"So, here's the thing about dreaming. Why do you think we dream when we're asleep, and not awake. I bet you never thought to ask that, huh. Maybe you're thinking, well, some people do dream when they're awake, and those people are called schizos. Okay, fine. But again, let's talk about you. You ever notice how after you sleep, everything that came before that sleep feels... farther away? Like you're starting over from scratch? Waking up, it feels like starting with a blank slate."
"Okay."
"Alright, so. Thoughout the day, your brain is getting all sorts of inputs. Seeing. Hearing. Feeling. It's making connections. It's trying to, basically, to change itself. You can sort of think about it like a big desk. All these little notes go on the desk. Update this. Remember that. And once the desk gets full, you sleep to clear the desk. All the notes get stowed away in their long term storage. Compressed, digitized, whatever. And so when you dream, okay, what's happening is you're observing your brain clear the desk. Because you ARE the desk. And you ARE the notes and all that. And you ARE the long-storage. All that stuff is also YOU. You get what I'm saying, right."
"So what I'm saying is: usually we can only directly tinker with short term memories, and we pretty much have to let your brain take care of the long-term memories. But if we can influence the long-term memories, we can basically change everything we want. I mean, within limits. It's like brain surgery, but you know, without the musical instruments."
Therapist (Jeff Goldblum) is in the office. Boy is there for an experimental procedure: a drug, prepazonol, is supposed to help him with his self-confidence by inducing a dreamlike state where he can safely confront his fears. If dosed correctly, in the dream state, the boy can confront his fears with total confidence and then feel better about facing them in real life. The pre-experimental paperwork has approved the boy for a dose of 130mg. This being a drug that induces lucid dreaming, it is very important to get the dosage right, as there is a rather fine line between lucid dreaming and being in an uncontrollable deep dream, where things can go haywire. The boy has a note in his pocket, a note which details his love for a girl in his Existential Philosophy class, Lucille. He wants to give it to her, but he's afraid that she likes somebody else in the class. He intends to give her the note in the dream, and deal with whatever happens. The doctor, meanwhile, is a cool guy (again Jeff Goldblum) and maybe too cool for his own good -- he's arrogant, even narcissistic about the whole thing. He's just going down the list of things to check "Ok... no preexisting conditions, see we have some problems with self-confidence" and maybe even a little condescending towards the boy, as he has natural confidence and is attractive to women already. In other words he has an opposite struggle to the boy. And to hammer that in, he gets a text from his girlfriend, or one of them.
Hey didn't you say I could see you at 230? Don't forget! Write it down!
Ugh. The doctor writes down 230, then puts 230mg of drug in the boys cup. The boy washes down the medication right as the doctor's phone rings. He puts it on vibrate but it rings again and again. The doctor ignores it. The doctor begins with the procedure. The boy has a little button he can press with his finger to communicate to the doctor -- basically, a short tap for yes and a long tap for no. The doctor's supposed to give him instructions and is basically reading from an instruction manual. "Can you hear my voice." The boy taps BEEP. "Good. Now I'm going to read you some questions. You say yes or no. Name, Barnie the Dinosaur." BEEP BEEP. "Name, William." BEEP. "Good. Age, 20". BEEP. "Now imagine, in detail, an experience that makes you feel insecure. Scared." The boy imagines Lucille. She's there, she's sitting at a desk, writing something. She's not paying attention to him. She's looking at someone else. The boy takes a step towards her. She doesn't look at him. "You are in a safe place." the doctor says, "as long as I'm with you, we can always start over from the beginning. Are you able to visualize the experience." The boy taps BEEP. "Ok. Now bring the person to your field of view. Can you see that person." BEEP. "Remember that this person, even if they look very real, is just in your imagination. Try saying Hi to that person. Are you able to say Hi." A pause, and then... BEEP. "Did the person say Hi back?" A long pause. Much longer. BEEP BEEP. "Ok, that's okay. They don't have to talk back. What I want you to do is talk to that person. I want you to tell them the thing that you're trying to tell them in real life, but can't." Can you try that? The boy walks up to her. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a note.
We snap back to the therapist's office. A long, long pause. BZZZ. He gets a text. HELLOOOOO.... JEFFY ARE YOU THERE??
"Did they reply to you?" says the doctor. BEEP BEEP. "Right, okay, let's see here..." he begins to read from the manual. "Sometimes it can be hard to get the person-of-interest's attention. Did your action get the intended outcome." BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP... Then we snap back to the boy's view. Lucille's head is now a pencil eraser. She now stands up and is walking towards him, menacingly. Will is losing control of the dream. The doctor, meanwhile, is reading something in the manual about Troubleshooting. What to do if the person doesn't reply. "It is very important," says the manual, "to manage the patient in times of crisis, or they could be otherwise irreparably harmed." Manage the patient? the doctor wonders. Lucille's eraser head is growing bigger and she doesn't quite look like Lucille anymore. "You're fine, Will, gotta take this." He steps outside the office briefly. Baby, whispering, you can't seriously be outside right now! ERASE YOU ERASE YOU Lucille is saying, ERASE YOU! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Do not come here while I'm working! Will is beeping frantically. Then a long BEEEEEEEEP. Then silence. The doctor comes back into the office and speaks to Will. "Hey Will, sorry about that. Say YES if you can hear me." But no sound. Lucille has erased Will. "Um..." the doctor flips through the instruction manual. "If a patient does not reply through the Communication System, do not pressure them for contact, as they could be going through a transformative experience."* Transformative experience*, the doctor thinks. Okay, sounds good. "Or a traumatic one." "Jeff!" he hears a voice from outside. A banana hits his window. Meanwhile we snap back to the boy. Jeffrey! he hears, followed by a thud. He's underwater. There's nothing. He's floating.
NOTES: this fails to set up the goals of the kid
"The point is to be yourself."
"Be myself. Okay."
"Where are you?"
"I'm nowhere."
"You can't be nowhere. What do you see."
"I don't see anything."
"You see black?"
"Yeah, I see just black."
"Okay, what are you thinking about?"
I felt myself close my eyes harder.
"It's just not easy to be myself," I said.
"Why is that."
"I don't know."
"Sometimes we can find it too uncomfortable to be exactly ourselves", said Dr. Nussbaum, "so, in that case, we can imagine ourselves as someone that we really want to be. Someone that we admire. It's like being ourselves, but the kind of person we want to be, with all the parts we don't like kind of taken away."
"Okay," I said.
"Can you think of someone in your life, who maybe you admire? Someone who you'd like to be someday?"
"Yes," I said.
"And what happens when you imagine being that person?"
It felt good.
"I feel good."
"What do you mean you feel good."
"It feels easy."
"And where are you now."
I could see it now.
"At school."
"Where at school?"
"At my desk."
"And what's around you?"
I looked around.
"I see... I see me."
"What's it like," I'm asking. I respond to myself:
"It's hard to describe," Addison said to me. "I mean, obviously it didn't feel bad. It felt good."
"Okay."
"What do you wanna know?"
"Dunno. Like, everything?"
"Basically, short story is this. Sends me a snap. It's a picture of her TV, she's watching something on Netflix and says she's scared to watch it alone and wants somebody to go over."
"So you went over."
"No -- I mean I did but not right then. Like it was definitely a signal, OK. And maybe I could've. But you can't just do whatever people ask you to do. You gotta make it seem like, oh, you're really busy, but you might have time later, you know, let it be a little uncertain. Because when you go over there, basically, every check you write is gonna eventually have to get cashed."
"Where's that from."
"My dad. But I think it basically means, you talk a big game, you gotta back it up, and that can backfire if you don't have the balls to pull it off. But if you make it sound like you're just gonna stop by, it's late, a little out of the way, but you can do a favor for a friend... then it's like..."
He made a swooping gesture with his hand like a plane landing.
"Touchdown."
"So did she text you after," I asked.
"Yea," he said, closing the locker.
"Nice." I held up my hand.
"Um..." he took my hand and gently shook it, "I'll hug your girlfriend, but I draw the line at slapping her."
"You absolute fuck."
"No, really. What about your girl?"
"My girl?"
"Yea the girl you never tell me anything about."
"There's nothing to tell."
"Is it Melissa?"
"Melissa has stribismus."
"Ok. So does Ryan Gosling."
"We'll never see eye-to-eye about this."
"McKenzie?"
"Okay, what the fuck Addison, she just lost her eye to cancer. Why are you listing off the blind girls."
"First, she's still hot. Second, easy to blindfold, if you're into that. Third, you stand the best chance."
"You absolute fuck! How about this, she goes to another school."
"Hm. I'd believe that if you ever left your house."
That crushed me. He saw it.
"Wait, no," Addison said, "I didn't mean it like that."
He thought again. "Oh and by the way, Lucy says hi. Or, she told me to tell you she said hi."
"She's not my type, I told you."
"She's just like you."
"I don't want someone just like me."
"She's smart. She's cool. She's normal."
"Just just not my type."
"What's your type then."
"Tall."
"Oh really."
"I'm not joking. Like taller than me. Slightly taller than you."
"Intriguing," said Addison.
And she's got
"black hair. Long."
"Okay," says Dr. Nussbaum, "and, importantly for the exericse, just to reiterate, this is your person. For your own mind. You can take little pieces of her from people you've seen before, but we want to avoid any real-life expectations getting in the way."
I saw just the back of her head. She had shiny, jet black hair. Shoulder length.
"So what now?" he said.
"I try to get a good look at her."
"And you don't, under any circumstances, talk to her. Now," said Dr. Nussbaum, "when it comes to hypnosis, you can't force things to happen. It's a bit like a lucid dream. Do you know what I mean when I say lucid dream?"
No, I heard myself say, as if from far away.
He spoke more slowly than usual.
A lucid dream is just like a normal dream, but you're aware that it's happening while it's happening. It's not so different, actually, from what's happening right now. One of the things that people assume about lucid dreaming is that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. And that's partly true. But the mind actually limits what we can do in a dream. We try to fly, and find that we can't, because the mind doesn't expect us to be able to fly. It's actually quite hard to fly if you've never done it before. You sort of have to learn to expect it to happen.
Why are you telling me this?
Try to see what she looks like.
I... I can't.
Why not?
She's not turning around.
She won't just turn around. You have to expect her to turn around.
"Psst," I said to her.
Did she hear me?
"Hey..."
I waited for her to look at me. But she was taking notes. The teacher was talking about something. Where are we again? Is this algebra class?
Nothing's happening.
Then you must not be expecting anything to happen.
Of course she wouldn't look. She's smart. She's not interested in bullshitting during class hours. What's something that would make anyone turn around to face me? What's something a girl like her would want me to do?
And suppose it weren't you there. Suppose it was that person that you admire. What would happen then? What would you expect then?
At that moment, she flipped her hair back, and turned to face me, just momentariily, catching the briefest glance. She smiled. I was perfectly still, almost as if I didn't notice.
She has green eyes, I said.
Good, said Dr. Nussbaum, is that what you expected?
Actually it--
She was right in front of me.
"What are you doing here."
"Huh?"
"I said what are you doing here. You're different from everyone else here."
"What do you mean."
"I've seen you before. You're different. Important. Like a big part of this story. I can feel it somehow."
"That's because I'm dreaming this. I think, anyway."
"Oh," she said, "you think this is a dream."
"I mean, it's supposed to be a dream."
"How about that. Then what am I in all this?"
"You're supposed to be someone I'm afraid to talk to. Someone who would intimidate me. It's part of the therapy."
"In therapy. Checks out. And what if it's me who's dreaming?"
"That wouldn't make any sense. Why would you be in therapy."
"Maybe I have daddy issues."
"You don't."
"Sure, but I could."
"The reason I'm even here," I said, "is I've never even..."
[...] but memories from earlier this day, this week, this year, crawled over him in his bed like spiders, from his belly to his neck, causing his mandible to clench and his eyelids to snap open. Every day was like this with him. In bed, as each memory struck him, his legs and feet would slowly bend into distorted crescents. He lost sleep this way every night.
In the past, he learned, none of this was permanent. But here, it was all written down in the permanent record. Every misspoken word, every embarrassing action, every low grade on his algebra exam. It was indelibly recorded forever, and known to somebody, somewhere, somehow.
That night he fell asleep, and before his eyelids had even closed, the spiraling dance of hypnagogic imagery began to turn in his field of view like a kaleidoscope. He saw fractals, faces, and memories. Before much time had passed, these images had been subsumed by a long, long tunnel which opened up in front of him like the mouth of a primordial snake. There was only dark static and this tunnel. His body was dressed in the static, and shortly, he floated in. The tunnel welcomed him in.
As he fell into it, the tunnel dressed him in a new body. He noticed hair on his arms and legs, broader shoulders, and he needed no glasses to see. He felt distinctly handsome. Distinctly different from thirteen.
In seconds, the tunnel had transported him somewhere familiar. He was in the back row of chairs, facing the blackboard. He raised his hand, and like magic, his algebra teacher appeared. Michael raised his hand, his teacher called on him, and he gave an answer to a question the teacher hadn't asked.
"That," said the teacher, "that is exactly right! Wow!"
With enthusiasm, the teacher wrote the answer on the blackboard. But Michael couldn't understand it. It was like gibberish.
Hmm, thought Michael. He looked around. It was all familiar, but somehow different. He looked at his hands. His wrists were muscular, belonging to a boy much older than him. He had a watch on, but couldn't read the time. And the number of fingers on his hands was constantly changing.
"Oh, I'm dreaming. This is a dream."
Someone tapped him on the shoulder with a pen.
"It's a lucid dream," she said. She was sitting in the chair just behind him. She had black hair, white skin, and green eyes that looked just a bit too big to be real. "It means you're awake and asleep at the same time."
"I know what a lucid dream is," he said, "you don't have to tell me."
"Hm," she said, thinking, "if you knew what a lucid dream was, why would you care what I think? I'll be gone forever the instant you open your eyes," she said.
"I've never seen anyone like you before," he said. He wanted to say: you're prettier than anyone I've ever seen before. Each strand of her hair appeared to him in exquisite detail to be perfectly cylindrical, perfectly smooth, and perfectly black. Her eyes, belligerently green, were carefully following his.
He looked at her lips. They were also black, and shiny.
"Ah-hem," she coughed, "a little respect?"
"I love you, I love you..."
"I love you too, honey," chuckled his mom, touching his smooth face, "but it's seven thirty and you're still in bed." She was sitting on his bed.
"Wait," said the boy, "what?"
She stood up and threw his clothes on him. "Time to go," she said, as she left the room.
He felt around on the bed for something, but it was empty. He felt his face, and it was smooth and round again, like a fourteen year old's face. He looked at his room. It was like the night before. His body was his again.
He sat on the bus with his head against the window. The bus vomited out all the students, and the school vacuumed them up. He sat in homeroom with his head against the desk.
"Psst, ass-canoe," said Zeek, throwing a ball of paper at his head, "if I have to stay awake through this bullshit, so do you."
"I didn't sleep."
"Fuck you! Maybe don't jerk off all night and you'll have the energy to pledge allegiance." said Zeek. Please rise, said the intercom. Everyone rose. I pledge allegiance...
"I only have two settings," said Adan, "jerking off, and jerking on."
"What the fuck does that even mean," whispered Zeek.
Adan thought for a second. "Question: do you remember your dreams?"
And to the republic, for which it stands...
"Yeah, I dreamed I banged your hot-ass mom. Is that where you get your canoe-ass from? Your mom? Her ass is more like a kayak though."
...with liberty, and justice, for all.
"What did I do to deserve you," said Adan. "No, I mean actually. What the fuck did I do."
Later, in computer lab, Adan opened up the web browser and googled "lucid dreaming." He had heard about it before. The page told him to constantly note whether he was dreaming or not. To try to read pages of text, to test if light switches work or not. He made mental notes of all of this.
When he got home that night, he tinkered with the light switches and