Seventy Hours, Give or Take Forever

I can’t sleep.

Also, I can’t wake up.

That is a paradox, right? Let me explain.

For the past few weeks—it might have been even longer—I’ve been stuck in this increasingly shapeless world. Smell was the first to go, obviously. It was one of the latest features they added, just a few months ago. The colors and sounds have all but faded, the dimensions are sagging and wonky, and the objects around us are definitely starting to bleed into one another. Just take a look at the chairs we’re sitting in. Are they really two separate chairs? Or is it more like one weird lumpy couch, stretched out like a piece of chewed-out bubblegum?

I can’t tell.

The thing is—I wasn’t really supposed to be here for more than a couple of days. Or seventy hours to be exact, the longest trip I’d taken so far, and the very first on the new Dreem Platinum tier. I went under expecting seventy hours of pure hallucinatory, imaginatory, conjuratory bliss, as the ads like to say. It was the exact amount of time I paid for, and as we know they are very strict on the plug-out times. I suspect them of actually starting the cortisol drip a little early most of the time so they can have the pod ready to go for the next customer. Not that I ever care to check. By the time I wake up, I’m usually so out of it I try and dry myself off, let my coveralls absorb the chunks of jelly I’ve missed and stumble right on home though the sweltering heat to sleep off the high. Then, get ready to work round the clock and save up for my next trip.

Some time yesterday—or it could also have been today, I haven’t been able to conjure up a decent day and night schedule—I tried to calculate how much they must have lost on me by now, but the numbers keep getting messed up. Every calculator I create, every notepad I build keeps jumbling the numbers. Typical.

That’s Artedreem for you. These artificial dreams might be of much higher quality and come with much greater detail, but after all this time they still haven’t managed to fix the classic bugs. Numbers, mirrors, teeth. Still not doing their thing.

Which reminds me… Let me check. Yep. My teeth are gone again. Nothing but gums and holes and a mouth that feels too big for my face.

Oh, well. It’s not like I actually need them. The food in here doesn’t taste like anything, no matter how hard I try (and believe me, with all this time on my hands I really tried). It has shape, it has texture, but it all tastes like absolutely nothing. It’s like consuming solidified air.

Anyway, if I had to give you a number off the cuff, I would estimate that I’m in the red by anything between fifty to… a hundred thousand by now? That is, if they didn’t up their prices in the meantime. With the current techonomic climate, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d added another thousand an hour by now. I wonder. Will they charge me for it after? Or will I be able to sue them for not waking me up in time?

Which leads me to the reason for my overextended stay. Am I at fault, or are they? So far I’ve formulated a few theories, in increasing levels of viability.

One: the world is ending.

Granted, this might seem extreme and unlikely, but it could very well be that a nuclear bomb has dropped. The Pan-Asia Accord has really rocked the boat this past year. It could be another earthquake, one that swallowed parts of the city like it did San Francisco; or who knows? Or maybe another summer storm to top off the heatwave. Oh wait, what about aliens? They might have finally taken it upon themselves to invade us and steal our top-of-the-line dream technology. Maybe aliens cannot dream and they’re envious of us? Ha. Right.

Oh, shit. Of course.

Don’t look, but… there are some mind echoes behind you. No, I said don’t look! That’ll only make them more substantial. Anyway, they look pretty much like what you’d expect an alien to look like. My mind is not that original.

I’ll get rid of them.

Just. One… second. Second.

Alright, they’re gone. I really shouldn’t have been thinking about aliens, they’re one of my weak spots. Aliens, hands, and closed doors. (Yeah, I know.) Usually I’m able to block the echoes out with mind anchoring—I always get the DreemShield add-on for longer trips—but as time goes on they’re becoming more frequent and harder to get rid of. Must be my credit running out.

Anyway, where was I? Right, the world could be ending. I’m pretty sure my dream state wouldn’t last more than a few hours tops after a major power shutdown, so I’m kind of ruling this one out.

Scenario two: they may be experimenting on me. I’ve heard the rumors that are going around. It’s all the usual conspiracy theories of poor people disappearing, rich people getting richer, and politicians covering it all up. So, assuming the adagio of ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ is applicable here—would I be a likely candidate for Artedreem? Although I’m not one of those desperate strung-out junkies that we can see all on the newstream trying to get their fix, I am pretty sure that no one will miss me that quickly. After all, I’m just another lowly anonymous developer. And even if the system would eventually flag my low productivity—who would care?

Sad. I know. Save the therapy for another time.

Three: there’s something seriously wrong with the Dreem Platinum service. Although I assume they test these procedures before they go live, they might have rushed it. I should know. I’ve stopped counting the number of times we pushed out the next release crossing our fingers and clenching our butt cheeks, hoping the circuits wouldn’t fry and the next batch of houses would keep on printing as usual.

Speaking of fried circuits, here’s scenario four—and my best bet: something went haywire in my brain. I don’t have much in-depth knowledge of brain science, but as the ads always say: ‘the human mind is nothing more than a very elegantly designed machine’. And machines can malfunction, right? There might be a leaky valve in my noggin, a bunch of pistons misfiring in my grey matter, a rusty gear in desperate need of some mental WD-40. God knows that my mental capacities haven’t exactly been functioning at 100% effectiveness lately. Hence the seventy hour dream binge that’s worth a decent autonomous home shuttle.

I might not even be able to sue anyone ever again after this. By the time they lift me out of the pod, I could very well be devoid of any coherent thought altogether. Just a drooling mess. I might be firing off my last viable neurons right now as we speak. Pew pew!

(Not that we’re actually speaking right now of course. There’s not even a ‘we’ here—you’re just the imaginary friend I’ve conjured up. I’m just talking to myself. Hi!)

For all the fancy scenarios I’ve thought up, they all pretty much amount to the same thing: my brain is currently slowly destroying itself. To my knowledge, the longest anyone has ever gone under with Artidreem (or any of their competitors for that matter) is a full week. A week. A week. The pods can stretch the limits of body and brain pretty far, but even science has its limits. And like I said, I might be here for several weeks already. Honestly, it feels more like eons. I might be better off trying to put myself in some sort of sleep mode to save some of my mind juice.

But now were back to my opening statement: I can’t sleep.

Sleep. Or dreaming. But sleep is best. Sleep.

Oh, I’ve tried to find a way to make it happen. If I can just power down for a bit, stop thinking, stop making things up, stop conjuring, stop. I should be okay for longer.

You can’t actually sleep in your dreams though. Did you know?

No?

Sure, you might have had dreams where you were fainting or drowning or dying or losing consciousness—but at the same time you were still conscious. You know you’re not awake in the story, but you are still registering everything that’s happening. You’re still seeing the events unfold, right through your closed eyeing lids. You’re always the omniscient narrator of your own dreams.

Ooh, I like that one. “The omniscient narrarator of your own dreams.” Proof that my higher cognitive functions haven’t completely deteriorated yet. Ha.

Huh, what was that? ‘The chairs are melting?’

Shit, you’re right. Ew, that feels awful. Yeah, just stand up and I’ll get us to another room. Or even better, I’ll just delete this one and start over.

No, just stand up, like this. Wup wup, two legs up.

Come on, I’ll give you a hand and we’ll get moving before the pudding lurts.

Fuck. No. Your hand. It’s… look at your hand! Your fingers!

Wait. Let me—

No, don’t grab my—what’s the thing called? Don’t grab the thing. The thing!

I will go to the door. I will go to the door. It’s closed, the door is closed. I can’t open the closed door. The door is closed. It’s dark. The door is dark. Is closed. Is clark. Clark. CLARK.

open.

don’t close—

don’t—