Prompt from "Imagine This" (May Ravenwood and Silvia Krpatova), January 2022: "Write a short story based on your dream/s. (This can be a dream you have about your future or an actual dream you had at night.)"

Story word count = 1882

A dream shook me from my sleep last night and I jerked up in bed, panting. It must have been significant, but as with all my dreams, in a moment it disappeared from my mind like a candle flame in a gust. I was left with a vague feeling of... something, but no more substance than a fading wisp of smoke.

"Earth to Aiden," my long-time girlfriend and fiancé Maya said, waving a hand in front of my face. Her other hand clutched a paper cup with a straw poking through the plastic lid.

"Huh?"

Those big mossy green eyes gazed at me over the top of oversized glasses, and her lips drew together into a hint of a smirk. For a moment, I entered another kind of dream. Did she know how devastating that look was to me?

"The Dream Weaver. You should try it," she repeated. Her eyes continued to hold mine while soft pink lips formed around the drink straw.

I pulled myself back into reality with a headshake. "Oh, yeah. But would a cute neuroscience associate professor tuck me in and give me a bedtime kiss? For science, of course."

"Maybe..."

The Dream Weaver, invented by Maya and fellow professor, Dr. Henry Volkes, induced sleeping dreams and guided the mental associations of the dreamer. Besides the potential for brain research, the Psychology Department showed interest in psychotherapy application. Eager corporate sponsors lined up, offering generous royalties in exchange for commercial consideration. And it had no shortage of students volunteering to be test subjects, by all reports a mind-expanding experience.

Late that night, Maya took me to her sleep lab. Being a weekend, only we occupied the space. While she readied the device, I filled out a data questionnaire at a computer station, but one section I could not.

Maya wrinkled her nose as she reviewed the form on the screen. "You left the dream section blank. What are your most common kinds of dream?"

I shrugged, "I don't know."

"Huh?"

"I'm fairly sure I do dream, but I never remember them."

She paused, then asked, "Most dreams are not remembered, but you do not recall any, ever?"

"Not even once."

"Hmm..." She wheeled her squeaky chair closer and glared into my eyes, making me wonder if I was somehow defective. "Do this for me. Close your eyes and imagine a colorful sunrise. How vivid is the visual image in your mind's eye? Do you see the colors just as if you were actually viewing it?"

I thought for a moment, then reopened my eyes. "Well, no, not visually. But I know what a sunrise is and how beautiful they can be, although I usually get up too late to see them." Her widening eyes tweaked my gut. "That 'mind's eye' thing is just an expression. Isn't it?"

"Oh, my God, Aiden. I think you have Aphantasia."

I gulped. "Is that bad?"

"Oh, no." Maya placed a supportive hand on my shoulder. "A condition, not at all a disability. It is a phenomenon where a person cannot mentally visualize imagery, just a different way of processing information. It occurs to varying extent in one or two percent of the population, and many famous and smart people have it."

"You mean other people can actually see images in their mind, like a photograph?" I asked, to which she nodded in response. "I didn't know that was possible."

"I hadn't thought of how Aphantasia might affect the results. Dreaming stimulates the visual cortex in the brain, which some say helps preserve its function. Most of dreaming is a visual experience." Maya's face brightened with an excitement that made me feel like I was a lab rat about to run a maze. "Let's get you hooked up."

The sleep pod, as she called it, was a large transparent tube laid on its side with both ends open. A white mattress and thin blanket spanned the length within. A hinged door laid open above a cradle-shaped pillow at one end. The whole pod rested on a sliding frame such that it would move inside a larger, gray torus ring, reminding me of a hospital diagnostic scanner. Maya attached sensor pads to various parts of my body and slid a wired skullcap on my head. Then I shimmied into the device and settled on my back while she hooked up the wires and made final adjustments. As a whole, it all felt strangely clinical, but not uncomfortable.

Maya explained, "The Weaver uses magnetic pulses to stimulate the hippocampus while you sleep. That is the part of the brain which controls memory and has a major role in dreams. From there, we can induce your memories, especially those with the strongest emotional connections. The methods were my contribution." She lifted her head, swelling with pride. This invention had potential to make her rich and famous.

She continued. "Then we can create new mental associations to those memories with images inserted into the visual cortex. There is huge potential for treatment of mental disorders, especially caused by trauma. The experiment will insert some innocuous images into your mind. It will be interesting to see how you respond."

"Wait," I said with a half-grin. "How do I know you're not some kind of mad scientist, using this machine to make me fall helplessly in love with you?"

"That would be unethical." The corners of her mouth turned up to a seductive smile. "Besides, I have other ways of doing that."

"Then do I still get a goodnight kiss?"

Maya smiled and bent down, cupping my face in her hands and pressing those luscious lips against mine. As the kiss lingered, a warmness swept through my core like a summer breeze. "Sweet dreams," she whispered.

"If I dream of you, they will be," I responded.

"Oh, that's one of your better lines." She giggled while sliding the tube within the imaging ring, then sauntered away.

The low soft lighting and gentle hum of the machine created a calming ambience. Nonetheless, between the unfamiliarity of the setting and all these body attachments, it took a while for me to finally fall asleep.

After an indeterminate amount of time, colored lights exploded within my dream-state like fireworks up close. Dizzied, my mind swirled as if sucked into a tornado - lifting, falling, spinning, flailing. Terrified and disoriented, I woke with a start, jerking up to bang my head against a hard surface. My heart raced while my eyes refused to focus. Where was I?

After a sensation of moving, the transparent shell above my head flung open. "Aiden, are you okay?" an airy, frantic voice exclaimed.

Maya. As my breathing slowed, her concerned face came into focus. "What happened?" I asked.

"When I started the visual image induction, your brain activity spiked, along with heart rate and blood pressure, as if your mind resisted." She disconnected my sensor attachments and helped me slide out of the tube. Leading me to a bench, she sat close beside me with and wrapped an arm around my waist. "I'm sorry, Aiden. I've never seen that kind of reaction."

I rubbed my forehead, which still throbbed. "Well, you have told me a time or two that I was hard-headed."

"Not like that." She chuckled, laying her head against my shoulder. "What do you remember?"

"Not much. Just bright lights and vertigo." I concentrated, willing myself to remember something. "I do recall ice cream, though. That's weird."

Maya narrowed her eyes and drew her lips into a tight line - her go-to angry expression. "That bastard..." Before I could ask 'what', she stood up. "I have to check on something."

I looked over Maya's shoulder at the computer monitor. She punched at the keys much harder than usual, and I feared the keyboard would fracture. Definitely angry. She pointed at a chart and statistical analysis on the screen. "See that? I thought little of it the first time I saw it, but it shows a significant increase in ice cream sales by those that volunteered for our study." She swung around to me. "Henry used the Dream Weaver to plant subliminal messages to alter behavior. We had agreed not to go there." Her eyes shot full open. "Oh, no, no..."

"What is it?"

"Something you joked about earlier, about me making you fall in love. Remember those rumors about Henry?"

Recently on campus, T-shirts appeared on some young women that bragged in bold print: 'I slept with Professor Volkes'. By rumors and Maya's disapproving suspicion, there was truth to that beyond scientific research.

The keyboard keys clacked furiously and lines of code scrolled across the screen. Maya's anger went to the next level, and she seethed through clenched teeth. "That absolute prick... These instructions inserted his facial image into the minds of female test subjects, and then created mental links to areas of the brain associated with erotic impulses. It would be like a hardwired hypnotic suggestion making the women more susceptible to his advances later."

"Oh, wow. So he used the Dream Weaver to get laid. What do we do now?"

Maya turned back to me. "He's going down. Would you go to my office and get a thumb drive? After I copy this, we're going to the university president."

Mumbled expletives followed me all the way down the hall. After rummaging through her jumbled desk drawer, I found a memory stick. But as I turned, another voice spoke in the distance. Dr. Henry Volkes' voice. "Calm down Maya, every significant advancement has gray areas."

"Gray areas!" Maya shouted. "You jumped way into the black. And what you did to those women was unethical at best, and a kind of rape at worst."

"No," he countered, "I just gave them a little mental nudge, like a harmless pickup line. Everything was consensual."

"You'd better get a good lawyer, Henry."

"Maya, don't you see the potential of Dream Weaver for population behavior modification? To steer humanity to a better future?"

"You sound like a comic book villain, Henry," she replied.

I quickened my pace down the hallway.

Henry pleaded, "You don't understand. I've made promises to people we should not disappoint. I can't let you do this, Maya."

When Maya yelped, I sprinted. He had the woman I loved up against a wall, gasping as his hands squeezed her throat. Henry was not a large man, and one rage-fueled punch to his narrow jaw sent him crumbling to the floor. He whimpered as I held him face down with a knee pressed against his back.

Maya downloaded the incriminating data and extracted the thumb drive from the computer port. "Got it. Let's go."

Hand-in-hand, we walked out into the sunrise. Hues of red, orange, and turquoise painted the low clouds in the eastern sky. "Beautiful. I know sunrises, and they give me a kind of contentment, even if I can't pull up a mental visual image."

Maya leaned against me, trembling, and I pulled her into my arms. Then the tears came, rolling down her cheeks in thin streams. "What have I done, Aiden? It will only get more difficult."

I stroked her hair as she burrowed her head against my chest. "You took the right path, Maya. And I will follow it with you."