TDM 05 "The Dream Machine"

A Chapter by dw817

The voice spoke again and was very patronizing, "Jerry is precisely where he needs to be, and he's behaving and being a nice boy, which is more than I can say for you. No, you are the direct problem."

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THE DREAM MACHINE

The Lost Saucer
Can't Get Off This Crazy Ride !

© September 2013 Written by David Wicker
Please do not reprint without permission

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CHAPTER 5 - THE DREAM MACHINE

* * *

This chapter is Rated: EVERYONE

Jerry was now trying a slice of pizza, really in truth quite making a pig out of himself now and a bit slopped down the sides of the table, but apparently no-one was going to notice or complain.

Jasper returned promptly from the weird flashing light room, apparently over his headaches and saw Jerry and smiled, "And how are you liking your food, young man ?"

"Ifsh derishus !" Jerry said his mouth completely full of pizza.

"How nice." Jasper replied in a curiously negative tone, but then saw Alice sitting in a corner and approached her.

"Is there a problem here ?" he inquired politely.

"This is a prison." Alice said, and perhaps a little too loudly.

Jerry looked at her having swallowed his bite, "Huh ? You crazy girl, this ain't no prison. This here is Heaven for sure !"

Having finished off his slice of pizza he was going for the ice-cream now.

Jasper looked at her and tilted his head at an odd angle to address her quietly with a stern tone, "Interesting. You seem to be more aware of what is happening here than your little brother ?"

She shook her head, "He's not my brother, he's - well I babysit him."

Jasper looked ahead and said in a serious tone as if confused, "Baby." then a moment later, "Sit." Finally, "Babysit." He looked to her, "You sit on him ? Does he ever complain or tell you it is uncomfortable ?"

Jerry laughed, "She better not sit on me ! Naaw man, it means, well, she keeps me out of trouble - I guess."

Jasper raised up and approached the boy then with an oily and sincere smile changed his demeanor to one of beatification, "But let me assure you, you are in no trouble. No trouble at all ! Why you're quite WELCOME here, Jerry !"

Alice groaned but Jasper ignored her and watched carefully to see Jerry yawn.

Jerry covered up his mouth and looked a little confused himself, "Man, I'm tired, bushed. You don't mind if I lie down somewheres, do you old Jazz ?"

Jasper's entire demeanor changed from one of servitude to a most peculiar one, what was it perhaps, anticipation ?

"Absolutely !" he said emphatically. "A comfortable room has already been prepared for you." and as he spoke a side panel opened up and a pretty soft blue and violet light shone from the adjacent room.

"Alice, you coming ?" Jerry asked her still seeing her sitting on the floor.

"No, I think I'll stay here." she said glumly, and kicked out one of her feet from under her looking at the sumptuous dining table. She was a little hungry, but she also knew the food was drugged and that's why Jerry was sleepy and groggy now. It was all too easy ! She hit the crystalline floor with the flat of her hand and wished for the umpteenth time that Fi and Fum where there to rescue them.

As Jerry stepped into the room to marvel at the pretty lights, Jasper did a 180 and approached Alice and leaning down to her level spoke in an intimidating voice, "Tell me, Alice. Is this what a babysitter would do ? Stay behind ?"

Alice scowled at Jasper who only smiled broadly at her and extended a hand to help her up.

She knocked away his inviting grip but did struggle to her feet, "Oh, alright ! But I'm watching you, Jasper ! And Fi and Fum are on their way to save us ! You know that, don't you ? And oh you and - WHOEVER - are so going to get it when they arrive here !"

Jasper looked up at the ceiling for a moment and nodded thoughtfully, "Yes, we did monitor some intra-space interference earlier. But there is nothing to be worried about. We have set up perimeter defenses around the complex. Let me assure you, we won't - " and he turned to look directly down at her with an amazingly intense smile, "that is - YOU won't be disturbed."

Alice went into a panic and ran forward to Jerry, "Jerry ! C'mon ! We gotta get outta here right now. They're gonna do something bad to us ! Fi and Fum ! They're going to rescue us, they've got to ! I just know they're gonna be here soon !"

But Jerry was staggering and felt like thick and rich warm and sweet tapioca was filling his brain and said sleepily to her, "Yeah we can be rescued all we want, but later, man, I'm tired right now."

Alice persisted and jerked him around to face her, but he shrugged from her grip, the thought of a comfortable place to sleep overwhelming any other senses and walked ahead of her where he couldn't see her.

Alice fell to her knees in desperation, "Don't you see ! They drugged the food ! That's why you - " but she didn't get very far because Jasper suddenly came up behind her and shone a strange rectangular acrylic piece up against the back of her neck and she suddenly slumped over on the floor, headfirst, silent.

He looked at her with a more than disturbing smile on his face holding up the strange alien contraption which was just a rectangular prism that reflected prettily in the blue and violet light.

Quick as a wink he dragged her out of sight still leaving her face down to stare lifelessly at the floor and returned to Jerry who was now holding the sides of the wall to steady himself from the dizzying effects of the dreamer's drug.

* * *

Jerry spoke but his voice was a blur, "Huh ? Where - where's Alice ?"

"She's examining the rest of the floor." Jasper said being completely trueful with him, "How are you feeling, Jerry ?"

He looked up and the camera closes on his eyes and you can see little rainbow swirls glowing from them. "I'm feeling - groovy." he said in an odd and dizzy voice.

Jasper smiled and took his arm around to help him, "Indeed. Yes - well, here is your room. Won't you make yourself comfortable ?"

Jerry looked and the room was rather odd in truth. Blue and violet crystals and lights shone above him twinkling in a slow and pretty hypnotic display and a large futuristic and comfortable looking chair was positioned in the center of the room facing a large blank screen in front of him.

"I thought there would be a bed, Jazz ?" Jerry slurred staggering to approach the chair to support himself.

Jasper patted him kindly on his back, "I think you'll find this is a most comfortable chair." and without even asking him if he wanted to try it, Jasper roughly assisted Jerry into it and hooks in leg straps.

"Huh ? What are these for ?" Jerry asked fighting to maintain awareness but now it felt like cool clear water was rolling over his body and he just wanted to - swim - in midair.

"To make sure you don't fall out. We would hate for you to get hurt." Jasper assured him.

Jerry was now becoming oblivious to everything around him and started to reach in front of him. The camera shows Jerry's view as he imagines he is seeing pretty colored flashes and sparks before his eyes. Jasper goes over to a computer console and entered in some values to it.

"Hey, this is really comfortable." Jerry said, his voice a bare whisper now and finally his eyes closed and his head slumped forward, exhausted from fighting the drug. A soft alarm flashed on Jasper's console so went over to Jerry and raised his head back up again and connected plastic braces around his cheekbones to hold him in place with his head up. Then he takes his wrists and straps him down in the chair.

Further he took a futuristic and beautiful crystalline laser visor and connected it to Jerry's temple and ears. The large display screen in front of him crackled with static and a white circle with rainbow tendrils stream out of it like an ethereal amoeba of consciousness.

Strange ghostly music floated down from the ceiling and the camera concentrates on Jerry, how he is moving around in the chair a bit uncomfortably, and then starts to slow, slow, and his breathing becomes regular and slow. The music adds some crystalline chimes to it, really lovely, and is obviously meant to be hypnotic.

The camera stays on Jerry who breathes slower, slower, finally he moans pleasantly and is now quite clearly and deeply asleep. Then the scene changes and the display screen swirls with colors and light and finally shows Jerry outside having a picnic with his Mother and Alice was talking to her, but the scene is too bright and is very blurry.

Jasper went back over to the console and hit some more controls and the picture grew darker, then lighter, then sharper, and finally more colorful. He fine-tuned the adjustments until the picture was as good as it could be, which in truth was quite sharp, like you could step through the scene and join them.

The music enters a catchy riff and the floor around Jerry's chair starts to ripple like ocean waves. Jerry sighs with pleasure that is extended from an additional sound-box from a moment in time to several seconds and is haunting, to say the least.

Then Jasper leaves the controls to go back to Jerry and places a thick blanket over his torso. Then he goes over to a cabinet in the corner and pulls out a vicious looking syringe. He attaches a needle to it and reaches for a clear bottle that has a pretty luminous blue fluid in it. He sucks that in through the needle and approached Jerry.

Then he injected it directly into Jerry's neck. Creepily Jerry's lovely brown mahogany skin tint on his face was replaced by a completely neutral gray tone as a sinister theme sounds over the crystalline music showing the severity of the action.

After that the music resumes it's lively hypnotic gait, introducing a pretty pan flute and Jasper pulled out a piece of yellow tinted acrylic rectangle from his pocket and placed it directly against Jerry's forehead. A soft beep sounded and a display appeared on the flat end of the device. "Life expectancy, 786 years." it read.

Jasper smiles, "My, well, aren't you are the nice young boy after all, plenty of dreams in that adolescent head of yours. How wonderful !" Jasper commented to himself. "We'll fetch a fine price for you indeed."

Jasper looked up momentarily to the large screen to see the scene had changed and Jerry was now outside with a girl about his own age and they were flying a kite. A quiet voice could be heard over the enchanting music of her cheering him on and suddenly she reached over to unexpectedly give him a passionate hug as the kite soared higher in the air. Jerry smiled slightly enjoying the dream, his face still looking frightfully gray.

Meanwhile, back with Alice, she suddenly jerked her head up and saw she had been moved into a dark storage room really no bigger than her that had 6-sides to it but extended up past her sight. She coughed and stood up, wiping her mouth from it being on the floor and felt around trying to find a seam in this new prison she was in.

But it didn't look like there was any way out ! "Help !" she suddenly yelled and pounded on the wall in front of her, "Help ! Let me out of here !" she said in a more desperate voice. She coughed again and for a moment she worried that she might run out of air.

* * *

Back in space, Fi and Fum were indeed no longer magnetized and were working over their consoles back in the Lost Saucer.

"I don't get it !" Fum said. "This old forcey-field thingie shore wasn't here when we left earlier !"

"I know !" Fi agreed with anger, "This is Earth, we got that far, but it's 20,000 years in the future ! And they obviously don't want us going back ! But we've got to find a way of rescuing those two ! Heaven knows what they're doing to them !"

"Maybe we could time travel before they got there ?" Fum offered in a random inspiration.

Fi looked up for a moment as if baffled that Fum could say something so intelligent in any part of his design.

Then she smiles wide, "Wow ! Say, that's not such a bad idea ! Okay, let's do it ! Right, we'll need to lay out the calculations for it and then we won't even have to back down there to get them because they'll already be back up here with us !"

"If you say so." Fum replied sounding confused again as if what he said earlier didn't even make sense to him now.

Fi ignored his befuddlement, "Okay Fum, Cross vectors Gamma 16 point 3 with Delta 14 point 9 !"

"Right, chief." Fum said and did as he was instructed.

Back with Alice a panel on the side of the wall suddenly opened up revealing bright light and a stern voice spoke authoratively, "You need to be quiet in there and go to sleep now."

Alice was frantic to see someone responded to her plea, "Please, you've got to let me out ! There's been some - a terrible mistake, I need to find Jerry. Have you seen him ? He's about this tall and -"

But the voice interrupted her. "I might have seen him." it answered cryptically.

Alice wasn't going to back down now, "Well, he's a friend of mine, and he's lost and I need to find him so you need to let me out of here now, okay ?"

The voice spoke again and was very patronizing as a doctor might speak with his mental patient who was delusional, "Jerry is precisely where he needs to be, and he's behaving and being a nice boy, which is more than I can say for you. No, you are the direct problem right now. You threaten to upset our operations here. Just what kind of girl are you anyways ?"

Alice ignored the question, "What kind of - operation - are you doing here then ?"

"Dreams, of course." the voice answered with an imperious sniff. "They are the only wealth left on this planet. Since the great Magellatic war of the 160th century, mankind was stripped of their dreams. Those survivors went mad you understand - with no dreams to lead or guide them into the next day."

"There is great power in dreams." the voice added in an almost sepulchral reverence. He paused for effect.

Then the voice continued to relate the history of the planet, "Without dreams, Mankind lost purpose in life, for it was dreams that drove them to accomplish great things, to invent new devices, to think up new ways of handling problems. Without dreams we all but a race died out from - for lack of a better word - EMPTINESS."

"But then one of our world-renowned scientists came up with a way to help us. Unfortunately it required a total restructure of the body's make-up and the human brain at that point became expendable and interchangeable.

He added, "Today you could be punished for free thinking against the government and have your brain replaced with a lesser model, like our citizen, Jasper you met earlier."

Alice reeled at the concept, trading brains ! Maybe they wanted to take her brain out and trade it for another ! Now she knew she had to get out of here !

"What do you want with us ?" she asked in a scared voice determined to get to the heart of this madness.

Suddenly the panel opened up noisily all the way and a face appeared, bearded and with a sinister smile, "Your dreams of course, girl ! Nothing more !"

"Huh ?" Alice tried to interject, glad to finally see her interrogator, "But why can't you just - "

She was interrupted by his voice which took on a condescending tone, "What ? Did you ACTUALLY think we had any concern at all for you snot-nosed brainless ran-away-from-home whining little brats such as yourselves ?"

He scoffed, "Why, we'd sooner deal with your kind by shooting you down the nearest refuse cylinder with the rest of the filth from this planet than have your cancerous ways injected into our perfectly perfect society, girl !"

Alice had never been talked down to so cruelly in her entire life and her mouth opened in shock. She began to cry, slumping against the far side of the wall. "Why can't you just let us go ... ?" she wailed sounding more like a little girl now than she was before.

The face suddenly jerked close, rather frightening really, and stared intently at her with a terrifying leer and shook his head in mock apology, "I'm sorry midear, but if you believe that is ever going to happen then you are without a doubt - dreaming !" and the voice laughed maniacally as Alice slumped against the floor sobbing in misery.

The camera closes up on the doctor's terrible face as he glares down at her motionless form, a few dramatic riffs play. Alice puts one arm over her head to hide her from the terrible eyes and the screen goes black for a moment before white text appears in the center of the display that reads, "To be continued."