Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26705150-20150904010042

'''Author's note: This is just a rough draft, but I've rewritten this story several times. So I'm not really focused so much on the spelling and grammar just yet. I'm more concerned about the actual story itself and how well it comes across. Is it interesting and entertaining? Is it difficult to follow? Does it have plot holes? Do I need to include more freaky elements?, etc.'''

I had been close to one of my colleagues within my close circle of scientific inquirers. But I had gradually lost contact within the last year or so and I hadn’t spoken to him in a while. It was only after some rumors that spread around that I learned he was missing and nobody had seen him for several weeks. Once I heard the news, I decided to do a little research of my own.

I decided to ask around about his whereabouts at his last place of work, which was in a research center regarding dream research. I went about asking anyone and everyone there if they knew what might have happened to him or where he might have gone last. But they all claimed that they didn’t know much about him, other than the work they did at hand. However, there was some information that I gathered about a supposed project he might have been working on. They all said that it was most likely separate from the work that everyone was involved with and he had been keeping it as low key as possible, but obviously not low key enough. He had apparently been spending more time in his office than usual and there were apparently several people who had gone into his office for meetings prior to his disappearance. I asked for all of their names but nobody there knew who any of them were and they hadn’t been seen since then.

But there was one name that was remembered and it stuck out due to him being seen more than once. There was apparently some dispute about a project, or the project, that they were working on and they were able to catch his name.

With that name in mind, I was able to do a little research online and find his address. There a few other names associated with different addresses on there but I was able to go with the one that was most likely. It was the one which was the most local and I decided to pay the man a visit.

This is where things get weird. I knocked on the door of his home and when he answered, he looked confused. I assumed he didn’t who I was or why I was there so I explained that I was doing my own research into the disappearance of my closest colleague.

A face that one consisted of confusion was now one of a downcast look. He said he didn’t want to talk about it at first but I persuaded him to the best of my abilities. I tried to assure him that I was very close to my colleague and that I really needed to know what happened to him.

With that he let me into his home and we sat down in his living room. He said that he would tell me everything that happened but he wanted me to believe him. He thought that the following story might sound completely ridiculous and implausible, but he said that it was true and he even had records of the whole thing. I assured him that I would but I just needed to know everything.

He said that my colleague had started a project separate from what he was being paid to do and he used the research from that to help him along in the endeavor. The project was in fact for dream research, but it was for something bigger. He had a team build something for manifesting dreams in a visual way but he didn’t specify the details, for secrecy. The deal was that he needed to get another team of scientists to test this machine out for the first time. But nobody could know anything about it and the project details were to be kept secret until the testing phases were to begin.

He was one of the few in said team that was supposed to be a part of it. He had met with my colleague weeks prior to the event to confirm that they would be working together and then they left without speaking to each other again.

It wasn’t until an email that he received, where it was explained who would be working on the team, and where this project was to take place. After that, everyone was asked to move into that particular facility for the time being, until the testing was over.

The next phase was to obtain a large number of volunteers and have them move in as well. They needed these volunteers for sleep and dream study, so that they could use the data for the machine. That took place over several weeks and the time was spent mostly waiting.

But once they had all the volunteers they needed, the studies began over many nights in the labs and Hours of sleep and dreaming were recorded. It was just a matter of time before they got enough data to do something with it.

That time came after several weeks once they were given the green light to go onto the next phase. This was what everyone had been waiting for, to test the machine that was supposed to visualize the data in some way. It was something that many of them thought was highly improbable or even completely out of the realm of possibility. Because to visualize someone’s dreams would require so much and nobody had ever seen or heard of someone attempting to do such a thing. It almost seemed destined for failure in all the minds of the group but the head of it all, my colleague, seemed quite confident in the ability to achieve this.

Now they could finally find out if that was true or not. So with that in mind, everyone gathered in one of the larger labs where the machine was sitting there at center stage. On top of it, stood its round metal frame which is where it was explained that the dreams would show themselves somehow.

The project head stood in front of the machine, where the switch was, and the rest of the crowd stood at a safe distance away. He gave a little speech about how revolutionary this may very well be and with that, he turned the switch on.

For a moment there was nothing but then everyone could hear the power surging through it, like the engine of a car or a computer booting up. After that he inserted the data from the sleep studies into the machine and waited.

<p class="MsoNormal">He stammered a bit as he told the story and he asked me if he wanted me to see it firsthand. I agreed that it was probably best that I did and I followed upstairs to his office, where he claimed that he had taken the records.

<p class="MsoNormal">There, inside, were a few stacks of boxes filled with documents and video tapes. He started searching through them until he found the tape of the testing phases. He put it into a small TV with a VCR in the corner of the room and we began watching it as the machine carried out its commands.

<p class="MsoNormal">There was a flash which temporarily blinded the camera but when the view came back, there was something inside the metal frame of the machine.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh my god,” I let out as I realized he had been telling the truth the entire time and the machine worked as planned.

<p class="MsoNormal">I could see beautiful, yet impossible images as they flashed across the thing inside the frame. It looked like a window in time, where you could see the dreams of others.

<p class="MsoNormal">There was a long pause of silence and stillness in the room. But my colleague spoke up and he smiled as he got closer to the thing, after he had been with the rest of the crowd.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It works, it actually works. We can experience other people’s dreams now.”

<p class="MsoNormal">But then I noticed something inside the frame. It became darker somehow. I could see glimpses of strange animal like creatures that I had never seen before, bizarre landscapes, and it looked as though it was pulling air towards it somehow.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What was that?,” I asked him.

<p class="MsoNormal">“A portal, He had built a portal.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“But I thought that it was for manifesting dreams?,” Isn’t that what he said?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“It is or was, before it was destroyed. He had spent years working on building a machine which would allow a portal to another world that he created. He had managed to build a world using his dream research and those who had expertise in the more complex sciences.”

<p class="MsoNormal">I kept watching the screen in amazement. The expression on my colleague’s face turned from excitement and joy of discovery to that of great concern over what had just happened inside the portal.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Something’s wrong with the machine. We have to shut it down.”

<p class="MsoNormal">He got closer to it and he carefully approached it to turn it off. But as he was just a few feet away, his body was pushed forward and his body dragged behind as some invisible force from the portal pulled him closer and closer towards it. He screamed as it did so, but nobody in the crowd did anything. They all just stood there in the background, watching as the event unfolded before their eyes.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Why didn’t they do anything?,” I asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">“We were all terrified and we didn’t want to risk getting sucked into that thing, like him.”

<p class="MsoNormal">It was only a matter of moments before he was and there was no trace of him left behind. The group promptly evacuated and the video footage ended after that.

<p class="MsoNormal">It was explained they had decided to set the place on fire and leave the premises. Only he, out of all in the group, had kept some of the records. The rest of the records were destroyed in the fire, along with the machine that caused the catastrophe.

<p class="MsoNormal">He explained that something clearly went wrong with the machine. The dreams were supposed to create something safe, something beautiful. But something went wrong when collecting the dream data, because it was obvious that the nightmares had been used as well. In addition, the strength of the portal’s power had been miscalculated or worse, possibly even tampered with.

<p class="MsoNormal">It’s unclear as for where my colleague went or what happened to him. But the event never escaped him and now I don’t think I could shake it either. This research and that portal changed the way I looked at things in the world and it proved difficult to believe the things that I had just seen and heard.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> <ac_metadata title="The Dream Project [Working Title] (Unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>