I didn't think it would be coming from our house, since it was too early for my housemate to be working on the bathroom renovations, but it sounded too close to be the neighbors. It was nearly time to get up anyway, so I did. The noise was distinctly louder at the end of my bedroom. I turned my head this way and that, and it seemed to be coming from a point in midair, which, even in my groggy post-awakening state, I deemed most unusual.

Suddenly, not two feet in front of my eyes, a small spinning disk burst of out nothing, spewing white dust in my direction. I blinked. Indeed, a two-inch saw-blade was working its way from left to right through empty space in my bedroom, spitting out a fair amount of plaster dust onto my carpet. I was fairly certain I was in fact awake, but it's often hard to tell in dreams. Transfixed by the sheer impossibility of the event, I just stood there watching it. After having travelled about two feet horizontally, it withdrew, then reemerged at right angles and started downward. There was light shining on the other side of the slit it had carved out of nothingness. I wandered around to the other side of this phenomenon, and noted that it could not be seen from that angle. Unsure what to do, I sat down on my bed and waited, watching the tool carve out a rectangle some two feet by three feet, a good three feet in the air.

When the disc reached the point where it had started, it withdrew, and was followed by a solid whump noise, which cause the rectangle of air to topple forward to lie on my carpet looking like ordinary sheetrock, but, more importantly, exposing an opening to somewhere else. In it stood a little man about three feet tall, dressed in dusty overalls and sporting a long, pointy beard that curled back towards his face, which was partially shielded by large goggles. behind him stood an equally diminuitive woman, also dressed in overalls, holding a clipboard, with her bright orange hair drawn up into two huge buns.

"Shit! What the hell, lemme see that!" said the little man, in a throaty yet high-pitched voice, turning around to grab the clipboard from his companion.

"There's a guy there," replied his companion, sounding rather concerned.

"No shit, brainiac! We are in deep crap. Deep!"

"Sorry sir, we're having some difficulties," she addressed to me, stooping over to look through the hole and smiling sheepishly. Behind her I could see another wall, covered in a tangle of small pipes.

I smiled back. "Don't mind me—I'm still too confused to be either annoyed or terrified."

"What is this? This isn't 17b! I'm gonna kick Stenn's ass! Incompetent retard!" The man proceeded to utter a prodigious stream of profanity, while frantically flipping through the pages on the clipboard and periodically glancing up at some things that were out of my sight.

"Don't mind Nern. He gets awfully worked up about these things. I'm Gleni, by the way," said the woman, pointing proudly at her small name badge.

"Pleased to meet you," I replied, making a half-mocking bow. "Care to tell me how it is that you came to make a hole in the air of my bedroom, and, for that matter, who you are and what you're doing?"

"Oh, we're reality gnomes. We fix things that need fixing." She bobbed her head enthusiastically.

"Hey, find out if this is 17b or 16i," Stenn barked out, glancing upward briefly from his notes.

"Ummm, could you tell me what you call a long yellow fruit with white flesh and what day of the week it is?" She grinned hopefully and wrung her hands.

"A banana, and Thursday."

"Banana and Thursday…Thursday…Thursday…oh!" She spun around, "It's 14b!"

"14b? Holy monkey snot!" Stenn dropped the clipboard and put his hands to his head.

"What's the matter?" called out another voice.

"We hit 14b!" Gleni yelled back, leaning back around the end of the frame.

Another small face, this time with a forked beard, poked past one side of the hole, shaking slowly and going "Tsk, tsk."

"We're very sorry, sir," Gleni apologized again. "If you just hand me that," she gestured at the floor, with the piece of wall still resting on it, "we'll have things fixed up in a jiffy and make it all up to you. Very sorry, truly."

I gripped the panel by the edges and lifted it into place, noting that I could still see the far side of my room on it, even though it wasn't lined up yet. I positioned it, then held it in place, and heard a muffled, "Okay, that's good, we've got it," followed by a series of banging and scraping noises.

That evening when I came back, there was still a thin rectangle of plaster framing the place where the hole had been. It hasn't gone away, and I bump into it sometimes. It seems pretty solid, and I suspect it'll lower the resale value of our home. On the other hand, since that day, busses always seem to arrive at the bus stop about thirty seconds after I do, even if there's not supposed to be another one for a long time. It works out even, I guess…