The Experiment of Dreams (4 page)

Dr. Egan answered: “Tomorrow would be great. Would you like the limo to pick you up, or would you prefer to drive?”

Ha! The Limo!

“The limo would be great, thank you.”

After a few additional mouthfuls of whiskey, he found himself in bed early. He didn’t get drunk and stare at the painting as usual—losing himself in loss and regret—but rather, his mind was preoccupied with his visit to the lab. Having something to look forward to was a strange feeling. A feeling he had not felt in quite some time.

A limo is picking me up!

T
he limo stopped at the gated entrance to Stone Hollow. The driver lowered his window, leaned out to type on the security keypad, and the gates opened before them. The car continued along the narrow pebble-lined driveway, curving to the left and right past rolling sand dunes covered in patches of low scrub-brush. After a few twists and turns, the driveway entered a clearing. To the left was a two-story house with an attached two-car garage. The car stopped before the house and the driver got out to open the back door. Warm air, laden with the salty thickness of the sea, rushed inside.

Ben got out, stretching his legs and looked about. The house was rectangular, with the driveway leading to the narrow side so that the front of the house faced off to the right. This was strange, Ben thought, since he had never seen a house that faced the side of a property.

The house was large, but not the mansion he’d envisioned when told all about Mr. Timothy Kalispell, the owner of Stone Hollow Estate. During the long drive up, Dr. Wulfric told Ben that Mr. Kalispell was a multimillionaire, perhaps billionaire, who liked to spend his money on lavishness and luxuries, and sometimes oddities and obsessions. The house Ben saw before him had maybe four bedrooms.

“Is he home?” Ben asked Dr. Wulfric as the old doctor pulled himself out of the car.

“Mr. Kalispell? No, he’s rarely here. This is his summer home. He brings his family here once in a while, but I haven’t heard word of him coming down.”

Ben could smell the ocean and hear it along in with the breeze, but all he could see were the rolling sand dunes and the wild thorn bushes and trees.

“This way, Ben.” Dr. Wulfric started walking toward the house as the limo driver drove farther up the driveway. Ben noticed that the driveway swerved past the house and disappeared around a bend. Dr. Wulfric caught Ben’s gaze and stopped, “Oh,” he said, “Were you asking if Mr. Kalispell is here—in this house?” He pointed to the two-story building, the bottom half a façade of light oval stones, the second half wood-shingled in soft blue, almost grey, with three white bay-windows facing outwards, and one large half-moon window cresting out of the roof from the attic.

“This isn’t the house, Ben; this is the guesthouse. Rather, it
was
a guesthouse. Now it’s our lab. Originally it had a pool, I believe, but the pool was filled in long ago.” The doctor laughed. “No, no, Mr. Kalispell wouldn’t be here, his house is farther up the driveway.”

They walked to a door on the side of the building. Dr. Wulfric found his keys, unlocked the door, and held it open for Ben to enter. The entryway looked more like a home than a lab, with a Persian rug on the ground and colorful sconces on the walls. The row of starched lab coats hanging on the wall contrasted with the cozy feel.

Dr. Wulfric exchanged his jacket for a lab coat, asking Benjamin to do the same. Immediately Dr. Wulfric looked like a scientist—a stereotypical mad scientist. His white hair and beard, combined with his glasses, white shirt and tie, changed him from a gentle old man into a serious doctor.

“Okay, Ben, this way.” Dr. Wulfric opened a second door and searched a moment for a light switch on the other side. Overhead lights flickered to life, and Ben entered the lab.

It was a large open room with a long counter running the full length against the left wall, covered with vials full of colorful liquids and thin tubes that twisted this way and that out of glass beakers. Shelves lined the walls above and below the counter—everything neat, everything tidy, everything organized. Three tables were set in a row beside the long counter. Looking down at the room from above, the left side would resemble the letter E. Computer monitors, an unidentifiable box-like apparatus, greasy mechanical parts, and strips of wire covered the three counters in an orderly fashion—although, Ben had no idea what that order may be. Several cube-shaped machines, some four feet high with thick cords jutting out from random slots, sat heavy on the ground. Red and green LED lights blinked in random intervals from various parts. A CAT scanner, or what looked like a CAT scanner, sat large in the opposite corner. Thick black cords trailed from the back, connecting to a desk covered with computer monitors and blinking control panels.

“Welcome to our lab, Ben,” Dr. Wulfric said, walking from desk to desk, turning on switches and bringing computer monitors to life.

“Nice lab,” Ben said, not sure how to reply since he had no idea what he was looking at.

“Fortunately for us, our lab is in a house rather than a hospital. It gives the room a rather, well, warm feel. Wouldn’t you say?”

Ben looked around. He noticed the same playful sconces lining the inside walls. They cast a reddish glow from their swirled glass covers along the room’s highly detailed molding and trim. A light gray plastic—or perhaps rubber—mat covered the floor, but Ben could see hard wood along the edges. If it were not for the harsh fluorescent lights overhead, the lab would certainly resemble a sitting room rather than a lab.

“Yes, Dr. Wulfric, I have to agree with you. This is much better than a hospital.”

“Please, Ben, call me Peter.”

“Peter, does the lab extend back there?” Ben pointed to a set of double doors in the middle of the far wall, and one singular door to the left of it.

“Um,” Dr. Wulfric began, staring at a monitor as it spewed numbers, “Not exactly.” He looked up. “The one on the left goes to the second floor. The other leads to a separate room—nothing to do with the lab. Come, Ben. Take a seat.”

Ben sat on a swivel-stool next to Dr. Wulfric. A moment later the single door on the left side of the room opened, and a tall man wearing a lab coat entered.

“Ben,” Dr. Wulfric said, not looking up from the computer, “this is my assistant, Dr. Charles Egan.”

“Nice to meet you.” Dr. Egan shook Ben’s hand.

“Likewise.”

Ben recognized the nasally voice from the telephone call the previous day. Dr. Egan was a gaunt man with prominent facial bones and thick glasses. Under his lab coat, he wore the same generic button-down shirt as Dr. Wulfric, only his tie was plain and drab. Dr. Wulfric’s tie, Ben noticed, was vibrant, resembling modern art.

Dr. Wulfric looked up from the monitor. “Dr. Egan,” he said, “would you please lower the lights?”

Dr. Egan nodded and went to the light switch. The atmosphere immediately became subdued. Fluorescent lights gave Ben a headache—not an aura migraine—but a headache nonetheless. Plenty of natural light came in from the high windows bordering the ceiling.

Dr. Wulfric typed something on the keyboard, and the numbers disappeared from the computer screen, replaced by a still image. “Here we are,” he said. “Sit back and enjoy the show.”

Dr. Wulfric hit
play
, and the images on the screen came to life. Whatever they were watching was shaky and fuzzy. It looked like a home movie from the ‘80s—like something his father with no photography experience would have taped when he was a child. There was a small pond, with maybe … something moving … birds, perhaps. Yes, definitely birds, distorted and pixilated. They flew upward. The camera panned along the horizon, following them until they disappeared out of view.

Then the screen flashed and displayed just a jumble of colors and thick pixilated shapes. Ben squinted. It was nonsense. There were people on the screen, lost behind distortion and blur, oddly shaped and almost impossible to make out. Someone walking away—no, not walking. Gliding? Yes, gliding. Now turning to smile at the camera. Suddenly, the image became sharp. It was a young girl, a child maybe six or seven with long blonde hair. She was smiling at the camera while waving and talking, although there was no sound. Ben thought she looked familiar, but then again, all cute little blonde children looked alike to him.

Suddenly the camera veered to the right, and in a flash, the scene cleared, and focus and clarity popped in great detail. It was a roller skating rink with people skating in circles. Only the people now were fuzzy and stick-like. The shiny pine-colored rink, the bright blue and red waist-high wall that encircled the rink, and the rotating disco ball flashing different colors and casting them about the room in a circling array—those colors were vivid, in amazing clarity and detail.

The scene seemed limited by the resolution of the monitor. Ben could practically hear “YMCA” playing in the background. It looked identical to the roller skating rink his parents took him to as a boy. The colors coalesced with such force, the room so realistic and nearly three-dimensional, that a spike of pleasure—a sudden release of endorphins and adrenaline—went off in Ben’s brain, trailing down his spine in a shiver. The hairs on his skin stood on end.

The camera swung back to the blonde child, skating away on small uncertain legs, her arms stretched out from her body like a tightrope walker. The hand of the camera operator waved to the little girl. She turned again to face the camera, only her face had become blurred, the features no longer crisp.

“What is this?” Ben asked.

Dr. Wulfric paused stroking his beard. “Just keep watching.”

The scene disintegrated into a swirl of pixelated color. It reminded Ben of one of his aura migraines. Images resembling buildings and people appeared among the swirling sea of pixilation, only to drown back down in the tide of colored noise.

“Just a moment,” Dr. Wulfric said, using a swivel knob on the keyboard to fast-forward the scene. He stopped as the images cleared to what looked like mountains; only they were very blurry. Then the image again snapped into unimaginable clarity, the brightness of which startled and entranced Ben. His brain let loose a sense of euphoria that swept through his body. The camera was high in the air—in an airplane or helicopter—flying above a colorful mountain range or deep valley, perhaps the Grand Canyon. Ben didn’t know.

“It’s beautiful,” Ben said. “Is that the Grand Canyon?”

“I’m not sure.”

Patches of brush in the far distance appeared in such detail that Ben doubted that he’d be able to see it any clearer if he were there himself.

Suddenly the camera dropped, diving straight into a massive gorge. The plane barreled down, and then quickly leveled itself, going faster and faster—like a jet. Ben felt his stomach lurch as the camera swung straight up, hugging the wall of the canyon. It was so close to the rocky edge that whatever aircraft was taking these pictures was in serious danger of crashing into the wall. Flashes of dark brown, yellow, and orange whizzed past the screen at amazing speed, yet the image was never blurred; only his eyes couldn’t process the speed in which they were passing. When Ben blinked and held his eyes shut, the exact image of whatever was flashing by on the screen stayed in his mind like a photograph—no streaking or blurring whatsoever. It was so fast—too fast. The scene swooped down and back up through the valleys and gorges, in unbelievable detail.

Ben’s mind whirled. Dr. Wulfric hit a button and the screen went black. Ben shuttered his eyes, letting his brain rest.

“So, what did you think of my video?” Dr. Wulfric asked.

“I don’t know. Those colors … I’ve never seen colors that vivid on a TV screen. What is this, some new high-def system you’re testing?”

“Not exactly.” He chuckled. “The little girl was my daughter, although she’s no longer a child. The roller skating rink is just like the one we went to on her third birthday, maybe a little different. The mountains, though—I have no idea where they came from.”

“Okay …”

“That, Ben … was from a dream I had a few days ago. I don’t remember dreaming it, but that was indeed recorded from my dream.”

Ben looked about the room—the CAT scanner, the computer monitors and blinking machinery, and the Pyrex beakers and other labware. “What exactly are you guys doing here? You recorded your dream? Is that what that thing does?” Ben pointed to the scanner.

“Sort of,” Dr. Egan replied before Dr. Wulfric could answer. “What we have here are two separate technologies. We’ve created a serum that actively monitors the neurological activity in the brain during REM sleep and transmits the activity to that piece of equipment over there. That instrument is called a Frequency Responding Lucid Transmitter. The serum works off the electrical output of the brain, triggered in part by the release of serotonin in the pineal gland, which lies above the medulla—”

“Yes, Ben,” Dr. Wulfric said, waving Dr. Egan down—who was pointing at the base of his head to his own medulla oblongata. “To answer your question without confusing you any further …” He looked again at Dr. Egan, “that device can read and transmit the images from your sleep—from anybody’s sleep. Presently, it can only transmit during the REM cycle, but that is about to change. This machine can record a dream in greater length and detail than the dreamer is aware when he’s dreaming.”

“That’s just crazy,” Ben said. “I mean in a good way. It’s amazing. I’m starting to see where I fit in with all of this.”

Dr. Wulfric smiled. “We would like to further explore the extent to which this machine can operate. We need someone who can utilize their REM cycle to its fullest potential. Someone like you, Ben.”

“So, I would have to sleep in that thing overnight?” Ben pointed to the bulky machine, covered with cables and blinking lights. The bed was nothing more than a thin pad, and barely wide enough to support the width of a man’s shoulders.

“We call that old girl Lucy, short for Lucid Transmitter, which is short for Frequency Responding Lucid Transmitter. Lucy sounds better.”

“Right. Lucy, then.”

“We’ve come up with an updated model—a much smaller unit that fits right over a bed frame. All you have to do is sleep. There’s a bedroom upstairs. The test requires that you stay the night.”

“And what was that about a serum?”

“Yes, the serum works to communicate information from your body back to Lucy. It transmits at a frequency produced by the neurons in your brain and sends that information to Lucy, where it is further processed. That’s all I can tell you about the serum right now. I’m sure you understand, but until you decide to go forward with this project, there are certain things that will need to remain private. What I can tell you is this: the serum possesses no direct or indirect health threats or problems, whatsoever. It is not dangerous or toxic. In twenty-four to thirty-six hours after injection, the compound stops working, shuts down, and basically dies. It filters from the body the same way as everything else.”