The Gift: A TAWOG Story

Chapter 29: The Machine

[The fanart above was created by @lifepaint as an honorary contribution to this story. Thank you so much!]

"W-what's going on?" asked Gumball as he looked around. "Where am I?"

"You were sleepwalking," said Nicole. "And as much as I'm hesitant to say it..." She took a deep breath. "We are now in the room."

"What room?" said Gumball.

"The one you've been dreaming about, sweetie," replied his mother. Gumball took a careful look around. He glanced out the door, in which the hallway was very recognizable from his dreams. He then gasped when he saw the number on the door: 0004. He came back in and looked around the dark room illuminated by a faint red light.

Gumball could not believe his eyes as he gasped at the centerpiece of the entire room: a big, bulky, strange looking structure. It was mostly a series of box-shaped frames with what appeared to be two dentist chairs on either sides complete with helmets attached to the headrests. Two little monitors were placed behind them, while a third monitor double the size was mounted on the center of the machine. There was a panel of buttons on the front with blinking and steady lights.

"What the what?" Gumball muttered to himself as he stepped closer to this strange looking machine standing eerily in the glowing green backlight. He glanced all around it in his t-shirt with a red stripe and boxer shorts. "What is this thing?"

"Right on time," said a voice that Gumball immediately recognized. He turned around to see Dr. Pill, dressed up in a lab coat over his usual attire. "I've been waiting for you, Gumball. You and your mother."

"Dr. Pill?!" exclaimed Gumball. "What are you doing here? What's going on here? What is this thing?" He placed his paw on the machine.

"Glad you asked, Gumball," said Dr. Pill. "What you are looking at is the Dreamscaper. Well, actually it's the Dreamscaper 2.0, rebuilt and revitalized to start over on the big experiment."

"Big experiment?" said the little blue cat. "What experiment?" The rest of the family decided to stand back and let Dr. Pill proceed to explain everything.

"Do you really wanna know how you and your mother are able to see into your family's dreams, Gumball?" Darwin, Anais, and Richard all gasped.

"What?" said Anais as she glanced up at her mother. Nicole's heart was pounding as she realized her entire family was going to know the truth. She then realized it is okay if Dr. Pill is the one willing to telling it all.

"Um..." said Gumball, trying to structure his words. "She has the mat and does the static with the radio and candles, but..."

"Well, I'm here to tell you Gumball," said the pill, "That none of that is true."

"Wha?" Gumball reacted.

"That was all for show," said the pill. "Well, except for the static noise. She genuinely needs that. But, you see, the machine behind you is what really gave her the ability, as well as the ability to read people's minds. In fact, it was the centerpiece of the whole experiment we tried on her over twenty-two years ago." Gumball gasped at everything he just said, while Anais fainted and Darwin caught her.

"You're telling me," said Gumball. "That my mom was... a lab rat?!"

"It's such a long story, Gumball," said Nicole, jumping into the conversation. "May I, Dr. Pill?"

"Go ahead," said the doctor as he sat down. Nicole stood in front of her son.

"Basically Gumball, you know how I used to rage throughout my life, since I was little?" Gumball nodded his head. "Well, it got so bad by the time I was a teenager that, my parents felt that this would be a last resort. You know that Dr. Pill was my psychiatrist when I was younger. Well, we tried and tried but nothing worked. Until finally, he told my parents about a new experiment that he was working on with the CIA. It was a brain booster experiment that, on top of benefits like seeing into dreams, it also improved the patients' outlook and got rid of excessive stress and rage. So they decided I was going to be the test subject. What fools my parents were."