by K. Z. Howell
DREAM STATE
A Novel by K. Z. HOWELL
©2017 K.Z. Howell
This is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Dream State
Chapter 1
The human brain is a fascinating machine.
It never sleeps, working even when the body can do no more.
Professor August Bench
Professor August Bench pushed his glasses back up his narrow nose, wondering for the millionth time why he didn’t just get contact lenses. The constant readjustment along his thin, pointed nose was especially irritating now that summer had arrived and the campus park was becoming uncomfortably warm. He always liked sitting here on the bench to read. The students wandering about provided just the right amount of peripheral motion to force him to concentrate and the fresh air and low hum of life going on around him was definitely better than his office in the stuffy science building. Right now, he really needed to concentrate. His experiment had been running almost a year and his test subjects had shown very little improvement over that time.
He had sold the Pentagon on his concept immediately after 9-11. Pointing out the incredible success of Edgar Cayce to a newly desperate intelligence apparatus had secured him funding for a two year trial. He was running out of time and soon the Pentagon would want results. Results that could be demonstrated and repeated reliably.
Professor Bench had designed the Dream State Precognitive System to “see” not only distant events while in a deep R.E.M. state but to follow in the steps of the “Sleeping Prophet” and actually “see” events that occur in the future. After the destruction of the towers in New York, the idea had regained interest. The last attempt at seeing into the future had died an ignominious death in the late sixties. That failed attempt had concentrated on what was called remote viewing. At its core, remote viewing was no more than a method of mind reading over great distances. While a few things had seemed accurate, the success rate was no better than the educated guesses of trained analysts and the program had been abandoned.
He was now looking to expand his own program beyond the original four subjects. Currently there were four students in his program and only one, Jennifer Land, had shown any real promise. She had suggested he bring to people she knew, friends that she had spoken of his experiments with and who had told Jennifer and the Professors grad student assistant, William Grant, about their own lucid dreams. Professor Bench was little suspicious of Jennifer and William wanting to bring two of their acquaintances on board, the two had been quietly becoming a couple for months and the Professor suspected that William was hoping that helping out Jennifers friends would also help him “seal the deal”. As the kids said these days.
Professor Bench checked his watch, he had not yet finished reading the applications and was out of time. He was scheduled to meet with both new applicants in just a few minutes. He would just have to finish reading each ones paperwork during their interviews. The slim, balding academic placed the papers back into his briefcase and gathered up the remains of his lunch, tossing the empty wrappers into the trashcan beside the bench. Standing up and stretching his arms, the 68 year old scientist began the trek back to his sleep studies wing of the college science building.
Benjamin Bartlett sat in the creaky old chair across from the hawkish professor. The room smelled of dusty books and peppermint, neither odor being one of Benjamins favorites. He sneezed. Loudly. Without looking up from the folder he was reading from, Professor Bench handed a tissue box to the stocky blonde student. Apparently sneezes were common in this room, a testament to the stacks of books and papers that covered every flat surface in the space. Benjamin took the offered tissue and sat the box on the edge of the desk and waited patiently for the Professor to begin the interview.
Several minutes later Professor Bench closed the folder, satisfied that he had memorized the applicants information and was ready to begin the interview.
“Benjamin, do you understand what I do here?” He asked.
“I believe so, Professor. Jennifer said that you needed people who dreamed vividly and could remember the details. As I understand it, you need lucid dreamers for your experiment and that is something I have been doing for several years.” Replied the young student.
“That’s, close. What I am looking for are people who can replicate the abilities of Edgar Cayce, do you know who he was?” The Professor asked.
“Yes, sir” Benjamin replied, “I’ve read a great deal about the Sleeping Prophet, he could dream of things far away and even in the future and wrote hundreds of his dream predictions down. He was probably the best documented seer in history, and was supposed to be the real thing.”
“Good. Do you feel that your dreaming ability is on par with that ideal?” Bench asked.
Benjamin answered honestly “I don’t know Professor. I do know that I often dream in very clear, realistic images. I can even carry on a conversation sometimes with the people in my dreams. I say they are clear, but that may not be the right description. The images and sounds are sharp, but they are also often, I guess weird would be the right word. Nothing is ever exactly like the real world. But I can always remember every detail of the dreams.”
“Have you ever seen or heard things in your dreams that occurred in the waking world days or weeks later?” The professor asked.
“Often.” Benjamin replied. “Very often. It is never exactly like the dream though. Peoples clothes are different sometimes, the time is different or other people are different people. One thing that is constant in every dream is that the person who says or does something never seems to be the person you would think would do whatever it is. Do you know what I mean, professor?”
“The dream state isn’t reality. It is a built in communication system so advanced that our conscious brain can’t comprehend the signals. If you had said it was always crystal clear and understandable I would not believe you.” Professor Bench stated.
The interview continued for nearly an hour. As Benjamin left, the professor completed his notes. He felt Benjamin was a good candidate for the program. He opened the next applicants file and began reading while he waited for her to arrive.
His next interview was with a Kathryn Tymauf. Jennifer Land had said she had been her roommate and was her best friend and that they had often talked about Jennifer’s role in the Dream State program. According to Jennifer, Kathryn’s ability to lucid dream was even better than Benjamin or herself. That had drawn the professors attention. In the last year he had discovered that not only could more females remember their dreams in detail but that many could control them far better than the men. The professor wasn’t one to get his hopes up on anything less than empirical evidence, but his entire program hinged on finding someone that could emulate Edgar Cayce in not only accuracy but in reliability.
The knock on the door alerted him to the young students arrival. He called out “Come in” without looking up from his reading. He heard the door open then shut behind the applicant and gestured to the chair for her to sit. He continued to review her application, she was a sophomore from Ohio, majoring in drama, excellent grades. She had nothing but glowing recommendations from her professors and no disciplinary record at all. That, coupled with his best subjects high regards made Tymauf a good bet, if Land wasn’t exaggerating.
He looked up when he heard the young woman say “You may need this, Professor.” As she handed him a tissue from the box on the desk. He recognized her immediately; he had seen her on campus often, always with a crowd of young men and even a few male members of the staff following along like cats after a sardine. He looked quizzically at the offered tissue, raising his hand to wave it off, just as the sneeze racked him.
William knew that she was. He didn’t like working with Dr. Mills because she was constantly either teasing him and trying to get his interest or she was rude and uncivil because of her failure to gain his attention. He and Jennifer had been together since their senior year in high school, he had no interest in the older doctor and really wished that she would just do her job and leave the subjects and him alone. William checked everyone’s connections one last time and turned the lights down as he left the room.
The test rooms low light cameras automatically switched on and were already recording by the time he reached his seat behind the EEG displays. He powered on the sound generator, it would pump the sound of waves into the test room at a level so low that it could not be heard by the conscious ear. The sound was designed to help the subjects brains relax into a semi-wakeful state and to also stimulate the occipital region of the brain to induce an almost hypnotic state. The four students had done this hundreds of times between them. Professor Bench usually had only two in the tests at a time, but had begun a new rotation system of the six participants. He wanted to look for any differences in the brain wave patterns when the test subjects were around each other during the experiments.
The new system had actually shown a marked increase whenever Land, Bartlett and Tymauf were present. Tonight’s test included Stephany Kant, the only other female and the only other student who had not been tested while with the three most promising candidates. Luke Devoe and James Buck had already been tested and had actually lowered the ability of the three more promising subjects dramatically. Their presence had caused a steep increase in the Delta wave type brain signals that control arousal. Both men had significantly altered the brainwave patterns of Land and Tymauf and caused the increase in the agitation center of Bartlett’s brain. Professor Bench had been both amused and annoyed at the results. Amused because he understood the biological process that caused the increase in the sexual response centers of the subjects brains. He had been annoyed because there is no known way of turning off the pheromone receptors without doing permanent harm to the subjects.
The Professor had explained to William that while he could not stop the autonomic reaction in the subjects, the subjects own brains could. That was why Benji didn’t elicit the response in the two women he was around all of the time nor did he cause them to respond either. Kathryn, Jennifer and Benji were close friends and all three were close to William. That constant interaction caused the brain to recognize a non-partner and did not cause the release of the breeding precursor hormones as happened when the two other males were around. In Benji’s case, his response was the protective agitation men experience when other males intrude into family space. The old professor grinned when he told William that he could hide his relationship with Jennifer from other peoples eyes, but never from the EEG. Jennifers pheromonal response went off the charts when he was in the room with her.
Twenty minutes into the experiment Dr. Mills came into the monitor room. She was an attractive woman, at only twenty nine she was young for a woman in her position. She was extremely intelligent as well. She held two doctorates already and was working on a third. If it hadn’t been for Jennifer, William probably would have enjoyed the doctors attention. Unfortunately for the frustrated scientist, William was quite happy with Jennifer and had no intention of ever giving in to Kendra Mills.
She sat in the other chair and slid it closer to William, leaning in toward him. He smelled her perfume and felt the heat from her breath as she softly asked how his day had been.
“It was good, Dr. Mills.” He replied. “The subjects are nearing dream state, no abnormalities in the EEG readings so far.”
The associate professor recognized his deflection. Sitting back, ramrod straight she glared at the screens. “Yes, they are. I will be in my office.” She said tersely before standing suddenly and walking out the door.
William was glad when she left. Dr. Mills was always either mad or annoying, at least this time she stormed out and left him to his work. He watched the monitors intently as the four sleeping students entered the early stage of dream sleep.
The EEG readouts for Jennifer, Benji and Kathryn all began to show K-complex spikes, indicating their entry into slow wave sleep cycle. This was the area that Professor Bench believed the ability to communicate from dreaming brain to dreaming brain resided. William looked at the fourth subjects readout. Stephany Kant’s monitor showed that she too was beginning to experience slow wave sleep, but her K complex spikes were more erratic and her Delta wave activity was not showing signs of modulating into a dreaming pattern.
Kathryn and Jennifer were both now in the slow wave sleep state. Here is where Professor Bench believed the ability to control and direct the dreaming brain resided. He watched carefully as the EEG patterns of both women slowly began to mirror each other. William had seen this pattern match twice before, both times Tymauf and Land had successfully remained in this state for many minutes and both had made remarkably accurate predictions on the nights control subject. Professor Bench had dismissed the matching readings as a mechanical fluke, it would be impossible for two brains to match precisely for that long. A second, maybe two, but minutes would simply not be possible. Yet here William sat, watching the impossible happen for a third time.
Tonight’s subject was the stock markets opening level on the DOW Jones Index for next Monday. William had given all four the target before he had attached their electrode harnesses. They were each supposed to concentrate on “seeing” the opening number. Since guessing that information three days in advance was impossible even by the most experienced Wall Street tycoons, it was a safe bet that if any of the subjects got it right it would be at least anecdotal evidence of success, if two or more got it right the professor would consider the experiment a complete success.
Benji’s EEG reading differed from those of Kathryn and Jennifer slightly. His K complex spikes matched but the Theta, Delta and Alpha waves were lower across the board. His brain was doing something similar to the two women, but subtly different. Stephany was obviously dreaming now but she had no control over it. Her readings were erratic and showed her in deep REM state. From her blood pressure and heart rate read out she was having some sort of intense activity dream. It was not possible to tell what kind, but all the signs pointed toward a dream of danger. Her brain wave patterns exhibited classic panic dream patterns and would be far too agitated to allow for a lucid dream.
Kathryn and Jennifer were still in an identical pattern. William checked the timer. The patterns had been precisely matched for just under three minutes now. That was incredible, even more incredibly, Benji was still in the same state that he had entered when the women had first fallen into the identical pattern. William scribbled a note to the Professor for him to look at the recordings. This simply did not happen, there were three brains exhibiting almost identical brainwave patterns while in a dream state. How was that possible unless all three were having the identical reaction to an identical dream at the exact same time? William had done these dream studies ever since the program began and had done a year long sleep study before that on comparing normal sleep patterns to autistic sleep patterns. He had never seen this occur. Maybe the professor could connect the dots.
The EEG patterns b
egan to diverge a minute later. Benji’s pattern shifted first to a more normal dreaming pattern. Kathryn and Jennifer remained in synch for a few more seconds but then quickly changed into the expected pattern of REM sleeping dreams. William turned off the sound generator. It would no longer be useful since the lucid dreaming cycle had run its course and would only serve to help keep the subjects in a deep sleep. He stepped into the test room and carefully but swiftly removed the electrodes from the subjects.
They would soon need to waken and write down their experiences in great detail. While people can sometimes remember dreams for long periods of time, they can only retain dream induced memory details for a very short period. Each bed in the testing room had a small table beside that contained the subjects personal dream journal. Once they woke, they would immediately write down every detail they could recall. Jennifer and Benji were both very good at recalling their dream state events, Kathryn though was phenomenal. She seemed to retain far more memory and greater detail than the others, plus she was a very good sketch artist. Her journal not only contained details of every dream state, but she would often include pencil drawn sketches of people and events.
William waited patiently while the dreamers woke and recorded their experience in their journals. Stephany woke from her normal dream when William raised the rooms lighting level to accommodate the others. He already knew what her journal entry would be. Mostly disconnected gibberish and vague descriptions of normal dreaming brain images. The three that had successfully navigated their way through a controlled experience would be far more detailed.
Stephany finished first, her frustration evident on her face and in her demeanor. She walked into the monitoring room and handed William her journal before walking out without a word. Benji completed his entry next and came in with William, sitting in the other chair before handing over his notes.