Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26705150-20150906173429

John had been a close friend and colleague of mine over the years. We had worked together throughout our university and work years. We bonded over scientific endeavors initially but we had grown distant from each other and we had started working in separate fields. But we still kept in contact every once in a while, as to maintain our friendship. But this time I hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of weeks and I hadn’t heard anything of him, so I decided to try reach out.

I tried calling him through his phone but he wasn’t answering. So I tried other means of contact, like email and social media. But after a few days of waiting and getting no response, I thought it was odd and I decided to just try to see him personally.

I figured there might be a good chance that I’d find him at his actual workplace. So I drove to the research center for sleep studies, where he worked, and I looked there. But he wasn’t in his office and I didn’t see him anywhere else in the building. So I decided to just ask around about his whereabouts.

What I heard surprised me and I found the news very unnerving. Everyone that I asked had said he had been missing for a few weeks and the police had been looking for him. Nobody knew what happened to him and they had no trace of him at all.

At that point I had just about given up hope in finding any new information and I was just about to leave the building when somebody came up to me. He looked he worked there, considering the uniform and the name tag he was wearing, and I hoped that this was going to prove useful.

“Are you John’s friend? You’re the one asking about him, right?,” he asked.

“Yes I am, but why?”

   “I know something about John’s disappearance. But we need to talk in my office privately.”

He ushered me with his hand towards an office doorway, presumably his and he shut the door behind us.

   “What do you know?,” I asked.

He turned his head to the left and to the right, towards the two windows which had a clear view of the rest of the office. But nobody was seen and he spoke up again.

“I heard talk that John had been working on something big. It was supposed to be bigger than all of us and our research. But it had something to do with sleep and dream studies. I noticed he had met with a few people, who didn’t work here, in his private office a few times. I don’t know who most of them were but I remember one name in particular. I learned all of this after listening in on one of their conversations.”

He reached into his pocket and handed me a folded note.

“If you want to find out what happened to John, then you’ll have to find this man.”

I grabbed the note from his hand and unfolded it. The name inside was Isaac Heppner. I said my thanks and left.

I found his address rather easily online and only a night later I went to his house, to speak with him. I knocked on the front door of the man’s home but when he answered, he looked much worse than I had expected as he reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke and his eyes couldn’t have had worse bags.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What do you want?,” he asked in a rough voice.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I was a friend of John’s. I was wondering if you knew anything about what happened to him.”

<p class="MsoNormal">His scowl was like the heat of the sun burning down on me.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Why do you want to know that?,” he asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’ve been a close friend of his since we were both young so I’d be grateful if you could tell me anything you know.”

<p class="MsoNormal">He stood there for a few moments, looking around and then back at me.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Please, I need your help. I just want to know what happened.”

<p class="MsoNormal">He hesitated as he looked at me but he spoke up again.

<p class="MsoNormal">   “Okay fine, I can help you. But if I tell you what really happened to John, you may not even believe it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">   “Yes please, tell me everything you know.”

<p class="MsoNormal">He turned around and he waved me into his home. Inside dust caked the furniture and clutter was scattered all about. Beer bottles, ash trays, and trash were all amidst the generally messy pile and it made it obvious what his state of mind was.

<p class="MsoNormal">I followed him to his living room where he asked me to sit down on his couch after he pushed aside some beer bottles. I was reluctant to agree to it but I needed to find out what happened to John. So we sat down across from each other and he began recounting the tale of what happened.

<p class="MsoNormal">John had been planning on doing something big with his dream research and he needed a full team of scientists to work on the project. He wanted to use data to make sense of and visualize the dreams of other people. It was so ambitious that he needed only the most brilliant of scientists and he set out to search for the best candidates.

<p class="MsoNormal">So he sent out ads, waded through all the applicants, and finally picked a small team to work on it. They had been given the job by email and they weren’t told very many details. But the end goal was to create and test a machine that could make sense of the dream data.

<p class="MsoNormal">This took several years but after so much hard work, it finally paid off. They had officially built the machine that was supposed to do exactly that and it was only a matter of going through the testing process.

<p class="MsoNormal">They sent out another set of ads in various places so they could gather up volunteers for data collection. They needed subjects who could stay at the facility for the next few weeks and have their sleep and dreaming recorded. They weren’t given many details as to what the research was for but it was considered best for secrecy. Once they got everyone they needed and they were all settled in, the process of recording and monitoring their sleep began.

<p class="MsoNormal">Now it was a just a matter of waiting and distracting oneself with whatever they could. It wouldn’t be until they had sufficient data and the go ahead to continue onto the next and final phases of testing.

<p class="MsoNormal">By this point Isaac Heppner stopped telling the story and he addressed me directly.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I think its best you see this next part for yourself. You won’t believe your eyes but I swear to you, both the tape and my story are true.”

<p class="MsoNormal">He led me into his office where several boxes filled with various documents and video tapes were scattered about. The office was, like the rest of the house, very cluttered. There was a small TV with a VCR sitting on a stand in the corner of the room and he was searching through a box of tapes next to it.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’ve got it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Then he turned the TV on and inserted the tape into the VCR. He pressed play and all of a sudden I could see a large lavatory with a crowd of people in lab coats standing a good distance away from some odd looking machine. It consisted of a large analog station and a round metal frame connects to the top of it. Next to the machine stood John where he was going on about this new discovery and how revolutionary it may very well be.

<p class="MsoNormal">I couldn’t help but feel myself shaking a little and I didn’t want to take my eyes off what I was seeing. It was true that I had doubts about the authenticity of the entire story but this was a video recording of John in the flesh and his supposed team of scientists.

<p class="MsoNormal">“This was the final testing phase and if you want to know what happened to John. I suggest you keep watching. You’ll probably deny what you see like I did but you’ll have to come to terms with it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">John ended his speech, counted down to ten, and flipped a switch on the machine. It presumably had been turned on, according to the engine like noise it was making, and he inserted a small device into one of the many station’s outlets. He used the analog station again and within moments the machine was getting louder.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Pay attention to the round metal frame.” He said.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">I did and I noticed little waves of motion in the air surrounding it. It looked just like the waves of air that you’d see in a hot desert. The waves became more and more visible, they danced faster, and I could now see flashes of light from within the frame. They kept coming until finally the camera was temporarily blinded by bright light.

<p class="MsoNormal">When the view came back, my stomach dropped and my eyes went wide. Now within the frame was a bright circle, which looked almost like a window, and a variety of surrealistic imagery flashed by on its surface.

<p class="MsoNormal">I could see the group frantically looking around at one another and John’s face mimicked my own.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s working. It’s finally working,” John said.

<p class="MsoNormal">But as I looked back inside the frame I noticed the images got darker somehow. The landscapes became stranger, I could see glimpses of alien like creatures, and the waves of energy emanating from the portal became stronger somehow.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Wait something’s wrong. We have to shut it down.” John said.

<p class="MsoNormal">He started approaching the frame and the analog station very slowly. The rest of the crowd stood back watching, their eyes never averting from the scene before them, and I couldn’t help but follow along. He got closer and closer to the analog station, but I think he got too close. He was pushed off his feet just a few feet away from the thing and he screamed as his body was pulled towards the circle. But everyone stood back watching and nobody tried to help him. He kept getting pulled closer and closer to the circle in the frame before he finally just disappeared into the air. The tape cut off then but the rest of the story was explained.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh god, what happened?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“It was a dream portal that we created. But there was a malfunction of some kind. I have my suspicions and theories about that.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Like what?,” I asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I think it the machine picked up on more than just dreams. It wasn’t supposed to carry out nightmares or anything else. There are also my suspicions about it simply being a miscalculation on our part. I had often wondered if somebody within the group had sabotaged the machine.”

<p class="MsoNormal">   “What happened to the rest of the project?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“We evacuated and we burned most of it. I kept much of the records, hence the boxes lying around, but I didn’t want it getting around.”

<p class="MsoNormal">I had a sense of disassociation from all of what I had seen and heard. It was true, I had a hard time taking in or accepting it all, but there it was anyways. I don’t know if John is alive or not and neither does x.

<p class="MsoNormal">But regardless, I have found my own vices due to the experience and I’ve quit my own scientific profession. <ac_metadata title="The Dream Project [Revised] (Unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>