The Dream Machine by Fiona Davis

It's always the same. I'm a small child, standing in the huge room that served dual purposes as my parents' bedroom and, with the help of several bookshelves that acted as a dividing wall, a reading/study area. The furniture is arranged exactly as it was back then, although it was moved around many times as I grew older.

My mother always wondered how I was able to describe that room in exacting detail, on those rare occasions when I would let my guard down for my younger siblings and tell them stories of how life was before they came along.

She was always amazed at my wonderful memory, as I often recalled things that she had long since forgotten. I don't think she ever noticed that my uncanny recollection was strictly confined to that one room. I never told her why.

In the dream, I always start in the same place, in front of a large, round chair in one corner of the room. In front of me, in the larger part of the room, stand my father and a man I don't know.

The unknown man is a stereotypical mad scientist type: Lab coat, radically disheveled hair that would make even Einstein cringe, crazed, humorless grin, and a maniacal glint in his eyes. He and my father are talking, but I never understand what they're saying. I'm too young, and the words sail over my head as meaningless sounds.

Suddenly, with one deft motion, the scientist whips out a small vial of dark green liquid, and throws it on the ground in at my father's feet. Thick, green smoke billows up from the floor, while my father throws his arms up across his face to protect his eyes.

Meanwhile, unnoticed, I slip behind the chair and huddle down so I can see what is happening without being discovered. My heart pounds, and I want to cry out for my father.

Through my panic, I find myself desperately wondering why this scientist wants to hurt my father, and what he has done to him. As if he could hear my thoughts, the scientist begins searching for me. Whatever change he effected on my father he wants to repeat, I am certain of that.

Meanwhile, my father has been completely shrouded in a veil of smoke. I can't see him anymore. My heart still pounding, I manage to scrape up the courage to start thinking about a way to escape.

The scientist blocks the entryway into the rest of the house. There is a back door, but it's been boarded up since we moved into the house. The windows are closed and locked, and I know that it would take me far too long to unlock them, open them, and escape. The mad scientist would surely hit me with a vial before I could get out.

The smoke around my father starts to clear, and his figure begins to take shape through the dissipating shroud of smoke. He's still standing, and for a brief moment I am hopeful that he is okay and will be able to save me. One look at the horrifying thing he has become shows me how wrong I am.

My father is no longer the man I recognize. He's been turned into a monster: green scales cover his body, his fingers extended into long, gnarled things that end in sharp claws, his feet similarly changed. He no longer wears any clothes, but that does not strike me as odd.

What I notice the most, what strikes fear into my heart and violently strips away any courage I have left, are his eyes. They are now yellow, glowing with hate and malicious evil intent to hurt, to destroy. As I stare into those eyes, two things hit me at once: he knows where I am, and he wants to kill me.

As he starts toward the chair I am hiding behind, I know I am no longer safe there. I bolt out from behind it, and start running across the room. The scientist still blocks my way to freedom, and now he is lobbing vials at me, each one exploding so close to me that I start to choke on the fumes, tears running down my cheeks.

I look back at the monster, who is now chasing me. "Please daddy!" I cry out. But he does not hear me. My daddy is gone.

Blinded by smoke, tears and sheer panic, I race for the only cover I can find. As I dive under my parents' bed, I can think of nothing but trying to put as much distance as possible between the monster and myself. No coherent thoughts can penetrate the unthinking haze of my panicked state, and all I can do is crawl for all of my life up under the bed until I hit the wall under the head of their bed.

Frantically, I turn myself around so that my back is pressed against the wall and I can see towards the foot of the bed. I protectively curl myself into a fetal position, trying to keep as much of myself as far from the terror as possible.

It is pitch black, and all I can hear is my own ragged breathing. I scan the area around me as best I can, looking for any break in the total blackness, listening desperately for any sound. I neither see nor hear anything for several tense seconds.

I blink, and in that instant the glowing yellow eyes pierce the darkness. I cannot see the rest of the monster, but I know that he is grinning. He has me, and we both know it. I start to sob uncontrollably, but I cannot move, even as I sense the monster reaching up under the bed towards me.

His clawed hand moves slowly toward my foot; I can feel it even though I can't see it. Frozen in terror, I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. His hand is about to close over my foot, and I know I am about to die -

At this point, almost invariably, I sit up violently, sweating profusely, very awake but still fighting off the last remnants of panic that cling to me even though by now I know it was just a nightmare. Sometimes I scream, but usually I am too stricken to make any sound at all.

The first time, when I was the same age in life as I was in the dream, I curled up on my bed and sobbed quietly for a while. Then I carefully snuck into my parents' room, just to check if my father was there. I didn't dare wake either of them, as I still had that lingering, irrational fear of my father. But I couldn't go back to sleep until I convinced myself that none of it was real.

I don't think I have to tell you why I felt it was necessary to put all of this down in my journal. I know that it will be read and re-read, analyzed until the words start to lose all meaning. But you all, every single one of you (Dr. Strauss, I beg you to listen!), need to understand why it is absolutely imperative that you allow me the periods of solitude I ask for before I step into the machine.

I know you do not understand what I do during these periods of silence. I am not sure that I can explain it in a way that you will understand. You seem to want to rush ahead in everything that you do, without pausing for reflection. Allow me to take this opportunity to encourage you to slow down and take some time to think about the consequences of what you are doing.

Do you know what you are looking for? You seem to be blindly searching for something, Dr. Strauss, and if you don't take some time to carefully consider what you are doing, you may stumble onto something you'd rather not have known existed, something that was never meant to live outside of the human mind.

What I do during these silent periods is quite simple: I listen. This is why I must be alone, and why there must be absolute silence. I listen to myself, to my breathing, to my beating heart, and eventually to the very blood rushing through my body. I listen to myself, to my physical and spiritual being. Sometimes I let my thoughts wander, as I process through the experiences that make up my life. In a manner of speaking, I am getting to know myself all over again.

The memory of my nightmare haunts me to this day, and I think even you can see the wisdom in allowing me to do everything I can to bury this as deeply within my subconscious as possible. If I can show my mind that there is a clear separation between my physical self and the imaginary world where this monster lives, I can ensure that the mental barrier that keeps it inside of me remains in place. That barrier weakens with every trip into the machine. If I cannot reconnect with myself from time to time, it will eventually crumble, and the monster will be set free.

I don't understand how your magical contraption does what it does, but I think we can all agree that I am one of the critical components in this little project of yours. Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is easy for me.

When I step into the machine, I risk everything, even my sanity. I lie back and close my eyes, hoping and praying every time that not only will I wake up again but also that I will recognize myself and the world around me. I don't want to lose my mind like all of the others who came before me.

I know that someday I will succumb to the forces that attack me every time I go into the machine, and it will strip my identity from me. At that point, I could very well consider myself dead, killed by this "brilliant invention" of which you are so proud. After all, if I no longer recognize my surroundings or my very self, if I am no longer the person I was, isn't that a form of death?

Then what will you do, Dr. Strauss? I find it laughable that after all of this time, all of the experiments, the research, the analysis, after all of these months you still do not understand how your own invention works. You, the grand scientist, the project lead, the man with the brilliant idea, you do not know why your little contraption works with me, but not with anyone else.

Why is it that I can lie down inside of it, close my eyes and dream a thousand things that pop into the waking world here, as alive as anything born by conventional methods? How can I, the insignificant test subject you so despise, create things that have only existed in legends, or never existed at all?

The fanciful part of me loves the unicorn the best, but I know that you have grander things in mind. If I could understand all of your talk about nucleic acids and proteins and cells, maybe I could dream up a cure for cancer. Actually, maybe I can just think about there being a cure for cancer, and see what pops out of the machine. It would delight me greatly, o esteemed doctor, to create something you never could. I will try that in my next descent.

You don't know what you're doing. You can pretend that you do, but I know that you don't. That's the definition of "research," isn't it? You don't know, and you're hoping that by using me and my "gift" however and whenever you see fit that you can find out how to make this work, how to apply it to the masses. You will all become very rich, my keepers, and I will likely be dead, or wishing that I were.

You try to silence me when I talk in this way, but I feel I must find a way to make you understand what this machine is doing to me, and what it could potentially do to others. "A leap into the future," you said. "A discovery more important than antibiotics, nuclear energy, or space travel combined." You overestimate your ingenuity, and far underestimate the sacrifices that must necessarily accompany any great scientific discovery.

How many trips have I made, doctor? How many times have I curled up on my side in that little coffin that is your grand invention, allowed you to connect all of your little probes that will read and interpret my dreams, and let you administer the drugs that will put me into an unconscious state, and keep me there until you see fit to release me?

Using the machine, I have created thousands of things, haven't I? New materials, animals no one has seen for millennia, if ever, new foods and beverages, cars, aircraft, spacecraft. "The sky's the limit," as you so gleefully enjoy telling me.

I don't understand how your machine can take the idea of something within a dream and make it a reality in our waking world. It doesn't seem possible, and yet it works -- but only with me. You're desperate to find out why, aren't you?

I hope that you will find your answers someday, that you will come to understand what makes me different, why I can go into the machine and come back out sane, while everyone else you've put in here went to sleep and never woke up as their true selves again. You have them all still in this facility somewhere, don't you? I don't know why I am so certain of that, but I am. I think sometimes I can hear them screaming.

Perhaps the dark fears that haunt my nightmares, those evil things that I run from, are the very things that allow me to continue to keep my inner mind intact. If I stayed asleep, remaining in that dream world, I would be caught, wouldn't I? Maybe that is the difference. I will leave you to ponder that, as I am too tired to think about it anymore.

My concern now is that you allow me to do what I can to prevent anything coming out that will harm you, or anyone else. Those yellow eyes, doctor. Remember those yellow eyes. I can escape them now, by leaving my dream behind and returning here, to this reality.

If my monster is allowed to leap from that world to this one, how will I escape? That will be the point where my mind cracks under the strain, and I will be forced to retreat to somewhere else, somewhere deep within my subconscious where neither monster could ever find me.

You don't want that, do you? You will have to scrap this entire project, and you know that I am your last chance. People are happy to fund projects that show promising results. If you have nothing to show for your efforts, I wonder what kind questions people will start to raise. And what secrets will they uncover? You can't hide your failures forever.

But let us return to the problem at hand. Dr. Strauss, I overheard you talking the other day (you do realize that I can hear you when I am in the machine, don't you?) and I disagree with you that I come out of the machine unchanged. You may not see any outward evidence of any changes, my dear captor and tormentor, however let me assure you that I am changed with every descent.

My mind is already starting to show signs of the strain of shifting back and forth between two very different realities. I know you do not consider my dream world as a "reality," but believe me when I tell you that for me it is very real. I can feel the cracks forming, Dr. Strauss. Every time I return to this "reality" I know that another small crack has appeared, and another small piece of me has died.

This is why I say that I know the machine will, for all intents and purposes, kill me someday. I know that on one of these trips a crack will appear that will shatter my mind. I will finally be pushed over the edge and will no longer be the person that you see before you. If the monster hasn't come out of the machine by then, I fear it will come out of me. You don't know what I am capable of. None of you do.

In many ways I feel that I am already dead, although my heart continues to beat and I continue to behave in a manner consistent with the standard definition of "being alive." It actually amuses me, albeit in a very morbid way, to think about it. Here I have spent all of these long months jumping from one reality to another, from sleeping to waking, from dreams to "real life," and someday I will jump from this "real life" to some form of death. Mental, spiritual, or physical, does it really matter?

But despite all of this, and I direct this plea to all of you, you absolutely must allow me my "alone time" prior to my descents into the world of dreams within the machine.

I know that this slows down the project, and I understand your eagerness to proceed as quickly as possible, however in the first place I am not eager to race to my destruction, and in the second I am concerned for what terrible things may come out of that machine, or what I may turn into myself.

Let me be perfectly clear: If you continue to force me to work at this unrelenting pace, without allowing me the peace and solitude I desperately need, I will no longer be able to escape from the nightmares that lurk just below the surface of my subconscious mind. Those evil yellow eyes continue to hunt me, and if I cannot find a way to escape them, I will find a way to take my own life.

I may not be as educated as you, but believe me when I tell you that a person determined to die will find a way to do it. Surely this project is important enough to you that you will allow me this one concession.

When you've finished analyzing this document I hope that you will see the wisdom of my plea. Please say yes. The next time I wrestle with my nightmare I want to find safety in this reality. Please don't let the monster take me at last.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Fiona Davis