The Dream Recorder

The Dream Recorder

     Jason Mellon paced around his room at the clinic. His arms flailed all around him on shaky legs. He kept saying, “A million dreams are keeping me awake.” Over and over again, he kept saying it.

     Suddenly, Jason stopped pacing. Right in front of a large two-way mirror. “I can’t sleep. If I do, I will have these million dreams.”

     On the other side of that two-way mirror, Dr. Emily Browne stood with another doctor. “How long has he been like this?”

     “At least eight months,” answered Dr. Walter King. “That’s when I started working at this clinic, and he was already here when I got here.”

     “Is it true, he hasn’t slept since he got here?” Emily kept her eyes on Jason who had started repeating, “A million dreams are keeping me awake.”

     Walter kept following around Jason wherever he went too. “Unfortunately, it’s true.”

     “How did this happen to him?” Emily was now looking at Jason’s chart.

     “We have been trying to figure that out ever since he was brought in here.”

##

     The Assistant Director placed a mini mike on her lapel of Jason. She smiled. “There’s no reason to be nervous. It’s just a television commercial. Just be yourself, and you will be just fine.”

     After the Assistant Director left, it was just Jason standing in front of the camera. His laboratory was behind him. “Have you ever had a dream you forgot just after you woke up? Only you didn’t want to forget, and no matter how much you tried to remember it you couldn’t.”

     “What about a dream you never wanted to end, but when you woke up, you couldn’t remember it? You tried to go back to sleep to the same dream, but you didn’t do it.”

     “Don’t forget about nightmares. They are a part of dreaming too. We have all had them. Nightmares are what we all want to forget. Staying awake for a few minutes sometimes helps you forget them. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

     Jason steps aside to reveal his laboratory with an opened metal hat with a large oval metal eyeball in front of it on a table behind him. “Now you can forget it. You can also remember the dreams you want to remember.”

      “This is The Dream Recorder. With it, you can get rid of the dreams and nightmares you don’t want to remember and keep the ones you do.”

##

     “Fifty Dream Recorders is a good start,” said Jason, looking through a two-way mirror at fifty adults in ten rows of beds. Each adult had a Dream Recorder on their head. They were all asleep.

     Jason looked at each adult individually for several minutes. He was looking at the video monitors above their heads. Each one showed a different dream they were having. “This month is almost over. Once everyone sees The Dream Recorder work, they will all want to buy one.”

     “This was a great suggestion.” Jason looked over at his partner, Clyde Winton. “Observe the first fifty for a month to prove that it works. I think we have done that.”

     “After this gets out, we will sell a half of million of these Dream Recorders. Maybe even a million or more.” Jason returned to looking at the fifty adults too.”

     Clyde started pointing at these adults. “It looks like they are starting to wake up. I wonder how many will keep their dreams and how many will erase them today.”

##

     “Not too bad so far.” Jason sat behind a desk in a small, cluttered room tapping away at the laptop on his desk. Every so often, he glanced up at the four desktop monitors. Each monitor showed fifty small screens.

     “After only six months, we have been able to help over two thousand with The Dream Recorder.” Jason used his Mouse to tap the next number at the top of his laptop monitor to change his four desktop monitors from Dreamers Seven to Dreamers Eight.

     Clyde sat at a desk opposite Jason. His two middle monitors almost touched Jason’s two middle ones, he was doing the same as Jason. “Almost finished categorizing my thousand Dreamers from last night.”

     “I have about two hundred more before I’m done for today.” Jason tapped the Dreamers Nine tab to change his four monitors again.

     “It looks like most of my dreamers are going to keep their dreams too.” Jason couldn’t see what Clyde was doing, and vice versa, but he could hear him tapping his laptop.

     Jason tapped a Dreamer’s screen to bring it to his laptop full screen. “So far, most of my Dreamers are also keeping their dreams.”

##

     A Dreamer started screaming as a giant blob of black opened its single eye in the middle of that darkness. An eye that got bigger until it was the height of the Dreamer. Just before it leaned over to take the Dreamer into its eye. The screaming stopped.

     The laptop screen in front of Jason went black too. “Another Dreamer had a nightmare. That makes about half of my Dreamers have had at least one nightmare last night.”

     “I had almost that many Dreamers myself.” Clyde sat straight up in his chair suddenly with a shocked look on his face. His jaw dropped and his eyes got bigger.

     “Wonder if there’s a reason why there have been so many nightmares last night.” Jason quickly brought another Dreamer to his laptop full screen.

     Clyde couldn’t stop staring at whatever was on his laptop. “We always have some Dreamers who have nightmares every night, but not this many.”

     Jason tapped the sign-off buttons on his laptop. The other four monitors went off too. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get any sleep today.”

####

     Looking over at Jason with a big smile on his face, Clyde knew what he was looking at on his laptop. “Having another sex dream?”

     “What makes you think that?” Jason couldn’t take his eyes off a young couple having sex. He couldn’t see them doing it because of the covers covering most of them, but he did see them as they got into their bed.

     “The look on your face says you are either looking at a sex dream or you’re looking at porn again,” Clyde went back to watching his laptop.”

     Jason looked at Clyde. “I’m not looking at porn. At not while I’m at work.”

     “I was just kidding.” Clyde suddenly had a big smile on his face.

     “Now look who is looking at porn.” Jason returned to looking at his laptop.

     Clyde couldn’t stop looking at his laptop. “We all have sex dreams. It happens a lot when we’re dreaming.”

     “I know.” Jason looked at Clyde. “With a little over a thousand Dreamers each, we have quite a few sex dreams each night. At least I do.”

##

     After Jason hung up the phone on his desk, he looked at Clyde. “Central Hospital recommends five more patients with sleeping problems. That makes almost fifteen thousand Dreamers now.”

     Clyde didn’t take his eyes off his laptop. “I think we need to hire some more Dream Assistants.”

     “We already have ten.” Jason started looking at his laptop again. “How many more do you think we need?”

     “Four of those ten have already quit. So, we need at least seven more DAs.” Jason couldn’t see what Clyde was looking at, but he could hear him tapping buttons.

     Jason continued tapping buttons on his laptop. “Why did they leave us?”

     Clyde stopped tapping away at his laptop. “For the same reason why, the others have done it. They consider what we do an invasion of privacy.”

     “It’s not,” said Jason. “Dreams aren’t real. So, we can’t share them.”

     “All we do is look at these dreams long enough to categorize them to see how we can help these, Dreamers.” Jason picked up his desk phone.

     Jason dialed a phone number. “All we need to do is adjust our commercials a little bit so someone like this doesn’t happen again.”

##

     Clyde entered that room and suddenly stopped. His eyes got bigger, and his jaw dropped. “What are you doing?”

     “Is that your dream? How long have you been using The Dream Recorder?” Clyde started walking toward Jason who lay on a couch in that room with one of The Dream Recorders on his head and a small monitor in front of him.

     Jason didn’t answer either question. He just continued to stare at the monitor before him with his eyes wide open. Clyde stopped when he got to Jason. First, he looked at Jason. Then he glanced at the monitor Jason was staring at. His jaw dropped and his eyes got even bigger.

     On the monitor, Clyde and Jason were watching a young black girl about twelve or thirteen walking down a deserted street. She kept looking behind her. Suddenly, she started running. Constantly looking behind her. No one or thing was coming after her, but her reactions said there was someone or something behind her.

     “That isn’t your dream.” Clyde pointed at the monitor. “How long have you been watching the Dreamer’s recordings.”

##

     Jason got out of a police car with some help from an officer who wasn’t nice about it. He acted like a zombie with his hands zipped tied in front of him, but he didn’t look like one. He looked dazed and confused. A foggy empty look on his face.

     A large crowd on both sides of the sidewalk leading to a police station was protesting. Quite a few of them were Dreamers. Some pretested for Jason, but most weren’t. the ones who weren’t didn’t like the ones who were. Several fights broke out. Only a line of cops on both sides stopped it from getting out of control.

     Several Reporters and news crews were there. Shouting questions and comments, one of those reporters was Angela Summers. Angela stopped Clyde who was walking behind Jason and his two police officer escorts. Each officer gripped an arm tightly. “Is it true? Has Jason Mellon been stealing Dreamer’s dreams?”

     “It’s true. He has been accused of doing it. Other than that, I can’t comment on what is going on. After all, I’m their star witness. I’m the one who turned him in.”

##

     “So, it was the police or was it the courts that brought him here?” Dr. Walter King asked. Not taking his eyes away from Jason either.

     Dr. Emily Browne shook her head ‘no’ slowly as she continued to watch Jason pacing around his room shouting, screaming, and mumbling the same thing over and over again. “A million dreams are keeping me awake.”

     “Neither” answered Emily. “It was Clyde who brought him in here. Jason never got into the police station. He passed out just before entering it. When he came around a few minutes later, he started saying, “A million dreams are keeping me awake.”

     Walter started to walk toward the door in Observation. “I’ll talk to him, but I don’t think it will do any good. I think the only thing we can do is get rid of those dreams.”

     Emily looked at Walter. “How are we going to do that?”

     “The only way I can think of is through The Dream Recorder. We erase them the same way the Dreamers have been doing it.”

     Walter turned back toward Emily, but he was looking at Jason. “Taking these dreams from his mind is very risky. It may kill him, but right now. The way he has been acting, he may welcome death.”

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