A Maze of Dreams

Chapter Two:

"What you're about to see cannot be told to anyone." Said Dr. Williams. "Do you understand Miss Walker?"

"Of course, Dr. Williams."

"Follow me." He beckoned. "Here at DreamCo, we do a number of things to say the least. To the public, we sell mattresses, pillows, sheets, and blankets. To higher paying customers we offer other services. Recently, we've been working on a new product, however, we need strong candidates to test it. Because it has the potential to be psychologically dangerous."

We reached a door, and he turned to me and said, "Are you sure you would like to do this? You could turn around and save us the trouble of wiping your mind later."

Obviously, I went ahead or I wouldn't be telling this story. Anyway, fast forward five minutes and I was sitting with a citrus smoothie while undergoing orientation.

"We call it the DDS Machine, or Dream Machine for short. In short, the machine puts you in a sort of stasis, where everything shuts down except for the mind. You will then dream about whatever world we have put in the computer. From then on, the mind takes the basis the computer has given it and builds upon it, creating an actual world. You will dream for however long we've put in the computer. Keep in mind however, that the dream world goes faster than the real world. We've deduced that one day of real time equates to one year of dream world time." Explained the cute, slightly nerdy technician in charge of orientation.

"Wait, I've seen Inception before, if the dreams are supposed to look real, then how is one supposed to tell the dream world from reality?" I asked.

"We've sort of adopted an idea from that movie: tokens. The token has to be unique and personal, and it will never show up in the dream world. You'll have to always have it on you so you can tell when you're not dreaming."

"Have you been in the dreams before?" I asked.

"Someone had to make sure it worked before we had clinical trials." He said.

"You never said what your name was by the way." I said.

"Oh, that. I always forget to put my name tag on. I spend too much time in the dreams and research. It's Mercer. James Mercer. Research Technician." He replied.

"Well, nice to meet you Mercer James Mercer, Research Technician. You guys have really awesome smoothies by the way." I just couldn't help teasing him. "How did you guys manage to create all this anyway? It seems super advanced."

"We have been researching the mind for years. We figured that if we could figure out how dreams work, then we could be able to simulate them. Don't you just get tired of not being able to control your dreams? With this machine, we can do that. Do you want to see it?" He asked me.

There was this look in his eyes, the look of someone who is truly alive, someone who loves what they do. I wanted that look in mine. "Heck yes!" I exclaimed.

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"It's very spockish." I observed. It looked straight out of a sci-fi movie. The outside was shaped like a tanning bed, but had sci-fi-ish elements. Like a futuristic tanning bed really.

"I guess it does look like something out of Star Trek, only better." He agreed. "First we input the specifics of the dream to the computer. Then, the person inside the Stasis Chamber gets,  well, put in stasis. The chamber takes care of all your needs, like nutrience, sometimes breathing, and hydration for example. The mind then goes into a sort of hibernation, like a dream. Then the computer sort of suggests the elements of the dream, like what's in there and what's not. It's the perfect controlled dream. Your body and mind will sleep for a specified amount of time. The best part is that the Chamber keeps you from aging while you're in stasis. The theory is that you could dream forever and never age a second."

Dream forever? People would pay billions for something like that.

"They can't dream forever though. If something happened to the machine while they were in it, like if the power and all 4 backup generators went out, the machine wouldn't keep the body stasis anymore, and it would die." He said then. "Or, worse, your reality slips away from you and the person you were.. is lost. There's a possibility that you could forget everything about yourself."

"But one could dream forever though? Would they be able to feel pain? Would it slow the effects of a disease such as cancer?" Obviously I wasn't ready to let go as of then. And I definitely didn't care about going insane.

"Maybe. I mean we haven't tested it yet, but theoretically yes."

"I'll test this, as long as my mother gets to use it once it's deemed safe. Not to keep her alive, just to take away the pain for a little while. Let her dream a bit. Think about it." I said. "You could use it as research."

"What does she have?"

A painful disease that is destroying what's left of my family. Or in other words: "Chronic Leukemia, near the end of stage two."

"You do realize how many dangers there are with this machine, right? We don't know what the long term effects are with people in il-health." He looked at me with this grim look on his face, as if he didn't know what to do. Not many people do. I didn't even know how to handle it.

"My mother's given up hope, she's ready to die. I just don't want her to hurt anymore." After all, how do you expect someone to win if they don't want to win anymore?

"Ill ask," he said. "But it's not very likely. I'll put down that you want to do the trial." He walked off somewhere and I went off in search of the conference room I was in earlier to sulk some more.

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"I don't have good news and I don't have bad news either. If all goes well in the trials, we might consider letting your mom try it. That's a maybe but don't get your hopes up because it's a serious liability for the company." Dr. Williams said. "On another note, you'll need to submit to some tests to make sure you qualify for the trials."

"Of course, Dr. WIlliams." After that, nurses took blood samples, medical history reports, etc. Basically made sure that I was healthy.

"You're good to go now, we'll call you next week to tell you if you qualify. If you do, then we'll probably start the dreams two fridays from now." Dr Williams informed me. "You'll need to put everything on hold for now, you'll be dreaming every week. 24 hour dreaming period, followed by a day for recording, where you write down what you remember from the dream, what it felt like, etc. We'll also pay for your mothers medical bills as we understand that you're the sole provider."

"Do you have any other testers besides me?" I asked him.

"Currently, we only have three stasis chambers though we're hoping to double that by Christmas. You have one, the rest are filled. We can't give you anymore information than that." The doctor answered.