He had never stood on this stage before. He had always sat behind his desk watching some human standing here. But after several millennia of constant work he had made the sudden and somewhat rash decision to take the leap, literally. As he had watched his current dreamer waking up he had poised himself for the jump, and the moment the stage was clear he leapt from his desk across the void and onto the stage.
This platform had been equipped with a huge treadmill spanning in all directions, large fans from multiple angles, all colors of lights, pulleys for flying dreams, and trap doors for falling dreams. He, as a dream giver, knew what to trigger from his command station across the way because his computer interpreted the human's brain wavelengths. A long time ago they had done this themselves, but as the humans developed better technology they had borrowed it to make their own jobs easier, and they had since lost the knowledge of how to connect without it. Now, a monitor would show him what sort of memories from the day the person needed to sort away, and if any past trauma needed rehashing while they were at it. He had learned early on that pleasant dreams were not always the best way to process these things; sometimes a terror was the quickest and most effective method.
Now here he stood on the stage himself, and he couldn't help but wonder how it all felt, to have the treadmill begin to move and the screens displaying pictures of a home or an office, to be gently lifted off the ground by the pulleys so you could sail among projections of clouds.
He spun around with the sudden realization that he wasn't alone. His next human had arrived. He watched in horror as the human looked around the room with evident interest. He was supposed to be seeing visions of familiar places; he wasn't supposed to be seeing any of this without the masking effect!
"Wow, what a room!" the human exclaimed. He saw the dream giver and said, "Are we on a film set?"
The dream giver nodded slowly.
The human cocked his head. "You're kind of an odd-looking fellow, aren't you? I mean no offense of course, just that there's something off about your face. Or maybe it's your eyes. Do you know what I mean? Have you been told that before?"
The dream giver shook his head. No, he had never even seen his own face before. He was actually kind of surprised that he had a face at all.
He began to speak, but slowly. He had never spoken to anyone before. "Excuse me, would you? I just have to get back..." He started walking back towards his desk.
"Ah don't worry about that, mate. It seemed like you were enjoying yourself." He walked towards the desk and the dream giver gasped in horror as he leapt across the void to it. "Just tell me what to do and I'll take care of it for you."
The dream giver had a rush of hope and he wondered if it would actually work. "Just watch the monitor. It'll tell you what buttons to push."
The human sat himself in the chair and stared intently at the monitor. The dream giver closed his eyes and waited.
"Um, nothing's happening. Am I doing something wrong?"
The dream giver sighed in disappointment. "No, you've done nothing wrong. I just don't have any material to use. I've never lived, you see." He bit his tongue. He shouldn't have said that.
"Never lived, huh? Boy, what a weird person I've created."
"What do you mean?" The dream giver asked.
The human shrugged. "This is all in my mind. I'm asleep, and this is my dream. And what a weird one it is. I wonder if I'll remember it when I wake up."
"You know you're dreaming?"
"Sure. I lucid dream pretty much every night."
"What's it like?" He sighed. "I've always wanted to dream."
The human chewed his lip a little, then said, "Huh, the funny thing is, the word dream can have a couple of meanings. It can mean falling asleep and living out strange circumstances that you rarely remember when you wake up, and it can mean wishing for something so hard that it's all you can think about sometimes. Honestly, the second meaning is the best one, and it sounds like you've already done a whole lot of that."
The dream giver's eyes widened in astonishment and joy. Because all of a sudden he realized he wasn't just a dream giver, but he was a dream haver as well. And that was better.
