Lucid- a novel.

[theotherguy]

LUCID
Chapter 1

The ceaseless dripping sound of the coffee pot unnerved him. It grated at his soul, etching away bit by bit until there was nothing left but a raw, hollow, drowsy lump of flesh. It was not so much the noise which annoyed him, but the implications of that noise. There was a little bit of caffeine in each one of those drops. It was the same caffeine which had coursed through his veins, had sustained and deranged him for the past five days, and which had, through its measly and occasional stimulation, kept him half-awake, a zombie during that entire epoch.
The buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights soothed him, if anything could soothe a man as brainless as he. Soon, even the dripping of the coffee pot ceased, and his vision slowly blurred. He could feel himself relaxing, his head tilting back. Something inside of him prodded for him to stand, wring his hands, jog in place, anything but sleep--- but he did not, could not listen. Uncaring, he lost himself.

Colors began to flash across his eyes. A blue square appeared in the corner of his right eye. He studied it vaguely, gazing passively at its fuzzy features, and it grew and grew until…

“Mr. Miller!”

The blue square disappeared, and he was suddenly aware of his surroundings. The coffee pot, the fluorescent lights, and now a bearded man in a blue, button-up shirt with a ghastly orange tie and wide, ungainly glasses became visible to him.

“You were sleeping, Mr. Miller,” The bearded man said matter-of-factly, “with your eyes open.”

“Ugh…” he grunted, rubbing his forehead and grabbing the powder-blue mug of coffee in front of him, which had long since cooled to a sickly lukewarm temperature.

Before he could bring the mug to his lips, the bearded man stopped him, “No, no, Mr. Miller—you shan’t have any more caffeine. The incubation period is over and we can finally begin trials.”

He put the mug down, staring at the rippling brown surface of the coffee with mixed feelings of envy and regret. The bearded man sat down at the long, white table at which Mr. Miller was seated, and pulled a black pen from his breast pocket. Removing the cap from his pen, the man remarked, “You look like hell. Frankly I don’t blame you for dozing off today. Five days without any sleep and an excess of caffeine can do a number on anyone, and I admire your steadfast commitment to the project. Three other subjects were already expelled for, shall I say, artificial narcolepsy, and not of your five-minute sort, but five hours! You could imagine my surprise when I entered the waiting room this morning to find three of them asleep at a table. I imagine they all congregated there some time last night to complain about the procedure, and fell asleep mid-conversation!”

The man droned on and on, but his addressee was not listening. He could feel himself teetering back and forth, still staring at the rippling surface of the coffee mug. The blue square re-appeared.

“Mr. Miller, are you listening to me!?” The man asked, clapping his hands and eliciting a slight response in his participant. “Look, we’ll start with a few survey questions and move on to cognitive tests. Then,” he ended, with a sigh, “You’ll get your sleep.”

“Okay,” Miller mumbled, rubbing his forehead yet again, and scooting forward in his chair. He only had to stay awake for a few more moments, and he would receive his coveted rest. The bearded man scribbled something on a clipboard, and began.

“Your first name, Mr. Miller?”

“Jacob”

“Do you know who I am, Jacob?”

“Is this part of the test?”

“Of course not, I just want to know if I’ve examined you before.”

“Don’t recognize you, sorry.”

“That’s fine. I’m Dr. Raymond West. I’m the lead psychologist on this project.”

“Okay.”

“Your age, Mr. Miller?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Mr. Miller, you reported earlier that you had no allergic reactions to any drug of any sort before this test, including caffeine and aspartame, is this correct?”

“Sure.”

“You signed the release form allowing your personal information to be published in any future references to this experiment, yes?”

“I think so.”

“Good. I’m going to begin the test now. On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate your alertness?”

“Three.”

“Your fatigue?”

“Nine.”

“Now, Mr. Miller, how could you possibly be more fatigued than you are right now?”

“I don’t know. I guess I could be dead, or running a marathon.”

“Can you recall the date, Mr. Miller?”

“February…uh… sixteenth, 2015?”

“That was yesterday, Mr. Miller. But I can forgive you for that. Mr. Miller, you stated prior to this test that to your knowledge, you did not dream at all. Is this true?”

“I don’t know. I guess everybody dreams. I just don’t remember them.”

“That’s correct Jacob. On your first night here you were recorded with sixty-three minutes of REM sleep, entirely characteristic of healthy dreaming. You were probably even dreaming during those few minutes that you dozed just a moment ago. As deprived as your body is of REM sleep, it needs to “pay the debt”, so to say. Do you know what this test is for, Mr. Miller?”

“No. I just heard it was about sleep.”

“That’s correct Mr. Miller. Our study concerns the effects of sleep deprivation and caffeine use on the sustainability and content of lucid dreams. As you go to sleep this afternoon, we will be closely monitoring you.”

“Lucid dreams, doctor?”

“Yes, lucid dreams. They are dreams in which the person experiencing has awareness, consciousness, you might say, of the dream, and can even exhibit a certain amount of control over them. As you sleep, we will monitor you for the first signs of an REM cycle, and we will then take certain measures to ensure that you become aware of your dream. We may, if the situation becomes too distressing for you, alter the content of the dreams themselves or else wake you. Our goal is to fully record a maximally sustained lucid dream for further study, so we’ll need to have you in REM for as long as possible.”

“So, you’re recording my dreams? How is that even possible?”

The thought of psychologists in lab coats prodding at his thoughts while he slept unnerved him a bit. Suppose he dreamt of something embarrassing?

“Now Mr. Miller, we’re simply going to analyze the impulses in your visual cortex and use an artificial neural network to analyze them and make meaning of them. We’ll probably only see flashes of color, a hint of an emotion, perhaps a disjointed scene or two, certainly not a full dream. Our neural networks are not quite as good as the human brain in interpreting random flashes of visual information, if you can forgive us for that.”

He didn’t understand. He was tired.

“Okay…” he managed, shaking his head. Dr. West continued on with the survey questions, gave him a familiar cognitive test involving assembling shapes out of multicolored blocks. He scored half what he had gotten before the test began. Then a nurse came in and took his blood pressure, measured his breathing, his eye responses, and left.

“Alright, Mr. Miller, all of your scores are within the expected ranges.” Dr. West chimed cheerily, now sipping at a cup of coffee, “Your cognitive scores are exactly where we expected them to be, but your blood pressure is a bit high, which should be expected from the amount of caffeine you recently consumed! I think we might be able to begin the procedure… I just--”

Why was he still talking? Why couldn’t they just get on with it? He just wanted some sleep damn it!

“So I’m done? Can I go now?” He snarled.

“Oh dear, irritability and impatience… classic signs of sleep deprivation. Yes I was just about to say that we could begin the procedure shortly. Please, follow me.”

Dr. West capped his pen, straightened his sickly orange tie, and stood up, his clipboard still in hand. Jacob Miller stood up as well, stretching and yawning as he did so, and followed west into the next room. It was fluorescently lit, exactly as the previous room was, with the same white tile floors and dirty plaster walls. There was another powder-blue table covered in coffee cups of the same color in one corner of the room. In front of the table stood a bank of LCD computer monitors, connected to a purple, cubic mainframe computer in the center of the room. His eyes followed a mesh of black cables from the computer to their endpoint at the other end of the room: a bed.

That bed might as well have been a million dollar check, an Italian supermodel, and God himself all in one. He lumbered towards it, like a deformed moth towards a flame, his legs not quite catching up to his yearning desire. But then, Dr. West stopped him.

“Hold on now, Jacob. I want you to take a look at the equipment. I want to make sure that all I my volunteers fully understand the procedures, to avoid any…complications. I hope you understand.”

No, he did not understand, damn it! He craned towards the bed once again, but then stifled himself, and stood passively, listening. The doctor glided over to the monitors, sipping his coffee along the way.

“These monitors will display the raw data from your visual cortex, along with the interpreted data from the neural network on the mainframe computer there. We’ll be able to send you auditory and visual signals through this interface. We can even relay pre-recorded stimuli from other patients (to a limited extent) to suggest other dream settings for you. Someone will always be on staff to monitor your dreams to ensure that you stay in an REM state for as long as possible. Now, over to the inputs…”

He moved over to the bed. It was a pale green, standard hospital bed, complete with metal bars on the sides and hypo-allergenic pillows and sheets. “This is the primary input electrode,” Dr. West explained, holding up a tiny, black wired device in his pudgy fingers. “We will attach this to the back of your ear, like this,” he clipped it behind his ear, “and it will measure the activity in your visual cortex and relay it back to the mainframe computer.” He pointed to a small silver node on the device, “this is a small speaker we will use to prompt you audibly. We will use this as our primary means of suggestion and communication, but if that should fail, we have this…” He held up another small device, “the NIMID, Non-Invasive Mental Input Device. We will clip this to your other ear, and it will stimulate neurons in your spinal cord, which your brain will interpret as sensory input. With this, we’ll be able to send you auditory, visual, even tactile sensations to communicate with you. It’s a brand new piece of technology, and it’s going through its trial phase right now. Something could potentially go wrong, so if you start getting weird inputs that aren’t making much sense to you, just do this.” Dr. West tapped the back of his left ear three times. “This will kill the program and prompt whoever is monitoring you to immediately wake you. But never fear, the system has so far been foolproof.”

Jacob Miller was hardly listening, simply rubbing the five-day-old stubble on his chin and staring longingly at the bed. He didn’t quite understand what was going on, but he gathered that something odd would be going on in his head shortly. It didn’t really matter, he only wanted sleep.

“Alright, I think I’m done here, Mr. Miller. Why don’t you lie down here and I’ll attach the device.”

Such a prompt could not have come sooner. He felt his muscles relax and his whole outlook change to one of great relief as he limped towards the bed and climbed into its soft, warm, pale green sheets and placed his aching head onto the itchy, paper-like pillow.

“I’m attaching the NIMID now, and the primary input electrode.”

He felt first a sharp bite as the device clipped to his ear, and then a cold, wet sensation as the doctor applied adhesive to his neck to keep it in place. Doctor West made him roll over and he again experienced those same sensations as the other piece of equipment was pinned to his ear. He imagined that he must look quite strange, like a miserable, restless cyborg. His thoughts began to run together as he imagined himself lying there, and then he felt a sharp stab on his right arm. He looked down at his pale blue hospital gown and saw the doctor placing a tube in his arm.

“Relax, Mr. Miller. I’m applying an I.V. We’re going to administer a light sedative to ensure that you fall asleep. Not that you needed any help… but we are a bit short on time here. You should feel a slight pressure on your wrist; I’m putting something on it which will monitor your pulse. There we go… all done.”

Doctor West backed away from the bed, and Miller had the strange sensation that he was a child, being tucked in by his father. The doctor’s glasses glowed slightly in the fluorescent light, just as his father’s had years ago as he tucked the child in during the long, cold winter.

“Sleep tight, Jacob.” Doctor west said, dreamily, “Don’t let the bad dreams get to you. Sleep deprived subjects almost always have nightmares.”

“Good night.” Miller said, his eyes coming to a close.

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning, Mr. Miller.” He walked away, and the lights went off.

Chapter 2.

 

[Seagull]

Interesting. I like it so far.

 

[Sheepo]

Well done, hope you keep writing:thumbs:

 

[Godron]

theotherguy, this is an absolutely awesome idea. I'll be watching this space, definately.
Have you read Counting Sheep before, BTW? It's very interesting all the way through, and it's where I first read about lucid dreams... if you haven't read it, you'd probably like it. It covers just about everything to do with sleep (not in depth, I suppose), there's a lot of science and tones of interesting studies. Hell, I reckon everyone should read it, it's that interesting.

 

[redruM]

This is a great topic for a story, you should definitely write some more and post it.

 

[Cavalry]

this is by far,if not the most interesting,then one of the most interesting stories have read thus far

 

[theotherguy]

Chapter 2: Lake
The wind blew through his hair, whipping its long, dark strands across his face and into his eyes, obscuring his vision. He brushed the hair away, revealing the glorious vista of the sun slowly rising over the surface of the lake, making its muddy green waters glow like liquid fire. He felt a deep sense of meaning, that there was a reason for everything, and that the reason was him. The wind blew his hair back into his eyes and he brushed it away.

Above the rushing of the wind through the sails, he could hear the strum of an acoustic guitar, playing a familiar tune with a soft, sad melody. Slowly he moved his gaze about the tiny boat to see his brother sitting there, a light brown, rustic guitar in his hands, strumming at it with his grizzled fingers. He felt young, unworthy, miniscule in the presence of his brother.

Freddy, his older sibling, was the ‘cool’ kid of the family. He was too cool to play baseball with his younger brother, too cool to go on bike rides with him to the park anymore. Heck, he was too cool to do anything. He just sat in his room, smoked, and played the guitar.

Jacob felt like going over to his older brother and sitting there with him for a while, listening to the melodies. But no, he could never be accepted, not even here on the lake with the sun leisurely rising into the sky and the waves lapping up against the bow of the sailboat.

He looked away from his indifferent brother, and saw his father at the stern, a tack line in one hand and the handle of the rudder in the other.

He was crouching there, keeping his balance and maneuvering the boat so that it stayed with its back to the wind. His father was a master sailor. A boating champion in youth, Dr. James Miller was now a successful heart surgeon and the father of two dashing boys, one eighteen, and the other twelve. The boatman kept his dark eyes on the horizon, his gray-whiskered chin firmly planted in the collar of his bright yellow windbreaker.

“Hey Dad,” Jacob said, his voice high and girlish, “Do you think I could have a try at sailing?”

His father acted as if he had not heard the poor boy, and kept his face expressionless.

Jacob repeated his request, “Dad, gi’ me a try! Come on!”

The man remained unmoved.

“Dad, please!”

The boy dashed towards his father. He did not enjoy being ignored. He reached towards the handle of the rudder, and suddenly his father’s expression turned from one of indifference to one of terror.

“Jacob! Get out of the way!” He yelled above the wind. Abruptly, Freddy’s music ended.

“What do you mean?” Jacob asked.

“You’re dreaming Jacob! You’re dreaming! You’re dreaming!” He kept repeating this over and over, his voice escalating into a scream.

“What are you talking about?” The boy tried to yell, yet elicited only a whisper.

He suddenly felt a sharp pain behind both ears. The sail had swung around and hit him in the back of the head. He tried to catch his balance but slipped and stumbled on the slick surface of the sailboat, and careened, screaming, into the muddy waters.

The frigid waters muffled his scream and left him spitting bubbles beneath the surface of the lake. Terrified, he craned his neck upward to see the silhouette of the sailboat glittering in the sunlight, the distorted faces of his brother and father grotesquely deformed over the edge.

He gasped for air, realized that he was under water, and was gripped by an indescribable sense of dread. He was drowning. He thrashed about, swirling the water around him, but he felt that he was being sucked downward by a strange force from the bottom of the lake. He quickly became exhausted, and let the phantom suck him downwards, the faces of his father and brother slowly evaporating into the green-black waters.

He saw a splash at the surface. His brother was jumping in to save him. Freddy’s guitar floated at the surface as he swam desperately downward. But it was too late now. Nobody could save him. He was going to die. He was going to sink forever to a place where no one could reach him, and where no one would care to find his corpse.

Gradually, it all faded away, and he was left alone, alive in the darkness.

-*-

A perfectly straight, red line vibrated on an endless black plane, resonating at a low frequency and emitting a low buzzing sound. Oddly, it began to rotate in place, or was it he who was rotating?

More lines began to appear, crossing one another in a rainbow-colored grid, filling each other, becoming each other. It was beautiful, or at least he thought it was. He felt calm, at peace. He became the lines, and they became part of his body, and he vibrated with them, humming.

“Mr. Miller?” A distant voice echoed, destroying the humming, destroying his peace, and leaving him bewildered and confused.

“Mr. Miller, we’re communicating with you through the NIMID now.” It was the voice of Dr. West, now loud and clear, filling him, grating on his nerves.

“I know that you cannot confirm anything I say, or communicate back to me at this moment, but if you can hear me I would just like you to know that the experiment has thus far been a success. After ninety minutes of deep sleep you experienced an REM episode, which was caught after thirty-five seconds by my lab assistant. We attempted to communicate with you through the speaker system, but you appeared unresponsive. You then entered a period of delta-wave sleep for fifteen minutes, at which point we administered an REM-inducing drug and began direct stimulation of your spinal cord with the NIMID. You are now experiencing pre-recorded hypnagogic imagery, and are in a stable REM state. I’m going to have to ask you to wait for a few more moments as we calibrate the primary electrode. We should also have access to your auditory cortex shortly, which should allow you to communicate with us directly. Hang in there, Mr. Miller!”

He heard a crackle, and the voice disappeared, echoing upon the virtual walls in his mind. What the hell was going on? He watched the dazzling, colorful lines for a few moments and then came to a sudden realization: he was dreaming.

How could this be possible? He ran over the details silently. Yes, he had been in an experiment. He had gone to sleep. People were monitoring him. Why hadn’t he realized this before?

Many questions raged through his head as he sat--- or, floated, or… he didn’t know what he was doing there. The lines continued to glow and swirl in the darkness, humming, making him calm. Was this what it was like to dream? Were there just pretty swirling colors, soothing noises and darkness? He suddenly felt cheated, angry.

“What am I doing here!?” He groaned. The sound of his voice pierced his ears. It was abnormally loud, as if it were being projected from a megaphone. He reached to cover his ears but found that he had no arms. He was nothing but a floating observer.

“Ooh, we heard you that time! As I said before, Mr. Miller, you are experiencing hypnagogic imagery, random auditory and visual stimulation. It’s sort of like a proto-dream if you will the precursor to a lucid dream. Mr. Miller, did you hear what I said before?” The voice of the doctor crackled off again, and he was left alone, hanging with the question in mind.

“I think so. I feel…fuzzy though. Am I really dreaming? I don’t feel like I’m dreaming.” He tried to move, tried to close his eyes and make the lines go away, tried to do anything, but could not.

Doctor West replied, “Yes, Mr. Miller. I’m glad that we’re finally in communication. We’re going to start a series of tests to make sure that our inputs are fully calibrated, and then we’ll let you go along your way, only intervening when we feel you are losing control. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, more tests, I understand.” He felt a twinge of excitement as he said this. He had never done this before. It was making him nervous.

“Excellent, Mr. Miller, we’re going to load some geometric shapes now.” The doctor’s voice was cheery, pleasant.

Instantly, the lines and the humming disappeared, leaving only a certain afterglow like a memory, and were replaced by a green, pixilated triangle, moving from left to right. He followed it with his gaze. It was not like the buzzing lines. It felt unnatural, unkind.

“Do you see a purple triangle, moving from right to left, Mr. Miller?” The doctor asked urgently.

“No,” he replied cautiously, “it’s green and moving from left to right.”
He heard a grumble, “But it is a triangle, correct?” The doctor asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m calibrating now. Yes, the neural network is interpreting a green triangle now. We’re going to run a few more shapes.”

Miller then saw a parade of shapes and colors, from red squares to bouncing orange spheres, until the researchers were satisfied with their readings. He began to become impatient, the colors began to fade.

“Say doc, how long is this going to take?” He snarled.
There was a rush of activity, “Mr. Miller you’re starting to fade back into delta sleep. You need to keep your emotions in check. It can be difficult, I understand, but you must remain calm and alert, or we will have to administer more drugs. Emotions can be strong, nearly uncontrollable while you are in a dream state. You simply must learn to control them. We’re completely done with the calibrations now, and we’ll let you sleep naturally in just a few moments. Stand by.”

His impatience grew as the doctor droned on, but it soon subsided and gave way to dull anticipation.

“Three seconds.”

A fuzzy blue square appeared in his center of vision. It grew, swirling.

“Two…”

It encompassed his entire field of view, spinning, glowing. It filled him, exploding all of his senses at once like a nuclear bomb.

“One.”
Chapter 3: Lucid

 

[redruM]

Yet again, great stuff. Keep it coming !

 

[Seagull]

was wondering, are you making chapter titles? I see there's one for chapter 2, but not one for ch. 1 D:

 

[redruM]

was wondering, are you making chapter titles? I see there's one for chapter 2, but not one for ch. 1 D:

Yeah I noticed that too. It should be called "Fatigue" or something.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Awesome. Keep going, this is brilliant.

 

[theotherguy]

was wondering, are you making chapter titles? I see there's one for chapter 2, but not one for ch. 1 D:

Yeah, I added them just now. Chapter 1 is titled "Caffeine"

 

[Lucid]

That was excellent, read this while Oblivion was installing.
Although the only reason I was drawn to it was because it had my user name in it. :X

You should consider publishing this into an actual book and taking it to some professional book/story analyzer and see what can be done.

 

[theotherguy]

Chapter 3: Lucid



The demagogue’s voice boomed above the cheering of the crowd below, “These are the times that try men’s souls. Ask not, what dreams our country can have for a better life, but what dreams you are dreaming. For this day is living in infamy. We are infamous. There is a certain expulsion in that. Should the fluoridation of the nation’s water supply determine how we treat one another?”

There was another resounding cheer from the monstrous crowd. The eloquence of the handsome, wholesome man on the podium was almost unbelievable. It made Jacob Miller feel empowered, that political efficacy was in his hands, and that the future was bright. He bumped elbows with the rest of the faceless masses around him and jumped up and down to get a better glimpse of the podium-mounted politician, who was illuminated by radiant green spotlights.

“Five score and eight years ago, our forefathers wrote: ‘We the people, under the current circumstances, say no!’”

The crowd roared. Jacob roared. He became one with the crowd. He felt powerful, strong, and wonderful. He pushed through the multitude, knocking unsuspecting people down as he went through it, eliciting laughs and giggles. Everyone seemed to have a glass of champagne or a bottle of cognac in hand, and they were all wearing gleaming silver monocles and top hats.

“Do you, sir, agree with the current tax upon all outgoing and incoming produce? Should the tariff by determined by men other than you, and your fellow countrymen?” The demagogue pointed down from his high podium at Miller.

“Are you asking me?” Jacob asked, pointing to himself and feeling quite prideful. Suddenly, a camera appeared in front of his face, gleaming, and a beautiful TV personality pointed a novelty-sized purple microphone at his mouth, awaiting a sound bite.

“Well...Uh...I don’t know. Now that I think about it that really doesn’t make much sense. I’m not sure what you’re asking.” He stammered into the microphone, his voice booming over the PA system and echoing again and again above the crowd.

Everyone began to laugh. The champagne and the cognac were spilled from every glass and fell like rain. The TV personality began to straighten her hair. The politician smiled, winked, and pointed at the poor Mr. Miller.

“Are you suggesting, Mr. Miller, that you are dreaming?” The politician asked, his voice suddenly becoming impossibly deep.

“No. No. I’m not dreaming! What you’re saying just doesn’t make any sense!” Jacob exclaimed. The crowd roared with riotous laughter.

“You are dreaming Mr. Miller. You are dreaming Mr. Miller. You have lost lucidity Mr. Miller. You are dreaming Mr. Miller. Please realize that you are dreaming,” the politician repeated with robotic intonations, his face slowly transforming into that of Dr. West’s, with a dark beard and circular, glowing glasses.

Jacob shook his head. This was just too weird. He had to get out of there… the crowd was getting to him, he had to find some air. He had to go home. He turned around and tried to run away from the transforming politician and was greeted with a thousand other faces. It was the crowd. They were blocking his path. Their faces were all bearded. They were all wearing glasses. No! He had to escape or he would become one of them. He couldn’t stand being one of them! He had to save himself!

Gripped by terror, Jacob Miller jumped. He jumped up above the crowd, floated into the air, and did not come back down. He felt safe now, floating above the heads of those zombies, looking down. He saw their faces grow further and further away.

Wait a minute. What the hell was going on here? Where was he? How could he be floating?

Then it hit him, “I’m dreaming,” he yelled, his entire existence coming to life, the fog lifted from his drowsy brain, “I’m dreaming!”

And then he fell. Realizing the existence of gravity, he accelerated towards the ground at incredible, impossible speeds. Oh god, he was going to die! He began to cry, the tears distorting the image of the crowd below. It was beautiful. His life was going to end right here, right now, and it was amazing.

Then he hit the smooth concrete ground, and it was all over.

_*_

“Damn it Mr. Miller! The test was a failure! We had such hope for you, and you blew it!”

The doctor was livid, balling his fists and stamping on the floor, his orange tie swaying back and forth. A young female lab assistant tried to comfort him, placing her hand on his shoulder and reassuring, “It’s alright, Dr. West. We’ll just have to try with the next patient, and the next. We’re bound to find someone who can help us eventually.”

“What…. What’s going on?” Jacob Miller groaned blearily, blinking and rubbing his sleep-encrusted eyes. He was lying in the pale green hospital bed, an I.V. tube in his arm and wires running out form the back of his head.

“You’ve woken up, Mr. Miller.” The doctor said, rolling his eyes and turning off the mainframe computer. “We can no longer continue the test. We gave you the maximum sedative dose, but it was no use. You simply started thrashing about and woke up. You are no longer of any use to this experiment. I’m sorry.”

“Ugh…” he yawned, and sat up. “So I can’t just go back to sleep?”

“No, Mr. Miller. The experiment is over.” The doctor crossed his arms impatiently.

Jacob began to feel trapped. He unclipped the devices from the backs of his ears, ripping off some of his hair painfully. He had to get it all off. He ripped the I.V. tube out of his arm with his left hand, and felt searing pain. He was bleeding badly. Deep red blood was flowing from his wrist and pooling in the sheets.

“Good heavens, Mr. Miller!” Doctor West exclaimed, “You shouldn’t have done that! Nurse! Nurse! Get this man some antiseptic and a bandage; he’s pulled out his I.V!”

The blood continued to pool as a nurse ran in from the other room, carrying gauze and antiseptic. Jacob rolled out of bed, applying pressure to his wound as the nurse grabbed onto his wrist and rubbed an alcohol-smelling substance onto it. It stung badly. She applied a bandage and left the room.

“God, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, embarrassed. He began to feel nauseous, “I need to go to the bathroom,” he declared, stumbling about.
“It’s right over there,” sighed the doctor, pointing to a door labeled ‘GENTELMEN’.

“Thanks.”

He padded his way, barefoot, to the door. He felt like he was going to vomit. He shoved open the door and came to the sink. He turned on the water and began pooling the cool, brownish liquid into his hands and rubbing it on his face. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He began to have a gnawing, searing pain in his mouth. He spit and felt something hard leave his mouth and clank in the sink. Oh god, he was losing teeth. He spat out another, and another. Bloody white teeth were pouring out of his mouth and into the drain of the sink, mixing with the brown waters. His mouth burned.

Confused, Jacob looked into the mirror above the sink. He saw not his own face, but the familiar bearded face of Dr. West staring back at him. What the hell? What was going on? Teeth continued to pour from his mouth.

“Mr. Miller!” The face in the mirror exclaimed, “You’ve had a false awakening Mr. Miller! You are still dreaming. Your brain has tricked you into thinking you’ve woken up. No, Mr. Miller, do not back away. Remain calm. Mr. Miller!”

“Jesus Christ!” the poor, toothless man exclaimed, backing away from the mirror. What was happening to him?

“Mr. Miller, you need to listen to me! It can be difficult for people to become lucid the first time. We registered that you became lucid in the last dream you had. Do you remember? You were floating above a crowd. You yelled ‘I’m dreaming’. Do you recall that Mr. Miller?” The doctor’s voice was sincere, pleading.

Jacob began to remember. Yes, yes he had been dreaming before. But was he dreaming now, or did they just drug him? Maybe that was what the I.V. was for, to dope him up and confuse him. But why would they want to do that?
The doctor continued, “Mr. Miller, if you don’t believe me, please, do a reality check. You need to do something to prove that you are in fact dreaming. Look at your right hand, is it still bleeding?”
Jacob looked at his hand. There wasn’t a bandage on it any more. It looked normal, real.

“Count the fingers, Mr. Miller,” the doctor said.

“What do you mean count the fingers? I have five, just like everybody else!” he exclaimed skeptically.

“Just do it,” the doctor insisted.

Jacob Miller counted the fingers on his right hand. “One, two, three, four, and five…six…seven… what the…” He counted again. He came out to eleven. He counted again, came out to six.

“What the hell is going on? Why does my hand keep changing?” He was confused, afraid.

“It changes because you are dreaming Mr. Miller,” the man in the mirror explained. “Look around you Mr. Miller. Take it all in. This is your dream. This is your creation. It is all in your head.”

Hands shaking, he looked around the bathroom. “It’s all in my head…” he whispered, gazing. How could this be possible? It seemed so real, so wonderfully, impossibly real. He could make out the fine details, the grit, the dirt, the minute hairs and dust on every surface. He felt the smoothness of the sink, let the brown water flow over his hand, and let it run down his arm. He smelled the dankness of the air, tasted it on his tongue. “It’s all in my head…”

Opening the door, he left the bathroom. He came out not into the harsh, fluorescent hospital room, but into the familiar, warm interior of his apartment. Sunlight streamed through the pane-glass windows, lighting every corner and bringing warmth into every crevice. Dust hung in the air, whirling about in front of his television set, on top of his kitchen sink, and around the ceiling fan. Every detail was perfect, natural, precisely as he remembered.

His TV flickered on, Dr. West peering out of it as a massive color image. “Fantastic, isn’t it, Mr. Miller? You’re having a lucid dream. Please take care to remember that you are dreaming,” his voice was muffled, precisely as if it were coming out of the speakers of the television set, not as if it were simply in Miller’s head.

He could see it now. This is why nobody ever realized that they were dreaming. This is why he had lived a double life every night, and never realized he was living it, never remembered its beauty or its incredible realism. He had always imagined dreams to be fuzzy, vague and nonsensical. But here he was, gazing at the most detailed, the most hyper-real scene he had ever come across in his life.

He moved through his apartment like a living sponge, touching, feeling, looking, seeing, listening, hearing, absorbing, and knowing. Dumbstruck, he gazed out of his apartment window out onto Lake Michigan. It was the most beautiful day he could have imagined. There was no fog; there were no clouds, no raindrops, simply a sunny blue sky over a gleaming Chicago beside a crystal-clear lake. It was all the more beautiful, he realized, because it was created by his own mind. He was the architect of his own reality, and he wanted to live in it.

“I wish you luck, Mr. Miller,” the TV set chimed, “remember to occasionally reality-check. You must never forget that you are dreaming. Don’t let your emotions get to you, and if you feel that you’re losing control, remember the procedure I told you before, and we’ll pull you out. Now go, and explore!” The TV turned off, and Jacob Miller was left alone in his own apartment, alone inside his own head.

“Wow,” was all he could manage. “I guess I’ll just have a look around then.”

He realized that he must have been wearing hospital clothes, no good for going out into the cold… but what did it matter? He looked down and noticed that he was now wearing normal clothing: a T-shirt, jeans and a brown jacket… or was it a button-down shirt, a tie, and khakis? It didn’t matter, it kept changing, and he was fine with that.

He unlocked the door to his apartment, smelled the fresh air, and stepped out to explore the fine world out there, the world of his own creation.

Chapter 4: Machine

 

[Godron]

Woah, I thought I'd have to wait like another week for the next chapter or something. This is brilliant, keep it coming :thumbs:

 

[theotherguy]

Aye, its the holidays so I have alot of free time on my hands. Starting Thursday updates will be very slow.(I will be back in school)

 

[theotherguy]

Chapter 4: Machine

Jacob Miller opened his apartment door and set foot on a Chicago sidewalk that existed solely in his mind, which was odd, because his apartment was on the 13th floor of his building. His front door was
supposed to open into the hallway, not the street. He shook off the ridiculousness of this fact. It was, after all, only a dream.

“It’s only a dream…” He whispered. He would have to keep reminding himself of that fact. Eager to see what strange things his brain would come up with, Miller scanned his immediate area slowly, taking in every detail.

It was a wonderfully sunny day. When he noted this, he felt sudden warmth all over his skin. The warmth hadn’t even existed before he thought about it. Maybe the rest of the world was like that too. It was, after all, only in his head, so it seemed reasonable that anything he thought about would come into being. Trees planted in little dirt plots on the sidewalk swayed in the wind and dazzled his eyes as they filtered the sunlight through their impossibly green leaves. Or were the leaves yellow, red, or orange? As each new color came to his mind, the colors of the leaves changed. He decided that the leaves must be green, and they remained so.

Cars were parked all along the sides of the road. He couldn’t recognize their makes or models. They seemed generic. They could have been made by any car company. It didn’t matter. He began to walk down the sidewalk. It wasn’t sunny any more, but cold and red leaves were blowing about in the breeze.

“Damn it, I wanted green leaves!” He cursed under his breath, and walked through the blowing red leaves, sheltering himself from the cold. He noticed that he was wearing a black leather jacket. He wasn’t wearing one before. He forgot about it. It didn’t matter.

After what should have been hours, but which was actually only a few seconds of walking, he found himself in downtown Chicago. He looked upwards, and noticed that he was standing next to the John Hancock Center… or was it the Sears Tower? It changed too much for him to tell the difference. It was just one huge angular black mass, ridiculously tall and daunting, with an ever-changing number of sharp white spires at the top.

“This is really weird…” he managed, his gaze shifting back to street level. He noticed he was now surrounded by John Hancock Centers and Sears Towers. Perhaps that was all his brain could manage in a simulated Chicago, which was odd, because he spent just about every day in downtown Chicago.

Instantly, as he thought about his morning commute, the scenery changed and he recognized where he was. He was standing outside the retail store in which he worked. It was all glass, modern. Its gleaming glass storefront poked out from the drab brown bricks of an old converted apartment building. A massive, gleaming aluminum apple shined from where it was plastered on the front door. He worked for Apple, the consumer electronics giant.

“You’re going to be late for work, pal!” A young, suited man said in a heavy New York accent, or was it a Boston accent? Miller glanced at his face, and instantaneously he recognized the man as his co-worker, Brad Morrison. Why did Brad Morrison have a New York accent? Miller knew the man to be a Texan the entire time that he had worked with him.

“I said you’re going to be late for work!” Brad repeated, his New York accent gone and replaced with a light Texan one. He was also no longer wearing a suit, but a black button-down shirt. He ran past Miller and across the street, practically ignoring him.

“I’m really late?” Jacob asked, genuinely concerned.

“Yeah,” Brad yelled back at him, “it’s like, 9:30 already! Come on, we’re about to open!”

Jacob felt a wave of panic come over him. Had he slept in? He shouldn’t have participated in that experiment. All that sleeping had made him late for work. Now he would only have a few minutes to prepare before the store opened. He could already see a line of customers beginning to form.

He instantly found himself across the street, opening the door into the Apple store to begin his day at work. His boss appeared, his bushy gray eyebrows constrained in annoyance.

“Miller, that’s the third time this week!” He scolded, putting his hands on his hips, “You’ve got to get control of yourself, son! What’s going to happen when I’m gone and you’re made manager of this place, huh? These customers aren’t going to open the store themselves!” He sighed, shaking his head.

“You were going to make me manager, sir?” Miller replied timidly. He was in trouble, for sure.

“Yeah, smart ass, I was going to make you manager! But you’ve screwed that up pretty bad, haven’t you?” He walked away.

“I’m sorry sir!” Miller practically shrieked, begging for mercy. His day was not starting off very well.

“Hey Jake, why don’t you unlock the stuff in the back and get ready for the customers?” Brad suggested, placing his hand awkwardly on Miller’s shoulder. Jacob looked out at the front windows and saw the growing crowd out on the streets.

“What’s going on here, why are there so many people out there?” Miller asked, shaking off Brad’s hand from his shoulder.

Brad chuckled, “What, you mean you forgot? The new I-Phone came out today! This is going to be the biggest retail day of the year!” He spread his arms out, spinning around about the various Apple products on display. Brad was acting very unusual.

“What do you mean the new I-Phone? Those came out four days ago,” miller responded skeptically, confusedly. Brad was still spinning. He tripped over a display case, knocking a laptop to the ground. He was rolling around on the carpet, laughing.

“What’s wrong with you?” Miller asked, staring at the hysterical man.

It hit him. “Right, I’m dreaming!”

The world became a hundred fold clearer to him. How could he have missed it? He looked at his right hand, just to make sure. He counted the fingers. Five… no, twelve…fifteen… He was dreaming alright. When he looked up from his hand, he marveled at the realism of the scene before him.

Every detail was exactly correct, from the display cases to the color of the carpet to the glasses on Brad’s smiling face. Come to think of it, Brad didn’t really look like that. He didn’t normally wear glasses. Brad’s glasses disappeared.

“What’s wrong, pal?” Brad asked, the smile disappearing from his face as he scrambled up from the ground, leaning on the white, angular display case from which the laptop had fallen. He didn’t really seem very realistic anymore.

“I’m not your ‘pal’.” Jacob said, shaking his head, “this is a dream. You’re not real. I have to remind myself of that. You may have fooled me before, but not right now.”

Miller began to turn away when he heard Brad wail, “Aw, come on. You don’t really think that do you? You think all the time we spent together was for nothing? Are you going to walk out on me now?”

Jacob was tempted to console the poor fellow. Perhaps he wasn’t dreaming after all. Perhaps Brad really was his friend of many years, and he was being irrational. Miller looked at his hand and counted seven fingers. No, he was the only rational person here. He was dreaming, and Brad was nothing but a mindless, senseless machine. But then, the flight of fancy gripped him that perhaps, Brad was as real as he was, and that he was the character in Brad’s dream. He shook the thought off. This was getting ridiculous.

“I’ve got to go now Brad. Why don’t you just stay here and sell the phones to the customers?” Jacob said, beginning to walk away.

“What are you, sick or something?” Brad asked, following the dreamer.

“Sure Brad. I’m real sick and I need to go home. You stay here, alright?” he responded, annoyed.

“No. If you’re sick, I’m coming with you.” Brad was being irrational, Jacob thought. Wait, what was he thinking? Brad was a creation of Jacob’s brain, an amalgamation of distant and distinct memories. He was nothing more than a puppet, an automaton, a machine.

“Okay, whatever. Just keep quiet, okay?” Miller surrendered, turning away from brad and practically running for the door.

As he reached for the aluminum handle of the pristine glass door, he came face to face with an angry customer on the other side. The scene started him, and he felt his heart rate begin to race. The customer had blood shot, yellow eyes, matted, frizzled hair, and she was screaming, beating on the glass.

“Jesus…” Jacob exclaimed, his hand shooting back as if he had just touched a hot stove.

“They’re trying to get in! They want the phones!” Brad proclaimed, shoving a display case in front of the door and blocking it from the intrusions of the frenetic customers. They were all beating on the glass now, shrieking. Miller could feel the tension rising in his veins. He had to find a way out. He had to escape.

From somewhere in the seething crowd, a stone careened into the glass storefront, shattering a pane and allowing a flood of customers to reach their frenzied, bleeding hands into the shattered glass. Brad shoved a ridiculously tall display case in front of this hole and began to hold back the crowd with his own body weight.

“Go, Jake! Get out of here! I’ll hold them off while you get help! Go!” Brad screamed, beating back the hands reaching out from behind the display case. More rocks began to sail from the crowd towards the store front.

No. Jacob couldn’t just leave his friend behind. He had to help Brad. He jogged over to another display case and began to drag it towards the window. His heart was racing. He could feel himself beginning to sweat. The glass was shattering. People were climbing into the store. He couldn’t let them get in.

Unexpectedly, every computer monitor, phone, and small electronic device in the store turned on simultaneously, all bearing Dr. West’s distorted face. “Mr. Miller! Your heart is racing! If you don’t calm down right away you’re going to wake up! Mr. Miller, you need to stop what you are doing immediately and pick up one of the small devices in your vicinity. I will instruct you further.” The faces all urged through raspy electronic speakers.

Jacob let go of the display case. What the hell was he doing? Of course he was dreaming. Of course he was still in the experiment. Nothing was going to happen to him. Nothing was going to hurt him. Still, the customers crashed into the store alarmingly.

He dashed to another display case and picked up a phone. Dr. West’s face was still on it.

“Very good Mr. Miller, don’t ask any questions, just move towards the back of the store. You will find a door on the wall to your left,” the doctor urged.

What was he on about? How should Dr. West, who had never met Jacob before, know anything about his workplace? A wild, livid customer ran towards Jacob. He wanted Jacob’s phone.

“Don’t hesitate, Mr. Miller! Get to the door as quickly as possible, you will be safe there!” The doctor insisted, his voice coming loud and clear over the speakers of the phone. Above the roar of the crowd, Miller could hear Brad crying. He decided to follow the doctor’s instructions.

He ran towards the back of the room, and indeed found a gray metal door in the back left corner.

“Open it. On the other side you will find a stairway. Follow it to the roof. You will be safe there.” Dr. West suggested.

Jacob complied. Opening the door, he found himself in a drab concrete stairwell—a stairwell which had not existed before. He sprinted up it, going up what seemed like an infinite number of flights until he found himself at another gray metal door.

“This door leads to the roof. Open it. It will lock behind you,” Dr. West commanded.

Jacob opened the door and was immediately greeted with a blinding light and a rush of cold air. Behind him, he could hear the clunking steps of following customers. Looking behind him to see the bleary faces of hundreds of people following him up the stairs, Miller leaped through the door and slammed it behind him.

“Excellent. You are now safe, Mr. Miller. Relax.” The doctor was smiling, apparently pleased with Miller’s progress.

He looked out at the vista before him. He was in the middle of a featureless, gray rooftop, looking out onto downtown Chicago. When he looked behind him, the door had disappeared. In fact, there didn’t appear to be any way to get up to the roof anymore. It made him feel safe, comfortable. He could feel his heart rate beginning to fall.

“How did you do that, Dr. West?” He asked, looking down at the millimeter-thick glass panel on which the psychologist’s wizened face was projected. “How did you know about that door, and the stairs, and the roof?”

The doctor chuckled, “Mr. Miller, I didn’t ‘know’ any of this. I made it up. You’re the one who creates these worlds in your head. By using an authoritative tone, I was able to convince you of what must be true, and your brain simply followed along. It’s a form of dream control, which is something that you’ll have to learn fairly quickly if you want to be a successful lucid dreamer during this experiment,” West adjusted his glasses.

“Mr. Miller,” he continued, “you will look up from this phone in exactly three seconds. After that, you will turn 180 degrees to find me standing in front of you on the roof, no longer simply projected on this screen. Are you ready? Turn around.”

He complied, looking up from the phone and turning about in place. As he did so, the entire world seemed to blur, making him confused—but as he stopped, he saw--plain as day—Dr. West standing there on the roof in a ridiculously stereotypical lab coat.

“How did you do that?” Miller asked skeptically, walking up to the doctor to get a better look at him. The psychologist’s body was rather vague and cartoonish, but his face was extremely realistic, like a photograph.

“It’s fairly simple,” the physical Dr. West explained, eliciting a slight smile – or was it a smirk? “We call it ‘rational suggestion’. It differs from conscious suggestion and hypnotic suggestion in that the things I tell you are constructed in your brain, as if you were reading a novel, rather than being acted out or perceived by your senses. All I have to do is tell you something that you see to be reasonable in a forceful matter and you will produce such a thing or event in your mind. It’s a very effective method of controlling dreams. Even you can do it. Look down; you’ll notice that you’re not holding a phone anymore.”

He looked. He wasn’t holding anything. “But I was holding a phone, Dr. West. How did you make it disappear?” Miller asked, perplexed.

“I made it disappear in the same way that I made the door and the stairwell appear, Mr. Miller, through rational suggestion. Or rather, I merely suggested to you that the phone would not be there, and since the phone is purely a construct of your imagination, it disappeared. Mr. Miller, I am going to try to teach you this trick. Thus far, you have only been a passive observer in your dreams. You’ve had no real control over anything. This is fine for the sake of a good night’s sleep, but for this experiment we’d prefer that you had some level of control over your dreams, so that you don’t run into anything nasty that might wake you up. I am going to warn you, however, that you probably will not find controlling your dreams very easy. Almost no one is able to control his or her dreams in the first few weeks of lucidity, yet with this open line of communication we have, I feel that I can give you a fair amount of control in the time allotted,” the psychologist walked away, still facing Miller, towards the middle of the rooftop.

“And how can I control my dreams myself? It seems like everything is happening regardless of what I want to happen. It’s really easy to get distracted, in case you haven’t noticed,” Miller pleaded, “it’s like a big machine.”

 

[theotherguy]

“That’s precisely it!” Dr. West exclaimed brightly, “it’s a machine that you control. You have access to the inputs, and you can predict the outputs. That’s the beauty of lucid dreaming, Mr. Miller, it’s like watching a movie in which you not only write the script, but pick the actors, design the sets…no, you are the actors, you are the sets. Like any machine, your mind is controllable; you can harness it. Mr. Miller, do you see that cloud up there? I want you to fly to it.” West pointed skyward. Miller’s eyes followed the doctor’s finger, and his gaze landed upon a bright, solid cumulus cloud high in the steel-blue sky.

“You want me to fly?” Miller asked almost sarcastically, his voice flat. “That’s impossible.”

“No it isn’t!” West disputed, explaining, “You’ve suddenly developed superpowers, Mr. Miller. You ate a radioactive pill five minutes ago which will allow you to fly, just like Super Man!” The doctor began to flap his arms, and rose a few feet off the surface of the roof, then fell again.

“That’s stupid,” Jacob insisted, “just because I ate a radioactive pill doesn’t mean I can fly. That’s impossible.” He was starting to get tired of this.

“Oh well.” Dr. West sighed, “Then I suppose I’ll have to prepare the skyhooks.”

“Skyhooks…”

“Of course, they’re neat little ropes that you can swing on. Haven’t you heard of them? Look, one’s come down from the sky right in front of you. Grab on to it!” The doctor seemed whimsical. This was childish, inane.

But then, a brown hemp rope with a shiny silver fishhook attached to the end appeared directly in front of Jacob Miller, supported by nothing but the firmament above. He shrugged, and grabbed on to it.

“I think you’ve got the hang of it! With the rope in hand, run towards the edge of the roof, and it will swing you up into the clouds. Come on, don’t delay!” The doctor ran to the edge of the roof, floated up towards the sky, and disappeared.

Jacob stood holding the rope in his right hand, sweating. This was too surreal… he didn’t really understand why he was doing this but he might as well—

He immediately found himself running, the skyhook in hand, towards the edge of the roof. The skyline suddenly appeared huge, daunting. He bellowed, and hurled himself off the edge, his heart racing.

He was floating, swinging in a great arc over the city streets on a celestial hook, upwards and onwards towards the ethereal blue sky. He roared, his voice echoing off the rooftops of every skyscraper in Chicago. Far beneath his feet, he saw the angry customers scurrying like ants, and in the distance he saw Lake Michigan, a sapphire jellybean reflecting the sunlight like a great mirror.

He careened ever upwards, the city becoming a mere pinprick below him, the rope creaking under the great stress of his swinging mass. Immediately, Doctor West appeared next to him, floating like some kind of lab coat-clad genie.

West yelled over the sound of the wind, “You’re flying Mr. Miller! You’re no longer holding on to the skyhook, you’re simply flying out of your own free will. All you have to do is make a rational excuse. Need to fly? Invent a skyhook! Need to get to a new place? Step into a teleporter! Your mind is capable of anything, Mr. Miller; you simply need to give it the rational basis for doing so!”

Indeed, he was no longer holding the rope, simply floating in space. He put out his arms like great clumsy wings, and looked down at the world below. He could see the curvature of the earth. He was in orbit. He felt invigorated, renewed, powerful. That world below him was his own world, his own sandbox and microcosm to explore and conquer.

“Mr. Miller,” Dr. West continued, “Have you ever been to the Sahara Desert?”

Chapter 5: Control

 

[Godron]

More awesome.

MOAR!!!

 

[theotherguy]

Chapter 5: Control


On the horizon of this new world, Jacob Miller began to make out the outline of familiar continents. There was Europe with its peninsulas and islands, and there was Africa, with its great jutting steppes, and of course, the overwhelming yellow mass that was the Sahara Desert. Below him, Miller could make out the dark blue sea, its waves cresting on the open water and reflecting the bright bloom of the sun.


He felt himself descending from the upper atmosphere and into the brilliant, ever-shifting clouds. He followed Dr. West, who left a trail of vapor in his wake as if he were powered by a jet engine, rather than the power of Miller’s own imagination.


They soared through the clouds, miller feeling the flits of vapor on his skin. God, how could this not be real? He felt as if he were transported not into the deep corners of his mind, but into never-never land. He was following Peter Pan, straight out of London and to some island in a lost and uncharted territory.


The clouds rose above them now, they were falling like arrows in a great arch towards the continent below. Jacob could still make out the coastline of Africa, as if he were looking at it straight out of an atlas. Waves broke on the shore, hissing on the rocks as they exploded and spewed into the desert. What a desert it was! The brownish yellow dunes stretched beyond comprehension in the white sun, blowing up hurricanes of dust in the air, like the breakers on the shore blew their spew into the air. It was a sea of sand, and he could make out the dunes blowing in the wind like waves… or was that only a mirage?


They swooped lower and lower, the rush of the sand filling his ears and creating a background of white noise through which nothing could penetrate. Dr. West began to slow, and as he descended, made his body vertical with the ground. Miller did the same. After only a moment, they were just a few feet above the dunes now. He could feel the heat of the sand on his toes. Then, softly, imperceptibly, they landed. It felt as though he had merely jumped off of a low wall, not as though he had flown several thousand miles.


“Welcome to Africa, Mr. Miller!” Dr. West yelled. He was about thirty feet away, but he was walking towards miller as he spoke, waving his arms. Jacob noticed that the doctor was no longer wearing a lab coat, but a white safari uniform, complete with a beige helmet and high shorts. “Well don’t just stand there,” West continued, “take a look around!”


He did so. All was sand. There were hills of brown sand stretched for miles around, the cloudless, blue sky above… wait? How could the sky be cloudless if he had just passed through the clouds? He shook it off. Deserts weren’t supposed to have clouds anyway. He was bored.


“It looks pretty much empty, doc. Did you really just re-create the entire Sahara Desert? It’s just sand, anyway,” he kicked at the ground, causing a fluff of sand to float in the air about him. The doctor had crossed a lot of ground, and was now standing directly in front of Miller.


“I didn’t create it, Mr. Miller, you did! I merely suggested that we were going to go to the Sahara Desert, and you believed me. Don’t you see, Mr. Miller? You can have a lot of control over your environment merely by suggesting things to yourself. You know, that entire sequence you just went through, flying across the Earth, landing in the Sahara Desert, even that sand that you kicked up, was all created by your imagination. All I did was to merely suggest what you should imagine.” The doctor smiled, “even I’m only a figment of your imagination, Mr. Miller. Your brain is taking the raw audio input of my voice and creating an image to go along with it. I’m not really smiling, Mr. Miller, you merely think I am!”


West’s smile disappeared. Miller began to see it now. This world, and everything in it, was his creation and thus subject to his own whims and fancies. But how could West, who knew nothing of his mind, so easily change what it created?


“I want to know how to do this.” Miller insisted, glancing at the world around him. He wanted to change it, wanted to make it his own.


“Good,” West replied, “that’s another reason why we’re here. I wanted to give you some hints on controlling the dreamscape and this is the ideal environment in which to learn. Here, you will find few…distractions that might keep you from full lucidity. Now, it is definitely within our interests to keep you lucid and in the dream state, so I think we should begin with methods of maintaining the dream…”


The doctor sniffled, and adjusted his glasses, then continued, “when you are about to enter stage two sleep, that is, the stage between REM and delta sleep, you will experience a certain blurring and darkening of the dream world. Things will become fuzzy, you will feel out of focus, and it will be difficult to remain lucid. When you begin to feel this way, immediately look at your hands. You see, your brain can only maintain a high level of detail for very small areas before it loses focus and causes things to become less clear. So, to prime your brain for more arousing, highly detailed imagery, you must study something small. As you cover your field of vision with your hand, a small object that your brain knows well, it will begin to fill in everything with incredibly high detail. As you pull your hand away, the dream world too should become highly detailed and extremely vivid. This burst of neural activity will be sure to keep you in REM sleep for at least another few minutes, but over time the transition into delta sleep will become inevitable. You should try looking at your hand now.”


Miller was skeptical, but he did not resist, “doctor’s orders…” he grumbled, putting his hand out in front of his face. He studied the details. Amazingly, every groove and wrinkle of his palm quickly materialized before his eyes, becoming so incredibly real that he could not believe it was his own hand.


“Now pull it away,” West goaded.


When Miller put his hand at his side, he was greeted with a scene of extreme beauty and detail. Colors became exponentially more highly saturated, and every small detail became visible. He could make out the individual grains of sand blowing in the wind, the miniscule plants popping out of the sand around him, even the individual hairs on Dr. West’s grinning face.


“Wow!” Miller exclaimed, practically leaping in amazement.


“That’s much better!” Dr. West concluded, “I have three of my students looking in on this right now. They can hardly believe their eyes, Mr. Miller. As you can see, looking at your hand can provide a much needed boost in detail whenever your focus begins to falter. Do not, though, simply go about looking at your hand every few minutes, or the effect will wear off. Use it sparingly, for it is a powerful tool.” Miller could make out the quivering of Dr. West’s eyes as they stared into his own. It was incredible.


“I want to know more…” Miller insisted hungrily.


“Very well, Mr. Miller… now I’ll teach you to spin. I don’t want you to try this maneuver now, because it might end up in making you go into delta sleep. Whenever you find yourself in a sticky situation, say you’ve fallen down a bottomless pit, or are being chased by some terrible monster, you can… how should I say this… ‘Reset’ the conditions of your dream quite easily.” West cleared his throat. Miller could still see his eyes quivering.


West continued, “Remember when I said your brain can only render a small amount of detail at a time? Well, it turns out that as you move faster, the brain compensates for the changing scenery by lowering the detail. This is imperceptible most of the time except on one condition: when you are spinning. If you spin in place fast enough, the brain will eventually not be able to compensate for the changing scenes, and will in essence reset the dream world to another state. Usually, when you stop spinning, the dream world will be set to a random location, perhaps your bedroom, or your workplace. However, if you repeat the location to which you want to go over and over as you spin, you are likely to arrive at that location when you stop spinning. Like hand-looking, spinning is a technique which should be used extremely sparingly. If you spin too fast or for too long, the brain will simply give up in its attempt to render a scene from the random spurts of activity in your visual cortex, and you will either wake up or fall immediately into deep sleep.”


“So you’re saying,” Miller replied, “that I can teleport around just by thinking about a place and spinning around? That sounds a little far-fetched, but considering all the rest of this craziness I’ve believed so far, I’ll just take your word for it.” He kicked at the sand once again, sending up great clouds of dust, with each grain visible to his eye.


“That’s right, Mr. Miller,” the doctor confirmed, “but it is a technique that requires practice. Unfortunately I cannot allow you to use it now, because there is one more thing that I have to teach you.”


“What’s that?” asked Miller.


“Mr. Miller, when you look down at your feet, you will see a snake crawling towards you,” West asserted, pointing at the ground.


Miller looked towards the sifting sand at his feet, and saw, to his utter shock and surprise, a diamond-backed, gray rattlesnake, its tail rattling, bearing its fangs. He jumped, backing away in fear. “Agh! Why did you do that?” Miller exclaimed, recoiling.


“Relax, Mr. Miller. It’s not a real snake. It’s only made of rubber. See, it’s not even moving! Pick it up if you don’t believe me!”


Jacob did not believe him. It was a real snake alright, more real than any snake he had ever seen, and it was going to bite him. Yet somehow, a strange force compelled him to move towards the creature, and before he could contemplate his own actions, he reached down and picked it up. Expecting a bite, he recoiled; but the snake felt limp, dead in his hands. It was no longer hissing, no longer rattling. No, it seemed that its scales were merely stamped into the rubber, its eyes only painted on, and its fangs only little pieces of plastic. He shook the rubbery snake, and looked on its underbelly to see ‘made in Taiwan’ stamped upon it.


“Indeed it is.” He said in astonishment, “What’s a rubber snake doing in the Sahara Desert?”


“You tell me, Mr. Miller. You’re the one who created it in the first place. I don’t know how many times I have to reiterate this to you, Mr. Miller; you merely have to suggest to your mind what you will do next. Try it! Start with something simple. Tell yourself that some small, simple change will appear in the world, and you will find that you have a great deal of control over your environment.” West grabbed the snake from Miller’s hands and tossed it into the air. It blew away in the wind like paper.


“What do you mean, a ‘small change’?” Miller asked hesitantly.


“Anything, Mr. Miller… it’s your imagination, not mine,” West explained.


“Alright, I guess I’ll try…” He shrugged.


He tried to think of something—anything. “When I turn to my right…” he began, clearing his throat, “I guess… I guess I’ll see a tree.”


He turned to his right, and saw nothing but sand dunes. “Aw, come on!” He exclaimed bitterly, kicking at the sand.


“You’ve got to do better than that, Mr. Miller. You can’t ‘guess’ something will appear, you simply have to believe it. Try again,” West encouraged.


“Okay, Doc. When I look to my right, I’m going to see a tree. I will see a dead black tree poking out of the sand,” he concluded, adding the extra detail in hope that it would make the apparition all the more likely. This was getting ridiculous.


But, as he looked again to his right, he saw not only the endless sand dunes bathed in the hot sun, but also a tiny black woody object, poking out of the dirt. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but as he looked closer, he could tell that this vague object was indeed a small dead tree. It sat there, mocking his sensibilities.


“You see, Mr. Miller? Reality is what you make of it. The world is yours to create, as long as you believe it is. Start with the small things, move on to the larger things, and eventually you’ve changed the world. Isn’t that what you want to do, Mr. Miller? Do you want to change the world?” Dr. West’s voice sounded like a TV commercial in his ears. He was selling exercise machines, and Jacob was calling in to order them.


“I will put my hands in front of my face,” Miller insisted, trying something new, “and when I take them away, that tree will have leaves growing on it. Green, oval leaves.” He put his hands in front of his face. He could suddenly make out every groove on his sweaty palms. Moments later, he pulled his hands away from his eyes, and before him stood the same tree, the sand now swept away from its trunk, and on its once bare branches now grew a multitude of beautiful, perfect, glowing green leaves. He felt something new stir inside of him like a spark lighting kindling in a dark cave.


“I think you’re getting the hang of it, Mr. Miller. Keep going,” West urged, “change the world.”


Miller was breathing heavily now, “This sand is not sand any longer but grass. I will look towards the sky, and when I look back down, there will be grass growing. It will be lush, green grass.” He looked towards the sky, staring straight into the sun. Its heat and its brightness filled him. He didn’t feel tired anymore; he didn’t feel alone, he merely felt full, and bright.


He slowly craned his neck downwards, his view gradually leaving the pale blue sky and revealing… emerald. All around him the dunes were gone. He was no longer in the desert, but among rolling hills, knee high grass replacing the blowing brown particles of dirt. The tree remained in its place, now completely devoid of sand, and blooming with tiny pink flowers.


Jacob could manage nothing but a gasp. Had he really done all of this? Had he really just altered the universe, constructed rolling plains from nothing but lifeless dunes? It was all too hard to understand, but at the same time, empowering. He felt like Christmas morning had just arrived, and he was getting to choose his own gifts on the spot.


Jacob slowly meandered towards the tree in astonishment. Its pink buds were growing before his eyes, spreading their petals and extending their brilliant yellow pistils into the air, fingers reaching out into the world for something to touch, and to eat. He was at the base of the tree now. He reached out his hand and felt the surface of its black trunk. It was rough.


Looking skyward, he focused on one of the budding flowers. A bee, hairy and trembling, poised at the end of the petal, pollinating it. It buzzed away. Miller reached up towards the flower and held his hand under it. He could see it grow, pulsing before him.


“Time is going much faster now,” he suggested out loud, “I can feel it.”


The clouds went by overhead at absurd speeds. The sun moved across the sky again and again. It was dawn, it was noon, it was dusk, it was midnight all at once. The flower bloomed before him, growing larger and larger. Its petals were torn by the wind and decayed. The bud became green, and grew further, bursting at the seams, squirting water. The green bud became deep red. It was an apple.


“Time is slowing now,” he continued, “It’s stopped now, I can feel it.”


The clouds slowed to a gentle amble above, the sun ending its race at noon, stopping to catch its breath at the top of the sky. The brilliant red apple floated above his hand, suspended by a thin brown stalk.

 

[theotherguy]

Jacob snatched it. Bringing the smooth, wet sphere to his mouth, he paused momentarily, and then bit into it. It was sweet, tantalizing. He could feel it flowing down his lounge and into his throat; no… he could see it; hear it, like he was watching a movie.


He found that he had eaten the entire apple in one bite, stem and core alike. It didn’t matter. He was only dreaming anyway. He didn’t need to eat anything, even if it was that impossibly sweet.


He turned away from the tree, searching for Dr. West, but the psychologist had gone long ago. He was alone now, inside this dream. Suppose he needed guidance.


“It’s alright…” he said aloud, “I can deal with it alone. I just need to remember that it’s a dream.”


Was it a dream?


He looked back up at the tree. Apples were growing now on every branch. He could make out every droplet of condensation, every stem and every leaf on every one of those apples.


“Damn realistic dream…” he muttered, turning away.


The apples began to fall all around him, bouncing on the ground like rubber balls. Trying to avoid being hit, he covered his head and ran away from the tree. Apples were falling from the sky now. They were hitting the ground all around him, thudding and pattering like so many raindrops, and bouncing everywhere.


Momentarily, he was frightened, but then the reasonable side of him came to action.


“This is ridiculous,” he asserted dismissively. The storm ended, and he was left standing in a treeless green field covered in little red apples. It was quiet, strange… disturbing. So where was he to go from here? Surely he couldn’t do many exciting things in a desert of grass and fallen apples. Perhaps he could make himself something new and exciting to amuse himself with.


“When I turn around, I’ll see…. I’ll see…” He announced to the world, his voice trailing off. What exactly was he going to see? “A big…” Jesus, a big what? “I’ll see a big mountain!” he blurted.


He spun about. The world blurred for a time. Things seemed to lose detail. When he found himself facing in the opposite direction he saw nothing—no mountains, let alone ‘big’ ones, just an endless, hopelessly idyllic field of grass.


“Damn,” he groaned, shaking his head, “I guess I’ll have to start with something small and work my way up.” He began to walk aimlessly, and found himself trudging up a grassy hill.


“When I get to the top of this hill,” he suggested, “I will look down to find a small cottage.”


Miller kept climbing. The hill was growing steeper and steeper now. It was nearly a cliff. He felt his calves begin to burn and found himself sliding hopelessly backwards. He clawed at the ground with his fingernails, trying desperately to climb his way up the hill. After scratching and crawling for some time, he found himself at the top of the knoll, and collapsed in exhaustion.


“I didn’t think dreaming would be such hard work…” he muttered.


Feeling himself rested, he stood up and looked down into the valley beyond the hill. He saw something fuzzy, blurry and dark in the valley. Why couldn’t he see what it was? Had he forgotten his glasses again? No, he hadn’t worn glasses in years…


“It’s a cottage,” he suggested, “damn it, it’s a cottage!”


The blur remained.


Remembering vaguely what Dr. West had said about maintaining detail in dreams, Miller stared at the palm of his hand, noting the crevices and the details. His hand was sticky from eating the apple, and he could distinguish the glittering residue of the fruit staining the lines on his palm like beeswax.


He looked up and into the valley, and there suddenly stood a gothic, half-timber cottage amidst a few scraggly oak trees. From its brown, wood-tiled roof jutted a black, angular chimney from which spouted particulate soot. He could make out tiny cobblestones in the grass leading from the door of the cottage out to a pink brick road, which extended into the hills beyond.


Without questioning this apparition, he felt himself drawn towards the cottage as if compelled by magnetism. His feet did not tread upon the ground, and in no time he found himself facing the cottage, which loomed before him like a monolithic tree. A heart-shaped window protruded out of the red oak door of the cottage, surrounded by painted white plaster.


Should he enter? He could see no reason why he should not… yet something seemed ominous about this cabin, as idyllic as it was. A cloud covered the sun, sending shade over the cottage and its immediate surroundings. Miller could feel the fear rising in him as he reached for the handle. He was being irrational. This was his dream after all, and neither man nor thing could harm him. He controlled all, and was all.


He opened the door. Dust flew into the air in eddies and spirals as light from the outside poured into the darkened cabin. Miller entered the room, his footsteps creaking upon the hardwood floor.


At first the cottage appeared empty, but as he searched it further with his eyes, objects began to materialize. Dust covered tables, chairs, desks, and various other pieces of furniture lined the room. The walls were covered in vague, distorted paintings with ever shifting, changing images upon them. An orange light flickered throughout the single room of the cottage, casting indistinct shadows upon the walls. The light, he deduced, emanated from a roaring coal-lit fire in an angular brick fireplace at one end of the room.


There, not five feet from him, stood a woman whom he had never met before. Her face was lit by the hard orange light of the fire, making her eyes appear as dark half-moons in the blackness. She had raven-black hair, pale skin, and a gently curving nose. He estimated her to be in her early twenties. She was staring at her hands, which were lifted in front of her face, like her most prized possessions.


He backed away slightly, startled. He had not expected her to be there. It didn’t matter. He had nothing to fear, she was nothing but a character of his imagination, like Brad from the last dream. He could control her—she wouldn’t harm him. He tiptoed further into the cabin and saw that she had not noticed him. She was still looking at her hands as if in a deep stupor.


He examined her face. It was so distinct, so real, yet so doll-like. Her dark eyebrows arched over the black pits that were her eyes, rising slightly as she studied her hands. She was beautiful. He wanted her. Miller edged closer to her dark figure, his hand extending outward slightly, searching. She was his to control. This was his dream, his mind, his wants, his needs.


The floor groaned, and she looked up, gasping slightly in surprise.


“Whoa, you scared me there, guy!” she exclaimed vibrantly, looking up from her hands and at his face. Her eyes were no longer dark but a vivid shade of green.


He didn’t care what she had to say. He kept lurching toward her.


“You’re a lot more real than the other ones,” she jabbered nonsensically, backing away from him with wide eyes, her voice hurried and her gait nervous. “I guess he was right about the hand-trick. Geez, it’s like I’m not dreaming at all!”


What was she talking about? She was saying drivel, nothing more. The characters in his dreams always spouted nothing but garbage. He reached for her.


“This man in front of me is going to stop in three seconds, and he’s going to be really nice to me.” She commanded, holding out her left hand with the palm stretched out before him. He could make out the lines on her pale, thin hand. She was impeccably real. He would have her.


“Three…” She was holding out both hands now, and backing away.


“Two…” She backed into table. Dust flung up into the air; a teacup shattered on the ground at her feet, its dusty shards sliding about on the wood floor. He lunged for her.


“One!” He stopped.


They were both breathing heavily now. He could feel his heart beating his chest like a sledgehammer. A shard of porcelain teacup shattered beneath the toe of his shoe. He had wanted her so badly, yet he had stopped.


“There we go!” she exclaimed cheerily, her hands bouncing to her sides, “you were starting to creep me out a bit there, Jack. But I know how to deal with guys like you—in my dreams, anyhow.”


He was confused. What the hell was she talking about?


“My name’s not Jack,” he snapped angrily, “its Jake; and I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you can’t make me do a damned thing!” He tried again to lunge towards her, but could not find the strength in his legs.


“Come on, now!” she pleaded, “I told you to be nice. Now, I think that your hair should be brown, instead of black, and much shorter. You should also be three inches taller. Do you think you can do that for me?” She elicited a half smile, her pink lips stretching as he stood, dumbfounded.


“Just what the hell do you think you’re talking about? My hair really is black and long, and I sure as hell can’t grow three damned inches on command, dreaming or not!” This character was beginning to annoy him.


Her smile disappeared, and she pouted, “Well fine, then. You can be as stubborn as you want. I guess you’re supposed to represent my own stubborn unconscious feelings towards relationships? I don’t know… I’m not Freud. I’m tired of this,” she sighed, rolling her eyes upwards, as if asking help from a Cosmic Deity. “Can’t you do something about this, Dr. West? Maybe you can poof me back to Chicago or something? Are you listening?”


Her voice trailed into silence. Miller stood there, gazing at her face.


“I guess not,” Miller replied after a few seconds, answering the woman’s hypothetical questions.


Her green eyes shot back at him, and her eyebrows lowered. She tilted her head slightly, “so who are you?” she asked.


Miller let out a long sigh, “I don’t know why you should be asking me. This is my dream, after all. I made you… you should know who I am,” he reasoned pretentiously.


“Look, all I know about you… ‘Jake’… is that you’re some weird guy who appeared from psychedelic dream-land after Dr. West teleported me into some creepy cottage, and that you insist on ignoring everything I say, very much unlike every other dream…thing I’ve met here. Is this my subconscious testing me, or something? Am I supposed to have some profound revelation through self reflection? Well come on, Mr. stubborn dream person, tell me what I’ve got to do to make you go away,” her eyes widened, expectantly.


This was getting very odd indeed, “Are you saying that you’re the one who’s dreaming here?” Miller asked skeptically.


She bared her teeth, “Duh!” she exclaimed, grimacing.


“You’ve got it all wrong,” Miller insisted, “This is my dream.”


“No it isn’t.”


“Yes it is.”


“No. It isn’t!”


Miller groaned, “Look lady,” he persisted, “a week ago I signed up for an experiment at Northwestern University involving sleep deprivation, and for the past couple of hours I’ve been in a highly monitored lucid dream. I. Am. Dreaming. Got that? You are a product of my imagination.”


She sighed, “Those are my memories, dream boy. I signed up for an experiment a week ago, spent five days living off of nothing but caffeine and cable TV, and got transported to magic fairy land by a nerd with a puke-orange tie, and I’ve been dreaming ever since. You’re just the manifestation of my subconscious urgings.” She shook her head, “no, I’m not talking to you anymore. You’re wasting my time.”


He couldn’t believe it, “I’m wasting your time, eh? Then please, feel free to leave.” He tried to turn around, to spin, to do anything to get himself out of this argument. He knew that he was only arguing with himself, if only in the form of an indignant imaginary friend. He couldn’t move.


“Sure thing, if that’s all I have to do to relieve my subconscious urges, I’m all for it. See you, ‘Jake’,” she emphasized his name as if it were a bitter insult, and stormed past him, towards the door of the cottage. He found himself following her, as though he wasn’t in control of his own body, but rather existed merely as her shadow.


“Alright,” she exclaimed in annoyance, “first you tell me to get out of your hair, and now you follow me. Whatever, dream boy… You can follow me all you like, just shut up about it, okay? You’ll disappear, just like all the others.” She swung open the door of the cottage, and exited.


He was confused, controlled… he was a puppet. He wasn’t sure any longer of what was real and what was imagined. He was pulled by her, connected by silky invisible fishing wires. Every footstep she made became his own, and he followed her into the world which he thought was his own creation.
-Chapter 6, Cate-

 

[Godron]

theotherguy.win += 1/0

//How many chapters are you thinking of writing?

 

[theotherguy]

-Chapter 6, Cate-



After they had meandered aimlessly for a few moments, the woman wandering about the pink cobblestone path and Miller following her, he asked, “So just where are we going?”


She craned her neck and looked back at him, her deep green eyes flashing in the sunlight, “I thought I told you to keep quiet dream boy. Besides, I don’t know where we’re going. This is psycho dream world anyhow… we’ll just see where we end up.”


She turned her back to him. She wasn’t being very helpful. Miller looked at his feet. Why was he strung to this woman? Why could he not stray from her lead? He wondered whether Dr. West was playing a trick on him again. Perhaps it was some kind of test.


The plains had gone now. They were walking through a deep, thick forest. Leafless oaks straddled the sides of the stony path like great and powerful guards, blocking both visibility and entrance into the woods beyond. He looked back. He could not see the cottage. He noticed that it had grown quite chilly.


“Say, what’s your name?” He called, jogging up to her side. He might as well converse with this strange manifestation of his subconscious if he were to be stuck with it. Perhaps she was supposed to be some kind of ‘dream guide’?


She did not look at him, “my name’s Cate, but you should have already known that.” She glanced at him once, and then back at her feet, “I keep thinking you’re going to grow blonde hair and grow taller like I told you to…”


He paused for a puzzled moment, and continued, “How the heck should I know you? How do I know you’re not just saying exactly what I think you’re going to say?”


“Heh,” she scoffed, “because I made you, dream boy Jake. You are a fragment of memory from somewhere. You’re an entity in my dream. You should know who I am.”


It did not make sense. She was not acting predictably, not like Brad had acted. Conceivably, she could have been right. He could have been a figment of her imagination. But then how could he be so sure of his own existence? It didn’t make any sense. His head hurt.


They were getting deeper and deeper into the woods now. Darkness blanketed everything. He could make out nothing but the thick tree trunks, and her violently green eyes. In the darkness, he could hear something rustling in the fallen leaves.


“I don’t know you…” he muttered aimlessly, “Tell me something I don’t expect. Something I wouldn’t know about you…” he didn’t know what he was doing. He felt odd.


“What, is this the reason you’re here? You’re supposed to represent my inner shrink? You want me to tell you things about my childhood? Well, I guess you already know this, but I recognize this place. You know what it is. You’re a character of my dreams, so you should know where we are right now.” She stopped walking, and looked around at the dead branches.


He could see nothing. All was blurred, distorted, and dark. He suddenly felt smaller. He felt no higher than four feet tall. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he managed, “where are we?”


“I have this dream every time…” she stuttered, tension growing in her voice, “oh God, it’s happening again, isn’t it? Oh God, not this dream again…” She put her hands over her face and sobbed. He could hear something rustling in the distance.


“What? Are you okay, ma’am?” Miller asked sympathetically, placing his hand on her sobbing back. It was itchy. She was wearing a wool sweater.


“It’s this dream again,” she sobbed, “the one I’ve had every week since I was s…six… you know the one, dream boy. Daddy took me out to the woods with Bobby… I wanted to see how they did it, how they hunted. They hunted every Saturday. I got lost. Oh God, Daddy isn’t going to find me!” She was bawling now.


Miller wasn’t quite sure of what to do. “Relax; this is just a dream, right? It’s not going to hurt you. Just calm down and think of something else. That’s all you have to do, just think of something else…” he rubbed her shoulder softly.


“You don’t understand… this dream always happens the same way. I’m standing here, it gets dark…oh it’s very dark… I cover my eyes because I don’t want to see it, but it’s out there, I know it is!” Miller heard more crackling in the dark leaves, but he could see nothing.


“What’s supposed to be…what’s out there?” He asked cautiously, feeling a slight twinge of fear in his own chest as he did so. This was getting really messed up.


She ignored him, “I try to run away but I fall… oh God, its coming!” She screeched and took her hands away from her face. She had an expression of sheer terror in her eyes.


Miller looked into the blackness at whatever she was screeching about. Gradually, a hulk of flesh came out of the inky darkness, cracking the black branches as it lurched towards them. It was massive, some sort of wild animal. He first noticed its wide, menacing antlers, and then its cloven hooves. It was undoubtedly a moose, but it looked like no moose he had ever encountered before. One side of its face was perfectly normal, but the other…oh the other! Its skin had been peeled away by a sharp instrument, its bloody flesh exposed in the dim light, its cheek bone protruding as a ghastly shelf out of the writhing mass. It had various maggot-filled pits all over its gray, deathly body, and it was charging towards him.


“Run!” He screamed, caught up in the moment.


They both sprinted as quickly as they could away from this most satanic of moose, their feet pounding over the cobblestones. He could hear the clattering of four hooves behind them. They had to get out of there. Suddenly, their progress slowed, and finally halted, and Miller found that his feet were merely slipping on the stones. He couldn’t move. Cate was sobbing. Why couldn’t he move?


He was dreaming. How could he have forgotten that? In the heat of the moment, he had forgotten that one simple fact.


“You’re dreaming Cate! Can’t you see that? Remember what Dr. West said! Spin around as fast as you can! It will get us out of here!” the moose was clattering closer now, calling out in deathly howls, “Spin!” he insisted.


“It’s going to get me! It always does!” She cried, still attempting to run away, her feet slipping on the cobblestones like ice.


“Spin, damn it!” He ordered. Maybe he ought to try something else, “You can feel yourself start to spin now, Cate. The world is becoming hazy. When you stop spinning, you’ll be somewhere else… someplace safe.”


His suggestion worked. She began to turn around, at first slowly, but she started accelerating. He could feel himself turning as well, as if propelled by her will instead of his own. The trees were blurring into one black line now. The moose had disappeared altogether. It was confusing, he couldn’t focus. He could feel his rationality begin to leave him. Things became darker, less defined.


“I…you…uh…” he mumbled, what he was supposed to be doing?



“Stop spinning!” he ordered.


He couldn’t stop. He was going faster and faster now; there was nothing left but blackness. He suddenly felt sleepy. It all disappeared.
-*-
When he became conscious again, he was sitting in a comfortable, padded green chair. His feet were clad in grey…or red…or now blue… slippers. Light yellow wood appeared beneath his feet, waxed and shining in the light. He rubbed his eyes. What time was it? Had he drifted off to sleep while reading again?


There was a book upon his lap. He was wearing a bathrobe. Obviously, he had drifted off to sleep while read. He looked at the pages. What had he been reading? It looked like Thoreau’s Walden… but he couldn’t be entirely sure. The words seemed to blur into the page. He attempted to read it again to start where he had left off, but as he made out the words, they suddenly shifted in their lettering and became other words. It didn’t make any sense. He was tired. He closed the book, its red cloth cover feeling like burlap in his hands. He threw it to the ground and stretched. What day was it? Could it be a Saturday?


He looked up. He was not in his apartment, but someone else’s. Startled, he jumped up, and looked frantically around. It was a bedroom. Blue light streamed out of a single window onto the plaster walls and the hardwood floor. A ceiling fan spun from above, sending down columns of cool air, playing with his hair. There were posters all over the walls, of obscure indie bands and strange artistic tastes. A massive, ancient cathode-ray-tube television stood against the wall, its rabbit-ear antennas jutting out at right angles like those of a great ugly insect. A queen-sized bed, covered in a powder-blue comforter, stood in one corner. There, under the covers, he saw a quivering mass. It rose and fell like the crests of a wave at sea, and the sound of heavy breathing emanated from it.


He was in someone’s bedroom, but he didn’t know who’s.


“Hey,” he whispered, tip-toeing over to the bedside, “who are you?”


He felt a twinge of terror. He had the strange sense that this mass was a thief, someone who had come into his home and stolen his life. He had heard of people doing that on the news. It was a recent scandal. The ultimate identity thieves, the media had called them. At least he thought he had heard something about that.


“Hey you,” he said, slightly louder, now lightly touching the blue-covered mass with two fingers.


Suddenly, the lump shifted, and the covers shot downward, revealing a pale woman with long dark hair. She groaned, stretched her bare arms out and slowly opened her vivid green eyes. “Oh… good, it was just a dream…” she mumbled, yawning.


She saw him, and leaped. “Jesus!” She exclaimed, “What are you doing in my bedroom? Who are you?” She was holding her comforter up to her chest, backing away towards the plaster wall.


He recognized her instantly. “Cate?” he asked.


He watched as her face turned from terrified anger to confusion and surprise, and finally into understanding, “I’m still dreaming, aren’t I? I had a false awakening.”


Suddenly, he understood. Of course he was still dreaming. He remembered it clearly now. They were running away from some sort of decaying…moose…thing… and he had told her to spin. Of course, they had just been reset in a place which Cate deemed ‘safe.’ Wait a minute… how could Cate ‘deem’ anything? Wasn’t she simply a dream character?


Then it hit him, “Cate, I think we’re both dreaming.” His voice echoed off the walls, unreal. She was a real person. How could this be possible?


She elicited a half-smile, “What, you mean like astral projection? You’re nuts dream boy. I’m the one dreaming here. People can’t visit each other’s dreams. It’s not like the freaking internet. You can’t just dial someone’s number and get into their head. You’re just somebody I made up.”


He shook his head, “look, I don’t know that you’re not just somebody I made up, either, but I sure as hell know that I’m real,” at least he thought he did, “and besides, I didn’t think it was possible for someone to look inside someone else’s head and watch their dreams like a movie before today either. Maybe it’s part of the experiment. Maybe somehow they’ve got us connected. I don’t know you. I’ve never seen this room before, and I really doubt that my brain could make this room up, let alone a decaying moose…or whatever the hell that thing was.” He waved his hands about as he talked. The room was becoming clearer and clearer now, more defined. He wasn’t sure if he believed his own words, but she seemed real enough. He doubted that his brain could create a living thing with such realistic behavior. The walls, the floors, the environment, he could envision creating, but not her, not Cate.


“Humph,” she sighed, “I guess all that we can do to clear up this little paradox is to wait for Dr. West to show up like the damned magic pixie that he is and give us some answers. “ She let the covers fall from her hands, and rolled out of bed. She was wearing a simple white T-shirt and sweat pants.


“Alright,” Miller conceded, “but I’m telling you, I know that I’m a real person, and I’m starting to think that you are too…” He suddenly felt a wave of guilt come over him. He remembered what he thought when he had first met her. He tried to picture it, the dark cottage, and the woman standing by the fire staring at her hands. He had wanted to rape her. He remembered his feelings clearly. God, what had he done? He had thought she wasn’t real… he had thought of her as nothing but a toy, something he could play with. God, what was he? What if he had carried through? What if he had raped her? He wouldn’t be able to live with himself anymore. Besides, even if she weren’t real, would it make any difference? It wouldn’t make it any more right…or would it? He shook the thought away. It was in the past. He simply had to hide his feelings from her now, and try to hide the truth from himself, because he certainly couldn’t live with it. He couldn’t survive the guilt of knowing that he was capable of raping someone, if only the constraints of society were removed.


“Cate,” he started, “when we were in the woods, you were telling me about a childhood memory. You said that your father had left you in the forest while he had been hunting. You said you got lost. Cate, what was happening back there? What was that thing?” He raised his eyebrows in sincerity.


She exhaled, “It’s nothing. It’s just a silly dream. I had been told they were called night terrors… but that can’t be right. People with night terrors don’t have dreams while they are having an episode. This is just a recurring dream. Freud would have said, the moose represents the specter of my underlying subconscious fear of my father. I don’t know… I was a kid. I was only lost for a few moments.” She looked away from him and went to the bedroom door. “This all looks so real, doesn’t it?” She looked around, running her hands over the posters on the walls, “It looks exactly like my old bedroom. Don’t you think?”


He didn’t know what to say, “It looks as real as any dream,” he managed, “as much as my apartment did, anyway.” He looked out the window, but could see nothing but bright light beyond the blinds.


“Well,” she continued, “I just didn’t expect to end up here. I haven’t slept in this room since last January. I live on campus now, at Northwest.” She placed her hand on the handle of the door.


“You’re a college student?” he asked. Miller had graduated just a year before from Northwest, with a master’s in business management.

 

[theotherguy]

“Yeah,” she replied, opening the door and stepping out into what appeared to be a kitchen. He followed her, “I’m a senior this year. That’s why I participated in the experiment, my friend Lily told me about it. She’s a psychology major.” They were now standing in the kitchen. White tile covered the floor, and stainless steel appliances lined the walls and jutted from the white oak cabinets. Light from the outside flooded in through a skylight in the ceiling, leaving a glowing rectangle of reflected sunlight on the ground.


Her story sounded plausible. Miller himself had participated in the experiment because he had been fired from his job, and had needed the four hundred and fifty dollars that the experiment had offered in order to pay the rent. He thought that it had sounded like a bargain. “What are you majoring in?” he asked.


“Everything,” she responded lazily, pacing aimlessly about the kitchen, “I’ve switched from engineering to English and now history. I probably won’t even graduate this year. Say dream boy, you want some eggs?” She opened the stainless steel refrigerator, and pulled out a carton of eggs.


“Uh, sure… I guess. It’s not like we can eat anything here…” he remembered eating the apple, how sweet it had been, “but I’m sure it will be an interesting experience.” He glanced at the kitchen table. It was white, and circular. The morning Chicago newspaper littered the surface. On a counter nearby a liquid-crystal television sat, static obscuring the screen like snow.


“Then I’ll make you some eggs,” she exclaimed cheerily, a pan suddenly appearing in her hands, obscenely large and black. She placed it on the stainless steel stove. He could see blue flames dance about on the gas burners. The room began to grow hot. She cracked an egg over the pan, and he watched it as it sizzled. Wisps of steam rose over the pan and into the air. He could smell the eggs cooking more vividly than any smell he had ever experienced before.It was fully scrambled in only a few seconds. “Sit down,” she insisted, piling the eggs from the steaming pan onto two red paper plates. He found a white painted chair and sat down in it at the table. The chair rolled as he sat in it. It had wheels on its legs. She placed one of the steamy plates in front of him, and sat down next to him at the table. The eggs were sulfur-yellow, glistening with grease. They smelled strongly of cooked fat. He noticed that a fork had appeared next to his plate. Cate had already begun to consume her plate of eggs, shoveling the stuff into her mouth in breathless gulps. He took a bite. The taste was indescribable. It was not a taste at all, but a feeling, an emotion of warmth and safety.


“So is this the house that you grew up in?” He asked, glancing about.


“Yeah, I lived in this house all of my life. I’m a Chicago girl, born and raised. I sort of miss it every now and then, but to be honest I’m quite happy to have left it for the college experience… as lovely as college is.” She rolled her eyes. Her eggs had completely disappeared. After a while she asked, “So what are you doing in my dream? Are you like Dr. West, somebody on the outside talking to me through a microphone or something?”


He shook his head, “I’m dreaming too. My name is Jacob Miller, I graduated from Northwest last year with a degree in business management. I got fired from my job as a low level assistant manager for a retail electronics store in downtown Chicago. I heard about this experiment from the newspaper. I just needed the extra money to pay for my living expenses while I look for a new job. They told me it would be about sleep deprivation and caffeine consumption or something. I don’t know… all I know is that the last five days have been hell, and the past couple of hours have been…well…weird.” He brushed a wisp of hair out of his eye, but another one appeared in its place.


“You’re telling me, dream boy. No amount of coffee can keep you awake after you’ve been a walking zombie for five days. Those times between 4 AM and 6 in the morning were the toughest. So what did you get fired for?” She got up and started to pick up the plates and forks from the table.


He shuddered, “I don’t know, it’s kind of embarrassing.”


“Oh come on, Jake. It couldn’t have been that bad.” She snatched the plate from in front of him. He had barely even touched the eggs.


“I uh… I came to work one day with a really bad hangover. I was like 45 minutes late. My boss told me at the end of the day that he was letting me go, no questions asked.” He sighed.


“Geez, that’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?” she asked, throwing the plates into a large green trash can.


“I was a repeat offender…” he explained. He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted a drink.

“Alright Jake, I’m not sure if I’m going to believe you just yet, but you seem so real that I’ll just pretend that you’re a real person for now. You’re not saying everything I expect, not like the others anyway. You’re more…unpredictable.” She exhaled slowly, her eyes focused on his face. For the first time, he felt that she was looking at him like a human being, rather than an object. Is that how he had looked at her in the cottage? Like a piece of furniture?


Suddenly, a female voice, distorted, with melodic phrasing, echoed from the other end of the kitchen. “Oh Cate, you brought a boy home again, didn’t you?” Miller glanced towards the sound. It was an old woman. She had dark hair, cut short and spiked, and was quite short and stocky.


“Mom?” Cate exclaimed, spinning about and looking at the woman, “Mom, not now. I’m just trying to have a conversation.” The woman, ever changing in features and expression, shuffled with arms outstretched towards Cate and Miller. “Oh, and don’t you two look so adorable? Is this a boy from school, Cate? You know you’re supposed to tell me about these boys…” she turned towards Miller, “Hello, dear! I’m Mrs. Foley, Cate’s mother.”


Unexpectedly, she reached down and hugged him where he sat. He could not feel her, yet it was still incredibly awkward.


Cate’s eyes widened, “Mom! He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just… we’re just… gosh what were we doing?” She pulled the woman off of him and began having a muffled conversation with her. The two were making wild gesticulations. He couldn’t understand what they were saying.


Cate growled, and returned to Miller, “My Mom wants to invite you to the stupid party. Do you want to come?” Her tone and expression were both of sarcasm.


“Um…” Jacob murmured, “What… what party Cate? You’re not making any sense.”


She rolled her eyes, “the party, Jake! I told you last weekend. Are you coming or not?” She now seemed excessively angry. Behind her, Cate’s mother began to sob. “Look, now you’ve made her cry. You’ll have to come to the party now, or she’ll never stop bugging me about it!”


Miller raised one eyebrow and raised his right hand in protest, and then stood up, “Cate… I just met you a few minutes ago. I didn’t know who you were last weekend. We’re in a psychological experiment, remember? You’re dreaming Cate.”



He saw her face melt from an expression of annoyance into surprise, “Oh my God.” She exclaimed, as if unsure of herself, “Did I really just forget that I was dreaming? It’s crazy how your mind runs…” Indeed, it seemed that she was making up an entire story to explain his existence in her dreams.


“Cate--”


“She looks so real!” Cate cut him off, observing her now silent mother as she stood there like a statue. “Just look at that! It’s like I’m looking at a photo or something.” Cate poked the old woman. Her pointer finger seemed to disappear into her mother’s sweater. “You’ve got to remind me that I’m dreaming, Jake…” she suggested, “maybe that’s why we’re together. Dr. West said that he wanted to keep us lucid, right? Maybe he’s put you in here to make sure that I remember that I’m dreaming…”


“… And vice versa,” Jake finished for her. He could see the reason in that. Perhaps they were supposed to support each other, to keep each other in check and ensure that neither of them forgot that they were in fact dreaming. But then again, wasn’t Doctor West doing that himself?


Cate’s mother began to walk away, and Cate followed, attempting to poke her again. The woman walked into the next room, and Cate attempted to follow her, but Jake stepped in front of the girl and prevented her from entering the next room.


“Cate, we can’t waste time with these dream characters,” he insisted, “what do you want to do now? I don’t think that Dr. West is going to give us any more advice. We can do anything, go anywhere we want. We just have to remind each other that we’re dreaming, and remember all the techniques.”


She shrugged, “I don’t know. Let’s just get out of here and see where the dream takes us. Just one thing though: who is in control here? If dreams are just interpretations of the stuff inside our brains, then who is doing the interpreting here? Whose brain are we in?”


The question stumped him. “I don’t know,” he conceded. “But I think I know how we can find out…”


“How?”


“Well, we control our dreams through that suggestion stuff, right? Well, both of us will make a suggestion and we’ll see whose suggestion turns out to be true.” His voice rose as he spoke. It made sense.


“Right… but we can control each other with suggestion. How will we know if we’re not reading each other’s suggestions? We’ll have to make them silently.” She walked into the center of the kitchen.

“That makes sense. Now we just have to find something to make a suggestion about.”


“I have just the thing,” she said, kneeling down and rummaging in one of the kitchen cabinets. She pulled out a large stainless steel pot and set it upside down on the kitchen counter. “Okay,” she explained, “when I pick up this pot, there will be something small underneath it. You’ll suggest something, and I’ll suggest something, and we’ll see what’s actually under it.”


He found the idea interesting. He began to suggest to himself that when she picked up the pot, a small yellow rubber duck would be underneath. No, he did not suggest it to himself, he simply knew it. He knew as an incontrovertible fact that a small yellow rubber duck lay beneath the pot.


“Ready?” she asked. She picked up the steel pot, and gasped. Something blurry lay in the space where the pot had once been, “A red rose,” she said, picking the object up, dropping the steel pot on the floor with a resounding clang, “exactly as I predicted… and… a rubber duck?” In her other hand, she held a small yellow duck. It looked precisely as miller had imagined.


“That’s what I guessed.” Miller said, shaking his head in disbelief.


“But that’s not possible! I guess that means we’re both in control of this dream, Jake.”


He shrugged, “I don’t know,” he replied, “maybe it’s external. Maybe we’re both interpreting something … out there…” He didn’t have a clue, he wasn’t a neuroscientist. “But that’s a good thing. It means that we’re both real… unless one of us is faking it.”


“I sure as hell wasn’t expecting a rubber ducky, Elmo…” She squeezed the toy between her pale fingertips. It squeaked.


“Wasn’t it Ernie who said that?” He rebuffed, “The rubber ducky song, from Sesame Street?”


She looked at him with derision, “Okay, Mr. Childhood T.V. Expert.” She threw the duck to the ground and laid the rose gently on the counter. “In any case, my brain is either going on completely random tangents or you made that duck appear. We’re both real.” She said it with a sort of sarcastic skepticism, her green eyes staring at the windows behind him.


“I’m bored.” She pronounced, walking past him to a door on the side wall. The door had a large plate glass window on it, and golden sunlight streamed past the window blinds and across her face as she moved towards it. “Let’s get some fresh air, shall we?”

-*-


“Are the subjects responding well to the monoamine blockers?” Dr. Eichmann asked as he entered the room. He was holding a steamy, powder-blue mug of coffee in hand and a manila folder in the other.


“They’re responding quite well!” Dr. West replied, looking up from his workstation. The only source of light in the room was the glowing array of computer monitors. They reflected off of Dr. West’s glasses, making his eyes appear quite like those of a grasshopper, rather than a psychologist. “I thought for sure we’d lose them after that last recurring nightmare, especially after they failed to respond to delanaphanine; but my, how they responded to those monoamine blockers! They are now both quite firmly in REM sleep. I don’t know how you thought to use monoamine blockers, Dr. Eichmann, quite a stretch that idea was!”


Eichmann took a sip from his coffee mug, “Well, I simply reasoned that since monoamines… serotonin, dopamine, melatonin and such… are suppressed during REM sleep, then what might have caused them to enter the next sleep phase was an increase in one of those neurotransmitters.” His voice was deep, self-confident.


Eichmann took another drink of his coffee, and ambled over to the two hospital beds in the room. There lay a woman in the fetal position, lighted by the glow of the computer monitors. She was pale, had dark hair, and wore a loose hospital gown. She heaved up and down with the motion of her breathing, clutching the covers of the hospital bed. Black wires ran out from behind her ears and into the darkness. Beside her bed stood an identical cot; in it slept a stubble-faced man with mussed black hair. He was drooling out of his open mouth onto the pillow.


“They seem rather peaceful,” Eichmann observed, “for what’s going on inside their heads. I assume these two are connected to the network already?” He turned back towards Dr. West.


“Certainly,” West replied, staring back at the monitors, “from what I’ve gathered so far, they seem to be catching on rather quickly… certainly much faster than the last batch… I think we might be able to begin the third phase of the experiment shortly, after we get just a bit more data.”


“Hmm,” Eichmann mumbled, “how long has the experiment been running?”


“It’s been going for oh…” Dr. West glanced at his watch, “a little under four hours now. They’ve got at least four more left. We could probably keep the experiment going for several hours, especially with the liberal use of monoamine blockers. You really ought to take a look at this output, Dr. Eichman. It’s quite fascinating. The neural network is responding really very well to their inputs. We’ll have to thank the computer science department for speeding up the detection algorithms on the NIMID.”


“Uh huh…” Eichman sighed, taking the final sip from his coffee cup. It was nearly one ‘oclock in the afternoon, he shouldn’t have needed coffee that late in the day… it was the damned insomnia again. “I’ll watch it on tape, when I can analyze it more thoroughly. I’m sure the department will really enjoy the footage when we submit our paper. Remember, I’m going to want an interview with both the sleep-state and waking-state participants after the experiment so don’t let anyone leave until I’ve spoken with them.”


“Of course, Dr. Eichmann; it’s standard procedure, as always.” Dr. West replied cheerily.


“Alright, I’ll prepare the other subjects for phase three of the experiment. Keep me notified if anything else goes wrong.” Eichman placed his empty coffee cup on the table and left the room.


Continuing with his observations, Dr. West gazed back into the ever shifting colors of the monitor array. He couldn’t help but feel that he was an unwelcome guest in someone else’s head, sitting there looking at the strange and fantastic images which appeared on the screen. He shook the feeling off. He was a scientist. He was bred to observe.


He glanced at the two dreamers in the corner of the room, and wished, silently, that they might have sweet dreams.

-Chapter 7, Latency-

 

[Cavalry]

theotherguy.win += 1/0

//How many chapters are you thinking of writing?

More than 7 apparently...

Theotherguy's story+nothing=Epic Win

 

[Godron]

He began to suggest to himself that when she picked up the pot, a small yellow rubber duck would be underneath.

It's wierd, the way I thought of a yellow rubber duck just before I read this.

 

[CrazyHarij]

dude, i just started skimming and got hooked. very fun and immersive story. love the attention to detail. keep it up!

 

[RjD]

Wow. This is super!

 

[Sheepo]

Please keep writing this, it's very good

 

[theotherguy]

Times have been tough recently. I'll eventually write the next chapter...

 

[Sheepo]

I was just checkin that you hadn't forgot.

 

[Godron]

Just in case you forgot.

No hassle, like.

 

[theotherguy]

Another chapter. I know, this one doesn't make any sense. It's the accumulation of several month's on and off writing.

-Chapter 7, Latency-

The world outside Cate’s suburban home was awkward, shifting, and unreal. Jacob could not quite focus on the scenery. First he was standing in the middle of a poorly paved, grey road, Cate at his side and multicolored, oddly shaped homes standing about like monoliths. The ground seemed to be shaking, the road twisting about like a river of asphalt. The sky glowed with a purplish hue, casting everything in an eerie light.

Miller began to feel nauseous. “What the hell is going on here?” He asked Cate. His voice seemed incoherent, fuzzy.

She didn’t seem to respond. She was like an ever-changing specter of an image. He reached out to tap on her shoulder and get her attention, but when he reached out towards her swirling black locks, she turned towards him, and revealed the featureless orb that was her face.

A hole melted through this glob of skin and smacked together like a bubbling potion of mud. She spoke—or at least he thought she spoke, but he could hear nothing but bubbling, hissing noises.

Confronted with this demon, he lost himself in fear and confusion and ran into the inky abyss.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the strangeness ended, and he was left standing on a perfectly normal, perfectly straight sidewalk on a perfectly clear day in a perfectly ordinary Chicago suburb. Dazed, Miller gasped for air. He looked at his hands. They appeared normal. When he shifted his gaze upwards, Cate was staring at him with a concerned expression on her face.

“Jake, are you okay? I was just about to tell you something, but you disappeared for a second and then came back. We are still dreaming, right? You didn’t just wake up there for a second…did you?” One of her eyebrows lowered. He couldn’t make out her entire face, just little detailed chunks at one time.

“I…” he stammered, “I don’t know. It was messed up. All of the colors changed, your face… it—“

It happened again. He heard a rush of noise inside his head like that of a broken TV set. Cate’s face melted before him, she bubbled and sputtered at him. Purple lights flashed from all directions like fireworks. “Oh god,” he groaned. He felt nauseous. He closed his eyes.

“Jake… you—I think you disappeared again. What’s going on?” She asked. Everything was fine again, distinct, realistic. A slight breeze blew Cate’s long black hair, creating a halo of inky darkness about her chiseled white face.

“Well,” he began, “either Dr. West has just given me a severe dose of acid, or something’s wrong with the experiment. I don’t know… let’s just—“

The world exploded around him once more. This time it was much more intense, much more severe. The cookie-cutter suburban homes around him melted into viscous metallic goo. The ground below him shattered like glass. He could taste the air. It was like honey.

What was it that Dr. West had told him to do if something weird like this happened? He couldn’t remember. He was supposed to tap something, right? His mind raced, but came up with nothing. He could feel things growing fuzzy, cold.

Slowly the world became totally indiscernible, and melted into a sea of gray nothingness. Miller’s mind, likewise, seemed to fill with gray wool. He felt annihilated. He could not remember who he was, why he was there, what was happening. Was this death?

After what seemed like an eternity, things snapped back into focus. It was like changing the channel on a television, vague static becoming something new, clear. He rested not in Cate’s suburbia, but in a tiny cell. Darkness surrounded him, gritty, engulfing darkness. He regained his senses.

Jake’s eyes darted about, assessing the situation. Gray cinderblock walls on all sides, a concrete sarcophagus. A single, caged lamp hung from the ceiling, emitting a paltry greenish glow over him. Leather straps constrained his arms, his legs, to a blood-red, decaying chair. And there, sitting immediately in front of him, a hideous creature rested.

It was strapped to a chair like his own, its pale skin eaten away by the rubbing of the straps against its wrists. It was hairless, its skin cracked and peeled away to reveal patches of sinewy gray muscle, its skull-like face barely discernable as human. Jake felt as though he could merely reach out with his hand and touch its putrid flesh, if his hands had not been bound. Its chest rose and fell, stretching the leather straps attached to it with a cacophonous creak, shadowing its decayed figure as it moved.

Jake’s heart began to beat. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. What was that thing? How the hell did he end up here? Was this one of Cate’s perverted fantasies? Was this even still a dream? He struggled to remove his hands from the leather straps. He had to get away from this abhorrent thing.

It rested for a moment, eliciting wheezing noises as Jake struggled, and then, it spoke. “Ah… I am complete…” it hissed its words breathlessly, as though it had not spoken in years, centuries even.

“What the…” Jake began, his voice rising in terror as he convulsed in the chair, trying to break free.

“Is this my nightmare, Jacob, or yours?” It asked, a smile spreading across its decayed lips, “I’m not sure anymore… I have had so many nightmares, touched so many minds.” It opened its eyes. Miller gasped in horror as he saw that no eyes rested in the sunken sockets, merely darkness.

“Get away from me!” He shrieked, nearly sobbing.

“I know your terror, Miller. I know who you are. I was you once. I feared, I escaped, I wept – but that was so very long ago. Now I control. Now I am the terror.” The eyeless skull watched him, cocking to one side. Jacob’s pulse raced as the monster tore from its straps, snapping them with inhuman force as though they had been made of tissue paper.

“No…no… get away from me. This is just a dream… I know it’s just a dream!” Miller was not sure if he believed his own sobbed words. The monster stood, and reached towards him with clawed hands.

“Are you so sure, Jacob? Or have you finally woken up? I will show you what it means to be conscious, aware. The pain can be so real…so real…” Its gray, bony hands felt his face, its eyeless sockets staring not at him, but into him, into his mind.

“No!” Jake shouted. “This isn’t real! I’m not strapped to a chair, I’m dreaming!” He told himself over and over in his mind, ‘when I reach up my hand, it will come free of the strap… my hand will come free… my hand is free… I am reaching up… my hand is free.’

“Those tricks will do you no good here, not in the real world, Jacob. Here, I am the suggestion, the fear, the control.” It lunged towards him.

His hand suddenly freed, Miller lifted his left arm. It came free of the strap. He quickly tapped the back of his left ear three times, the signal to West to wake him up. “There’s no place like home…” he whispered wryly.

-*-

He was back in suburbia, standing in exactly the same position that he had been transported into the terrible cell with that…thing. Cate stood in front of him, with a look of half-concerned confusion on her face.

“There you are again!” She exclaimed, as though she had been waiting for him to reappear, “You see, Dr. West, he just keeps disappearing and reappearing.” She directed this explanation not towards Miller, but the empty air above her head, conversing with the sky itself. Her hair blew in the slight, warm breeze.

“Indeed, we’re getting a feed from him now. Let’s just hope we don’t lose him again.” The pedantic voice of Dr. West echoed from omni-directional space. “Mr. Miller, how are you? We seem to have lost you there for several minutes; I’m not quite sure what happened.”

Jacob shook himself, dazed by the events which had unfolded just moments before. “What the **** just happened to me?” He screamed, barely able to stand.

“Mr. Miller, please remain calm! It is very important that we follow a diagnostic procedure to determine what went wrong with the NIMID. This procedure does not involve emotional outbursts! Please, Mr. Miller, what did you experience?” Dr. West’s voice was calming, reassuring.

Jacob slowly breathed out, shook his head, and restated, “I…I think I’m fine Doc, just a bit terrified. What’s happening to me? One moment I’m walking along the sidewalk with Cate in idyllic suburbia, and the next I’m strapped to a dentist’s chair with some kind of existential demon hungering for my flesh, is this a dream, or a nightmare?”

West’s sigh echoed through Miller’s head. “Mr. Miller, we stopped receiving input from the primary electrode, and the readouts on the NIMID were going crazy. You were definitely getting input, but not from the neural network. It looked like some sort of latency spike. The traffic exceeded the maximum bandwidth for the NIMID. I assume it was a simple hardware failure, but after we received the reset command, it seemed to stabilize, and we’re getting normal output now. I suppose whatever input you were receiving might have been interpreted by your brain as something disturbing, but we were getting positively nothing on this end. As I said before, Mr. Miller, the NIMID is a highly experimental device. We only got approval for human trials a few weeks ago, and there are sure to be a few bugs to work out.”

“Well, make sure it doesn’t happen again!” Miller snapped, his voice wavering. He didn’t like the idea of having a malfunctioning piece of machinery attached to his brain, especially when the malfunctions involved decaying monsters desiring to eat him. Perhaps he should just request to end the experiment, to get out of this hell in his head and avoid going back to that…nightmare.

“Of course Mr. Miller, we’ll continue the experiment. I’ve increased the bandwidth limit for the network, and if we get another latency spike, I should be able to visualize and control whatever input you’re getting. If not, we will simply have to terminate the experiment… I will leave you now to observe, but if anything else troubling happens, feel free to ask for my assistance” The doctor’s voice was hesitant, careful.

“Wait a minute Doc, just tell me one thing, is this experiment really about the effect of caffeine on lucid dreaming, or is it about torturing us with little mind games? I bet that’s it, isn’t it Doc? You’ll just twist the thumb screws to see how long we last. I didn’t sign up for being eaten by—“

“Jake, stop—“ Cate interrupted his tirade, he continued.

“brain-devouring zombies, or getting trampled by moose from hell—“

“Jake, stop it! He’s not even listening—“

“-- from the brain of some mysterious woman who lives in my dreams. Damn it West, I want answers! Tell me what is going on!” His voice echoed into the hollow sky, but no response came.

Cate put her hand on his shoulder, “Jake, he keeps doing this. He’s not supposed to give you any more information or it will skew the results. That’s what they do in these psychological experiments, they mislead you, they lie to you, subject you to all sorts of distractions. The best we can do is stick together and leave all the technical stuff to West and the other researchers.”

“Cate, you didn’t see it. You don’t want to see it. When I disappeared, I was in a tiny room with some… creature. It’s hard to describe, but it terrified me. It was like that thing wanted to skin me alive…” He shook his head, “Cate, I’m not sure if I made this thing up or not. It was terrifying.”

“We all have our nightmares Jake. You’ve seen mine, now you know yours. It’s best just to forget about them.” She elicited a pseudo-smile, filled more with worry than empathy.

“I don’t have nightmares…” Jake began, but then corrected himself, “but then again, I didn’t think I had dreams at all before this experiment. This thing though, whether it was a nightmare or not, felt real, it felt dangerous.”

“It always does; why else would we be afraid of them? Freud used to say that dreams were the one true window into the subconscious. You’re probably just exhibiting some kind of subconscious fear of… flesh-eating…zombie…things…” She shrugged.

“Freud was a kook.” Jake replied derisively, “and a drug addict. This is way crazier than Freud—and that’s saying a lot.”

“Whatever,” Cate sighed, “I’m bored. Let’s explore!” She darted away from him, and began doing what Jake could only describe as frolicking through the brilliant, yet brilliantly empty suburban streets. As he watched her, he couldn’t help thinking of being strapped in that chair, his flesh being torn bit by bit from his limbs by the bony teeth of that hideous demon. Perhaps it was a suppressed fear. Perhaps that was what he was afraid of becoming, or finding in his dreams.

He shook off the thought, and followed Cate, who by now was practically floating amongst the parked cars and abandoned children’s toys which littered the road. He caught up to her easily, not even feeling his own legs moving. They were walking leisurely side by side now down the perfectly straight road lined with an endless array of identical houses, like so many stalks of corn.

 

[theotherguy]

“You don’t have A.D.D do you? Are we just going to keep on skipping around in the daisies or are we going to talk about what happened to me?” His question seemed to have no effect on her. She merely snorted and continued walking on ahead of him. He decided to let the matter drop, and caught up with her. Maybe she was right. Perhaps it was best to forget about such things, lest they appear again in another dream.

“So, is this your neighborhood?” Jake asked, gazing into the distance and seeing nothing but boxy homes extending to the horizon, “it looks kind of dull.”

“Sort of,” she managed, shrugging, “I guess this is my schema for my neighborhood anyway. Do you think it goes on forever like this?”

“It could. I don’t know…”

Suddenly, she leapt up into the air, impossibly high, floating above his head.

“Now what are you doing?” He yelled, gazing up at her figure suspended in the perfectly blue sky above.

“I’m trying to fly!” She asserted, flapping her arms as she fell, impossibly slowly, back to Earth. “What else would I be doing? Haven’t you ever wanted to fly in your dreams, Jacob?” She landed smoothly back on the pavement beside him. “Darn. I always come back down.”

“I’ve flown already, you know.” Jake said, stepping closer to her, “it just takes a little imagination, is all. Didn’t Dr. West tell you about skyhooks?”

She frowned, “I don’t think so, Jake. I guess it’s because I expect to fall back down to the ground, just like everything else.”

“That’s exactly it.” Jake replied, “I’ll show you. A skyhook is going to come down from the sky right between us very soon.”

As quickly as he suggested it so, a sinewy black rope appeared between them, hanging seemingly out of nothingness in the sky, and tipped by a silver hook. Cate stared at it, and then handled the hook in the palm of her hand.

“Well, at least it’s aptly named.” She managed, looking to him for further explanation.

“It’s whatever you want it to be, I think,” Jake replied, tugging on the rope and feeling it taught, “basically, all you have to do is swing on this rope, higher and higher, until you find yourself flying. It’s weird, I know, but West showed it to me, and it really works.”

She glanced back at him, skeptically. “Here,” Jake reassured, “grab on to the end of the rope, and I’ll grab on just above it, and we’ll swing on it together.”

“Sure,” she responded, “let me be the one impaled by the immaterial fishing line from the sky.” She grabbed on just above the hook, and Jake placed his hands just above her, feeling the wispy touch of her pale hand. She felt as real as she looked.

“Okay,” Jake announced, “just trust me on this one. We’re going to push off and start swinging. Don’t think about it that much, just imagine that you’re on a swing set.”

“That’ll be fantastic,” she snorted, “in my experience of trying to fly with a swing set, when we jump off of this thing, we’ll land on the sidewalk. That will be fun.”

He ignored her, and began pulling the rope back. He felt her moving along with him, and they both ran backwards at an absurd speed, and soon he felt that they were no longer touching the ground, but swinging several feet in the air. The great pendulum of their bodies upon the hook swung to the top of its bizarre arc, and then swung back down at incredible speed, sending them back down to the street and houses below. As Jake looked about him, Cate’s hair blowing intermittently in his face, he could see nothing but houses extending in all directions, with the slight, foggy outline of Chicago in the distance, the great lake shining beyond.

“Ahh! We’re going to hit the ground!” Cate screamed giddily, grasping onto the rope now with both her arms and legs.

“No,” Jake insisted, shouting over the noise of the wind, “we’ll just miss it.”

Indeed, just as they came to the bottom of their arc, Cate’s feet barely scraped the ground, and the pendulum began swinging upwards. Jake could feel his stomach lift, and his adrenaline flow as they shot up towards the sky. Cate squealed with glee as the contents of Jake’s imaginary stomach slowly climbed up his imaginary esophagus. Above them, the sky, filled with puffy cumulus clouds, spread out like a great quilt.

“We’re flying!” Cate yelled, letting go of the skyhook and spreading her arms.

“No kidding…” Jake managed, taking his hands off of the rope and watching it disappear back into the blue.

Then, they were falling. It was difficult to describe, but it was as if the Earth’s gravity suddenly decided to reverse, and Jake found himself staring down at his feet, falling towards the sky. At first, he thought it had been a mere trick of his mind, but then again, what wasn’t?

“What’s going on?” Cate shouted, finding herself oriented in the same direction as Jake.

Frantically, Jake looked upwards, or downwards, or wherever the ground had been before he began falling towards the sky, and discovered there to be nothing there but more sky, and more clouds.

“I think one of us expected to fall,” Jake explained over the rush of air, “so we started falling towards the sky!” He found himself drifting towards her, as if compelled by a strange force.

“So what do we do now? Do we fall forever?” Cate asked, panic in her voice.

“I don’t know, it’s our dream, isn’t it? Just imagine that we’re flying in an airplane.”

And then, they were.

-Chapter 8, The Pilot-