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So I designed this ultimate escapism, or so I thought, and it was a hit, relatively speaking. People loved it, they could disappear into their dreams for a few hours every night with joyful abandon. Too long and it would start to cause problems. And I got money from this, I owned the company and it went well. I could afford a proper research facility, managers ran the company, secretaries, marketing strategists, market researchers, factory workers, unions for factory workers, tea ladies, and call centres in India for any complaints. While I could work at my one true love, physics. Well physics and beer, I probably drank more than I should have done, because I never seemed to get much physics actually done, but I tried, everyday, from and midday until 3. Late start and early finish. But physics was what I wanted to work on, quantum physics, I wasn t even much bothered with the physics of the glasses I had designed, that was done and that was bringing me a steady income. I wasn t bothered with predicted takings, share prices etc. I was certain that that could run itself.
Now one day someone in the company, I forget who, probably someone from market research, or a think tank, decided that we needed a redesign, we needed to create a version of the glasses that wouldn t throw up unwanted scenarios. Take out the fail safe. I told that despite the near physical impossibility of it, it would be creating a drug out of a recreational game. I didn t want to be part of it, I wanted to carry on with my failing research and let everyone buy these glasseCHNKWKS j¯ˇˇˇˇTEXTTEXTPRFDPPFDPPVFDPCFDPCXSTSHSTSHZ STSHSTSH Z2SYIDSYIDPZSGP SGP dZINK INK hZBTEPPLC lZBTECPLC ÑZFONTFONTúZ<STRSPLC ÿZ:PRNTWNPR[@ FRAMFRAMRgàTITLTITL⁄gDDOP DOP h.ems so unreal.
So I designed this ultimate escDream Design – Karl M V Waugh
First Draft
Sometimes you make something, design something, of which you are so proud of, which you want to shout about from the rooftops, and then a while later, sometimes days, sometimes months, and sometimes years later, you become ashamed of it, and regret your wild proclamations and support of it.
It s been three and a half decades since I, as a recently qualified physicists, designed those sunglasses. I d been doing routine research into the quantum workings of the eye and brain, and noticed a strange topology, a loop-hole that I could use. So a rushed patient later and voila, it was mine. It didn t take me long to develop the idea, the simple physical anomaly, into a working design, the dream-glasses, that could allow you to feedback your thoughts into your dreams. Allowing you to step into your dreams at any time you wanted and step out whenever you felt you d had enough.
It wasn t habit forming, because although you could have sex with every Hollywood star you wanted, could fly a spaceship against alien hoards, or find yourself at that one dinner date you had with the girl who got away, it wasn t real, and everyone knew that, I think. You psyche has a self defence mechanism, a reflex against bliss. So when you re making love to 50th Hollywood actress who wouldn t look at your twice in everyday life, you re mother would walk in, or you re wife would catch you. That dinner date would go as badly as it had the first time. Your fear of spiders suddenly becomes debilitating when all those alien hoards are in fact giant-spiders like a 1950s Horror film that scared you in spite of the tacky special effects. But it was still fun, especially when taken in small doses, and the crux of the biscuit was if other people were usins, let them have their dreams. But this is where I found I probably should have taken some more interest in stocks and shares, in forecasts and market turns. Because apparently we needed this redesign. And apparently they had someone who could do it, some young newly graduated physicist, with hunger in their bones. So I told them I thought it was morally wrong, you can t let everyone have everything they want without some comeuppance. And this is where I found I really should have taken interest in stocks and shares. Because then they told me that that was exactly what they planned to do, and that I didn t own enough of the company to stop them. And they were right.
I d never actually had that strong a moral conviction back then, I mean I could see that it could be dangerous to have the psyche s fail safe removed, but that wasn t what drove me to say those things. I was embarrassed. When I d made my first designs, I d spotted that peoples dreams did have a way of turning on them, and I d tried to get rid of this, but to no avail. So I just left it, I thought it wouldn t do too much harm to my sales, and I was right, it hadn t, I d made my money anyway. I was embarrassed that some new blood could do what I couldn t, could do it to my design, to correct the flaw that I just couldn t work around. But he did it, and it worked.
I m writing this sitting in Trafalgar Square, at the foot of Nelson. And it s empty here, it s midday sometime in June, I forget the date, and it s empty. Just pigeons, and some old litter.
The glasses sold well, I mean, the newly designed no-nightmare glasses. They sold very well. My company soared. We made millions. We made all the money that the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, the computer games industry and the film industry had been making collectively. We replaced all of them. Everyone wanted these glasses because they gave them everything they wanted. And we made them so they weren t too expensive, a working family could afford some, if they saved. And so everyone bought them. And everyone used them. Except a lucky few, for whom it wouldn t work. I am one of those lucky few, and that s because of my prototype. Something about my first prototype had blocked me and the few others who d tried it, from being able to use the newest improvement. And for that I am eternally grateful.
It was about this time that the first couple of deaths happened. A couple of kids from some southern state in America had been in the dream world for weeks. They starved themselves to death. The news tried to make a story out of it, but no body wanted to listen. These glasses weren t a threat, they weren t a health scare, they were what everybody wanted, they were heaven, here on earth. But personally I think everything changed about that time. In fact I know it.
Over the next couple of years I worked with the young blood that had improved my design, actually we became quite close friends, in a way. I wanted to know what would happen if someone died while in the dream world. We were never conclusive, it was almost impossible to be so, but I was certain. The body would die, but the psyche would continue in the dream world. Spreading out via the telepathy we d observed into everyone else. If the mind could have everything it ever wanted, why would it let the body stop all that just by dying. Survival instinct runs deep.
And I became more and more sure of this, as users began to show personality changes taking on bits and pieces of the people who died in the dream world. And people died. More and more teenagers, bored housewives and losers ended up starving to death. And the more that this happened, the more the addictive personality spread to everyone else using them. And so the more people just disappeared into the dream world. And at some point, and I m unsure exactly where, but everyone started going into the world, and not coming out. And things started to go wrong.
Crime had dropped radically at first, and so had employment, everyone just quit their drops and lived in dream world. Or if they didn t quit, they just stopped showing up. But that was ok because the people than ran the companies were also dreaming. And when crime dropped, and taxes dropped because no one was working, then the police were cut. Which had basically happened anyway because most police just spent their days dreaming in their cars, pretending to be on duty.
Then there was an uprising, the poor, the dole people, who d never been able to afford these glasses anyway. Well they were starving because the government had stopped dishing out handouts, and supermarkets and stopped being open because no one ran them. And so there were thousands of homeless and hungry. So what did they do, they broke into the rich houses. At first they took food, and alcohol. Then they took luxuries. But then they realised that they could take the glasses. Right off the faces of the dreamers. And the dreamers didn t wake up. They d always used to wake up, with the original glasses I designed. But now they didn t. They just stayed asleep. They didn t die, I checked. I used to walk around the streets, I d be armed with a gun to defend myself, and I would see smashed up houses. I would investigate, and I would find a rich old business man, sitting on coach off in a dream world, but not wearing the glasses. Just off there anyway, and sitting on the floor in front of them, amid all the vandalism would be this homeless man, wearing the glasses, himself off in a dream world. Sometimes this would have happened several times over, all of them just like statues. Dead to the world.
Well soon there wasn t much left, everyone was off dreaming. My company ceased to exist, but then so did most others. The government ceased to exist. But then so did most others. I managed to survive, it s surprising what you can find to eat when you re hungry. And I do occasionally meet people who don t use the glasses, usually it s because they don t work on them. These people don t become my friends, they know what I ve done. Usually they want to hurt me, but I ve found I m remarkably good at defending myself when I need to. So here I sit, in this empty world. This world of wild dogs and rotting bodies. People die and just decay, wherever they were sitting. I sometimes wonder what will happen when everyone in the dream world has gone.
I ve been working on a way to make the glasses work on myself. I know why the prototype blocked this new design, it s all to do with the way it feeds back in on itself. And now I think I ve got it. But I m kinda scared, do I want to take this step into the unknown. Or stay amid all this decay. I ve been putting it off for days. The other night while I was asleep, I dreamt (the old fashioned way) that I had put the glasses on and I couldn t get them off. But then when I wake up in the morning, why do I find myself in this empty world?
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