Did you dream of Bill Murray last night?

​The fisherman was surprised by his own composure as he pulled her body towards him.
Perhaps it was because she was face down – faceless, as such - an easier tragedy to confront.

Perhaps it was due to the serenity of the place, seemingly aware of the unpleasantness. The 5 a.m. air was fog-filled and quiet. All the edges soft. The lake deathly still and mirror-like, disturbed only slightly by his gently wading into it. Even the trout dared not unsettle the surface as she drifted across their ceiling.

Perhaps it was because of his affinity with the lake - this familiar black dank so often wrapped itself around his ankles, squeezed his thighs, and swallowed him up to his water-proofed waist. If anyone should take a body from the surface of this lake, it ought to be him. And so, it was as if the lake assisted, floating her to him, returning her calmly. Without panic.

His composure did not wane when he left the water either, with her draped lifeless in his arms, her once flowing summer-dress now murky and cold and clinging to her thin shape. Her face, though a little bloated and blued, bore no signs of a stressful death. Indeed, her lips held a smile not befitting her fate.
She was limp when he lay her on the dew-damp grassy bank, rigor mortis having come and gone. She’d been dead now almost four days.  

The fisherman blessed himself, took his jacket from the grass and covered her with it.

Her striped socks drooped over the collars of her navy Dr. Marten shoes huddled together patiently at the water’s edge. Her purse and a thin silver necklace with her name, Laura, in a silver pendant, sat stacked upon the vamps and lace-holes. No note.

The fisherman, forgetting his fly rod where he had dropped it, strode to his car, carefully sat in, and delicately closed his door. He winced as the old diesel engine cranked and turned over loudly, before steering away from the lake to alert the authorities. Soon the peace would be shattered by sirens and flashing blue lights. The trout are spared his skill today.
​
                                                                                               *

You’ve probably heard about The SandMan Corporation, a much-lauded Irish success story. Recently included among the most valuable corporations on the planet, accompanying the likes of Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple, SandMan seemed to come out of nowhere, virtually overnight, but was, in fact, decades in the making. The brainchild of a young wife and husband team, the bulk of the company’s development was achieved in relative secrecy from its inception in early 1992 right up until its initial product launch in mid-2018.
The day that would start to shape The SandMan Corporation as an unwavering and unrelenting force, however, can be pinpointed to that morning in May 1994 when the fisherman pulled Laura Burke’s body from the lake.

                                                                                               *

A hundred and nine mornings earlier, Laura was alive and not enjoying breakfast.
She’d burnt her toast and her fingers. The kettle had gurgled its climax, settling her kitchenette back into drab silence, save for the sporadic fizz of distant traffic and the hum of her fridge.

She had a bad habit of cupping the mug when she filled it, and when the rickety clunk of the toaster tore through the calm it shook her, causing her to shudder and scald her fingers.  
She’d forgotten she’d dipped the toast a second time, it being insufficiently browned the first. The slices now resembled two square sections of carcinogenic wasteland on the faux marble sprawl of countertop. She smeared mandarin marmalade across them using the back of her teaspoon, all her knives being caked with something, none of it cake, and buried in a sink full of neglected dirty dishes.

She sat with her back to the Saturday morning chaos, washing crunches of char and mandarin zest down her gullet with mouthfuls of tea, distracting herself from the acrid taste and throbbing fingers with The Scene, the free weekly city-wide magazine pushed through letterboxes and under doors each Saturday morning.
‘Did you dream of Bill Murray last night?’ read the headline of the full-page ad on the inside cover.
She normally never paid much attention to ads, especially ones this wordy, but the header demanded her attention, not because of typeface or colour or size, but for its uncanniness; you see, Laura had indeed dreamt of Bill Murray last night.

Did you dream of Bill Murray last night?
We want to talk to you about being part of a ground-breaking study.
Participation is well paid and non-invasive, with opportunity for long-term, high figure earning.
If you had a dream on the night of Friday, May 6th, in which Hollywood actor Bill Murray appeared, please record as much detail about your dream as you recall, in writing, as soon as possible.
With this record and valid state-issued photo Identification, please attend the Oneiroi Institute, Briongloch Way, any time between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. within the next three days (until Mon. 9th May inclusive).
Attendees will be compensated for any associated travel expenses* and time, which will be approx. 20 minutes for assessment. Selected participants will be required to remain on site for further briefing.
On arrival, please see reception. Do not discuss the details or content of your dream with anyone until instructed.
*Please retain taxi receipts for reimbursement. Drivers seeking reimbursement for fuel costs must provide a recent utility bill stating address of residence. Milage will be paid for shortest possible route from home address as per The OSI Complete Road Atlas of Ireland 1994. 
 
Laura was baffled and intrigued. How did they know I dreamt of Bill Murray last night? Who is ‘they’? Why did I dream of Bill Murray? What the hell is all this about?

Laura had no plans for her would-be lonely Saturday, having yet to make any friends since arriving to the city almost two months previous, and all that occupied her here was a sorry second slice of cold carbonised bread.

Fifty minutes later, Laura stood at the entrance of the Oneiroi Institute, a grand and sprawling building dating from the early 1800s surrounded by manicured gardens, gallops, and man-made lakes on the southern hem of the skirt of the city, a thirty minute journey but a world removed from any sense of the urban environment.

Its antiquated shell of exposed stone and Victorian grounds were a deceptive first impression. Inside, you’d think you’d stepped into a contemporary hotel that felt uniquely voguish. A theatrical colour palette of bordeaux, ochre and green absorbed original period features, and space was punctuated by markers of the building’s modern scientific function in streamlined, soulless greyscale and glass; a décor confidently at odds with itself - warm and luxurious, full of purpose, and harmonising ancient splendour with the clinical, minimalist language of a cutting-edge research facility.

It was a hive of activity. People milled around enthusiastically. An invisible lady’s voice carried over the buzz, directing holders of numbered yellow tickets to different rooms in a pleasant tone much like that heard on calm days in airports.

Laura joined one of the short queues kept in efficient motion by five personnel behind the long reception desk. There were two people ahead of her. She could hear the receptionist, Lorraine, according to her elegant name tag, courteously issuing instructions.
“Thank you. Please keep this ticket, yellow 998, and listen out for your call in the next few minutes”, she informed the first.
“Thank you, we’ll not be needing you further today, Paul, so here is your cheque for attending, and thank you for coming”, she politely informed the second.
Laura approached.
“Hello there, I’m Lorraine. Can I have your ID please?”
“Yes, hello, here you go” replied Laura, handing over her crisp, unstamped passport.
“How did you travel today, Laura?”
“By taxi - do you need the receipt now?”
“Yes, perfect, thank you. And do you have a written record of your dream with you?”
“Oh, crap. No. I’m sorry, I forgot to write it down, I just saw the ad and came as soon as...”
“That’s okay”, assured Lorraine with a smile, “you can just pop in to my colleagues in the drawing room and they’ll look after you”,  gesturing to her left with a gentle sweep of her hand. “Here’s your passport. And I’ve added your taxi expense in the system already. Thank you, Laura.”
 “Thanks”, Laura replied, somewhat dissatisfied she was still none-the-wiser as to what was happening.
 
In the drawing room, Laura was beckoned over to one of eleven desks dotted around it, a computer monitor on each.
“Hello, Laura?” a young man greeted her from behind a desk as he invited her to sit.  Laura nodded.
“I’m Jacob”, he said, not leaving time for any small talk, “now, can you tell me please, did you watch The Late Late Show last night?”
Laura was visibly taken aback. “Yes, yes I did”, she stuttered, surprised. “How did you know?”
“Don’t worry, everything will be explained shortly, I just need to clarify a few things first”, Jacob revealed calmly. “Now, in your own time, can you tell me about your dream, in as much detail as you remember please?”

“Well”, Laura began, clearing her throat and focusing her memory, “it was strange. I was walking along a road, there was dense forest on either side, and I don’t know where I was going but I knew it was far and I needed to get there soon. Then I was aware of a horse and carriage approaching from behind me, but it didn’t feel odd to see it, in the dream, and I held out my thumb.”
Jacob tapped a single key on his computer keyboard, interrupting her. “Go on”, he said, brightly.
“The carriage pulled up beside me, an old-style carriage, and the door opened, and I could see inside, it was kind of glowing, a soft-reddish light, and Bill Murray was inside…”.
Jacob tapped a key again.
“He told me to hop in and that he’d give me a tattoo on the way”, Laura continued
Another tap on the keyboard.
“And he had something in his hand, I couldn’t see it, but I knew it to be a tattoo gun. It buzzed. And then I think I realised I was dreaming…”
Another tap.
“…and then I woke up I think.”

Jacob beamed a smile and stamped a blue ticket with the number 0004 on it before handing it across the desk to her. “That’s perfect, Laura, thank you very much. Please take this ticket with you through to conference room A, go to desk two. My colleague, Dieter, will speak to you there for a few minutes. Thank you kindly.”

Laura followed the signs to conference room A. There she handed her ticket to a man with chiselled features at desk two.

“Hello, Dieter”, she announced, taking her seat without invitation, an attempt to take charge of this conversation.
“Laura”, he replied.
“Dieter, I’m a little frustrated, you’re the third person now and I’m still not sure what is actually going on here.”

“Okay, allow me to satisfy this curiosity a little”, said Dieter in a coarse German accent, guttural sounds in staccato which, were they not coming from his kind and handsome face, might have added to the air of unease.

“This is a research institute. I guess you know this already. Here, we research the science of dreaming and we’re undertaking an exciting new study for which we need participants, but not just any people. We’re looking for people, at this early phase, who demonstrate a propensity to dream somewhat vividly and can remember their dreams rather clearly….”

“But how did you know that I dreamed of Bill Murray, that all of these people here dreamed of Bill Murray?”, Laura interrupted.

“This we can explain shortly. First I need to have you sign an NDA…”

“A what?”, asked Laura

“A non-disclosure agreement - it’s basically a legal agreement that you won’t divulge any of the information you learn here to anybody not involved in the study. It’s standard in such clinical research. And, just to clarify, all of these people, as you say, didn’t dream of Bill Murray last night, many of them, in fact, probably don’t remember dreaming anything at all. They just saw the advertisement and thought it was, how do you say, ‘easy money’”, explained Dieter, complete with finger quotes.

“Speaking of easy money, what’s the story with getting paid? The ad said I’d be paid…” Laura asked, looking up from the one-page document.

“Yes”, said Dieter, consulting his computer screen, “so far you’re due to be paid, including your travel expense, forty-five pounds.”

“So far?”, quizzed Laura, trying to subdue the delight in her voice; forty-five pounds an incredible sum for twenty minutes of a 19 year old trainee-florist’s time in 1994.

“Yes. You are, of course, free to leave now if you wish, you don’t need to sign this NDA, and I’ll give you a cheque for forty-five pounds” he said, joining his hands in preparation to say more.  
“I mentioned that some people didn’t actually have a dream about Bill Murray, those ones don’t get this far in the process - they’re already filtered out in the previous room or at reception. Some did have a Bill Murray dream last night, but not precisely the dream we’re looking for, something like it, yes, but not exactly. Those are still useful to our study, and they are given yellow tickets, and go to a different room to continue. You, currently, have a blue ticket. This is a good ticket. It means you’ve had, pretty much, the precise dream we are looking for, so you are considered potentially very useful to the study. What I am hoping, if you choose to continue and can answer some more questions, is that I can give you a green ticket. This means you are of primary use to what we are studying and, should you continue with us, will be paid a good deal more for your time. This is why I say, ‘so far’”, explained Dieter, again complete with finger quotes.

Laura pondered, glancing over the NDA document once more. “Okay”, she announced, asking for a pen with her eyes. Dieter obliged. She signed, in part because the prospect intrigued her, the potential to make serious money excited her, but mostly because not knowing more would haunt her curiosity indefinitely.

“Great”, said Dieter, collecting the sheet. “Now, I just need to get some, more personal, information”
“Personal?” asked Laura.
“Yes”, replied Dieter, “about you and your lifestyle and day to day. This is very important for progressing you to that next part, Laura, so I ask you to be honest, and please, be assured that there’s no judgement here, there’s no right or wrong answers, the purpose is simply to know more about who is Laura, so we can tailor the study correctly. Okay?”
“Sure”, replied Laura, committed now to seeing this through.   

A litany of questions followed pertaining to her background, heritage, her childhood, education, religion, beliefs & values, sexuality and sexual preferences, how often she engages in sexual activity - solo and with others,  drug use – recreational and prescribed, blood type, medical history, work history, income, ambitions for the future, any instances of trauma in her past, likes and dislikes, favourite movies, books, music, and diet - even how many cups of tea and coffee she consumes daily.

Each answer was input to Dieter’s computer. Then, smiling, he stamped a green ticket bearing the characters A0001 and handed it to Laura.
“Welcome on board, Laura. That was the last part of assessment. Now, if you’ll take this ticket, you can go through that door for the final briefing”, Dieter told her, pointing to a dark wooden door on the far side of the drawing room.
“But I have questions”, Laura demanded.
“Well, of course you do”, responded Dieter, “And they will all be answered, I’m sure, by Missus Foley….and Mister Foley. They’re waiting for you inside.”

Laura ventured through yet another door into yet another grand room reflecting the unconventional decorative balance of past and future. In this room, she was greeted enthusiastically by a couple, Mr. & Mrs. Foley, both probably in their early-thirties and both exuding an air of genius, Laura thought, in that ‘mad-scientist’ kind of way. 

He was wearing a short-sleeved, lapel-collared shirt in ‘oil-painting’ stripes of lurid neon green and gaudy orange, a solitary blue biro peeping out of the left breast pocket. His shoulder-length hair was un-brushed but voluminous, yet thin and brittle at the ends, and brown, despite his bristly moustache being more of a dark ginger.

Mrs. Foley was taller and thinner than he, pale skinned, almost the same colour as her cream-white silken blouse complete with pussycat bow. Her frizzy, jet-black hair was tied back tightly, and navy thick-rimmed glasses framed her intense green eyes.

The desk Mr. Foley stood up from as Laura entered was messy and chaotic, a spread of papers and chunky open books. Mrs. Foley’s desk, by contrast, was near barren save for a computer monitor and keyboard. She approached Laura and took her by the hand, leading her to an antique deep-buttoned brown leather Chesterfield sofa in the centre of the room.

“Laura, delighted to meet you, thank you for coming today”, she said as they sat onto the polished leather.
“Would you like something to eat, or drink?” asked Mr. Foley, now sitting on the front of his desk, hairy white legs jutting down from knee-length sky-blue shorts, his socks & sandals dangling just shy of the wooden floor.  “No, thank you”, Laura answered politely.

“That’s Mister Foley. Hugh”, Mrs. Foley informed her, “And I’m, Missus Foley, Margaret. I’m The SandMan.”
“Eh, actually, we’re both The SandMan”, interjected Hugh, adding a diffusing chuckle that was notably insincere.
“Hm, well”, continued Margaret, “we’re the founders of The SandMan Corporation. Though, as you can see, I wear the trousers”, she said pointedly, removing a fleck of lint that was never there from her navy nylon pant leg, “and we’re very glad to have found you. I’m sure you have some questions.”

“Yes”, blurted Laura, her frustration starting to spill over, “how did you know I dreamt about Bill Murray? What am I doing here? What are you researching? What’s The SandMan company…”

“Corporation”, interrupted Hugh, receiving emerald green daggers from his wife’s glance before she returned her eyes to Laura and softened them, inviting her to continue.

“…What will you need me to do? The last guy, Dieter, mentioned payment, how much is that?...”

“Okay”, said Margaret, with a short laugh, straightening her posture and tapping the front of her thighs with her palms, preparing to answer.

“We ought to make a FAQ leaflet, dear”, offered Hugh. He went ignored.

“So”, continued Margaret, “I’m a neuroscientist, and my husband is a psychologist…”

“…And I’ll be involved on the marketing side too”, interjected Hugh.

“There’s nothing to market yet, dear” replied Margaret, not looking at him, clasping her hands on her knees.

“As I was saying, Laura, we are the founders of SandMan and we’re mainly concerned with dreams. Not particularly why we dream, but what we dream.”
Laura gave a slow, single nod and a glance in Hugh’s direction. He smiled.  
“Every night, almost every person on the planet goes to sleep”, continued Margaret, “we spend about a third of our entire lives asleep. Most of us dream while we are sleeping, and most of us forget these dreams. Now, imagine if not only did you always remember your dreams, but could have any dream you wanted…”
Margaret’s face began to defy her rigidness, revealing her passion for the prospect.
“Whatever you can imagine, you can do…every single one of your fantasies is achievable, can be experienced in your dreams.”

“That’s good stuff, darling, let me write that last bit down, for the marketing…” enthused Hugh, diving his hand into a sea of paper on his desk, searching for a pen.

“Okay, and how did you know about my Bill Murray dream?” Laura, asked

“We put it there”, answered Hugh, bluntly, abandoning the search for a pen despite the biro in his shirt pocket.

“What do you mean? How?” Laura persisted.

Hugh took a few steps towards the pair on the couch, as if taking the floor, and brought the tips of all his fingers together in front of him.

“Last night, you watched The Late Late, as many do, good show. What do you remember about it?”, he asked.

Laura thought for a moment, “eh, Roddy Doyle was on, he has a book out that won an award or something...”

“Yes, worthy I’m sure, but do you remember there was a viewer competition? A question, and viewers could telephone in…and there was a prize…”

“Yeah, a trip to New York was the prize” said Laura, growing increasingly frustrated at the drawn-out explanation.

“Exactly”, said Hugh, “and you’ll remember the question was Who is the star of Groundhog day, A. Mill Burray, or B. Bill Murray. And the correct answer is….?”

“Bill Murray”, Laura said, somewhat vacantly, accommodating Hugh’s bit of theatre while Margaret banished more imaginary specs from her pants, an effort to pacify her own frustration.

“Of course”, continued Hugh, “and you’ll recall that this competition was promoted every fifteen minutes or so with a little twenty second piece of footage, a very rapid and confusing montage of different images - a horse and carriage in Central Park, a heavily tattooed New Yorker in a tattoo parlour, dive bars and red neon lights, among others…..and a voiceover, saying things like ‘win a dream experience tattoo will remember forever’, ‘get carriage away shopping ‘til you drop’, and sleep in luxury at The Foresteasons hotel, ‘five thousand pounds to make this the trip of your dreams’, and so on.”

He began taking short, slow paces as he continued.

“You’ll have subconsciously picked up on those wrong words…tattoo instead of ‘that you’, carriage instead of ‘carried’, foresteasons instead of ‘Four Seasons’…and so on, as well as the images, the horse and carriage appears eight times, trees six times, the tattooed man six, the red glowing lights four times, and a buzzing sound every so often….”

“Like subliminal messaging?” Laura suggested.

“Something like that, yes” replied Hugh, “though, I think of it more as a ‘mind-hack’, or Informational alchemy; patterns, creating a web of associations in your subconscious. You were likely a little baffled by the footage, and the non sequiturs – those illogical use of words in sentences, and trying to make sense of it all, and, in that state, we are naturally responsive and suggestible. Indeed, our perception of what is happening, and how we remember it, is actually quite fragile - a gateway to influence the subconscious formation of memories and how we recall them”

Hugh eased himself onto the arm of the couch beside his wife who was visibly annoyed by the intrusion before catching herself and fixing a closed-mouth smile.

“A lot of our dream content is made up of things we’ve seen and absorbed during our waking day”, Hugh continued, fingertips no longer fused together, hands more animated now, “when we dream, our unconscious brains try to organise those memories and information in a kind of memory consolidation. Our conscious brain then, and the cortex, works to process these as a kind of cohesive story, manifesting as images, as a dream.”

He leaned further in Laura’s direction, Margaret leaning back a little.

“I’ve figured out…..excuse me, we’ve figured out a way, a pattern, or algorithm if you will, that, when absorbed with regular repetition shortly before going to sleep, will manifest and play out in a particular structure in dream-state. This is how we successfully managed to make you, and hopefully a significant number of others too, have a dream that involved Bill Murray in a horse drawn carriage with a tattoo gun.”

“I don’t know how to feel about that to be honest”, responded Laura, “isn’t that unethical, subliminally manipulating people?”

Margaret sat forward again, resuming her position, and resigning her husband’s lead. “I can understand why you might feel like that, Laura”, she said, sincerely, “but be assured we didn’t do anything untoward in a legal sense, the competition is legit and…”

“Did you enter?”, piped Hugh.

“No”, said Laura, “I’m not really lucky when it comes to competitions or raffles or things, anyway the phone is down the end of the hallway in my building and more often than not isn’t working…”

“…the main thing is”, interjected Margaret, “the means were above board, we weren’t selling you anything or convincing you to commit a crime or something, and this was the most effective way of finding the right kind of people for the study…”

“And who are the right kind of people?” Laura questioned.

“Well, people like you”, answered Margaret, “people who dream, dream vividly and, importantly, remember their dreams quiet accurately. What makes you a particularly exciting prospect though, Laura, is the fact that you realised you were dreaming – you indicated as such to Dieter just now. This is called Lucid dreaming. Do you know much about the process of dreaming, Laura, what’s happening while we dream?”

“Don’t patronise her, darling” snapped Hugh, “she’s a clever girl, I’m sure…”
“I’m not patronising. Darling.”, retorted Margaret through gritted teeth, “but not everybody has insight to the science now, do they?”

“Oh, we’re not all neuroscientists, you’re right dear, how could I forget? Do forgive me”, mocked Hugh, giving Laura a smile like she was in on his little game. Margaret regained her composure with a deep inhale through her nostrils, and a measured exhale through her mouth.

“There are four stages of sleep”, she explained, “the first two are light sleep, when we’re dosing off. The final two are deep sleep. It’s typically during the last stage, stage four, when we dream – during what’s known as rapid eye movement, or REM…”

“If you believe, they put a man on the moon…” Hugh sang, badly.

“Oh, just get out, please, Hugh!” Margaret barked, turning her head sharply, burning a hole with her eyes in the floor in front of him.
“I’m sorry, dear, I’ll behave. Consummate professional”, he bargained as he retreated back behind his desk again.

“I’m sorry, Laura, he’s a genius but a lot to put up with”, Margaret excused. Laura laughed it off, partly in politeness, and partly because she found the whole scenario genuinely comical. She’d already renamed them Mr. & Mrs. Fawlty in her head.

“Now, as I was saying”, Margaret continued, “During REM, the brain almost exactly mimics the awake state, albeit your muscles are temporarily paralysed. We dream during REM sleep, but about thirty percent of people regularly have what are known as Lucid dreams. This is when you’re aware that you are in a dream and can start to manipulate the dream….the environment, people and things, the actions, the feelings, the sights, sounds, smells…virtually everything!”

“Yes”, enthused Laura, “I’ve had this, like one time I dreamt I was on Vic Reeves Big Night Out and the man with the stick and I were beating Vic to death, he with his stick and I with a hurl, and I felt intensely guilty, and the audience were cheering, but then I realised I must be dreaming so I made it that the stick and the hurl were actually made of foam and we were all just playing a bit in the show and we all laughed.”

“I have no idea what you just said, Laura…”, uttered Margaret, confusion on her face
“I do. Great show!” called Hugh

“Please, stay with me here”, appealed Margaret, “what we are going to do, what you will be a part of, is increase that thirty percent, hopefully, make the ability to lucid dream accessible to lots of people, ensure longer, more vivid REM Sleep dreaming, allow people to control their dreams and remember them vividly…..we will provide particular dream content and even create bespoke dreams for people on demand.”

Her eyes lit up again as she delighted in her vision. She reached into her hip pocket pulling out a match-box sized pill-box.
“And that’s where this little piece of magic comes in”, she said, opening the box to reveal a single purple capsule. “This is LUCID.” 

It was more like a little bullet than a pill, thought Laura, bigger than your average paracetamol. The kind of shape and size that, though it looks like it’ll be difficult to swallow, you’re glad it’s taken orally.

“well, it isn’t magic”, Margaret said, beaming with pride at the LUCID pill clamped between her thumb and index fingertip, “it’s perfect science, and that is as close to real magic as one can hope for.”
She laid it back into its box, like a mother bird nesting an egg, and placed it on the arm of the couch beside her, the lid open like a display case.

“What LUCID does, essentially, is increase melatonin and lowers heartrate and body temperature to advance you through stages one and two of the sleep cycle rather quickly, and into delta sleep where you’ll start to dream sooner and for longer. Then it temporarily blocks, or greatly reduces, the level of hypocretin production and Increases Glutamate at the right time to advance you into stage four, promoting low voltage, fast electroencephalography activity, inducing muscle atonia and triggering REM sleep more rapidly...” Margaret said fervently, looking at Laura but not really, she was addressing an imaginary Nobel Prize audience. It didn’t matter anyway; she’d lost Laura at hypocretin.

“…then it activates the prefrontal cortex and a cortical network including the frontal, parietal, and temporal zones, inducing lucid dreaming, and beta blockers make those dreams more vivid. On top of all this, LUCID also helps you remember and recall your dreams like never before by stimulating neurons in the hippocampus, and increasing and enhancing the chemical signalling between neurons, promoting strengthened synapse that form memory. We’re programmed to forget dreams pretty much after we come out of REM - LUCID over-rides that programming and strengthens your short term memory sufficiently to recall your dreams as easily as you might a recently watched tv show or movie.”

“So, you want me to be a lab-rat!”, Laura quipped.

“Not exactly”, stated Margaret, her adoring audience vanishing as she came back to the room.
“Guinea pig, perhaps. It has already undergone extensive testing on lab rats. And we’ve used it ourselves, of course, but, while you will use it during the study, your role is not actually so concerned with LUCID as it is with the content of dreams. You see, you’ll be representative of a persona…”

“A persona?”, quizzed Laura

Hugh approached with a glass of recently liberated bottled water in each hand, giving one to Laura and the other to his wife.
“Here, darling, you surely need a drink after that speech”, he remarked, “and you could probably do with something stronger, Laura, am I right?”

“Yes, a persona”, Hugh continued, taking over the conversation, “do you ever wonder how we know TV-ratings, how many people tuned in to a particular show?” he asked Laura, not waiting for an answer, “obviously, they can’t know what channel every single television set in the country is tuned into, but there’s a few thousand or so, well I dunno how many, but a good few people who agree to install what are called Nielsen boxes on their tellies that register what channels they watch and when. These viewers are kind of personas, representing larger sections of the population - so one household or individual represents thousands of others around the country. So you, Laura, will be something like that, representing other people like you.”

“Like me?” Laura asked, more to remark on the assumption than anything else.

“Yes. Like you. You see, as I mentioned before, our perception of reality and how we remember it is constantly in flux, and easier than you’d like to manipulate. We like to think this perception is an inherently personal experience, bound up with our personality – and it is, of course, but there are both genetic and environmental factors which determine one’s personality, how we habitually relate to the world and the inner self. This is why Dieter required such personal insights to your life earlier – your demographic, your lifestyle, your values and belief systems, your past experiences, your ambitions, your character……all these different things affect how you interpret and process signals, symbols, triggers and cues, suggestion and neurolinguistic programming.”

He bent his knees and slowly lowered himself into a squat position without warning, Laura quickly diverting her eyes to avoid an unwanted glimpse up the left leg of his shorts.

“We like to think that all those things, everything that defines us as individuals is just that – individual” continued Hugh, “but, sorry to disappoint, all of those things we all think make us unique and individual are not so unique or individual at all. In fact, we all have, each of us, a huge amount of like-minded personalities and characters running around out there in the world, feeling the same, thinking the same, experiencing life more or less in the same way we do.”  

“We need to fine tune the algorithm”, he continued, “the sequence of patterns that need to be absorbed in order for particular content and imagery to properly manifest itself in a particular dream, in the particular order and structure, for each kind of persona out there. It’s a mammoth task, and you will be one of many thousands of our personas participating in this study throughout the world over the next few years.”

“Years?!” exclaimed Laura, spluttering a little on her water.

It became instantly apparent to her that this was a monumental project. These two were in the long game. The sheer scope of their vision revealed itself to her; he’d said thousands of persona participants – not just participants, but specifically personas, implying there was going to be other kinds of participants too, all over the world. There must be serious money behind this thing, Laura thought.
“Tell me about payment”, she added.

Margaret forced her now empty glass into her husband’s hand, as if to shoo him away with it. She took his blue biro from his shirt pocket and unfolded a slip of paper from her hip pocket.

“This is what you’ll be paid during the first year. Net”, she said, writing a figure before re-folding the slip and handing it to Laura. “This will increase sixteen percent exponentially year on year.”
Laura unfolded the paper. £35,000. She could hardly contain her joy, but she did. She double checked, and checked again.

“You’ll have to spend the first six months here, on site.”, continued Margaret, “You’ll be one of thirty, we estimate, but you’ll have your own room and board…”
“We’ve a great kitchen staff” added Hugh, “class grub.” Laura thought of her burnt toast at home and her fingers began to throb.

“And, of course, you can come and go as you please, we only need you here at night to sleep”, Margaret declared, ”we have drivers, but I think you’ll find everything you could want in a day here.”

“And what will I….would I be doing, if I do join?” asked Laura.

“Each evening you will watch a twenty to thirty second clip on a loop for approximately one minute. Then, you’ll go to bed as normal, dream, and record the details of your dream immediately when you wake up in a dream journal”, explained Hugh.

“And that’s it?” Laura asked, in some disbelief.

“Three times a week, while you’re here, we’ll conduct a Polysomnogram” Margaret explained, “it’s an overnight recording of brain and muscle activity, breathing, and eye movements…nothing invasive. Then, when the six months are up, you can return to live off site, if you wish, and continue watching the patterns we send you, and recording in your dream journal.”

“You can continue like that indefinitely”, added Hugh, “we need to keep feeding the algorithm, the more data we give it, the better we can fine tune it to deliver incredibly accurate results.”
 
Laura didn’t need to think long about it. She signed a contract and waiver there and then. This was an un-passable opportunity. As Hugh put it, “It’s literally a dream job, welcome to the dream team!”
 
                                                                                           *
 
Three months went by, the study progressing successfully. The intended business model was such that, in due course, consumers would subscribe to a catalogue library of pre-made dream foundations, dream models tailored to their specific persona, over which they could exercise a high degree of autonomy and control. Eventually, they would be able to request specific dream scenarios that the algorithm will tailor-make for them. They would receive a VHS with the one-minute loop of footage, by courier, along with a single LUCID pill on any desired day they order it.

In the third month of Laura’s stay, it was deemed necessary to test for the scenario in which a prospective customer might forgo consuming their LUCID with a view to accumulating and consuming multiple doses at once, curious as people are.

Over the course of eight nights, participants were administered double-, triple- and quadruple-doses of LUCID. While many participants reported longer, increasingly intense, and vivid dreams, and some demonstrated temporary erratic brain activity, all were unaffected after waking. Except for Laura.

Having been given a dose four times the potency of a single LUCID, Laura, seemingly, did not wake up. An FMRI scan showed hybrid consciousness – part of the brain asleep, part awake, as occurs temporarily during lucid dreaming. She was experiencing prolonged sustained cataplexy – a loss of muscle tone, with retained semi-consciousness; a kind of sleep paralysis - unable to move voluntary muscles or speak and seemed to be enduring hypnagogic hallucinations.

She was trapped in some forsaken no-man’s land between dream and waking states, unable to move her body, only her diaphragm and heart functioning normally, and conscious of the fact she was dreaming. She was aware of the sounds and happenings around her, but these were incorporated into her dreams - muffled dialogue translating as her mother’s loving voice reading her a bed-time story, the beeps and whirring of the machines she was fed into forming the sirens and helicopters at the scene of the hostage situation she was expertly de-escalating as an acclaimed negotiator, and the sense of safety and calm of being in utero again, wrapped in the womb, as the lake took her and filled her lungs.
 
                                                                                            *
​
As the years passed, Mr. & Mrs. Foley’s relationship deteriorated. The sitcom-esque tension that Laura had witnessed on her first day at the Oneiri Institute soured into irreparable detest for one another. Their crime, disposing of the damming evidence in Laura, as it were, did nothing to bind them closer.

It was a messy and long-drawn-out, torrid divorce. Margaret and her legal team managed to convince the Judge that it was her input into The SandMan Corporation which was the bulk of the intellectual property and value, resulting in her retaining the lion’s share of the Corporation.
Mr. Foley wasn’t cut out entirely. His shares in the organisation were significantly reduced, although they are worth an eye-watering amount today.  He continued working at SandMan in his original capacity, out of loyalty to the project, and as a matter of principle, but mostly to annoy Margaret.

While fighting his wife in the courts, Hugh, unbeknownst to most, was also fighting another battle; one in his pancreas and then his blood and bones. He had the financial means to fight it well, but, ultimately, money couldn’t buy a halt to the spread that consumed his innards, and his days are now numbered.

Dubbed 'the Netflix of Dreams', the advent of the internet and data mining meant SandMan’s product offering matured at precisely the right time. Harvesting buyer persona data from big tech partnerships, they are now able to provide instant custom-made dreams direct to your ‘dreamer dashboard’, with LUCID delivered in a matter of minutes – even the most rural outposts served by drone.
Introducing an ad-revenue model to a non-subscriber option saw the corporation’s value triple too, being able to directly target qualified leads with product placement and intermittent ads in dreams proved a genius stroke.

Today, The SandMan Corporation is incredibly popular in every country in the world, with more than three billion subscribers, and counting, making it a Trillion Dollar company. That’s today. Tomorrow will tell a different story.
Tonight, Mr. Foley has seen to it that every single user will have the same dream in which the now famous face of Margaret, CEO of The SandMan Corporation, consumed by guilt and remorse, confesses how she dragged the paralysed body of Laura Burke into the lake behind SandMan HQ after a botched test in May 1994, and watched her drown.

Of course, it was Hugh who carried Laura into the water, ordered to by his wife who placed her shoes and socks, purse and necklace by the lake’s edge. The suicide of a research participant an unfortunate tragedy, yes, but a detrimental set-back to their study, not so much.
Margaret will, no doubt, maintain her innocence, dismiss the stunt as a ploy by her former husband to frame her and suggest that if, in fact, there was foul play in the death of Laura Burke, that he ought to be the prime suspect. Hugh’s not too concerned either way, as he sees it, she wore the trousers, and it’ll be fun to watch her squirm a little.

​

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