Adventures in Dreamscapering

the project revisited

"Holy cannoli. We have done absolutely no work."

"Tell me something I don't know, Nathan."

Nathan and I met after school to call a state of emergency regarding our science project. I was feeling unusually short with Nathan. Of course, he'd have no knowledge of my lucid dreaming complications, but I had grown anxious about the topic.

"What's wrong with you, Gwendolyn? A few weeks ago we were all hamming it up, and now you're just--"

"I've just...been having some problems with the whole subject."

"It's too late to change our topic."

"No, it's not like that."

"Then what's the problem?"

My breath caught in my throat a bit as I mentally decided how to respond to this question.

"Ah. Have you ever...had people doing things inside your dream?"

"Isn't that how dreams work?"

I shook my head. "Nah, not like that."

I hesitated again before continuing.
"Like, the people in your dream have a mind of their own. And they know they are in a dream."

Nathan shot me a confused glance.

"Um," Nathan began.
"Never mind, don't worry about it," I said back.

Nathan looked away sheepishly before pressing the matter further. "I mean. You can tell me about it, if you'd like." 

I felt strangely about Nathan's empathy, and decided to confide in him against my better judgment. 

"Have you heard of 'dream errors' before?" I asked. 

Nathan tilted his head at me. "Maybe? The term sounds familiar." 

Familiar? "Where have you heard it before?" My voice sounded more desperate than I intended. 

Nathan put his backpack on the library desk and began fishing around in his backpack for his phone. 

"What did you say it was?"

"A dream error?"

"Yeah," Nathan said, typing into his cell, "I've seen this before. Don't tell anyone, but I go on this one forum a lot... it's just people talking about their lucid dreams. Kind of dorky."

I raised an eyebrow at the thought that Nathan found his dreaming-for-fun to be the most dorky aspect of his personality. 

"Shut up," Nathan said, sensing this thought from me. "Anyway, does this sound like you?"

Nathan turned his phone towards me to show me the forum where people were discussing dream errors. I took the phone from his skinny fingers and scrolled through. What I read frightened me. Hundreds of people described being terrorized by their own dream errors, in different situations ranging from merely being locked out of lucidity to outrageous fantasies twisted into nightmares daily by a sadistic out-of-line dream character. No one commented on anything close to my situation though. 

"Pretty wild huh? I can barely get my dreams to stop forcing me awake when I'm lucid. These people have dreams with a mind of their own."

"Wow..." was all I could say. I was speechless. No one on the dream forum thread had solutions, either. Were my dream self and I doomed to be tortured by Max for the rest of our lives?

Nathan looked at the floor; I handed him his phone back. 

"I think I'm going through the same thing, actually. The dream error thing," I admitted to Nathan. 

"What?! " Nathan's shout of surprise was enough to elicit a SHH! from fellow library patrons.

"What?!" Nathan repeated in a more library-appropriate harsh whisper. 

I told Nathan an abridged version of what was happening between me and Max, leaving out all of our romantic endeavors. By the end of it, Nathan's eyes were widened with shock. 

"You're not lying? This dream error stuff is legit?" Nathan said. I nodded solemnly. 

Neither of us spoke for a minute. 

"Gwendolyn, I have something...we...might want to try. For our experiment. Do you think you could come over to my house over the weekend?" 

Confused and perhaps relieved by the sudden change of subject, I agreed. I left the library feeling a bit vulnerable at what I had just revealed. Something about Nathan's tone of voice made me curious about what he had in mind next for our project.