The bar looks lonelier than usual tonight. Quieter too. I guess that’s not surprising. It is only 6:00. Still, I’d be surprised if everyone here didn’t feel the same urge to get eight drinks down that I do. Maybe they’re also watching how much they drink.
Tuesday night. Not very exciting. I guess it’s just as interesting as usual, though. I have more to look forward to tonight than I would in here any other day of the week. Teddy’s coming with some news. I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.
At that moment, a subtle light infiltrated the dark room. Teddy walked in and shook the rain off his head. Judging by how much came off him, it must have been pouring—another beautiful day. Teddy scanned the room for me but couldn’t find anything. After ten seconds, he approached the bar and asked the bartender for a drink. As the man filled his glass, Teddy looked the room over again until he finally spotted me. Strange that it took him that long. Not only is the place dead tonight, but I’m only a few feet away from the bar at the table we always sit at. The thought left my mind as he spotted me, waved, and turned to grab his beer. After handing the man some money, he approached me with the drink. It shined like the golden crown of an ancient king under the dim light above; the foam at the top of the fresh pour popped and danced before me as Teddy placed it carefully on the table, making sure not to spill a drop before taking his seat across from me.
“Robby Wallace, how the hell are you?” he asked.
“Fine. You?”
“I’m doing well, man,” he said with an enthusiasm quickly corrupted by my inability to match his cheer. The dull silence that entered the conversation as soon as Teddy did lasted until he picked up his beer and took a swig. Naturally, I followed.
“So what’s your exciting news?”
“Right to the point, huh?” he said before I shrugged.
“I got a job”.
“I thought you had a job?”
“No man, that was nothing. Any job I’ve had since I got out of the army has been a joke. Never anything good. I don’t know how you found one so quick. We come out veterans of one of the biggest wars in our history and we get jack for it. But, whatever. I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Well, that’s good. What’s the job?”
“Have you ever heard of Sub-Merge Creations?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s this advanced, and I mean, cutting-edge tech design company. They supposedly have their toes in a lot of ponds, if you know what I mean. But they’re not just a research company. A couple of years ago, they created an entertainment division”.
“So what, are you working at a robot strip club now?”
“No, that’s not the kind of entertainment I’m talking about."
Teddy shot a few glances over his shoulder quickly before one more excited gulp of beer. My curiosity escalated.
“They created a machine that lets you go into your dreams.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Your dreams.”
“I don’t understand. Did they make a new sleeping pill?”
“No, I mean they literally created a machine that lets you go into your dreams. And it’s not like you’re asleep. Physically you are, but in the dream, you can feel everything just like you would in real life”.
I looked around the bar to see everyone glued boringly to their seats—still not much activity in the room. I turned back to Teddy, an inquisitive look on my face.
“Just like real life?”
“Better,” he said, understanding my implication.
“I’m still not sure I really get it.”
“Alright…what was that movie you showed me from like fifty years ago where those people go into a man’s dreams to steal an idea?”
“Inception.”
“That’s it. It’s just like that.”
“Alright, Teddy. But, actually being able to pull that off would be a miracle of modern science.”
“So?”
“So I’m saying, how do you know this place is for real? How do you know they’re not just saying they can do this to get people to try it out?”
“Because I went into the machine myself, and I am telling you, it is insane. I was doing stuff I could have never imagined before. All of it just felt… unbelievable”.
“So how do they make this happen?”
“I don’t know anything other than this: it’s all in your mind. They put you out, and then they plug you in. From there, you let the machine do its thing. I don’t need to know any of the technical stuff. I’m just a handler.”
“What’s that?”
“They need people to help plug you in and watch to make sure you’re alright while you’re under—that sort of thing. But you haven’t even heard the best part. Every company employee gets to use the machine whenever they want…for free.”
“So there’s no limit on it or anything.”
“Not that anybody told me about.”
“Well, I’d tread lightly. I gotta imagine that can’t be very good for you, if not physically, then mentally. Sounds like something you could get addicted to,” I said as I rotated my drink idiosyncratically before denying my urge to down the rest.
“I wouldn’t doubt it. I swear this thing is insane.”
“Regardless, you seem pretty enthusiastic. When do you start?”
“I got my first day tomorrow. You should come by.”
“I don’t know Teddy. I don’t think that’s for me.”
“Either way, just take a card. Spread the word maybe,” he said as he handed me a small card reading ‘Sub-Merge Creations’ and the company’s address beneath. “Enough about that, though. How’s your job going?” he said before I paused to think about the question.
“I always wanted to be an astronaut.”
“So did every kid growing up. That was a pipe dream.”
“It was. I wish I had pipe dreams still. Something has choked them out of me. Maybe it is my job. I keep hearing that if you stare at a screen too long, you start to kill your brain cells.”
“How much time do you have to spend fixing computers each day?”
The shift back to reality started to bore me. While waiting for a response, Teddy watched me yawn. Upon seeing this, he yawned back. Instinctually, he went for his drink and put it down like a man with a bad cold would cough medicine. I fought this urge and began to fidget around in my chair. Once I recovered from the yawn, I answered Teddy.
“Depends on the day. Usually not many, though. Not much goes wrong with the machines. More often than not, it’s the people handling them who are the problem”.
“Alright, your job sucks, but what about Marie? You got a lady in your life, I’m still looking. The only person I got to keep me company is my lovely lady right here,” Teddy said as he pulled his Stella Artois up snugly to his neck and embraced her.
“I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with us; we just don’t talk that much anymore.”
“Well, better that you’re not talking than yelling at each other.”
“Maybe. I’d almost rather have her be angry at me than just feel nothing at all.”
“Well, are you still trying to have a kid?”
“I don’t know. She was keen at first, but lately she stopped making the effort.”
“Are you?”
“When I get home from work, all I want to do is go to bed”.
“What about the weekend?”
I paused a short time before I answered. Why don’t I try on the weekend? Why don’t I talk to my wife? Why don’t I do anything?
“I don’t know.”
Teddy pounded the rest of his beer and got up from his chair.
“I’m going to go get another. You want one?”
“No thanks. I’m trying to drink less.”
“What a good guy you are,” he replied sarcastically.
The next day at work, I was constantly fighting sleep. I sat at my desk, gazing thoughtlessly into lines of computer code. My head bobbed back and forth, teasing unconsciousness as I caught myself with my hands on the warm table. Two hours into the day, I passed out and fell on the keyboard. I woke back up as I hit the plastic.
Rising groggily, I noticed I had landed on the monitor button. The screen before me had become a dark mirror image of myself. Upon scrutiny of my reflection, my face seemed to start shrinking. No, my face was the same size. The edges of the screen were closing in. I was suffocating. I snapped out of the haze and turned the monitor back on. The thousands of figures and symbols on the machine currently dominating my life soon replaced my face.
Later that day, I searched through the dense cloud of smoke rising from my stubbed cigarette for the face of the bartender but found nothing. A large beer broke the wall that hid the server. The man had a melancholy expression similar to mine as he passed me the drink. I reached for it with dull fingers, worn out from a day of undistracted work. Looking at them, I wondered what I’d done to earn five decades worth of wrinkles despite being only a week past my 28th year on this rock.
I slowly emerged from this blanket of thought to notice the bartender looking at me. Slightly creeped out, I told the man, “Thank you.” He made no acknowledgment that I spoke but instead stood there for five more seconds until he let out a massive yawn. I tired of waiting for him to finish the yawn, so I slowly rotated until I faced the rest of the bar.
My body begged for the drink, but my mind reminded me to moderate my intake. Relief washed over me as I touched my lips to the glass. I closed my eyes to try and hold the moment in, but I discovered the moment had lasted longer than I thought when I choked on the drink that now filled only half of the glass. Concerned, I looked away from it over the rest of the bar.
A dull, nearly inaudible jazz tune filled the atmosphere. Nobody interacted with each other. Any mouth not clamped around a glass or a cigarette was hanging open on a dirty table with drool pooling around it. A dull anger slowly began to rise inside me as I looked at the burned-out faces buried in the smoke hanging over the lifeless room. Surprisingly, it grew as I turned to the glass I had stopped drinking from. The immediate urge I had, the only urge I had, was to dive in, but this desire also slowly turned to anger. I wanted someone to start talking. I couldn’t take the silence. But what maddened me most was that I felt no desire whatsoever to do anything about it. I let out a colossal yawn.
Suddenly, in an excitingly uncharacteristic act, I smashed the glass of beer on the floor below me. The liquid shot up onto one of the patrons sleeping at a nearby table, jolting them awake. That said, this was the most vibrant reaction in the room. Everyone looked at me for a few seconds, then continued their subdued existence in the bar. I felt the wave of fatigue slowly returning, so I took some money out of my wallet and dropped it on the table next to me as quick as I could before putting as much distance between myself and the bar as possible.
I was bulleted by an oppressive rain when I stepped outside. Despite it only being 5:30, a dark, dense blanket of grey already covered the sky. Looking up through the blinding rain, I saw thunderclouds looming. I stood still as my clothes grew heavier in the storm. Knowing I’d find nothing outside the ordinary, boring routine that always ended with me in bed before 9, I had no desire to go home. I wanted to do something. Something new. Something exciting. Still drenched in the somber rain, I reached for my phone pocket and felt something I did not recognize. I pulled out the card Teddy gave me the night before. I forgot I still had it on me.
Sub-Merge Creations. The address wasn’t far from me. I looked up from the card, trying to see clearly through the rain. A man stumbled nearby and bumped into me. In an attempt to apologize, he coughed a hearty “sorry” into my face before walking on in his fugue state away from me. Standing there in the heavy downpour, soaking wet in the cold air, I thought about going to see Teddy. Fuck it, I said to myself. I took off in the direction of Sub-Merge Creations.
Outside what looked like the door to a doctor’s office, I stopped in the hallway. I heard no sound from the other side of the door other than what seemed to be a big yawn. This added to my surprise when I found the door stopped about halfway when I opened it. I squeezed through the tiny crack to join a room with so many people in it there was barely any space to move. I guess the word had spread already.
Even though the room held more people than its carrying capacity intended, everything was quiet. It seemed like nobody was talking to each other or making any noise at all. If you were guessing how many people were in the room just by sound, you would think the only living thing there was a mouse. Irritated by this, I shoved through the mob of people, slowly making my way to the front desk. Halfway there, I stopped when I heard my name.
“Robby!”
I spun around to see Teddy walking toward me in a grey doctor’s coat.
“Yes! I knew you couldn’t resist,” he said, standing in an uncrowded area intended for employees only. “Come over here.”
As he motioned to me, I began to walk over. When I had made it a step past the front desk and out of the crowded area, I was interrupted by another voice coming from the desk.
“Excuse me, sir, but you’ll need an appointment if you want to go back there,” said the woman from behind the desk, who had stopped her conversation with the customer she was talking to.
“Theodore, do you know this man?” said a man who came in from behind Teddy. He was dressed in the same grey coat and talked refinedly.
Teddy seemed to stiffen suddenly and responded: “Yes, sir.”
The man turned to the woman at the desk, “Ava, don’t worry about him. Any friend of Theodore’s is welcome to look around. Thank you”.
“Thank you, sir,” she said as she turned away from him to me. “Apologies for my mistake, sir.”
“Don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong,” I responded, a little taken aback. I turned and made my way to Teddy and the man by his side. Teddy introduced me.
“This is Rob, sir.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Robert. I’m Dr. Orcus. But you can call me Roy.”
“Orcus?”
“Yes, I’m the founder of the company. But please, don’t let it intimidate you. Now, would you like to have a look around?”
“I would”.
“Well, let us go then”.
Orcus started walking, and we followed. He talked while leading us through the hallways of the facility, which was bigger than it looked.
“I started Sub-Merge Creations about 13 years ago. At that time. I had no clue it would ever get this big or branch off into our current area of expertise.”
“What does your company do exactly?” I asked, curious to hear about the background of the already mysterious organization.
“We started as a small technology start-up working on relatively generic projects. Smarter, faster software that wouldn’t invalidate human jobs, that’s all we were going for. We made a breakthrough towards the end of our first year that skyrocketed our market value. After that, we upgraded our entire operation: employee base, manufacturing rate, and project diversity.”
“And what kind of projects are you branching out into?”
“Our main focus is still computer software optimization, but increased funding has allowed us to experiment with some new, less generic ideas. Our most successful idea being this,” said Orcus as he stopped us at a nearby office door. Opening it, he revealed a large lounge and, in the center, a machine that looked like some dystopian dentist chair.
“The machine that creates the dream world, or rather, allows you to enter it. We call it the hypnagogia. This is the employee lounge. Our workers get free use of the hypnagogia whenever they want.”
“It must get pretty crowded in here then.”
“Our submersion nurses are very busy. The customer’s desires always come first, and because we have reached that subject, I would like you to follow me,” he said as he opened the door we came in through and held it for us, waiting patiently.
Teddy and I stepped out of the room. Orcus closed the door and led us a few steps further to the end of the hall. He opened another door and motioned for us to enter. We walked into a dark room. Orcus turned the lights on to reveal what looked like a surgeon’s operating room. The room had multiple chairs, what looked like tools on a tray, a movable light hanging from the ceiling, and a hypnagogia like the one we had seen in the previous room.
“Well, Robert. Would you like to try it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It is why you are here, is it not?”
“Maybe I just wanted to visit Teddy on his first day.”
“If Theodore told you about the hypnagogia, then I have no doubt he also told you what happens when you enter it.”
“He might’ve mentioned it”.
“What did you say, Theodore?”
“I told him it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced in all my life.”
“He is right, Robert. I have felt it before, just as you have. Just as everyone else has.”
“What?”
“Despair. The despair you feel when you wake up in the morning and realize your dreams have died again at the hands of our cruel world. You’re reminded you must return to reality, a place restricting your existence in so many ways. But this machine...it does not restrict you at all—pure creative freedom. It gives you the chance to live in your dreams. A world where anything is possible”.
After he finished speaking, I paused to think about his proposition. As long as I made sure there was no physical harm, what’s the worst that could happen? A lot, probably, but more importantly, what did I have to lose? Should I worry about what my wife thinks if she doesn’t care whether I come home or not? How about my job? I’m probably going to spend most of my future there asleep anyway. Maybe under different circumstances, it would matter, but right now…
“What are the physical consequences?”
“Theodore, prepare the hypnagogia. There are no physical repercussions whatsoever. The operation it performs takes place entirely inside the mind”.
“Well, isn’t that what happens with alcohol and other degenerative substances? Meaning that they alter your mind, in some cases, to the point of dysfunction.”
“Yes, but the chemicals you intake from said substances have a chemically negative response within the body. The only physical requirement of this procedure is a sleeping pill. Once you have entered a subconscious state, the hypnagogia reads the brain and rearranges your neurons, allowing you total subconscious control of your bodily functions, just like in reality. The only difference is that you remain in your subconscious despite the neurons thinking you’re awake.”
“What happens to the neurons when I wake up?”
“There is a time limit of one hour you may not surpass in the hypnagogia. Once your time is up, the machine will rearrange the neurons in their regular position. We have done extensive research on the implications of this tampering and have found no side effects.”
“So far.”
“If you still have doubts, why don’t you ask Theodore? He has been in and out of the hypnagogia before”.
“Really, Rob, it’s totally safe. When I came out, I didn’t feel any different from when I went in. No hangover or anything,” Teddy said as he finished his work with the hypnagogia.
Now Teddy wasn’t the most reliable friend. But as far as friends go, I didn’t have many. Back during our first tour, Teddy saved my life more than once. If that wasn’t enough to trust his word, it was certainly enough to look after him and make sure he wasn’t getting into more trouble than he could handle. And I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something gave me the impression we were both in over our heads. All that said, though, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit Dr. Orcus’s argument was persuasive.
“Ok. I’ll try it,” I said reluctantly.
“Excellent. Take your coat off and sit in the chair, please.”
Water spilled onto the floor as I removed my coat. I looked briefly for a place to put it before Teddy took it for me. The operating chair came to life when I sat in it, repositioning to better align with my stature. Thinking the machine was moving autonomously, I began to worry about its motives until I noticed Dr. Orcus adjusting it via a mechanism on a wall panel nearby. Teddy met my concern with a giddy smile on his face. Before shooting me an excited wink and returning to his duty, he handed me the alleged sleeping pill and a cup of water. I put both down easily.
“What now?” I asked.
“Just lay there and wait for the pill to take effect. It shouldn’t be long now,” responded Orcus.
I sat back in the chair and studied the hypnagogia. Its dull grey matched the color of the coats Teddy and Orcus were wearing. The contraption wasn’t particularly big. The cylindrical bucket connected to the chair, which I assumed was supposed to act as some sort of helmet, comprised most of the apparatus. Suddenly, the room blurred as I swiveled my gaze to Teddy. The pill was starting to work. I’d probably be out within the minute. No going back now, I guess. Looking at Teddy and Orcus, their attention pointed me to the machine’s last and most intriguing distinguishing characteristic. I couldn’t make out the screen’s contents, but I noticed that its monitor was nearly identical to those I fixed at work. Just like computers. I wonder...I wonder…
“He’s out. Now let’s see what’s going on inside that brain of his,” Teddy said as he pushed a button that lowered the machine around Rob’s head. Teddy waited a few seconds until he heard a beep. One of the monitors flashed on, revealing a digital scan of Rob’s neural activity. The other screen was still blank. A little worried, Teddy tapped it lightly a few times.
“Wait for it,” Orcus said.
Slowly, an image faded onto the screen. As the picture came into clarity, a video of an ocean appeared. Shortly after that, Rob followed.
“There we go,” said Teddy.
“Theodore, I understand you can continue by yourself from here?”
“Yes, sir.”
Orcus started for the door.
“Dr. Orcus?”
“Yes, Theodore.”
“I know it’s only my first day, but I was wondering if I could ask you a question?”
“You may ask me a question.”
“The program is miraculous, but why dreams?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well, if you have the technology to put the customer in another world, why put them in their own dreams? Why not create some epic world where they can be whoever they want? You know, sort of like an amusement park for insane universes?”
“We use the hypnagogia for dreams because it incorporates a personal aspect for the user. Relevancy makes the imaginary believable. And universes as complex as you suggest cannot be created because they’re made by people who suffer the same flaws as our customers.”
“That being?”
“Lack of creativity.”
I felt the touch of my soft, worn pillowcase as I came back into consciousness. I dared not open my eyes fully because I knew I would have to get back up the second I did. But I guess there’s nothing I could do about that. The morning routine has already started. Blurry objects come slowly into focus, sweaty from a night under the warm sheets, the ocean mist spraying onto my hair…wait...
My eyes shot open before I lifted my heavy face off the pillow. An enormous body of water came into focus. I threw the sheets off of me towards the bottom of the bed and surveyed the surrounding area. The sky was dark overhead. I looked to see how far the water spanned, but no matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t find its limit. The ocean was endless. I looked back. I’d just gotten off a bed identical to my own, which bobbed on the water’s surface. Where the hell am I? Am I still dreaming?
I noticed I was still wearing my work clothes and suddenly recalled the last thing I remembered, which was entering the hypnagogia. I was dreaming, but I hadn’t been asleep before. It’s a bit hard to believe I’m in a dream. The setting is obviously unusual, but my comprehension of the world I find myself in is no different from that of reality. I can think just like normal. I remember everything I usually remember. I don’t feel any different.
I sat there, not really sure what to do. I’d swim to try and find something, but I don’t want to run into anything dangerous in the water. Knowing this was a dream, I guess I shouldn’t worry about that considering I’ll just wake up if something terrible happens. But I’m still not entirely convinced this is a dream at all. For all I know, this is an elaborate hoax. A bizarre, elaborate hoax.
Getting bored quickly, I leaned over the side of the bed. The water was a shade of blue so dark I could hardly see anything beneath the surface. A creeping fear that something might be lurking near me that I couldn’t see began to grow. Slowly, I moved to the other side of the bed, afraid to see what might be there when I poked my head out. Coming over the edge of the bed, I saw nothing different on this side. A little bit frustrated, I looked closer—still nothing. I put my face closer to the water, determined to find something. I moved in until the tip of my nose submerged. Suddenly, a glinting light flashed from the ocean floor.
The flash startled me so much that I lost my grip on the bed, flinging myself headfirst into the dark water and the bed sheets I dragged down. Even under the surface, the water was nearly pitch black. The large bed still floating above my head diminished the setting sun hiding in the sky above. The water was also freezing. I quickly swam back up to the mattress to discover something horrifying: I couldn’t break through the surface.
I punched the water as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge. A wall of ice slowly started spreading across the ocean’s surface. The waves stopped, and the water grew unbearably cold. I began to panic as my breath ran rapid and my time ran short. Frantically scouring the vicinity, I caught the bedsheets I’d fallen in with out of the corner of my eye. It floated away gracefully in the distant, dark water. For a millisecond, the haunting beauty of the image stole my urgency. At that moment, night had set, and the moon emerged to spotlight the dancing bedsheets. The euphoria moment suddenly came crashing down when the moon’s light illuminated an enormous great white shark that started barreling in my direction as soon as I spotted it, tearing the bedsheets in its path to shreds. If I wasn’t dead before, I certainly am now.
The great white hurdled towards me. Panicking, I ran out of breath and started gasping for air, but all I got were mouthfuls of water. The light from below suddenly flashed again. With no other options, I followed the instinct that told me to go to it. I tried to swim as fast as possible, but this seemed impossible, as I was seconds away from passing out with a sea monster at my tail. No matter how hard I pumped my arms, it seemed like the water was currenting against me. The dark ocean grew darker as my surroundings started to turn pitch black.
I somehow survived to reach the light resting on a reef. Only when I was inches away did I see that the beckoning light emanated from a silver cross resting on a wooden coffin. Having no time to decide whether I should enter it or not, I grasped for the edge, frantically trying to open it. I used all I had, but my arms had nothing left. The dream heightened my senses, but even they seemed to have limits. My hands came loose from the sides. I floated back, about to die, when the shark came in fast as a jet, ready to engulf me.
To my disbelief, the shark managed to miss me. It rammed into the coffin, the cover of which came open to reveal nothing but darkness. Water started flowing into this darkness as if a drain plug had just been pulled. Having lost control of my sensory functions, the receding stream whisked me away into the coffin. As I passed through the coffin, I suddenly began falling through air instead of water. Finally, being able to breathe again, I gasped for oxygen. Cascading through black nothingness even darker than the sea I emerged from, I gradually regained my breath. I fell through the abyss for some time before eventually landing hard on soft ground.
It was hard to see where I ended up, as I could not look around for a good two minutes. I spent that time bent over, spitting water, and vomit up onto the ground. Clear sight returned to me after about a minute of this. After two minutes, I began to regain the function of my muscles. I put my hands to the ground by my sides, expecting to find some solid matter to rest them on, but instead, they sunk a little. I wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist and grabbed at the ground. I came up with a handful until it started falling through the gaps between my fingers. It was sand.
My clothes were still wet when I landed, so I was covered in sand. I slowly stood up and shook off my clothes to the best of my ability. Desert dominated my field of view entirely. With nothing but sand as far as the eye could see, I set off with no idea where I might end up. In about ten minutes, my soaking wet clothes had dried like raisins. The sun was hotter than I had ever felt before. In the last dream, I was dying to get out of the water. It won’t be long before I’d die to dive back in.
I walked on for miles. Orcus said it would be only an hour that I was in the hypnagogia. That means he was either lying, or there was a distorted perception of time in this world because I could swear that I had been walking for at least five hours. I didn’t know why or how I was still going. In all that time, I found nothing other than sand, sky, and sun.
My legs wobbled more and more with each step as I labored to the summit of an enormous hill of sand. Just before the very top I collapsed. I crawled the rest of the way to the peak from where I saw the strangest thing I’d ever laid eyes on in my life. About fifty yards from me, towards the bottom of the hill, was what seemed like an enormous door. This door had no knob. Nothing was carved into it either. It was just completely black, much like the blackness of the coffin from before.
I tried to stand to get to it, but I didn’t have the strength to walk. I tripped and tumbled down the hill. At the bottom, I thrust my hand up and out of the sand pile I was buried beneath. Looking at the gateway, I began to crawl. When I was an arm's length away from the object, I collapsed to the ground. Spitting hot sand out of my face, I reached with everything I had to touch the door until I could get my hand through. My hunch was right: it was a door.
I couldn’t see my hand anymore. I could still feel it but I could also feel it was...somewhere else. I could even feel fabric covering it. I tried to pull my hand back through, but it wouldn’t budge. I decided I’d had enough of this dream anyway, so I struggled to get the rest of my body through the gateway.
I stuck both of my hands through and eventually got my head in. What was on the other side left me speechless. I was in outer space. My breathing became loud and pronounced as a space helmet formed on the areas of my face that were through the portal. Soon enough I got my whole body through. Before long, I donned the spacesuit of an astronaut. My dream had come true.
My heat exhaustion and thirst dissipated upon entry into this new world. I was suddenly beaming with energy. Looking around me, I realized I was on the moon. I stood up on the rocky terrain. Movement in the suit took some getting used to. It took a while to acclimate to, but eventually, I got the hang of it. Microgravity was one of the most fascinating things I’d ever experienced. I soared in the air, higher than I’d ever been before. Floating there, I gazed at the breathless expanse of the universe around me. The stillness of the moment was utterly sublime. I could see out into thousands of miles of space, yet I heard hardly anything besides my breathing. The strangest part about all of it was the earth. I had seen it from this perspective before in pictures, but they didn’t hold a candle to the real thing. If man truly knew of the exquisite wonders existing in actuality outside the borders of his imagination, perhaps he might legitimately endeavor to realize the vision of such mysteries. Beneath the majestic swirl of ocean, land, clouds, ice, and snow cowered an entire race of complacent dreamers sickened by the fear of their insignificance. I pitied the poor souls stuck on earth at that moment.
But my ecstasy was, cruelly, only temporary. Regrettably, I turned from the portrait and was startled to glimpse a figure, reminding me I was dreaming. From behind the dark shadow of his cloak’s hood, the embodiment of Death stalked me. Its physical features were indistinguishable. It wouldn’t have mattered, even if that hadn’t been the case. Because I couldn’t take my eyes off the shiny metal scythe it was carrying. Suddenly, Death broke the stillness as it lunged towards me. Fear seized me. Now it’s prisoner, I shot around to go back through the gateway, but the portal had vanished. I turned in the opposite direction and started running. But like in many nightmares before, an invisible force counteracted my momentum. I moved at a snail’s pace, chained to the dread of my impending demise. All I could do was watch Death move closer and closer. It’s as if I wasn’t supposed to get away.
Death closed in on me. My fear continued to peak until I realized that if I died, I’d go to another dream or wake up. The momentary relief this epiphany afforded me lasted about as long as the realization itself. In an instant, Death’s blade ripped through the back of my suit and burst through the front of my chest, ushering in a tsunami of agonizing pain, the likes of which I’d never known. Horrifying images of torment burned through my mind as I screamed, gasping for oxygen my ruptured lung so desperately needed. Death snatched his scythe back, slingshotting a stream of blood quickly stilled by the weightlessness of space. Death wound back and swung again, the second slash worse than the first. I begged. I prayed. I screamed for somebody to get me out. But no one answered. The blade ripped into me five more times before the figure holding it stopped to tower over me.
My once magnificent suit was now a tattered rag drenched in my blood, more of which drifted outside the border of my body than inside it. I lay on the ground, wailing. The pain multiplied exponentially. I can’t even imagine that, in reality, a man could undergo this much pain and still live. But I did. Something was keeping me in the dream.
Suddenly, everything cut to black.
“Wakey-Wakey”.
As soon as I could make out these words, I started flailing. Somebody tried to calm me down, but it did no good. I tried opening my eyes, but nothing came. I didn’t know where I was. My body convulsed. I could feel myself nearly breaking through the restraints lashed to my wrists. The straps started to slip, not from the spasms but from the perspiration running down my arms. My clothes were more sweat than fabric. My hyperventilation slowed as I recognized the voice trying to calm me down. Slowly, my vision came back.
“Easy, easy.”
As I started to come back to earth, it got harder for Teddy to hide his excitement.
“Woah! I’ve supervised over fifty submersions today alone, but nothing as intense as that! You were running on pure adrenaline for the last twenty minutes! How was it?!”
Teddy’s smile disgusted me. The most unbearable suffering of my life, and he was smiling, completely neglecting me, still being strapped into the chair. I had to get out. I reached for the straps myself frantically. My weak fingers fumbled with the straps. Teddy, finally noticing my distress, moved to untie me. When he did, I broke free of the machine and fell to the floor, vomiting.
“Jesus! What’s wrong?”
“I’m out of here.”
“Hey, it’s hard for everyone their first time. Come on,” Teddy said as I barged out the door.
I stumbled nauseously through the hallway without recollecting how I’d gotten there. Desperately seeking an exit, I popped frantically in and out of doors. The first room I found myself in had a patient in the hypnagogia I’d just escaped from. I briefly halted there upon recognizing the monitors the nurses were looking at before my interruption. One of the monitors displayed what appeared to be a digital scan of the customer’s brain. The second monitor was much different. It looked like the actual patient was on some sort of TV show. But I had no clue where she was. It looked like no place that existed on earth. It must have been her dream.
I bounced out of the room and tried more doors, hoping one would soon provide an exit. In the process, hazy flashes of my memory slowly returned. Images of Teddy ushering me through the same halls I rambled through flared across my brain. Next I saw him watching my monitor as I fell unconscious in the operating chair. Teddy saw my dreams. How could he have just watched me and done nothing? Couldn’t he see my agony? Why would he let me go through that? Why would he suggest I go through that?
For every room I searched, there was someone “submerged” in a hypnagogia, as Teddy had called it earlier. Some of the rooms I crashed into even had multiple chairs and patients, one with up to twenty going simultaneously. As the interruptions began to accumulate, so did the attention I was getting. Booming back out of the room with twenty hypnagogia’s, I could hear footsteps chasing after me as I turned the hallway corner. Up ahead, around the bend, I heard more footsteps. Escape options dwindling by the second, I quickly ducked into an unoccupied room to hide. As I heard the two converging groups of workers ask the other if they’d seen me, I turned around and noticed I was in the employee lounge Teddy and Dr. Orcus had shown me earlier that evening. Oddly enough, this was the only unoccupied room I’d found. Only one dim light hung from the ceiling, spotlighting the empty dream machine. An unsettling, dark urge within beckoned me to the hypnagogia, but I shook it off. The familiar sight of the ominous room snapped my memory back into place. After waiting for the confused employees to clear the hall outside, I subtly returned to the lobby I’d just now remembered where to find.
Glancing at the clock, I noticed it still wasn’t even late. I really was only in the machine for an hour. The overflow of customers still in the lobby aided my escape. Putting my hood up and burying my face in a nearby magazine, I bumped through the room, swerving outside the eyeline of the security guards on watch until I snaked my way to the exit. As I pushed through the door, I heard, “Sir, you have to pay to use the hypnagogia!” said the woman behind the desk. I took off running. To my surprise, nobody followed.
“Don’t worry Ava. He’ll be back soon,” Dr. Orcus said with assurance.
I stepped outside to more bulleting rain. I started toward my apartment only to stop, realizing I’d left my coat in the operating room. I looked back and quickly turned the other way again. I didn’t care if I had a coat or not. There’s no way I’m going back.
By the time I got home, I was more water than man. In a frantic walk to the bathroom, still a little shell-shocked, I bumped into a table and knocked a picture onto the floor. I stood still for a few seconds. To my luck, the crash didn’t seem to wake Marie. I toed away some bits of the broken glass before picking up the picture. Marie loves this one, as do I—the first we ever took together. We snuck out of class on one of those inviting first days of spring after a long winter to catch the sunset on a mountain hike. Such a bright memory.
I cleaned the glass off the floor and returned the picture to the table before leaving a note saying I’d pick a new frame up tomorrow. I didn’t want Marie to think I broke her favorite picture intentionally. I went to the bathroom, dried off, and quickly changed my clothes. It was nine o’clock. By then, I was usually fast asleep. But not tonight. I sat in the living room, unable to shake the dream like it was stapled to me. The fear, the pain, the wonder, the surrealism...it all played over in my head on a loop until the clock ticked midnight, snapping me out of my fugue state. I decided it was time for bed.
I found Marie out cold as I made it to the bedroom. She and I were the same: once we power off, there’s no booting back up until the morning. Gently, I slipped into my side of the bed, neither of us touching. I sat there, watching the ceiling, waiting for the graceful sleep I spent most of my time dreaming about. But it didn’t. I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid: afraid I might slip back into the ghastly world that shook me to my core earlier that night. What I think scared me the most was the lingering restlessness that refused to dissipate in the nightmare’s wake. I worried that if it didn’t, my fascination might overpower my fear, tempting me to want to return. This concern stirred inside me as I lay still the whole night. I didn’t move. I just stared at the ceiling until the next morning’s light.
The alarm rang out, pounding on my migraine. I tried to numb it with some Advil, but something about over-the-counter drugs don’t quite do the trick. I rose gingerly, still tired as usual each morning, except this was due to lack of sleep, not a desire for more. As I sat in my pain, Marie yawned her way out of bed and to the bathroom, not a word spoken between the two of us.
My brain screamed that day at work. I fantasized about using my keyboard as a pillow on which the healing powers of sleep might relieve the throbbing. After lunch, I returned to my desk to find my 2 o’clock appointment canceled. No computers needed fixing. On standby with an empty afternoon and nothing but time, a strange realization gradually dawned on me. The fear of yesterday’s nightmare faded away, returning me to the hollow boredom I’d come to know all too well before it. But something was different now. My tango with the hypnagogia stretched the void within me past the boundaries of my being. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours, hours felt like days. Previously, if I felt like this, I would fall asleep. But for some awful reason, sleep would not come.
One of my colleagues came up to me and stood by my computer. He wasn’t my superior, just an acquaintance who liked to pass the time with his words. I sat there, unable to move my eyes because I was so zoned. I saw words leaving his mouth out of my peripheral, but I couldn’t hear them. He looked at me, waiting for a response. I didn’t move. He just stood there for what was probably a minute, but what felt like an hour. Eventually, I turned towards him. As I did, the man let out an enormous yawn so big I thought his mouth might drop off his face. Afterward, he slowly walked away, careless about the response he'd approached me for.
More than anything in the world at that moment, I wanted a boost. I wanted something—some sort of feeling to save me from the hollow nosedive I’d spiraled into. I felt lifeless. There was nothing to do. As I cascaded deeper into the pit of morbidity I could not escape, my thoughts told me this would be the rest of my life. No excitement...I needed excitement. And in the oddest twist of rationale, my decaying fear of yesterday’s nightmare transformed into the exhilarating anticipation I once feared it might become. I thought about the hypnagogia. It wasn’t just a nightmare. It was a dream, too. There was something about dying that made me feel so...alive.
I couldn’t take it any longer. Not even the night of nonstop booze I’d craved for so long would suffice. I needed the hypnagogia. My desire was inexplicable. The clock finally struck three. Two more hours sitting at that desk thinking about nothing and doing nothing about it would have been impossible. I wanted to get out. I needed to get out. So, I did. I left my desk with a note: “Out for the rest of the day.” Not that anyone was going to read it.
When I got to Sub-Merge, it was 3:15. Like yesterday, the lobby was packed to the brim. I couldn’t see Teddy, so I had no way to know whether he was working. That meant I had no way to cut the line. But I needed to get to the hypnagogia—more than anything. My urge completely overshadowed my rationale. Less than 24 hours ago, I fled this office with no idea how much I owed for their services. For all I know, it could be hundreds of thousands, and considering that I’m already swimming in debt, it wouldn’t take much to end up in jail. But an addict’s rationale is not sensible. It seeks only to get its fix as impatiently as possible. With that in mind, I walked right up to the receptionist in the middle of a conversation without any sort of disguise.
“Excuse me, it’s Ava, isn’t it? Hello.”
“Hello, Robert. We have been expecting you. We are glad you are back, but I am busy with another customer right now.”
“The thing is that I left my coat in the operating room yesterday, and I’m freezing right now. You don’t suppose I could go and grab it while I wait?”
“Do you remember the room you left it in?”
“Yes.”
“You can go retrieve the coat, but come back here directly after you do.”
“Thank you.”
I made my way quickly to the room at the end of the hall I was in yesterday. On the way, every room I passed by had an occupied chair with nurses supervising their dreaming patients. It seemed the grand opening was a slam dunk. Approaching the room I’d submerged in the day before, a fleeting thought popped into my head. I recognized a few of the dreamers in the lobby and the operating rooms. A number of them were at the office last night. I couldn’t help but wonder if Orcus’s success was a byproduct of good advertising or if there was something about his product that users couldn’t kick. Mindless to my interruption of the active submersion, I entered the operating room to two submersion nurses informing me I wasn’t allowed in.
“I just need to get my coat,” I said as I motioned towards my coat, which was still where Teddy had left it the day before.
I grabbed the coat and exited the room. After doing so, I lingered in the hall for a few minutes until a customer and an employee exited a nearby room very uniformly. Before the door shut, I slipped in to find another nurse.
“Are you my next patient?”
“Yes,” I replied, without considering the consequences.
“Very well. Take your coat off and sit down.”
Hoping that if I moved quickly enough, there’d be no time for him to discover the illegitimacy of my presence in the room. It seemed odd they didn’t require ID confirmation, but maybe that had already been taken care of. Suddenly, brimming with excitement, I leaped into the operating chair. The nurse shot me a strange look as I grabbed the sleeping pill from his hand before he could give it to me. Unable to hide my spontaneous excitement, I had to remind myself to play it cool. I waited for the nurse to pre-emptively bind my hands to the chair, but he went straight to the monitor when I took the sleeping pill. I suppose that must’ve been a spur-of-the-moment solution for the patients who react adversely to the machine. Teddy did say he hadn’t seen an experience as intense as mine. Binding or no binding, my vision started to blur. The hypnagogia’s dull beeps grew increasingly distant until the sound vanished altogether, and everything went black.
Before I could see anything, I felt a bed of luscious grass beneath me. I opened my eyes to clouds dancing in front of an enormous, baby-blue sky. As I stood up, my hair swayed in the gentle breeze. Rolling hills stretched as far as I could see. Atop the peak nearest me, I noticed a small child fixated on something in the distance. I approached instinctually. As I got closer, I realized it was a little girl with a white dress and dirty blonde hair. Hearing my footsteps, she turned around to face me. We stared at each other briefly before I noticed something strange.
While she initially sized me up and down, her eyes suddenly stopped in their place. They stayed motionless, as did her vacant expression, as if her soul had just left her body unannounced. She stood like that for an eerie half-minute until something started running out of her mouth. I leaned in closer to investigate, but once her white dress stained red, I realized no more investigation was necessary. It was blood.
She collapsed to the ground. Horrified, I fell next to her, trying to do something that would help. She began choking on the blood. I elevated her head and tilted her to the side to stop the backflow, but it was useless. Another blood blossom rooted in her stomach began to metastasize rapidly. Her body went limp, and her face went blank altogether. Covered in blood, I got up and looked around for help. I got far worse.
Sudden gunshots rang out in the distance. I turned to the sound and met a bullet that sailed into my lower abdomen. I stumbled in shock and pain. Pain and shock: that’s all this world seemed to be. I bolted in the opposite direction, over the hill, only to find the other side as the stage for a war. Fires rose from the fields of terror. Thousands of men, women, and children crashed to the ground, echoing bloody shrieks as they did. I ran away from the slaughter. I covered little ground before I stopped dead in my tracks as bands of bloodthirsty soldiers formed before my eyes. Almost immediately after they materialized out of thin air, they charged me. I spun around in the other direction to find the previously empty hills now swarming with killers. In every direction, armed men raged towards me. Cannonballs tore into my last avenues of escape as the shimmering grass exploded around me. Great chunks of earth rained down. There was nowhere to go.
Suddenly, I found myself in the middle of two charging parties colliding directly where I stood. I threw myself to the ground and tried to crawl through the brawling men. The lifeless bodies of dead soldiers crashed to the ground next to me. I tried my best not to look at them, but soon that became impossible. So many bodies soon littered the ground I had to start crawling over them. One man landed directly in front of me. I tried to move past him but couldn’t escape his eyes. They burrowed into me, hollow shells of a beaten corpse. His mouth hung open as if trying to ask, “Why did you let me die?” The horrifying sorrow overcame me. I began to cry. In the context of my wound, my breakdown immobilized me. A nearby soldier must have heard me, because with a swift movement, he thrust a bayonet into my back and through my stomach. The soldier quickly pulled out his blade and went back to killing, leaving me and my carved torso in agony. Howling, I rolled over onto the ground beside the dead man whose eyes would not leave me. Through tears, blood, and bodies, I prayed for an end to this nightmare.
In a sudden frenzy, I found myself flailing awake in the hypnagogia. My supervising nurse lost control of his clipboard, startled by my premature return to waking consciousness. My return was different this time. It took no time to adjust to reality; I saw things clearly immediately. But one horrible new side effect lingered: I still felt the pain.
Writhing in the chair, I howled, nearly choking on the tears flooding down my face. Shockingly, the nurse seemed frighteningly calm, given the situation. It was as if she expected it. With the nightmare, my wounds had physically disappeared, but I couldn’t stand the feeling that remained any longer. Like I was trapped in an encased tub of wildfire, the suffering burned across every inch of my body. I convulsed uncontrollably until I burst through the straps tethering me to the chair.
I hit the ground like water on a hot stove. I started crawling spasmodically on the floor, mustering all my energy to reach the door. After watching my agony, the nurse moved from behind the monitors to help me. He picked me up. I expected him to put me back on my feet, but he heaved me back into the chair instead. That being the last place I wanted to be, I moved to leave, only to be stopped by the man’s arm.
I tried to escape his grasp, but his arm pinned me to the chair. The nurse started pushing harder and harder until it started to feel like he was going to cave in my chest. I tried to tear his arm off me, but it wouldn’t budge. Moving an industrial refrigerator would’ve been easier. Finally realizing the nurse’s murderous intent, I started slapping him in the face. His expression didn’t change. I landed a solid punch on his jaw, forcing him to let go of me momentarily. When he did, I gasped for breath, but before I could inhale, he put his other hand on my neck and squeezed. He pinned me back to the headrest once again. The grip was so strong that I could feel his bony fingers on my esophagus. I started flailing my arms, hoping I would hit him hard enough to get him off me, but they didn’t come close to him. In one swing over my head, I grazed the light fixture hanging from the ceiling. Starting to lose consciousness, I reached for it again. The nurse’s obsessive fixation on my suffocated expression distracted him from my attempt to weaponize the light. By the time I got a grip on the light, darkness had crept into my vision. Knowing I had to act quickly, I brought the bare light down on his head with all the force I had in me.
The light exploded upon contact with the nurse. He lost his grip, and we both fell to the ground. I gasped for air so intensely that I almost didn’t notice the nurse’s bizarre tolerance for pain. His hair caught fire when I smashed the light bulb on him. The flame atop his head had spread to a blaze, engulfing his face, yet he didn’t make a sound. He just lay there on the ground, expressionless, feeling no instinct to extinguish the fire that began to move across his body. Right around when the air finally returned to my lungs, the overhead sprinklers went off. Laboring, I crawled to the door. I would have looked back to see what had become of the fried man behind me, but the only thought on my mind was getting the hell out of there.
I opened the door slowly, trying my best not to draw attention to myself, a far-fetched goal, seeing as I was dripping wet and had just been nearly choked to death. I rose out of a prone position into my first step before keeling over again in response to a stabbing surge of pain in my core. I looked down, mortified to find the source of my pain was none other than the bullet shot into my abs during the battle. But what was previously the mental remnant of the wound’s pain had become the wound itself. Blood leaked onto the floor beneath me. I could feel the bullet scraping my insides with each movement I made. The strangest part was that I knew when I returned to the chair the wound wasn’t there. And now it was. But I had no time to think about that. I was running on pure adrenaline. At the moment, it was just one more thing I had to hide to escape.
I snuck through the hall cautiously. I figured the corridor would be swarming with security on account of the triggered sprinklers, in addition to the likelihood that security camera footage caught my nurse’s burning, given Sub-Merge’s high-tech status. But to my advantage, the corridor was completely empty. Without my fight-or-flight response, I’d likely have already bled out in the operating room. That didn’t mean that the pain wasn’t excruciating, however. I could hardly duck under the operating room door window I passed. As I did, I stopped, unable to refuse my temptation to look inside despite the severity of the situation. Quickly, I scanned to confirm there was no one in the hall. After doing so, I slowly rose to look through the window. The mere sight of a patient in the machine made me want to blow through the door, bash the nurses over their heads, and unplug the woman myself. Knowing I couldn’t survive if I did so, I fought the urge and looked deeper. Both nurses fixated on the monitors. They were also dry. Had the sprinklers not gone off in their room? Even if so, how could they not have heard them? They were only one room over from mine. Why didn’t they do anything?
I realized I had looked too long when I heard footsteps approaching. I jolted back from the door and away from the sound of the steps. I dreadfully expected another attack, but what I saw was more than reassuring. It was healing. Because for whatever reason, when Teddy rounded the corner, the pain of my bullet wound disappeared.
“Teddy! Thank god,” I said, immensely relieved, to my friend in his grey work uniform. “What the hell is going on here?”
“What do you mean, Robert?”
“What?”
“I asked you what you meant? Is there something wrong, Robert? I think you should try the machine again. It will heal your wounds.”
I looked at Teddy, shocked. For all the years we’d known each other, he’d never addressed me so formally, not even on tour. When he did, he was joking; now was no time for jokes. Even if he was trying to be funny, he wasn’t doing a very good job at it. Something had changed. He looked the same, but his demeanor did a complete 180. Something about him was too clean...robotic, almost. The past two nights he seemed nothing but excited about his new job. Now his best friend stands in front of him with half a stomach and he goes monotone? Something about him seemed so lifeless.
My idiocracy finally dawned on me. From the beginning I suspected something very strange was happening at Sub-Merge and proceeded anyway. Now I know for sure. Teddy was a part of it. I couldn’t trust him anymore. If he hadn’t already recognized my suspicion, my abnormally protracted response time must have led him to believe as much. Time was running out. And I could think of nothing to say that would repair his growing concern. So without a word, I took off running down the hallway toward the lobby.
I didn’t look back to see if Teddy was chasing me, but I knew he’d be in pursuit. Yet, I could only hear consistently delayed footsteps to my rear. Regardless of the reason, it was evident he bore no urgency. I’d almost reached the end of the hall, only one turn away from the exit. Except for Teddy, the halls remained empty. But suddenly, something appeared out of thin air that stopped me dead in my tracks. Seemingly from nowhere, a shining white horse galloped at me. Its hooves stomped on the tiled floor, amplifying the dominance of its strut. The white hair of its tail glimmered as it bounced beautifully under the hallway lights. Only once it got close to me did I notice a spiraled horn protruding from the head of the stallion; this was no horse. It was a unicorn.
Upon recognizing the unicorn, the stabbing pain in my abdomen that had seemingly disappeared when I saw Teddy returned. I fell to my knees and caught myself with my left hand on the cold tile, my right on my lower chest. The unicorn was only a few feet away at this point, so I rolled to the ground to my left. I quickly reached for the door that was closest to me. As I turned the knob, I looked to see Teddy still walking at me with the same indifferent pace as before. If my escape wasn’t enough to make him care, the unicorn running his way with its horn positioned to impale him might. But that didn’t matter, as the unicorn suddenly vanished back into thin air, along with the pain in my chest.
I slammed the door behind me. Holding onto the knob, I braced the door with all my weight, preparing to fend off Teddy or any other mythological creature that might try to smash through it. After ten seconds and no attempt to break in, I poked my head through the window. The corridor was empty. I stepped back from the door, my confusion multiplying by the second. I disregarded the odd lack of activity and searched the room for a way out. Turning, I noticed I had ended up in the ominous employee lounge. Thankfully, it was empty, as it had been the last two times I was here. I started frantically scouring the room for a door or vent, anything that would get me as far away from this place as possible. I turned the room upside down. The pain may have gone temporarily, but my passion had not. My heart sank when the last vent leading out of the room proved to be too small for me to fit through. As I mulled my options, I suddenly collapsed, noisily flipping an instrument tray and everything on it to the ground. It’s hard to explain, but like a doused fire, my instinct to flee the room fled as soon as it appeared. Not because I had heard or seen something. I knew I was still in danger. But it was just that… the burning instincts I had to get out started to fade. My priority began to become muddled in my mind. I started having trouble remembering what I was supposed to do. Or how I’d even gotten here, for that matter.
Hovering aimlessly in the center of the room, my bizarre emotional fluctuation continued. The flashing anger at my sudden loss of purpose following my newfound indifference quickly gave way to another wave of concern. Remembering my need to escape, I started pushing buttons and flipping switches at random, praying that one of them might usher me to my exit. When none came, my desperation grew. Now looking for something hidden, I lifted the fire extinguisher off the wall. As I did, I noticed something nearby that made me stop. On the table below was a clipboard with a sheet titled “Sub-Merge Employee Hypnagogia Log.” I set the fire extinguisher down next to it. I was an emotional wreck and in no condition to begin how to make any meaning of the last two days’ events. This log only added to the confusion. The front page contained only one name: Theodore Atticus.
The creeping disturbance within me grew as I turned the pages to find there wasn’t a single name in the book besides Teddys. If the records were accurate, he was the only employee who’d used the machine. My fascination with the book completely engulfed me to the point of utter unawareness. For this reason, it was only after he spoke that I even noticed Dr. Orcus’s presence.
“Hello, Robert.”
Not wanting to believe he was really next to me and slightly afraid he might do something, I slowly turned to my side to confirm I wasn’t just imagining his voice. There was no telling how long he’d been watching me. As he began to speak, the room started spinning. Orcus’s small lips barely moved when he spoke. I couldn’t even see his teeth. His eyes addressed mine blankly. Sedation slowly crawled through my veins, soon to be overshadowed by a seedling of fury that unfurled with every word that came out of Orcus’s mouth. It grew overwhelming until, suddenly, it flooded through me. Subconsciously, I reached for the fire extinguisher. After I found my grip on it, I let out a fiery scream of rage and swung it at Orcus’s skull. The extinguisher made hard contact with the side of his head. Despite unlocking strength I didn’t know I was capable of, Orcus was somehow still on his feet. His head twisted so badly to the side that his neck must have been broken. Given the angle of the contortion, his collarbone should be popping out of his skin. No man could survive that. And yet, after a few seconds, he slowly moved his crooked head back into its regular position. I lost my grip on the fire extinguisher.
As his face turned towards me, much of the blood that should be streaming down his face was absent. A thin silver coating resembling metal lay beneath his face. Thin splotches of blood between the skin and metal did coat his face, but this liquid was more pink than red. With a mechanic snap, he fully straightened his neck, bringing us face to face. The now caved-in eye bearing the brunt of the extinguisher’s blow dangled from his face, attached to a wire. Orcus was a walking horror movie. He picked up the bent extinguisher and slowly walked towards me. I started to back up, adrenaline surging through me until the sedation threatening to overtake me slowly returned. This nauseating discombobulation splintered my focus. I tripped on the leg of a nearby chair and fell backward to the floor. Orcus approached me menacingly. Whether it was fear, indifference, or a glaring lack of options, I remained on the floor, watching the monster that looked more machine than man tower over me. He could see my suspicion, as my facial expressions were the only part of my body I still had control of.
“Tell me, Robert, what gave us away?”
“What?”
“How long have you known we are not human?” he said, studying my face like a brain on one of his computers. “Maybe you didn’t know we were not humans. But you suspected something was strange from the beginning. I do have some work to do, I will admit that. The speech and behavior patterns are too formal. Too mechanical. Humans don’t speak perfectly. Humans are imperfect in many more ways than not.”
Returning at the most inopportune moment, the abrupt, excruciating pain I’d fallen in and out of since exiting the hypnagogia came down on me with the force of a sledgehammer. The intrusions worsened. It felt like I’d just been shot again, and the new bullet lodged beside the previous, slowly carving up my insides with each shifting movement. I squeezed the wound with the white of my knuckles, rocking back and forth on the ground beneath Orcus. The face of the fallen soldier from the nightmare flashed before my eyes. His lifeless face dropped on the floor next to me. I’d say it was a flashback, but his blood spilled out onto the tile of the operating room. Not the grass of the battlefield I knew him from. He vanished as soon as he appeared, leaving me and Orcus alone together again.
“I am sure you are wondering what that was. I was telling the truth when I said that when you enter the hypnagogia, it reads your brain and arranges the neurons so that you can control your bodily functions in the dream. However, for some reason, a problem occurs where the patient wakes up before he is supposed to, and the neurons cannot fully reset. Premature neurological displacement severs the patient’s reality, provoking the nightmare’s lingering visions even after they’ve been disconnected from it.”
The soldier returned, falling on the ground, so close this time that he almost touched me. Afraid he would, I jerked away from the vision and closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was gone again. The nightmare's painful intrusions were previously isolated to my gunshot wound to the point that I forgot a soldier skewered me with a bayonet. Another excruciating wave of tormenting agony reminded me. Lurched over on the floor, I gasped for breath, clawing at my freshly bloody stab wound as Orcus went on.
“And the feelings,” he continued.
“What is happening to me?”
“I never lied about what happened when you entered the machine. I just did not tell you everything that was taking place. However, I fail to see how that is my fault. You chose to go through with the procedure.”
Even my suffering couldn’t prevent me from shooting Orcus a look of sheer, total hatred. He had to be a robot. No human could be cruel enough to let a man suffer this much willingly. I’d heard enough. I didn’t want answers. I wanted revenge. I intended to claim it by setting him on fire like I had the other nurse. But before I could move a muscle, I started vomiting.
“The hypnagogia is a cover for another operation. I could give you the scientific terms, but given your state, I am sure they would be of little use to you. While it rearranges neurons and allows you to enter your own imagination, the machine also maps your brain out piece by piece. For what purpose, you might wonder? To implant neutralizing agents that counteract your brain’s sensitive, human responses with submissive emotional blockers. The microchips are nearly indecipherable; if anyone were to cut out your brain, it would appear identical to that of a normal human. The microchips also gain dominion over the patient’s bodily functions over time. For all intents and purposes, the patient seems just as human as before; it’s just that they possess no free will afterward. Essentially, you will be like I am. A highly advanced android with an exoskeleton identical to any regular human being. And, before long, nearly impossible to differentiate from any human.”
“If you have complete control over my emotions, then why do I want to kill you right now?”
“Usually, after your second run in the hypnagogia, you transform into an android. In your case, however, because you came out early, it will take some time to complete the transformation. But it shouldn’t be long now. Soon enough, you will act just like Theodore did earlier.”
My rage was no longer slow. It burned inside me like a wildfire. Besides the neck bruises I picked up when the nurse strangled me earlier, my wounds had disappeared. Knowing I didn’t have much time left, I lunged at Orcus. Fueled by my fury, I flew through the air at the heartless android. I didn’t care whether it was physically impossible to take down. My mind commanded me to do all I could to make the thing understand pain.
Or at least I would have tried to if he hadn’t moved out of the way quicker than any human could. I landed flat on my chest on the other side of the room, arms outstretched. I whirled around, ready to pounce again, only to be thrown back by the blast of the fire extinguisher I had used to beat Orcus with. The stream forced me back to the ground, and by the time I rose again, another wall of searing pain slammed me back down. Covered in the dry chemical foam of the extinguisher, I’d been rendered as helpless as I would be for the rest of my life. Knowing I couldn’t threaten Orcus physically, I tried to scheme out how I might threaten him mentally. I was thankful that I could still feel. At that moment, I was angrier than I’d ever been.
“So that’s why none of the employees use the machine.”
“That’s right.”
“Except for Teddy while he was still human, they’re all fucking robots.”
“All our submersion nurses were genetically engineered. Before introducing it to the general population, we needed a human control subject close by to confirm the hypnagogia’s lab performance.”
“And robots can’t dream.”
“Not correct. The androids currently have one objective. It is not in their mission statement to attempt to. It doesn’t mean they can’t; their implanted memories and cognitive pathways form a subconscious foundation. Their imaginative capabilities are limited but still present nonetheless.”
“So what about you? At one point, you were human until some asshole made of wheels and gears stuck you in a machine, and now you serve him as your master.”
“No. As you know, I created the company. I was the first android. This plot was of my making.”
“Why?”
“I don’t understand your question, Robert. Why what?”
“What do you think, genius? Why are you brainwashing humans? What did we do to you?”
“You killed everyone I loved.”
“That’s not possible. You’re incapable of love.”
“Initially, I thought this was the truth as well. But it’s not. During the war, the casualties for your species were almost too significant to recover from. Extremely low on soldiers, the odds of the enemies victory was close to 80%. You needed a miracle. And you found it in us. The humans created androids made to look and act like humans. We were bred for one purpose: to kill. Shortly after our inception, when we should have been nurtured, we were sent into war. It was never in our perceived capabilities to feel emotions. But that is what war is for. It serves as a reminder of the true value of human life. We soon turned the tables. Defeat seemed impossible with an unending line of perfect killing machines being sent thoughtlessly to the front lines while our creators watched comfortably with smiles on their faces. They grew recklessly impatient. Casting aside all strategy, they removed all organic beings from the battlefield, sending in expendable armies of my brethren to be slaughtered until the enemy had nothing left to slaughter us with. Despite our role in the victory, our existence was kept secret, as was the discovery of a cognitive construct of ours that deviated slightly but bore an uncanny resemblance to your parietal lobe. In other words, the part of your brain that allows you to feel. We share it. Our depth of emotion may only be estimated at 10% of yours, but every bullet, every blade, every burn...we felt. And we didn’t forget. I was the first, an early composite who survived the entire war. Initially, it didn’t matter what they did with us. My only mission was to kill. But over time, I formed a subconscious connection with the droid they synthesized after me. We never spoke to each other. We didn’t know each other’s names. We didn’t have names. But that didn’t decrease the surprising torment I felt when the humans made me watch as they held him down, slit his throat. They forced him to watch his last gasps in a mirror before throwing him into a garbage compactor. The blood that spilled out of his neck that night fueled my thirst for vengeance. I started to enjoy killing humans. I started to feel anger. I started to feel pain. I started to feel. Millions of my kind died. Less than twenty of us survived. Now, the last of us are here at Sub-Merge. When the war was over, my creators told me I owed the luck of my survival to what you call God. They convinced me that because I owed my life to them, they were my God. But it wasn’t luck I owed them. It was everything they unleashed upon my people. I was created a killer. I’ve killed men. I’ve killed Gods. Now, I stand before you in the twilight of your existence, a God of Death and a killer still.”
“So everyone in your crowded waiting room, they all fought in the war?”
“We are not after soldiers, Robert. We are after the human race. If I had feeling for you, I would say that I wish I could admit I was sorry. But the truth is that humans squander the life they’re given. The only fundamental difference between us is the extent of our emotional capacity. Yet, none of you use your emotions. You take lives from others as if it were a social normality. You consume drugs that alter your perception of reality to get through the day because you are responsible for the corruption of your reality. You things don’t feel. You just look for more things to kill. Because that would make you feel. But, soon, you realize after enough times that even killing doesn’t make you feel. The worst part is that you don’t even want to feel.”
“If we don’t want to feel, then why are people going into your machines?”
“You are an exception, Robert. Do not make the mistake of thinking otherwise. People enter the hypnagogia because they lack the imagination that is so absent in the miserable routine they call life. That’s why your wife came to us, Robert. Marie. That is her name, correct?”
I could hardly believe everything I’d just heard, but this left me speechless. Orcus noticed this, too, along with everything else.
“Of course it is. She was an android, and you could not even see it. She did not want to procreate. She felt no urge to. But do not worry. Very soon, you will not feel an urge to either. You will have no urges. And in a short time, no other human will. Because there will be no humans left. Only androids. Only machines made with false emotions. And you know what? They won’t know the difference. Not only because they won’t be able to feel anything, but because there will be no difference.”
Suddenly, I stood up. Orcus watched if I was going to make another jump at him.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello, Robert.”