Test, Don't Test

Inspired by an interesting source:

And I thank RMS for this Challenge:

At least the weather was nice. Dr. Ally Sherman was happy that it was a beautiful day for the start of the study. The Institute of Psychological Media was glowing in the sun as she drove up and found her assigned spot. In her first week, they had explained what they were going to do with their grant money and support from other institutions and private companies. They were doing remarkable things with the human mind now, said Dr. Saleen. They can now project dreams during the REM state and we can actually use them to solve… Well, that was the problem. Ally looked down at the I.D. on her lanyard as she thought about the awkward pause that stood out from a very comfortable talk. What were they doing with this data? What was the Institute going to pursue in the future (the brochure and prospectus she studied that weekend were useless)? She said hello to the security staff that remained unsmiling as she passed down the hall. Why was she still thinking about that speech? It was going to be a long two weeks and she wanted to focus on the subjects. It was her big chance and every journal or magazine with an interest in science knew that this was going to be big.

*

“Twelve?”

Her assistant, a Michael Sydney (not yet a doctor), was ready with the coffee and all of the equipment. He had the clipboard set on her desk with the pens and paper forms created just for the process. Maybe he was 25, 26? Ally just wanted to get some coffee in her and wait for the results.

“A small group at first. We are still in early days with this.”

Michael stood up, looked over at the two-way mirror, and smiled.

“Still can’t believe that we can do this.”

“Nothing proven yet.” She saw the bank of monitors glow and hum with multicoloured graphs and lines to indicate the health of the subjects. “We have only had some signs and glimpses of something bigger. If this works out, then…well, I’m not really sure what come next.” The coffee was actually quite good (did Michael make it himself?).

“Dream projection…” He leaned back in an ergonomic chair. “It’s like something from a bad movie.”

“Or a good one.” She took her seat.

“Hmm. I just thought about a hundred bad movies when I first heard of this. And then, well…”

“Well, what?”

He turned to her, light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs giving his glasses a very odd glow. “It never ends well, does it? Some weird shit goes down and then they cannot control what comes out. It is always when people try to cross some sort of line and then…” He mimicked an atomic blast with his hands.

Yeah, around his mid-twenties; definitely still a kid.

“You should stick with videogames. Those films are great, but they just go too far sometimes.”

“Right.” He looked over at the mirror. “Nothing to report yet, but they have just started to enter REM sleep.”

She looked over the clipboard. Michael had done his work well and Ally was back to being intrigued by this kid. How did they choose these kids for the project? She had her degree, experience, the right contacts, and a bit of luck. What did this kid have? Should she still be thinking of him as a kid?

The machines were humming.

*

There were no names given. All the beds had test subjects named SIM 1 to SIM 12. Gender was also included, but it was not considered especially important for the study. Ally had to wonder about that one. Personally, she wanted to know everything about the people in front of her. Studying biology and psychology proved to her that no two people were really ever alike. There were always quirks and oddities that could not be easily understood. But this was a particular study for a particular reason. They just wanted to figure out how these dreams could exist and what they could do with them. They were going for the process first, the purpose later.

SIM 4 was active.

“All right,” Michael exhaled, leaning forward on the keyboard. “We have liftoff.”

Was he going to become boring? Maybe it would help if they worked in separate labs (not something that she could bring up now)?

“Any activity?”

“Just the eye movement. But the computer is catching something strange and…well, just strange. You can see it here.”

There was a separate screen, broken up like a Zoom conference, where each subject was given a space for their projections. SIM 4 was the only active one. And Ally was impressed.

“Wow.”

“I know, right? All that stuff about not dreaming in colour really doesn’t work when you get the proof.”

On the rectangular space for just this subject was a scene that almost too beautiful to stare at. A home was situated on what looked like a private island, with boats of all shapes and purposes idling nearby. Splashes were audible (another interesting touch with this study); trees swayed without a care; sunlight touched every surface of the scene.

No people were visible…yet.

“Just one place so far.”

“Right.” Michael looked over her shoulder. “I wonder if this is some buried vacation memory.”

SIM 7 now lit up the screen.

“And there is another one.”

Again, a very beautiful scene, this time a desert in what looked like something from an old western. Tumbleweeds, dirt roads, a simple cabin made from logs and planks of wood and cacti.

Where were the people?

Ally decided not to say anything about this. Maybe this was just one of the things that happened when you probed dreams. Eventually you would get to something real, right?

She kept staring.

Soon, all of the subjects were represented on the screen. There were science-fiction scenes that would have made a George Lucas fan proud; cars chasing cars; trains running into other trains; Shangri-Las; Candylands; places that looked like every child’s dream of what Christmas, Easter and Halloween could be if they all fell on the same day.

And not a single person.

“Very strange.”

Michael must have noticed. Ally wanted to point it out now.

“You noticed?”

“Yes, I mean,” he stood up and walked over to the monitors, “it’s like they really don’t have any imagination. No wars; no sex or…” He had his arms akimbo, reminding Ally of a cartoon she saw once as a child (was that Bugs Bunny?). “So dull.”

“But there is something else, right?”

He turned and looked down.

“What else?”

“No people.”

Smiling like he did, she thought of a cat catching a long-desired mouse.

“Strange…I really did not notice that.” He went back to the desk and picked up his own clipboard. “Should we note that?”

A very fair question. She knew that their job was to just review and record what they saw. The machines would get the basics on the biology of the subjects; they were there to record what they saw. This was part of the work.

“We have to. It’s a factor…I think.”

“Right.”

The screens went on and on with the same set of scenes. There was something that hinted at a dirty dream (music was straight out of an old porno led to a scene at…a school; not a single hot student or leering professor to be seen). There were more scenes that could have been out of a war movie (one open plain in what looked like sub-Saharan Africa; some sand dunes shifting and changing shapes as the wind grew and faltered). But…

“No people.”

“It is still early. And I’m hungry.” Michael looked down at his lanyard and noted the bar code. “The cafeteria is supposed to be fantastic here. And we won’t have to fight over dessert.”

He was trying to lighten the mood, she thought. That was a good sign of maturity.  Maybe there was hope for this one…

“I think that we both need a break. The monitors are going to catch anything we miss.” Ally could not let it go.

“No people.”

“Or animals.”

She stopped moving to the door. “What?”

“Animals. No living creatures in any of these dreams. That’s worth noting, I think. Not a single one.”

She had to give that to him.

“Let’s eat and try to figure out what this all means…later.”

*

The food really was fantastic. They had provided them with carefully prepared dishes (Michael apparently had a problem with gluten), and also a space that did not resemble the kind of cafeteria that Ally suspected would be in a laboratory.

They sat on a sofa with their coffees and looked around.

“Do you think we are changing things?”

Michael had a biscuit halfway to his mouth. “What things?”

“The world. Society. The way we think about…anything, everything… This is big.”

He leaned back, wiping crumbs of oatmeal from his face.

“Yeah, I thought about that. And like I said, the danger, too. Just not sure what come next. But we are on the edge of something…”

Ally was letting those last words spin in her thoughts as she finished her espresso.

“The edge…” She smiled. Michael closed his eyes.

And then they heard it.

“That’s…the mics are off, right?”

“Of course.” She stood up and walked over to the hallway. “That wasn’t…c’mon.”

They both ran down the hallway and had to stop when they looked through the glass panel of the lab.

There was a man standing in the room.

To be clear, it was not just a man. It was a soldier, fatigues and weapon in hand, standing at attention, facing the door.

Ally and Michael waited a bit…and then she swiped on the door’s scanner.

The soldier did not move. He simply stared past them and left his weapon on his shoulder. Michael snapped fingers in front of him and there was no response.

“Amazing.”

“Be careful!” Ally was looking carefully at the man. At least six feet tall, muscular, crewcut under the helmet (maybe?), and his face was neither angry nor tense. It was more of a blank…like something from a unfinished sketch.

“This is from the dreams.” Michael was almost giddy as he said it. “This is a projection!” Ally could tell he was trying not to dance around the room.

“Look, we should…” She found the clipboard, wondering what to write down. “We should try to note this and then contact…”

A roar echoed from a far corner. There was a tiger pacing in a small circle. Ally felt her skin get cold.

“Jesus…”

“Don’t move.” Ally noted something with both the soldier and the tiger. They were present, but they were not aware of their surroundings.

“So odd.” He picked up his phone and took a picture.

“What are you doing?”

“We should record this. We need photos…”

“There are cameras all over the place.” She stared at the tiger and waved at the upper corners of the room. “This is all being saved…somewhere.” She looked at the clipboard, realizing just how useless writing anything down would be. “We should just see what happens next.”

They both sat at the desks, ignoring the main screens as the room filled up with more guests. Cowboys faced each other, waiting for the draw. A housewife was in tears as she waited for someone to approach her. Two boys rode their bikes in very short stretches, returning to the same spot on the floor of the lab to begin again. Ally and Michael noted that they were never interfered with as they sat, stared, made notes, and wondered why this was happening.

“Absolutely incredible.”

“Indeed.” Ally was checking the monitor to see if there were any abnormalities she missed. “Not a single change. All the test subjects are still asleep. And…we are not being noticed.”

Michael laughed out loud. “There’s a tiger in the corner, and Billy the Kid is about to take out Pat Garrett. I’m glad that they don’t care about us.”

Ally admitted that this was a fair point, but she kept this to herself. They really were on the edge of something and she was glad to be a part of it.

So glad…

But there was something that she needed to check.

“I need to check one thing.”

Michael barely noticed as she padded over to the soldier (still the same blank stare). He was very intrigued by the housewife (quite a 1950s version of a beauty, she thought), wondering which SIM was connected to her story. It was when she looked back in the corner at the circling tiger that she formed her thought.

There was no heat, no smell. No sense that this would be difficult to do.

It was a beautiful day for it.

She reached out to the animal, attempting to rub its back as it made another circuit.

So beautiful…

*

The security guards ran when they heard the alarms, very surprised that they would have to enter a room with two scientists and a bunch of sleepers who seemed to have not stirred at all. The room was empty. Not a single entity remained and both of the people they had allowed into the building were gone.

Was this a test? One guard hurried off to find someone to speak to while the other stared at the screens for the various SIMs. Not much of a show, he thought, and he left the room before noticing that Michael was now in the middle of a war zone, attempting not to get killed as a horde of sword-wielding soldiers chased him. And Dr. Ally Sherman was now a suburban housewife right out of a terrible sitcom her mother would have enjoyed. She had no idea why she was crying but there was something that she was anticipating as she stared at the door of their very expensive. Was it a husband? An old lover (very risqué for the time)? She just knew that it was a beautiful day and she had nothing better to do.

*

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