Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26705150-20150828012637

   I had been selected, among various scientists, to be a part of the team in a new project, under the guise of dream research. That’s what we were all told the project was about, but without being given any other details, other than the where.

Once the scientists were selected, we were moved to an undisclosed facility for our research where we lived there temporarily, until the end of the project. It was only after we got settled in that we were told a little bit more about the true purpose of this research. The head of the project, a name I won’t mention like the other details, claimed that a group of subjects would be studied while they slept, in the hopes of gathering their dream data. That data would then be transferred over to another machine which would somehow turn the dreams into other data, or something else. Once again he didn’t give us any details about the machine or whatever this data was supposed to actually do. But we were supposed to test it out regardless. Another team had already built the machine so we only had to do the last part and work out any errors that may occur.

The subjects were chosen and were moved into the facility after a few weeks. Once that was done, the research began a few nights later, and took place over several nights. Their dreams were recorded while they slept during this time and they were given breaks between then, to relax and do whatever they needed to do.

After a while we were all notified that the data was of a sufficient amount and that it was time for the final phase of the project. We were told to gather around the machine that had been built specifically for this project in one of the chambers and we waited for everyone to be ready. Once everyone got there, including the project head, the process went underway.

The head turned the machine on and the data was plugged into it. The machine looked like a strange computer with a square metal frame sitting on top of it. There was nothing within the frame and the computer looked especially advanced.

“Get ready,” he said.

We all stood in silence and motionlessness, wondering what was about to happen, but all the more excited. Once he said, he pressed the buttons and did the final settings for the machine. There was a few minutes of nothing and for a while I wondered if the thing would even work or if it was broken somehow.

“Oh come on. Is it even working?,” one of the scientists proclaimed.

But the head of the project quickly shushed him and the waiting continued for a moment. But then we noticed what was happening right in front of our eyes. The machine’s lights were turning on brightly and something about the center of the metal frame above, made the sight blurry and yet, colorful.

Then in a flash, the frame was completely covered with some wormhole looking thing. It looked like one big circle of light, moving in a vortex, and I wondered if this was supposed to happen. I glanced around in a hurry, at my fellow team members and they’re eyes and mouth was just as wide as mine. But then I glanced back at the head and he seemed fine with the whole experience. If anything I could see that he was filled with glee at the sight of the thing and for a few moments, we were all amazed and scared at the sight.

But it was only a few moments later, when we started hearing noises from the light. They were all noises akin to that of exotic wildlife but they didn’t sound exactly like that. They sounded foreign somehow, as though they had never come from any place, living thing, or object before.

I looked back at the head once again and his smile had now faded, into a grimace.

“What’s going on?,” he said.

He got closer and from his angle, along with ours, we realized we could see strange things inside the light, Things of creatures of various types flashing in and out of there. The head kept lessening his distance between him and the machine, but safety had become an issue.

“What? There nightmares, not dreams. I have to turn off the machine.

He got so close to the light, as tried to turn it off, that he actually got sucked into it. His appearance now gone, we could now hear his voice screaming through the light. His begs and pleads were for whatever escape we could muster, but there was no way we would get any closer and we had no idea how to help him.

<p class="MsoNormal">Our only option was to turn it off using a backup system and so we did. The machine was shut off and the thing was gone, but there was no sign of the project head or anything else that was seen and heard inside there.

<p class="MsoNormal">It was considered, by all of us, to be too dangerous to risk turning the machine back on, causing whatever the hell happened before, to happen again. It was decided that it would be best to shut down the entire facility, along with the project for good, and destroy any and all remains of the experiment. By the time we had finished, there was virtually no trace of anything ever happening there and confidentiality among the group was seen as the highest priority.

<p class="MsoNormal">To this day, I’m not exactly sure what happened or why the project head even considered doing this experiment. It was a terrifying disaster, that I wish to forget, and it was the most bizarre thing that I have ever experienced. Nothing will ever up match up with whatever happened at that facility and I now approach science a little more carefully. <ac_metadata title="Dream Research (Unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>