Chapter 4

Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

 

           

            Jenson couldn’t believe his luck. If Dr. Wesson was still performing his dream studies, Jenson might actually be able to participate, given his locale. He desperately needed to convince Dr. Wesson to meet with him. He was too obsessed with this subject now to just let it fall by the wayside, and he had to find a way to contact him.

            Finding contact information for Dr. Wesson was easier said than done. Jenson was unfamiliar with which avenues to follow for finding contact information for someone. It took him almost an hour to finally dig up an email address, but when he did, it took him even longer to compose an intelligent letter that would be taken seriously. He didn’t want to sound like a raving lunatic, even if that was how he felt.

 

Dear Dr. Wesson,

 

            My name is Jenson Thorne. I recently had the pleasure of reading your article entitled “Dreamscapes as Parallel Universes” in the November 2010 edition of the Journal of Quantum Physics. I came across the article as I was doing research to better understand a peculiar event that occurred in my life this past week. I had a strange dream one night before a long road trip, in which I met a woman I had never seen before in real life. The next day, when I stopped at a gas station I had never been to, I met the woman from my dream. Strangely, she revealed to me that I looked familiar and then went on to tell me about a dream she’d had of me the night before. It was the same dream I’d had. The strangest thing about the instance was that her name was the same name with which she provided me in the dream. I can only conclude that somehow we met in the same dream at the same time. Your article and studies greatly intrigue me, and I wonder about the possibility of speaking with you about my incident and perhaps becoming a part of your study on dreams and alternate dimensions. I look forward to hearing from you and I appreciate your time. Thank you.

 

            Jenson signed off and provided his email address, phone number, and mailing address. After clicking the “send” button, he felt his stomach tie into knots. How long would it be before he heard back from Dr. Wesson? Would Dr. Wesson take him seriously, or just delete his email and move on? He was determined to find out what Dr. Wesson knew, so he wasn’t going to allow himself to be ignored. If need be, he’d become a pest until Dr. Wesson had to acknowledge him. For now, though, he played the waiting game.

            When Maggie came home that evening, she didn’t ask Jenson about his day or try to follow up with him regarding his research and Dr. Wesson. She simply announced that he was to get showered and dressed immediately as she had made plans with one of her friends to meet her and her husband for dinner, then she disappeared into the bedroom to change her clothes. He followed her into the bedroom.

            “Seriously?” Jenson asked in disdain. “I can’t stand Heather, and her husband is even worse. I don’t even remember his name.”

            “Dick.”

            “What?” Jenson replied abashedly.

            “His name is Dick.”

            Jenson laughed at his misunderstanding, then said, “Fitting. But why do I have to go? I’m pretty sure they can’t stand me either.”

            “You’re going,” she said firmly as she rummaged through his clothes in the closet. “It’s weird to go out with a couple and not have your own date. Then you just feel like a third wheel.”

            Jenson sighed heavily and grabbed the clothes Maggie had picked out for him. As he turned to leave the room, he mumbled, “You didn’t even ask about my day.” She said nothing.

            In the car, Jenson told Maggie about the letter he sent to Dr. Wesson. If she wasn’t going to ask about it, he was going to make her listen anyway.

            “I tried to make it short so he might actually read the whole thing, but I hope I put in enough details to get him interested,” Jenson said. “I just hope he responds, one way or another.”

            “What if he doesn’t?”

            “Then I’ll keep trying. Dreams as an alternate reality is a hugely amazing idea, and if I can help in any way to prove it is real, I need to.”

            “So his paper was pretty interesting?” Maggie inquired.

            “Incredibly so!” He enthusiastically described the contents of the article to her.

            “That’s pretty weird. But how did he know that his test subjects weren’t just going home, looking up the numbers or equations, memorizing them, and then going back in and reciting them at the next experiment? Mathematical equations are easily accessible online.”

            “He covers that issue in the paper. All participants were given a different value or equation to look up each time they were monitored �" one they claimed to have no knowledge of beforehand �" but what’s more interesting is that they were only able to accurately describe what they were asked to learn when they’d had a dream that produced the unusual brain patterns. And they weren’t notified of when they’d had such a dream until the entire experiment was over. Also, the people who never showed signs of unusual brain patterns weren’t able to provide the correct answers. Statistically, it was more significant than just mere chance or coincidence.”

            “Still, though. It just seems a little too easy to falsify,” Maggie said. “I just don’t want you to get too caught up in something just because you want to believe it to be true.”

            Jenson tried to control his irritation. “Well, I need some direction to go on this, and right now, Dr. Wesson is the only legitimate lead I’ve got.”

            “Legitimate might be a strong word for now,” Maggie replied as she checked her hair in the visor mirror. “The restaurant is right up here. Please try to be nice tonight.”

            “I’m always nice,” Jenson stated begrudgingly. He was too annoyed to notice the irony.

            Jenson tried to keep a pleasant smile on his face as he and Maggie were seated in the restaurant. Heather and Dick were already there, waiting for them. Jenson instantly remembered why he disliked the couple when Dick’s first comment to him involved a jibe about being fashionably late. Jenson looked at his phone and saw that he and Maggie were actually five minutes early.

            “Well, better to be fashionably late than pathetically early.” He followed up with a falsely good-natured chuckle. Maggie shot him a look. It was going to be a long night.

            As he sat and listened to the usual dry, boring conversation, he tried to mask his displeasure with a fake smile. Dick turned to him as Maggie and Heather gossiped about one of their other “friends,” and said, “So what have you been up to? You’ve had a smile on your face all night, so it must be something good.”

            “Oh, I’ve been working on my paintings for my upcoming art show, as usual.”

            “I’ve never understood that artsy thing. I mean, it must be difficult to sell a painting in this day and age with high resolution photography. Do you find that to be the case?” Dick said condescendingly.

            “Not at all. You’d be surprised at what someone will pay to own a piece of what another person created by hand. I find it’s more of a higher class market that my work appeals to.” Smile.

            “I suppose. After all, look at the crap Picasso put out and his work is worth millions of dollars.” Smirk.

            “Indeed.”

            After a long silence, Dick asked, “So do you have any other hobbies, aside from painting?”

            Jenson fought the urge to argue that his painting wasn’t a hobby, it was his livelihood, and instead said, “Well, I’ve been doing some research into parallel universes lately. Are you familiar with the theories of parallel universes?”

            “Oh, I don’t believe in all of that nonsense. God created the Earth and the universe, and I don’t believe that we as mere humans are capable of understanding His divine processes, or should even try. We have the Bible to tell us all we need to know.”

            “If we never tried to understand the world and universe around us, we wouldn’t have the medicines that save our lives, the electricity that powers your big-screen television and lights your home, or the carbon fiber on your expensive Porsche. We would still think the world is flat and burn women for witchcraft. Don’t you find it a bit ironic that the people who fight so strongly against science are doing so while living comfortably with the products of its progress? It’s like raging against the machine while using the machine. Or like drinking a cup of coffee every morning and saying, ‘Wow, I sure hate coffee.’ Science is a necessary and inevitable aspect of human existence. Why would God give us such wonderfully efficient brains and limitless curiosity if we weren’t supposed to use it? It is what makes us human and not just animals,” Jenson argued.

            “And often it is that same dangerous thirst for truth that makes us act more like animals than humans,” Dick replied matter-of-factly.

            “I find it to be quite the opposite, actually. It seems to me that many of the atrocities against our fellow man throughout history have been done in the name of religion and the rejection of truth.”

            Maggie interrupted, “Wow, it sounds like you guys are having quite an involved conversation there, but I must interject for a minute. Dick, Heather just told me that you are taking her to Italy for your anniversary this year. Tell me about your itinerary! I would love to see Italy.”

            Jenson tried to cool his boiling blood as the other three at the table talked about Venice and Rome. He was by no means an academic scholar, but it burned him to his bones when others were so hypocritical as to scoff at science yet reap the benefits that science offers. If you don’t believe in the science it took to create the smart phone, then maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use smart phones, he thought. He wasn’t an atheist, but he felt that a belief in God and science were not exclusive of each other. How could someone be so close-minded?

            He avoided conversation with Dick the rest of the evening, and for Maggie’s sake, he kept all responses civil and simple. By the time they got into the car, however, Maggie was fuming anyway.

            “You embarrassed me horribly tonight! I told you to be nice!” she scolded.

            “So I’m just supposed to let Dick just treat me like a chump and say nothing? I wasn’t being any more rude to him than he was to me. It’s not like I punched him in the face, and believe me, it crossed my mind,” Jenson defended.

            “I’m sure I’ll be getting a call from Heather tomorrow about what happened tonight. I’ll be surprised if they ever want to have dinner with us again.”

            “Mission accomplished,” Jenson chuckled.

            “This isn’t funny. God, I can’t take you anywhere.”

            “And I didn’t ask you to. Actually, I specifically remember asking you to not take me,” he reminded her.

            “So you did this on purpose, to get back at me for making you accompany me?” she asked accusingly.

            “No, I honestly didn’t. I’m sorry you are mad, but I’m not sorry for defending myself and my views. I wish you would do more of that so I didn’t feel like it was always you and your friends against me.”

            “This is the problem, Jenson. I shouldn’t have to defend you. You should just be nice and try to get along with my friends.”

            “It’s hard to get along with someone who belittles me and thinks that I’m beneath them. And that describes every one of your friends.”

            “That’s not true. They just don’t understand you yet because you never give them a chance to. If you let them get to know you like I do, they would really like you,” Maggie said.

            “I doubt it. The moment they find out I’m not a successful lawyer or businessman, they completely disregard me and treat me like a lowlife. I’ve just stopped trying. After three years, dear, you should understand that I’m never going to fit in with your crowd. I’ve just accepted it as an inevitability.”

            “I just wish you would try harder.”

            Jenson gave up. He knew there was no point in continuing the argument, as it was going nowhere. At this point, Maggie was just trying to make sure she had the last word, so he let her. He spent the rest of the ride home in silence, stewing.

            When he and Maggie returned home, he went straight to his laptop and checked his email. There was no response from Dr. Wesson yet. He’d expected as much, but still felt disappointed. While he was online, he decided to see what he could find out about lucid dreaming, as Dr. Wesson had mentioned in his paper that it was a technique his study subjects used in their dreams to remember to gather the information that Dr. Wesson had requested.

            Jenson found several informative websites and bookmarked them all in his browser. He then began reading through them. He found that learning to become lucid in dreams was a far more involved process than he had imagined. It required a dedicated schedule of checking to make sure you were actually awake by looking for cues throughout the day, such as checking your watch two or three times in a row to see if the time changed too quickly, or reading something several times to see if the text changed. The process for purposely trying to have a lucid dream, from what he read, was to do it when you’ve just awakened from a dream and remembered it clearly. You were then supposed to recall the dream as vividly as you could, then try to fall asleep again with the intention of looking for signs that you are dreaming and trying to imagine what you want to happen in the dream once you enter into it again.

            As Jenson read this, he wondered how well these techniques could really work for a dream that caused an actual out-of-body experience to another dimension. From the information he was reading, the lucid dreaming was supposed to keep you conscious of the fact that you were dreaming and allow you to do anything you wished. But if you were actually in another dimension, would the dream cues actually work? The dreams that supposedly transported an individual to another realm were described by Dr. Wesson as being very realistic. The dream Jenson had had seemed incredibly real when he was in it, but when he awoke, he knew it had been very different from the world in which he lived. He doubted, however, that the watch technique or the re-reading text technique would have worked in his dream, or any other mind-transporting dream. That would likely only work in an actual dream. So how did Dr. Wesson train his study participants to become lucid dreamers in another world? He desperately wanted to know.

            After gathering all the information he could stand to read, Jenson leaned back in his computer chair and clasped his hands over his forehead. He tried to relive his dream, attempting to remember anything about the dream that would indicate that it was different from any other dream. One thing came to mind: in his dream, he’d had a choice as to whether or not he went into the room after Kristine killed the demon. He remembered clearly that he actually weighed the options in his head, and had made a conscious decision to go in because he wanted to make sure that nothing terrible had happened. He could have run. He had been in control of himself. In most of his dreams, everything flowed as if he were watching it in a movie, with no conscious decision-making. The script had already been written and he was just acting out what was supposed to happen next.

            As he thought more about his dreams, it occurred to him that his dream of the beautiful Andrea had been of a similar caliber. He’d consciously tried to find a face he recognized when Andrea had pointed out that her ex boyfriend was in the bar. He’d consciously decided to take her back to the apartment instead of making her stay at the bar. He’d had choices, and hadn’t blindly done whatever was scripted for him. Did that mean that Andrea was real? Was she a real person that just happened to be in the same dream as he, like Kristine? The thought had crossed his mind after he had the dream, but now he truly believed it. And it excited him almost as much as it scared him.

            He jumped when Maggie walked into the living room.

            “Whoa, jumpy aren’t we? Did I catch you doing something bad?” she teased.

            “No, no. I was just lost in my thoughts and I didn’t hear you coming.”

            “What were you thinking about so hard?”

            “The only thing I’ve been able to think about lately: my dreams, and what they’ve really meant all my life.”

            “You need to find something else to focus your attention on for a while. This whole thing is consuming you.”

            “I’m still getting my work done, though. Did you see how much I got done on my painting today?” he asked.

            “I did, but ordinarily you would be painting again tonight, not sitting in front of the computer, staring off into space. I’m just concerned.”

            “If I hadn’t had to go out and get insulted by Dick all evening then I might’ve had time to do both,” he said, smiling smugly.

            “Do we really need to go there again, Jenson?” Maggie asked curtly.

            “Nope, we sure don’t. Why would you bring it up?” he teased.

            “You’re not as cute as you think you are.”

            “I’m only as cute as you think I am.” He wondered if she would understand that he was actually referring to her controlling personality.

            “Damn straight.”

            That night, Jenson contemplated whether or not to attempt lucid dreaming. If he was serious about getting involved with Dr. Wesson’s research, then it was something he should probably begin learning. As he closed his eyes, he focused on the fact that he was going to sleep, that he would be dreaming soon, and tried to remain conscious of it. An indeterminate amount of time later, he realized he was half asleep and thinking about dinosaurs. He tried to regain control of his thoughts and began the process again as he tried to fall asleep.

            When he woke up in the morning, alarm beeping, he knew he had failed. He remembered the dream he’d been having, though, so he did what he had read he was supposed to do. He got out of bed, leaving the alarm for Maggie to deal with, and went to the kitchen, still in his skivvies. He grabbed a pen and notepad and began writing down the dream as best as he could remember.

           

            I was not an actual participant in this dream, and it played out as though I was watching it as a movie, yet it was as though I was still there. A silent, floating observer with no body. It started out in a room that resembled a classroom, and a woman was giving birth, surrounded by people assisting her. Suddenly there was a huge burst of light, and everyone in the room died except for one man, who happened to be a cop. Then there was an entire family that appeared, seeming to have come from the light, and they looked to have poor hygiene, were overweight, and dressed in ragged clothing. There was a woman, her husband, and several children. I got the feeling that they were evil, and they had actually been what the woman on the floor had given birth to. They saw that one man had survived the explosion of light, and they set out to kill him, as for some reason they wanted no survivors. They wanted no one to know of their existence. The cop escaped and suddenly his partner was with him. They then began chasing after the family and the entire family disappeared into a blast of light again. The cops ran around through a school that I recognized as my old elementary school, then they went through some unfamiliar, run-down buildings. Somehow they came to the realization that this family was able to travel through space in a manner like teleporting. The cops then investigated several strange incidents in which houses had been raided with no apparent point of entry, and all that was taken was food. The cops discovered that the evil family members were using their space jumping skills to steal mass quantities of food, which they ate like gluttons. The rest of the dream was all about the cops and the family trying to kill each other.

 

            When Jenson was finished, he read through what he had written. It sounded incredibly crazy, and he was quite certain that his dream hadn’t been of the mind-travelling kind. At least, he hoped it wasn’t. If he had been able to become lucid during this dream, what could he have done? He wasn’t even really there, and had no body to control. Would he have been able to influence any of the events that occurred in the dream in any way? It was just a strange dream, even for him.

            He went back to the bedroom while Maggie was in the shower and tried to go back to sleep. He ran through the dream over and over again in his head, trying to bring about the same dream as suggested by the websites on lucid dreaming. Unfortunately, he just wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep again.

            When Maggie came back to the bedroom to get dressed, she said, “You’re going back to bed? Don’t you think you should get some work done since I apparently kept you from it yesterday?”

            Jenson sighed and climbed out of bed. He didn’t tell Maggie that he was trying to have a lucid dream, as that would only exacerbate her obvious foul mood. Instead, he said, “Yes, dear. I’ll get right on that.”

            “Don’t ‘yes, dear’ me. I know you’re being sarcastic.”

            “I’d never dream of it.”

            After Maggie was gone, Jenson showered and dressed. He checked his email only to be disappointed again. He didn’t feel like painting at the moment, so he sat in front of the television and searched the channels for something interesting. He ended up watching a program that discussed the theory of ancient astronauts, which theorized that aliens had visited earth several times throughout ancient history and had influenced the evolution of mankind and culture. He wondered what Dick would have to say about it, and made a mental note to bring it up next time he had the pleasure of spending time with him. Jenson imagined it would make for an eventful evening. How could Maggie even suggest that he didn’t try to get along with her friends?

            He finally pulled himself from the couch and checked his email again. When he still found no reply from Dr. Wesson, he felt frustrated. He knew it had been less than twenty-four hours since he emailed the man, but he was anxious to hear something. Annoyed, he went to his painting table to work and clear his mind.

 

***

 

            Over the next week, Jenson was disappointed each time he checked his email, which was often. He continued to record his dreams, but he still had no luck in bringing about a lucid dream. None of the dreams he had seemed to be like the demon-hunting dream or the Andrea dream, either. He began to lose a little of his passion for his dream research, and he considered giving up on the entire endeavor as he felt that he was going nowhere with it.

            One night, however, about three weeks after his initial obsession began, his passion was reignited. He was walking down the sidewalk of what he knew to be Main Street in the dark, alone. None of the street lights were lit. The cars parked along the curb were covered in dust and debris, as though they hadn’t been moved for some time, but he found it to be nothing out of the ordinary. He felt a tangible sense of anxiety and fear, because he knew there was danger about. People were infected in this area, and he shouldn’t be here, but he pushed on because he was looking for someone important to him. He couldn’t remember who it was he sought, but he felt that he would know when he saw her. It was definitely a woman.

            Suddenly, from his left, he heard quick footsteps of someone running. He ducked into a nearby shop in which the door had been left ajar. It was incredibly dark inside. He waited next to the door until he heard the footsteps run by and fade into the distance, then peeked out. He saw no one on the street, so he continued on his way. When he came to a tall brick building on the corner of Main Street and Ash Street, he saw her. It was a beautiful brunette, but she wore dirty, ragged clothing. She was standing next to the building and gesturing wildly to him to hurry to her, but she said nothing. He ran to her, and she grabbed his hand and pulled him through the doorway into the building. She quietly shut the door behind her. Jenson followed her down a short flight of stairs, stepping over garbage and paper waste, until she brought him into a small room, dimly lit with candles.

            “Did you get the antibiotics?” she asked him in a hoarse whisper.

            He searched the pockets of his worn corduroy jacket and found a small bottle of gray and white capsules.

            “Oh thank God.” She took them and rushed to the corner of the room where a young girl of about fourteen was lying on an old, dirty mattress covered in blankets. As she gave the feeble-looking girl one of the capsules, she said to him, “We need to get out of here soon, Jamie. This place is riddled with the infection.”

            “Natalie,” the girl said weakly after swallowing the pill, “I can’t ask you to stay here with me. You and Jamie should just go. I’ll catch up when I can.”

            “We’re not leaving you,” said Natalie, the beautiful brunette. She looked at Jenson with concern in her big brown eyes.

            “She needs water,” Natalie said to him. He saw a bucket on the floor that appeared to be filled with water and grabbed it, bringing it to her. She grabbed an old coffee mug from the floor next to the mattress and dipped it into the water for the girl. The girl sat up and drank the water down in a few big gulps, as though she hadn’t had anything to drink in days. Then the girl lay down and closed her eyes.

            Natalie stood up and walked to Jenson. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He felt her body begin to shake with silent sobs as she buried her face in his old jacket.

            He embraced her and kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. Suddenly, he felt a strange sensation, like that of Déjà vu. And he remembered.

            “Andrea?” he said as he looked down at her.

            “What? Andrea?” she said as she looked up at him, her face full of tears and confusion.

            It was her. He remembered. He remembered everything.