Diego M. Sieiro 132

Diego M. Sieiro

I can do it in my sleep

Mary checks her pulse—it is steady. She is wiring her brain to what used to be her bed, if her vitals are not on point, she would be flooded with drugs. “Last thing I need is to be woozy on my first day at the dream office.” The current corporate trend is working whilst sleeping. It took months of effort, but she secured a spot on the pilot program. The objective is to quantify the productivity increase when compared to waking hour environments.

She chuckles as she sees the messy state of her apartment. The cabling in her sleep commode is sticking out from several uncovered gaps.

“Hacking the damn thing was messy, but I’d rather go with a bespoke clothing and hair expansion pack”, said Mary. Several protective panels lean against the sides of what used to be the wardrobe under an air mattress. “The extra features that I needed are unofficially in place.”

What used to be the header of her bed is now taken over by a helmet like hull, packed full of trackers and sensors. The whole structure clangs after she slaps it. “It looks as sturdy as it does uncomfortable”. Slowly she climbs over the railing surrounding the connection well. The pulse tracker reports optimal vitals for docking. Mary lowers herself carefully, to avoid hitting her head. “An influx of adrenaline and curse words is not the way to dock.”

The soft lights around her dim, a low hum generates white noise. Electricity tingles as the sensors over her skin connect. The future is one blink away. “Welcome to the new working from home experience”.

Two glass doors bar the way, flanked by fancy plants. “I could have sworn it was going to be elevator doors opening”. Her reflection greets her from within the massive doors. “First day in and it’s got to be a bad hair day. Well, at least it is the right colour”.

Mary pushes the left door, it is unlocked. The scan makes her shudder as she crosses the threshold. “Ok, all checked in; time to gear up on the pirated hairstyle.”

Startled, she notices the big desk at reception. If someone heard her talk about illegal content, her dream job will turn into a nightmare. No one is behind the wooden front panel. This furniture screams early twenty first century vintage style—the office space period best suited for spying on employees. “Who needs receptionists when you have scanners?”

To her left, a short yet wide corridor conducts to the open plan area. Exhaling with every step, she emerges smartly dressed with matching perfect hair—it took but a second of concentration for it to become real, the hacks are working.

The scene ahead looks as if lifted from an Edu-online history site. Working from home became the norm thirty years ago, after the third XXI century pandemic. Anyone on this level of the oneiric building knew the inside of an office only from pictures. Current workplaces were limited to squads of six; seeing so many people in the same physical space talking casually, smiling as they check each other’s attire, felt nicely bizarre. Despite this aura of normalcy, the deaths that took place on the ramp up to this day, linger on her mind.

As she traverses the open plan dreamscape, Mary bumps into two men in their thirties engrossed in conversation. Something is quite off about them, as if they were stylized avatars instead of realistic dream representations. One is muscular but out of proportion, resembling the body types on video games. The other one is thin to a degree of looking flat, with the spiky hair of anime cartoons.

“I can feel the sweat on my palms man”, said anime Perry. “This is even more realistic than streaming in ten k, but not as fun as it is, like, work.”

“Piece of cake work, bro. I reckon I can do it in my sleep”, said videogame chad Carlos. Mary starts to feel uncomfortable as the two of them lay eyes on her. The smaller one does so shyly, the bulkier one stares without any self-awareness. “Here’s hoping this is one of them wet dreams.”

“I reckon you still wet the bed then”, said Mary. The words came out without hesitation, yet her heart rate spiked. Changes in biorhythm get reported, and she needs to be as unnoticeable as possible. “Don’t let me keep you from your enlightened conversation.” Mary exhales sharply as she walks away. Months of preparation, effort and giving up on her actual career dreams to end up joining an apparent landscape of nightmares. Daymares more like, as the place scintillated with natural light.

Mary hastens her pace towards the throbbing mix of colours that indicates her workspace— at least it is not a pointing arrow. To her left, a balding middle-aged man laps around his workstation, trying to outpace a floating digi-frame of what appears to be his mother.

“If we are here all night, every night”, Angel said. “Then we never see the dark, only light burns our eyes. We risk becoming too jolly, which is the first step to insanity.”

“You should nap at work then”, said Perry. The two chads had caught up with them. “Give it a go, a dream within a dream. Slumber cures all maladies.”

“Stop it with your castle and dragon words bro”, said Carlos. “You’re going to turn the water cooler into the soy cooler”.

Mary sits down slowly, remaining undetected is crucial; the risk of neuronal damage due to asinine chit chat is real. Crouching behind her monitors, a blink turns on the system. The whole set up is incredibly realistic. Her forehead lowers until it rests against tacky wood that feels cool. The smell of coffee makes her pull up. Next to her, steam raises from a vintage clay mug—the company logo prominently displayed. The coffee never gets cold here.

A shrill squeak startled Mary, making her spill coffee on her virtual cacti. Angel stops his pacing and runs towards the corner office from whence the screams originated.

“Our boss is a rat from the experimentation branch; he provides many years of experience, having worked at the addiction department," said a bald man looking over thick rimmed glasses. “My name is Joseph”, he smiled as he pushed up his glasses. “I work the accounts.”

“Of course he does, big nerd that he is.”

“That’s how you like it”.

“Hi, my name is Caroline. The woman looks like the personification of efficient administrative skills. A blazer combined with a well-matched blouse and skirt combo. Thin rim glasses hit it off brilliantly with the perfect earrings for her semi-long hairstyle. “That bunch over there, humans and animals alike, are hooked on cocaine”, said Caroline pointing to the left. “No wonder they can’t sleep properly and remain trapped within realities. Do you think that hurts?”

“Clearly not enough, is that why they talk so much shit?” said Mary.

“That’s also why the boss is see through”, said Joseph. “The cravings keep him from fully falling asleep. Constantly being half-awake with a side of anxious and angry. That’s torture if you ask me.”

“Nobody asked you,” said Caroline.

“Do you know each other from before this place?”

“We are married’, said Joseph.

“Guess he wasn’t lying when he said he was the man of my dreams.”

“That’s lovely”, said Mary. There is only one way to get rid of these two. “Let me get settled in my workspace and I will catch you later for a coffee”.

“No coffee here, we want all employees wide asleep,” said Joseph.

“Shut up, you big doofus,” said Caroline. She grabbed her husband by the arm and walked away. “See you later, sorry I never asked, what was your name?”

“My name is Aisling.”

Mary regains her seat. The chair turns to the sides and falls back with a will of its own. The fabulous ergonomic design is topped with rough fabric biting into her side. It is based on a last century model, not vintage but cheap—the fancy blueprints would’ve eaten away at the profit. The dual monitors are six k enveloping models, the specialty of public library basements. As anything subject to patents and speculation, dream energy is becoming a top currency; but even when dreams are for sale, such cheapness is insulting.

Apart from the extra content from dubious sources, Mary converted some of her savings into dream energy, to be on the safe side.

She can spare enough to upgrade her chair one level, and thus halve the itching sensation.

A quick vertical swipe activates the hovering frame. Its rim buzzes with antigravity electrons as it takes off. Three taps to the side make it hover steadily at the right height.

An 8k image blinks into existence, its resolution too low for holo-display. It is from a while ago: Susan and Mary are hugging each other at the beach. Mary hesitates for a moment and then gives in. She swipes the display, activating a short video in which the girls giggle to the background of crashing waves. The sound goes directly to Mary’s internal ear receptor, via Bluetooth, as the least thing she needed was her co-workers asking questions. The death of her sister is too fresh on her mind.

The curved monitor on the left flashes a warning; the electromagnetic pulses of the brain are to be recorded. Every brilliant idea, as well as any salacious enough to be profitable on the dark web, is the property of the company. The working day is starting, so personal mind-walls are disabled.

Mary’s endgame requires discretion, so she runs her surreptitiously acquired patch. There must be a bit of lag, as a mind mail has just arrived, saying that the new chair, even though acquired through Mary’s dream credit, is to remain in the company’s premises.

The fix kicks in, she is not completely on the network. She feels tempted to stress test the patch, but at the last moment she stops.

Free thinking comes at a cost, as the employees’ brains are powering the simulation—cost cutting at its best. Any possible extra, from doughnuts to ergonomic keyboards is billable and leaves a trace.

Mary’s many years of training as a psychologist, reviewing recorded dreams, allowed her work group to put together breakthrough theories on how the dream weaving capabilities of the brain could be harnessed to create alternate stages of being. She is delighted that from all the possibilities for application, charging for coffee that is not there made it to market first. She needed to be there regardless, a reckoning was due.

The screen flickers, an invoice needs revision and rendering. This is a lengthy yet straightforward process—finding the error, triggering a correction, recalculation, and rebilling the charge. Mary practiced each scenario for weeks before even applying for the position. Not knowing how to do the work before getting it guaranteed failure; training and coaching were costs best outsourced to the workforce.

Ferdinand, the boss rat, squeaked once more, with such fury as to be heard through his closed door. Carlos and Perry looked at each other’s now pallid faces, their eyes wide open. Carlos' lips trembled as Perry's hands shook.

“Run to the boss, you idiots!” said Joseph. “If you make him squeak again, he’ll flay you”.

Seeing them run away, tumbling against everything on their path, soothed Mary. The time has come. She was able to focus her breathing, making her surroundings porous.

The high-pitched tones of Ferdinand became emotions—anger, frustration. The cadence of the screeched syllables formed images in her brain. Perry and Carlos squealed in a higher pitch, stressed by apologetic undertones. They will stop playing multiplayer games and visiting dirty sites during office hours.

Letting the mist rise from the lake of her mind breaks the electric chains of the dream office. Her breathing mimics the winds by the shore, rhythmically covering it all. The electrons that shape her surroundings glimmer as her gaze relaxes. On her monitors numbers blink and windows pop out and in. Now all she needs is a case to keep the jig going. The right ticket appears: a big invoice stuck because a comma was in the place of a dot.

Mary is not splitting her personality, but her consciousness. The id part of her mind, the impulsive aspect, has been tamed to do clerical work, whilst her superego—the morality—ensures the work processes are carried out without haste. The main part of her consciousness, or ego, is thus in a semi dormant stage in which thoughts rule over dreams.

Mary’s subconscious is manifesting itself with enough consistency as to effectively be another worker. These thoughts should have triggered the security alarm, as having more than one subconscious pattern triggers a database error. Protocol dictates that she should be sent home via rude awakening but the patch masks her other reading.

It is now time for a practical test.

The next part is the tricky one. Mary needs to run a decoy of her imprint that appears to be working at her station. In this controlled environment, brainwaves are capped. If not, there would be flying people everywhere. The ability to wish anything in a dream now carries a hefty fee. Through meditation Mary has enhanced every aspect of her mind. The illegal dream fantasy software she got at the second level of the web should fry her brain or make her dreams come true.

Mary stands up to see her double sitting at her desk, wearing the gorgeous new blouse. She wonders which wavelengths are being registered by the security systems. Mary looks at her wrist to check the readings on her tight fit device and finds it gone. She smiles as she spots it measuring the vitals of her decoy.

Undetected by every productivity tracker in place, she is now a shadow. The whole set up is in its infancy, recording the work sessions remains cost adverse. To offset this handicap, several employees were deployed as spies. They came from trusted departments, like the addiction department. Addicts can always be trusted to rat on others.

Mary walks towards the big window, the warmth increasing with every step. On the back of her mind there are numbers, at the front waves crashing against rocks. The tempered glass doesn’t stop her hand. The electric sun is not as warm on the outside as the chill of fear takes over for a moment. If what she is about to do fails, her heart bursts.

She must fly up two levels on the side of the office building and murder the Operations director. The vivid dream corp. has patented flight—hovering in a dream is no longer possible. Trying to do so is regulated via kill-switch.

The thirst for revenge can only be quenched with blood—which is raspy on the throat. The shielding she put together cuts her imprint from the patent trackers, but might not work as expected and she is likely to plummet and die back at home from the shock.

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall, here we go”.

As she dropped the air rubbed against her legs and caressed her face. Her hair twisted in quick spirals during freefall. The pavement below approximates her rapidly. She is sinking, just as she used to do whilst learning to swim. She recalls the reassuring grip of her sister, holding her under the waves, and fluttering hair morphs from brown to black and wavers, she is now floating in a sea of air. She kicks and propels herself upwards, just as if Lucy was holding her.

She sees him through the window, her shadow falling across his big fancy desk. The memory of her sister, killed under that man’s watch, freezes her for an instant. The fire of hatred reignites her. On the building’s facade her face reflection changes to that of her murdered sister.

The man is wearing a very expensive three-piece suit, a garment whose blueprint costs more than all the furniture on the floor below. He notices the shadow across his hands, as he watches the keys when he types. The executive suffers a small urine leak as he recognizes the dead girl staring at him—her floating being ignored.

“Mirror, mirror, here we go. “

“Lucy? It can’t be you. The dream shaper software had this glitch corrected. I stopped seeing you months ago.”

“Silly me was thinking you would be happy to see me, again”, said Mary. Speaking in her sister’s voice felt eerie. For a moment she gasps for air that isn’t there.

“Of course, I am”, he said as he reached for the communicator on his table. Never a man of brilliance, it didn’t occur to him sending a mental distress call. “Let me just call a technician to make you disappear again”.

Mary clutches his hand, having closed in within a heartbeat. “That’s quite rude, we are but getting started”. A light squeeze of the wrist makes the man yelp.

“You truly are back”, Henry said. “This is not possible; it can’t be real. We scrubbed the system of anything remotely matching your imprint—this place can’t render you. Charles said he had it sorted.”

“He said what?” Mary said as her right-hand goes for the nose of the man, ramming her fingers into his nostrils. A quick yank spurts blood on the exclusive tie and shirt. This damned place feels so real. Mary wipes her soiled fingers across his mouth. “Your boss is aces at problem solving, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about”.

“Back to the clichés, are we?” said Mary. She tightens her grip on the wrist, enough to feel Henry’s radial artery smacking against her hand. His dream station should be flooding him with various stress relieving components. Alas, Henry suffers from severe trypanophobia. The sight of a needle has made him faint for the last thirty years, so he removed them all from his dream station. No relaxing substances will enter his bloodstream. That leaves but a couple of seconds before his arrhythmia triggers off the alarm.

“Henry, do you know that seconds in a dream feel like hours? That is why your boss, Charlie, was so eager to get this office up and running. People can do the work of a week over a good night’s sleep. That is, if they get the right gear. Which can be quite pricey, especially the meds that keep you from going mad.”

“That is our business model, the competitive advantage we are going for. A workforce with thrice the output, no longer subject to the productivity decrease associated with resting times. You caught us red handed, so we cut you in on the action and offered you a promotion.”

Mary’s suspicions were right, her sister was murdered. The dream station that killed her didn’t accidentally trigger a cardiac arrest—it was done on purpose. All evidence had been expunged, if not for Lucy being a romantic that spent thousands of dollars on real paper, her death would have remained a malfunction. Mary inherited her sister’s notebooks, where she had read in a lovely cursive about horrible things that could ruin a business.

“Pay me off to hide the fact that the dream office melts neurones, causing diseases for which you have patented all possible treatments”.

A punch lands inside the thorax of the man. Mary went straight for the heart, as they did to her sister. Henry's eyes bulge, as Mary squeezes the ventricles. As more force is applied his face reddens, and the remainder of his hair stands up. His left arm stiffens, and tears roll out.

“It won’t be this easy”, Mary said as she relaxed her grip.

Mary immaterializes her hand, giving some respite to the company man.

“Anything else you want to tell me? Or should I give you another squeeze?”

“Charles said you were going to post on the mind net. The bonuses and dividends that took years to set up would be gone. My third house was getting actual water in the swimming pool. You know how much that costs? I’m sorry but it needed to be done. Lucy, I told you to let it slide.”

Tears solidify mid-air, crashing against the marble floors. Henry’s heart is severed as knuckles materialized within it. At home, his heart gives out. As Henry rattles his death, Mary appreciates the exquisite Verona marble floors, extinct in nature for at least a decade. A blink of moist eyes later, she is looking at her screen. All her co-workers are getting away from their stations, running towards the emergency exit that would wake them.

Slowly she rises, shaking at the knees as her chest heaves. The world falters in a blinding rush of luminosity as adrenaline floods her. Her mouth is awash with the taste of cherries, it turns out murder had a flavour.

The forensic team found her tears, their readings declared them as the artificial rain in this environment, nothing but a blitz of electricity.

“Did you see anyone suspicious the day Henry Quinto died?” said special agent Eduardo Smith.

“It was my first day, so I couldn’t tell what or who was out of place”, said Mary.

“Are you sure?” Eduardo approached her, getting close enough to lean over her desk. “Did you see anyone that looked like they didn’t belong?"

“It is quite diverse here, everybody belongs, human or otherwise.”.

Eduardo grabs the picture on her desk, the agent’s risk tracer warns him that the woman’s heart rate spiked. Now he will apply a bit of psychological pressure, whilst the biometric analyzers all over his uniform do their job. “Is it OK for me to grab this?”

“I guess so. I mean, it is on display, isn’t it?”

“I take it you are an animal lover then”, he said arching his eyebrows. “What type of mutt is this one anyway?”

“Rita is a border collie, not a mutt. She is a mid-twenty first century pedigree. I pretty much work for the upkeep of that beast.”

“I see”, said Eduardo. The voice search utility on his belt confirmed the dog’s registration—it checked. Same goes for the face recognition, Aisling McDonald, the matching algorithm places her at six degrees of separation from the victim—statistically he was closer to him, even though he didn’t know her name last week.

“I will be truthful”, said Eduardo. “I am more interested in who do you think told the press.”

“I didn’t talk to anyone”, said Mary, “Not even when they offered me loads of money. I ended having to spend my own credits on an enhanced mind-block—as the mailcomms kept coming, giving me awful headaches.”

“The news broke the mind net. Corporate bigwig murdered by ghost of former employee on the first day of the shiny dream office. There are holo-movies with worse plots than that. Talking to the reporters would have made you a star; the extra money could have bought plenty of dog chow.”

“Or it could have gotten me fired, and then there would be no more money for dog or holo-cable romances.”

“Those shows are my mother’s favourites”, said Eduardo with scorn. “Art uploaded directly to your brain.”

As they speak, the microcomputer on his wrist analysed every sentence the girl said. The software cross-referenced her pitch, tone, and emotion, with her heartbeat and brainwaves in order to render a profile. The psych results hit the agent’s pupils; the woman in front of him is incapable of dishonesty.

“This as I mentioned is a big impact case. The boss of Quinto, Charles Lear was arrested yesterday, after an emergency meeting of the board of investors. The recording of Quinto talking to himself and admitting a murder reached a billion views on the mind-tube. The shares of Pharmatron nosedived. It is an actual PR nightmare in the office next door.”

“I know, the screams have lasted over a week. It has been chaos. I heard they are coming with some sort of dream cocaine to keep them from losing it. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we are getting furlough until the share price rebounds..”

“If you think of anyone who might have ratted, and I stress this word with good reason, let me know.”

“I will do mister police officer, sir.”

“Thanks Aisling,” Eduardo said. “That is all; you are free to awaken and go home.”

The dim lights of the bed-station make her blink. Mary’s eyelids drag lazily, as her sight adjusts to her apartment. There are spider webs hanging from the ceiling. Everybody was forced into a weeklong office lock-down after Quinto was dispatched. It felt like three months. She raises her hand, her fingernails look vampiric in length. If her toenails are the same, her biggest crow’s feet are no longer on her face. She chuckles as the mind link is pulled off.

The backup system hums, as the bandwidth stabilizes. The mirror device performed formidably. She was able to answer police and journalist calls as herself from the dream office. They never bothered knocking at her door, as gasoline is quite dear.

Her sister Lucy’s dissertation on comatose patients was a breakthrough at the time. It paved the way for enhanced recoveries. Mapping the path to the subconscious was possible thanks to her efforts; a path to which a dream cast could be connected.

“That notebook was worth every dollar spent on it”, said Mary as her feet touched the ground. “You always defended handwriting as a method to enhance mental processes. As a side effect you ended with offline manuals on the future, out of the reach of greedy conglomerates.”

A heartbeat beeps and dances on a vintage holo-screen, encased within a rudimentary desk that clashes with the ever-connected furniture in the tiny apartment. Mary spent hundreds of hours putting it together and linking it to her dream station.

“Aisling is doing ok, the electrical pulses of this machine keeping her mind and body in shape, via well placed shocks.”

Part of her was in that office, as the projected decoy imprint. Aisling had been in a comma for three years, plugged into a predecessor of the dream-station, receiving the therapy Lucy had helped to develop. With the help of Lucy’s journals, Mary had hacked her station and copied her brain wavelengths into her official dream-station, deploying them as the main id from the first interview. The patch that she got on the black market, had allowed everything else. Mary wonders if the thrill of getting away with murder is therapeutic; perhaps even an accelerator to her awakening. Hopefully, that is the case.

“Mr. Lear, your dinner is ready.”

“Is it done to my specification?” said Charles. “The last steak was not rare. Not even all the drugs you pump into me in this dream jail made it passable.”

“One of the last remaining highland cows was slaughtered just to get the taste right.”

“You would be surprised what executives are willing to pay for”, said Charles. He paused to savour the steak. “Of course, these would be improvements to the dream office project, but quite easy to port for the dream-jail. Ever since every eyeball became a video camera, it is harder to get away with things. Most of the VIPs of the dream-jail, for which I found myself being a beta tester, will continue to lead their industries from the comfort of home incarceration. Damn, we fixed the brainwaves so they can spend as long as they want with their family, whilst appearing to be in their cells.”

“It truly is a well-designed space, sir. I mean, you can turn your so-called ‘cell’ into any room ever to exist.”

“My favourite is the Victorian age brothel—it feels just like work. Talking of which, dismiss yourself. There are some new crazy addictive drugs that need my approval to begin human testing”. “Please do not hesitate to summon me again, if there is anything you might desire.”

Charles takes another bite of the juicy steak, fat dripping from the corner of his mouth. The help is clingy but a solid non-disclosure agreement keeps them in check.

The contracts are in order. Soon enough stronger painkillers will be added to the dreamscape offices, slowly released over work times. The latest batch was genetically modified to become even more addictive. The numbing effect was reduced, so the staff would remain clearheaded and desperate to return to their desks to finish that bit of pending work.

As Charles is about to place the first electronic signature, he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“I told you to never interrupt me when I am busy”, Charles said without bothering to lift his gaze from the holo-screen. “I fear you are in for unpaid overtime, old chap.”

“Life is a dream, Charles Lear. It is now your time to awaken.”

“Lucy?”

DM

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