by Nick Salomon
Back in her living room, I walk past Lucy who doesn’t acknowledge my presence and continues typing. I sit in her couch and wonder just how late it is. It doesn’t seem like she’ll react so I ask “so, do we have a diorama?”
“Yeah, but it’s strange,” she replies. Shit, I hope it’s usable.
“Strange how?”
“Here,” she says and points to something on her monitor. I stand up to get close and see a graph with a bunch of lines plotted on it.
“What’s strange about a standard brainwave graph?”
“Hold on,” says Lucy then type something. The graph reloads but I notice the lines are plotted at different values.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Now we’re now looking at a completely different diorama.”
“No, it’s the same one,” she says and clicks a button that redraws the graph with a new set of values.
“Fuck,” I say and cross my arms. “It’s corrupted then.”
“I don’t think so. Integrity checks run normally,” she says turns to look at me. “You want to stop by tomorrow after work to check it out?”
“Huh?” I respond abruptly. “After all I went through? I want to dream it now. I’ll just send an email to the boss man and tell him I came down with the flu. I mean unless you want to go to bed.”
“No, I want to find out too.”
“Alright then, is it ready?”
“Yeah,” she says and stands up. From underneath her desk, she pulls an immersion visor. Oneiros brand. I like those, they’re high quality. She runs its long cable across the living room and places it on the sofa then motions for me to lie down.
“I’m naked under this robe, don’t molest me while I’m out,” I say. She gives me a ‘bitch, please’ look I shrug off then sit in the couch and lie with my head near the visor. She puts it on carefully. All lights go out.
“Have fun,” I hear her say over the earphones then the visor comes to life and reality warps in front of my eyes.
Full Catch Diorama
I open my eyes and find myself standing next to a car, parked on the driveway of an upper-class-looking house in what looks like an upper-class neighborhood. It’s late at night, chilly. There’s something strange about the overall scene. As if I was watching a video with its brightness drastically dimmed down. Shadows look pitch black. Probably a byproduct of dreaming the diorama of a chronic alcoholic. Looks like our good ol’ wino friend did well for himself at some point of his life. I’m just relieved the diorama we caught was not corrupted. I guess it was totally worth it to swim in shit water for a couple of minutes.
My wino friend looks down and from his perspective, I see him pull his keys out of a pocket and walk towards the front door. Just like any other diorama, I am reliving this scene from one of his memories as if I was him. It seems I am wearing a suit and tie and holding a briefcase with my left hand. I approach the door, unlock it and step in. It’s curious how my eyes don’t even adapt to the darkness but somehow, I know where to go and find a switch. When the lights come on, it surprises me how expensive everything looks inside. I kind of feel sorry for our wino business partner, it seems the poor guy fell down from a stable life pretty hard. That’s alcohol for you. I feel tired. Exhausted. Like I just came back from hell at wherever it is this anonymous wino dude used to work. Some relief comes from loosening my necktie.
All I want is to do is get to my bed and sleep forever. There are no clocks I can see. No idea what time it is. I’m glad the dreamcatcher works but this rama won’t attract many viewers. Fuck me, I’m going to have to find a way to pay legitimate dreamers. Anyway, I climb the staircase and open the door to my room. I hear noise inside. I turn the lights on and I see my wife in bed with my brother. They’re... naked? I clutch the briefcase handle as hard as I can but it feels different somehow. I lift my left hand and find an unsheathed army knife instead. My wife is crying apologies that go to deaf ears. My brother is freaking out. He sits there, on the bed, butt naked, trying to explain the betrayal but I hear nothing. Their voices sound distant, distorted. I don’t want to hear excuses. I feel rage. I feel pain. Exhaustion goes away in an instant and I feel an adrenaline rush overriding rational thought.
Jesus Christ, his brother fucked his wife. I want to feel sorry for the guy but instead all I can sense is fury and I agree with him. I’m furious myself. Fuck this asshole and fuck this bitch. They’re going to die. I punch my brother as hard as I can and he falls to the floor face down. An opening. I grab the knife with both hands and stab the motherfucker as hard as I can. Steel cuts through skin then deep inside his flesh. He screams in agony and coughs blood. This is not enough. More. He must die. This fucker. This dog. This fucking animal that shares my blood. Tears run down my face, slightly blurring my sight.
In a far distance, my wife cries, as I stab my brother over and over again, hands sticky with his blood. He is moving no more.
She cries hysterically. My wife. The woman I loved. The woman I still love. The diorama immersion breaks my heart. I feel this man’s fury. I feel his pain as if mine. He’s been betrayed in unspeakable ways and now he’s ruined his life. This isn’t fair.
I gave her everything. I sacrificed much for her. I was always faithful despite plenty of opportunities to not be. I put up with her fucking mother and her constant sarcasm. I got myself in debt for the rest of my life to provide the house she wanted in the neighborhood she wanted. And the cars and the clothes and the jewelry and the expensive vacations. She was my high school sweetheart. The only woman I’ve ever been with. I thought we had something that transcended reason. I thought we had a connection.
But she fucked my brother.
I look away from my blood-soaked hands. There she is, cornered against the wall. Naked. Covered in sweat and the saliva and the cum of my brother. This fucking whore. She pleads for her life but at this point, there is no reasoning with me. Common sense and self-preservation get pushed way in the back of my head and only rage prevails. I walk to her and swiftly grab her by the neck with my free hand. Streaks of coagulating blood stain her face and her neck. There. She is now covered in all of my brother’s bodily fluids. Wait, what about piss? The stupidity of such a thought crossing my mind at this moment makes me laugh. And I laugh loudly. Maniacally. She’s in shock. She is crying no more. She is begging no more. She just stares at me like some stupid beast, unable to comprehend the world around it.
With a swift motion, I thrust the knife into her. I pull it out. I thrust again. Then again, and again. Yeah, her lower abdomen. Her cunt. Her thighs. She looks at me, silently, eyes wide open, then a whimper escapes and her eyes go white. She passes out then dies while I still hold her.
The knife drops to the floor, followed by the mass of flesh that was my wife just moments ago. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at her. I admire her nude blood-covered beauty. There’s no going back from this but this man somehow still avoided jail and made it into the Pershing Square tent city. I cry but I can’t wipe my tears. Hands covered in blood and all. Why did she make me do this? Why?
There are no answers. In the distance, I hear police sirens approach. The neighbors probably heard the commotion and the screaming. This is the most raw, intense diorama I’ve ever been immersed into. We’re going to be rich. It’s short but intense as hell. But the diorama does not end. I hear footsteps downstairs then up the stairs and finally through the door. Policemen yell at me but I’m too numb to comply. Someone grabs my shoulder and I turn to see fire. The house is on fire. There are no cops in the room that I can see. The fire starts burning the bodies of my brother and wife. I feel I should flee to safety but I move slowly, and I as walk down the stairs, I touch the flames with my hand and they don’t hurt me. I take my time but eventually make it out of the house. I stand in the middle of the street and I watch it all burn. The house I bought for her now crumbles to ashes with her inside.
The intensity of the diorama distracts me for a moment from the fact all these surreal thin
gs happened in it. A briefcase turned into a knife. The cops vanished. The house burned down for no reason. I look around the neighborhood and see all lights in all houses are out. No one is even peeking out to see what the hell is going on. No curious onlookers to watch the house burn down. My hands are even clean now.
Then it hits me. This diorama is an amalgam of reality and fantasy. There is no doubt this poor man’s wife slept with his brother but maybe he didn’t kill them. Maybe he just walked away, fell to alcoholism and never recovered. Maybe he just fantasized about killing them.
Oh my god. We’re going to be so obscenely rich. Yeah. I see it now. We came up with the technology to catch lucid dioramas. I smile and look down at my hands. There are hundred-dollar bills, rolls of them. Millions of dollars, it seems. Piles of money on the street. By the car. By the burning house.
Wait. Hold on.
With a quick thought the house goes back to normal. Another and it’s daylight. I stare at the car and it turns into an expensive hyper sportscar.
We can make lucid, fully interactive dioramas. How did this happen? Oh shit. That homicidal blind rage. It was all me. I was given a starting scenario and I built the rest. Those crazy thoughts. All that rage. All that violence, it was all me. Man, am I fucked up. At least I’ll have plenty of money to pay for therapy and thought-correction medication.
An idea comes to me so I look down the street and away in the distance, a grey alien pops up to existence out of nowhere. Holy shit. We’re going to be so insanely rich. The archetypical grey alien from Roswell fame walks towards me and waves his hand. Where did it come from, though?
“Hey dude, what’s up?” he asks with a smile in his small mouth. Huge black, unsettling eyes look at me, waiting for an answer.
“Uhh,” how does one greet an alien. Well, who cares, it’s not like it’s real. “I’m great, how about yourself?”
“Bro, I don’t know about you but I hate this hot weather.”
An alien complaining about California summer. What the hell?
“Yeah…” I say. Am I talking to myself right now? Whose voice is it? Who’s giving it a script? This was obviously not part of my wino friend’s memory, certainly not mine either. Why does he sound like a frat boy? “Shouldn’t you be speaking in some sort of weird alien language?”
“Huh?” the alien mumbles and looks at me, somehow his alien face is capable of expressing confusion much like a human’s would.
“Yeah, you’re from another planet, so why do you speak English?” I insist. “You know, that’s why I hated Stargate SG-1, because every planet they went to, everyone spoke English without a plot reason for it. Put a science-fictiony babel fish in the script or something for fucks’ sakes. That’s just lazy writing.”
“Yeah dude, I totally get it,” the grey alien says then takes a puff from a blunt that wasn’t there before. “Writers, man, bunch of entitled fucks. Ohh look at me, I can type shit on a piece of paper, give me money,” he says mockingly.
I chuckle at the absurdity of the scene. “No, but seriously, where did you come from?”
“Look, bro, I’m going to be honest with you,” the alien says and flicks the blunt to the sidewalk. “I could answer that question with whatever bullshit comes to the head of the entitled fuck putting words in my mouth, but why bother if the diorama will end in about 10 seconds.”
“What? You know you’re a fictional character in a diorama?”
“I know right?” he giggles stupidly like a stereotypical stoner would. “Some trippy fourth-wall breaking meta going on right here.”
“Huh?” I ask and before I can follow that up, reality warps around me.
The Business Plan
I wake up from the hobo’s diorama feeling hung over. My head hurts. My eyeballs hurt. Still dizzy, I remove the Oneiros visor from my head and look up from the couch to see Lucy standing there.
“Well?” she asks, arms crossed. “You were crying and hyperventilating.”
I reach for my face and find fresh tears I wipe off. I could explain what just happened, but no, Lucy loves surprises. It’d be fun if she finds out for herself. I look down my robe and say “good, you didn’t molest me.”
“Ugh,” she scoffs and rolls her eyes.
“It’s hard to explain,” I say, getting up and placing the visor on the sofa armrest. “You better see for yourself.”
“What do you mean? Is it good?”
Must hide excitement. “Yeah it is, try it.”
“Well, alright,” she says and takes my place in the sofa and puts the visor on. “You were joking but I’m serious, stay away from me while I’m out.”
“I’m hurt you’d think so poorly of me,” I say sarcastically as I sit in her nerd throne. “You ready?”
“Yeah.”
The diorama file is already loaded in the Oneiros player so all I have to do is click the ‘Start’ button. I hear the fans speeding up in Lucy’s computer. Looks like replaying these lucid dioramas takes a lot of processing power. The workstation seems beefy enough that it should handle it. Lucy, on the other hand, goes limp and lies there passed out. I let her enjoy the immersion and go to the kitchen to grab a soda. The first level of the fridge is full of ginger ale and diet cola cans. I push some of them aside to look towards the back and I’m surprised to find a couple bottles of mineral water. I pull one out of the fridge and notice the ‘best by’ date is a year away. Looks like she purchased it recently, just for me. How thoughtful of her.
I get back to the living room and sit in the nerd throne, observing Lucy in silence. There’s a possibility these lucid dioramas are so intense some people might not be able to handle them so I bring up a 911 dialing website in her computer in case I see her convulsing. So far she seems fine. After a few minutes I see what she meant. She lies there, breathing heavily but I don’t see tears running down from under the visor. Well, I guess I’m some kind of little bitch who can’t help but get emotional when stabbing two dear people to death.
There was something unique to the immersion. In a typical, static rama, the scene plays exactly as it was caught from the dreamer. Experiences are full sensory immersions, that’s for sure, but one retains one’s personality through it. I could react to for example, a rama caught from a soldier who dreamed about a battlefield and I would feel fear, excitement or whatever but these would be my reactions to what I was experiencing. Lucid rama on the other hand, I felt what the dreamer felt. I took it personal and it felt like I had intimately known these people I was stabbing. That’s what intensified the experience, I figure. The stakes were high. I knew I was immersing but that didn’t make the feelings any less real.
Some more minutes go by and I hear Lucy wake up. Her arms move about drunkenly, searching for the visor. That confusion will go away shortly. She finally finds and takes it off then immediately sits upright.
“Owww,” she whines and reaches for her head.
Just like she did when I woke up, I stand next to her, arms crossed.
“Well, what do you think?” I ask.
Her breathing is still fast and she looks at me for a moment then down at her feet. She doesn’t say a word. I guess she’s still processing the fact we’ve struck gold.
“You understand what this means, right?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she mumbles. “We found a way to make dioramas that can be controlled in real time. Like lucid dreaming.”
“Yup,” I nod with a wide smile and she looks up and smiles meekly. “So, did you kill the fuckers?”
“Kill them?” she asks confused. “Oh… no I did not.”
Interesting. Am I really that fucked up and my only reaction to seeing my rama wife and brother fucking is murderous rage? Someone more normal would talk to them and work out the situation.
“No, I…” she continues, looking down. “I took my clothes off and joined them. We… uhm… we had a threesome.”
She says this as I was taking a sip of mineral water I spit out and laugh at the remark.
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“Shut up!” she exclaims, embarrassed out of her mind. “It’s not funny.”
“It is funny,” I say with a wide grin. “And kind of hot now that I think about it.”
“Ugh” she once again rolls her eyes. “Why does everything have to be a joke to you?”
“Okay, okay I’m sorry,” I say and kneel on the carpet so we can be at the same eye level. “Whatever your experience was, we don’t have to talk about it. But look, this is revolutionary, what we accomplished.”
She seems comforted and looks at me with a shy smile. “Yeah and we weren’t even coordinating to make a lucid catcher.”
“I know! Isn’t that awesome?”
She sits there, hands to the sides and now visibly relaxed. “Yeah, that’s why the wave pattern was unique after each simulated playback. The simulator software wouldn’t know what to do with a lucid rama so it just generated garbage every time. I mean, the synaptic load was…”
“Hey, hey,” I interrupt and we lock eyes. “We’re going to be obscenely rich,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she nods. “Yes!”
For an instant, biting her lip, she gives me this look like a lion looking at prey then without warning jumps off the sofa to kiss me. The force of her landing pushes me to fall on my back with her on top.
“Woah Lucy, what the fuck?” I ask between chuckles.
“Shut up.”
‘Yes ma’am’ I think to myself and return her kiss, as my hands go about undressing her.
*
We lay on our backs in silence, fully naked, on the floor of Lucy’s living room. A few minutes after climax go by and she gets close to put her head on my chest. I run my arm around her back and we hold each other tightly. Such a simple gesture and it strikes me I didn’t know how much I missed it. She puts her leg on mine and the warmth of her inner thighs almost burns against my skin.