Ewa Mazierska is historian of film and popular music, who writes short stories and nonfiction in her spare time. They were published or are forthcoming in ‘The Longshot Island’, ‘The Adelaide Magazine’, ‘The Fiction Pool’, ‘Literally Stories’, ‘Ragazine’, ‘Shark Reef’, ‘BlazeVox’, ‘Red Fez’, ‘Away’, ‘The Bangalore Review’ and ‘Terror House Magazine’, among others. Ewa is a Pushcart nominee and her stories were shortlisted in several short stories competitions. She was born in Poland, but lives in Lancashire, UK.
Dream Factory
It was Paul’s last full day in Edinburgh; the next day he was meant to fly back to New York. He felt that he could not take any more of these business trips, with meetings in high-rise buildings, the coded language used by the people there which made him feel on edge and the excessive amount of coffee and alcohol, which only gave him headache and made him sleepless. He thought he screwed it up too; the meetings didn’t follow the scenarios he prepared and all four days he was in Edinburgh went excruciatingly slow. At times he even couldn’t understand these Scots, whose soft, childish accents were like a cover-up for the most insincere plans. Everybody says that Scots are friendlier than the perfidious Albion, but he thought the opposite – for him they were outdoing the English in hypocrisy. He was also down because it would be more difficult than ever before to leave his job, as Sandra, his wife, who had so many ambitions for him, and so few for herself, recently became pregnant.
As the day was surprisingly hot for such as northern city, he decided to take a stroll through the centre. Apparently it was a day of a solar eclipse, but Paul doubted this could be observed in the middle of the city. Anyway, he never saw anything more unusual than the rainbow, as far as events in the sky were concerned. He left his mobile at the hotel, so nobody could get hold of him – neither his boss, nor his colleagues from work, nor his wife. At first he walked around the castle, admiring the magnificent building, perhaps the best-situated castle he knew of and then took a steep narrow back street. The beauty of Edinburgh’s centre was that it consisted of such steep narrow streets, in which one could easily get lost but also miraculously emerge in front of the familiar building. The important thing was not to think too much about one’s destination, just let the streets lead you, as somebody told Paul the previous day. He followed this advice, especially as he had no specific plan, except to strengthen his legs, sit down in a café, drink a soda, take another aspirin and read a real paper. Unfortunately, his headache got worse, and he felt like his lips were getting dry, but there was no cafe or even a shop to buy a drink. Suddenly he found himself in front of a building with a neon sign saying ‘Dream Factory.’ The building looked like an old cinema, although as far as he knew, there were no more cinemas of this sort left in Britain. He went in, as he expected it to be cool inside and he thought that perhaps they sold soft drinks there.
Inside there was a dark corridor lit with a very weak, red light. He had to walk for some time until he reached a small desk, where a Japanese-looking receptionist greeted him in English with a strong Scottish accent:
‘Do you have an appointment, Sir?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What is your name?’
‘Paul Taylor.’
‘I do not have you on my register, but this might have to do with the power cut we suffered yesterday, which wiped some information from our system. Is this your first visit?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you need to see our personal dream advisor first.’
They carried on walking this long corridor which was even more badly lit than the reception area. The uneven walls were painted in dark red and there were many doors, as if it was a hotel full of small blind rooms, which are not uncommon in cheap hotels in China and Thailand. Paul was taken to one such room, indeed lacking windows. The only furniture there was a small desk with an old-style PC and two chairs. On one of them sat an old man, also looking distinctly Asian and he had the same Scottish accent as the receptionist. He introduced himself as ‘John’ and said:
‘Welcome to Dream Factory. Our motto is “We dream for you.” Our philosophy is based on the premise that dreaming is a hard and dangerous work. Dreams can make you exhausted and unhappy, even more so than insomnia. Therefore we want to ensure that your sleep will be restful and satisfactory and help you survive your daily life.’
’How does it work?’
‘First we try to establish what type of dream you want and what characters you want to insert into it. Then we take a scan of your brain to extract the appropriate mental images to place in what we call the master narrative. Usually these will be people you want to see when sleeping: your beloved or, conversely, your enemies. Once the right combination is achieved, you have a dream trial. If you are satisfied with it (and most customers are), we work with you on your long-time “dream plan,” where you decide how much of your sleeping time you want to devote to quality time and how much to leave to unstructured sleep.’
‘How do you insert these dreams?’
‘We inject them with a special syringe; as this ensures that they work almost immediately. However, it is also possible to take them in the form of a pill.’
‘How is it better than taking LSD or something like that?’ asked Paul.
‘Many people ask us this question. To begin with, drugs are poison; everybody agrees on that, even their users and manufacturers. Sooner or later they will kill you. By contrast, our dreams are completely safe. We represent biocybernetics, not some junkie business and we have almost a hundred years of experience. Our headquarters are in Vienna, not in Columbia or Mexico. This is our founding father – he pointed to a portrait of an oldish, baldish man with a beard and a cigar, which was vaguely familiar, but Paul could not recollect where he’d seen it before. Secondly, people take drugs to cope with their daily reality, even if the drugs affect their sleeping pattern. Our injections and pills work only when our customers are asleep. Hence they are entirely private. There is no danger that you will embarrass yourself by acting erratically or aggressively as is the case with users of heroin, LSD or meth.’
‘Are they addictive?’
‘Not in the usual sense of the word. It is you who decides what to do with the dreams. You can request new narratives or develop them with our designers or on your own. It is like moving from a primary school, through secondary, up to university. First you need a teacher who does everything for you, then one who assists you and finally you can do it all by yourself.’
‘How much does it cost?’
‘This depends on the type of meta-dream you choose. We have three basic types: the loving type, the killing type, the avant-garde type. The loving type is the cheapest – it is around 150 GBP per dream. Next is the avant-garde type – about 200 GBP per dream. The killing type is the most expensive – 250 GBP per dream. You can reduce this cost by up to 30% by agreeing for us to insert an advert into your dream, like popular songs on YouTube. The only difference is that you cannot skip the advert. You have to dream them to the very end. But they are, of course, short. We also try to make them fit the actual dream. Our team designs the adverts in the same way we design dreams. The dream trial costs 100 GBP, irrespective of the type of dream and lasts about two hours.’
‘What are these types?’
‘The loving type is, in a nutshell, the dream of having sex with a person you wish or more than one, for that matter. In the killing type you torture or kill people you hate. In the avant-garde dream you do not see people, only soothing images and hear pleasant sounds. We try to customise them too’.
‘Can you kill real people in these dreams – people I know?’
‘Yes, that is the beauty of it. You can place in your dream real people and do with them what you want. There can be historical people too and imaginary, as long as they are clearly defined. You can kill Hitler, if you wish, and sleep with Angelina Jolie.’
‘What do people usually choose?’
‘Few people opt for Hitler. Most people want to kill those they know and sleep with those whom they do not know.’
‘Like who?’
‘This year among heterosexual men the most popular are the Taylors: Taylor Swift and Taylor Schilling. Among those who are dead the leading ones are Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. But there are also national variations.’
‘Can I have a threesome with Monroe and Diana?’
‘Yes, but it will cost you an extra 50 GBP. 200 GBP in total.’
‘This will be more expensive than a night with a hooker.’
The man smiled, and then answered:
‘A customised dream is a very complex commodity and still a very new one. Imagine yourself being the first customer who bought a laptop or a mobile phone. Things like that weren’t cheap when they first entered the market.’
‘Are there any cheaper companies doing this?
‘Yes, they are, but they are not reliable. If you go there, it will be like buying crack cocaine from an unknown dealer.’
‘Can I also commit suicide in my dream?’
‘Yes, though such dreams are a bit dangerous. It might be difficult to wake up from them.’
‘OK. I know what I want. First I want to kill the annoying man whom I met in Edinburgh and… ‘
‘You do not need to tell us all that’, John raised his hand to stop Paul. ‘Just put this headgear (you see it is very light and comfy, not like these cosmic helmets from old science fiction films) and imagine the people you want to place in your dreams. First in the killing dream, then the loving dream. Press this button after you finish with one type of dream.’
Paul put the headgear, which indeed felt very light and soft, like a bandage. He wasn’t certain if he closed his eyes or not, but for sure he found himself in a new place: a kind of huge curiosity shop, dark and musty, and filled with various things from his past, mostly those which he disposed of. There was a Santa Claus costume which he was asked to wear when he was a child, many old toys, a pile of CDs Sandra threw away when they moved to a new apartment and even a piece of a fancy cake he failed to eat because Sandra was unwell and they had to leave a party. These things were arranged in no particular order, as in a junk shop. When he was approaching them, he noticed that behind them there was somebody a person, who gave him this thing or took it away from him. The things were much larger than the people, as if it was a warehouse serviced by gnomes and they had shy smiles on their faces, as if they were asking for mercy. After all, it was meant to be a killing dream. But Paul had no time to stop and talk to these people or inspect the old treasures – something forced him to hurry up. The further he went, the less crowded became the warehouse and the more light was filling its space. Eventually he reached its end, where there was a large, old-fashioned wooden gate. Unfortunately, it was locked, and there was no way to open it. He was kicking the door, but this only made his body ache. Suddenly he noticed that there was a small eye-shaped object on the frame, like a small knob or a large button. He pulled it and the door started to move with a crackle. When it happened, Paul started to regret that he didn’t stay a bit longer and didn’t eat the cake, which looked delicious. But there was no way back – he was now pushed forward, leaving the junk behind. Eventually he heard somebody saying, ‘He is waking up.’
He opened his eyes and saw a man in a white uniform.
‘Is this a dream factory?’ he asked.
‘You could say so,’ the man said with a smile. ‘But we are slightly more versatile. We also try to wake up those who are sleeping. You are in a hospital.’
‘What happened to me?’
‘You lost consciousness. Most likely it was a reaction to a solar eclipse. You were lucky a Japanese tourist called an ambulance.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘About two hours. It doesn’t feel very long, but we were worried about you. It looked like every part of your body was switching itself off, as if preparing to take you to a different reality. Very unusual’, continued the doctor.
The doctor asked him to stay in the hospital for another day, but Paul insisting on leaving, as he had a plane to catch.
Back at the hotel, he checked his mobile. Sandra was texting him to phone her back. When he phoned her, she told him that she had to rush to a hospital, as there was a danger of a miscarriage and how angry she was, not being able to contact him at this time of anguish. In the end everything was fine and the baby was saved. She talked about all these things in her typical minute detail, managing to squeeze in every sentence a drop of self- pity and accusation.’
Finally she said, ’and what about you?’
‘Me, as usual. The meetings were stressful and I had a bit of a sleeping problem. But it is all over now.’
‘Of course, with you always everything is fine, therefore you don’t understand how it is for me to be here on my own, with all these worries, when you are enjoying himself.’
Paul started to feel again very tired and uncomfortable. It was in part because his clothes were hurting him, especially his tight trousers. He put his hand in his pocket and took out from it a small eye-shaped object, like a little knob. He started to squeeze it.
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