"Pandora’s Dreams" by Peter Beaumont
A new technology allows the recording, playback, and sale of dreams.
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"Pandora’s Dreams" by Peter Beaumont
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Five years ago we opened Pandora’s box. Blinded by hubris, we didn’t foresee the problems that would arise. Only later did we realize our work would have such horrible implications, and as the story of Pandora goes, it’s too late once the bad stuff gets out of the box. Now things are a mess and I guess we are to blame. You would be right to judge us harshly, and I won’t hope for your forgiveness, but perhaps you might eventually understand how we got here and where we might end up if something isn’t done.
I still remember the day well. It was early Spring. A tang of vitality hung in the mild morning air as I climbed out of my car and walked slowly to the lab, weary from the late night and stuck in a loop of thinking I couldn’t escape. Why wasn’t it working? Where had we gone wrong? What had I missed?
We had been working late all week, sustained by a stubborn, almost desperate self-belief. We knew we were close. Close enough to believe the next day would be the breakthrough. Or the next. We just had to keep at it and ignore the poisonous doubt lurking in the long pauses between conversation; the doubt that it actually might not be possible to achieve.
None of us wanted to walk away from the years of work. From the years of sweet-talking potential investors and cajoling skittish board members. From the years of telling each other and anyone else who would listen that if we couldn’t make the biggest advancement in neuroscience in decades, then no one could.
We had run the latest version of the program seven nights in a row without success. Each morning we had grimly accepted the disappointment and sent the volunteers on their way. Each morning our frustration accumulated like weeds choking a garden, and I wondered which of us might crack first under the pressure.
Then something changed.
On the eighth morning the result for two of the subjects was different. The quality was poor, and there was no sound, but irrefutably and quite remarkably we had finally succeeded in recording and playing back a human dream.
There was a reverent silence for five, ten seconds, then the room burst into life. People were shouting, laughing. Someone slapped my back. I stood rooted to the spot, eyes still focused on the wall-mounted screen in stunned disbelief. Someone called out to replay it, and as we watched again, the significance of what we had achieved began to sink in.
I still feel a flicker of the awe from that day.
I still feel a flicker of the awe from that day. Like the small tremors that continue long after an earthquake has struck.
Looking back, I know we should have paused during those first heady days to consider the implications of what we were doing, but if you can imagine the excitement we experienced that day then you might understand why we didn’t. We had persevered and been rewarded, and were doubly determined to stay the course from there on in.
To say all the possible implications were unknowable is inexcusable, I know. Just as I know all we could think about on that day, and for many after, was the startling, beautiful things we could do with our discovery. And if we were honest – at least with ourselves – some of us were also imagining fame and glory. We were only human after all.
You won’t be surprised to know that once we fixed the bugs in the system and moved to the full trial phase, the first participant was a rich entrepreneur. One of that infamous group rich enough to build private spacecraft and a boldness that could mesmerize millions with a grand vision of the future.
Some of the team weren’t happy about blurring the boundaries between science and capitalism, but given our benefactor was prepared to donate a sizable portion of his wealth to the trial it was impossible to say no. And let’s face it. Science doesn’t happen unless someone pays the bills, and compared to the stifling bureaucracy of the university system we worked in, his proposition was beautiful in its simplicity. All we had to do was allow him to be the first to use it. Beyond that he wanted nothing, and in return he gave us more than enough money to make our dream project real. What reasonable person could refuse that?
So there we were. We had worked out how to record dreams and play them back. I was almost going to say play back at our leisure, but five years of viewing the confused, disturbing, even horrific creations of the unconscious mind has been as far from leisure as you could imagine.
The project was originally conceived with a noble intent. We had theorized that the roots of mental illness, trauma and certain cognitive disorders lay hidden somewhere within the deep, dark folds of the unconscious mind. Dreams were a manifestation of this little-understood function of the human brain, and we were confident that if we could capture and analyze them, we might be able to tease out the causes of these afflictions, and just possibly, find a cure.
There was so much we could have achieved, but – and I’m ashamed to say this now – we allowed commercial interests to override our therapeutic goal.
Once news got out that we could record and play back dreams, people clamored to get access to it. And those able to pay the hefty price were more than happy to do so.
Overnight, orbiting Earth as a space tourist dropped to number two on the must-do list of the mega-rich and would-be famous. After that there was, as they say, no holding back the tide.
With that, our research unit was transformed into a corporate entity, and in the eyes of some – ourselves included – we stopped being scientists and became salesmen. Soon the researchers and technicians were outnumbered by the marketers, lawyers, accountants and the quickly despised band of executives who cared only for profit and growth.
A year after that we made the next important breakthrough, improving the technology so that it could be housed in a portable unit and used by our clients at home. We had to install some seriously large computing hardware in our new facility to be able to handle all the incoming dream data, and then hire loads more technicians to keep it all running, but it’s what the customers – and therefore the shareholders – wanted, so no one balked at it.
The units were clunky at first, and a little unreliable, but that was fixed in time. More problematic was some of the early client feedback. A number of people were confused and shocked by what they were confronted with, and a few couldn’t handle it at all. We did our best to reassure them, sometimes cajoled them, and where necessary, directed them to a discreet counseling service to work through the more unpleasant stuff. The lawyers had also insisted we get all clients to sign an indemnity absolving us of any responsibility for harm should it occur, and a few clients had to be reminded of this as a last resort. Despite all this, enough clients continued on to tell their friends and social media followers about the miracle of their captured dreams – with perhaps some judicious self-editing in the telling – which fanned the flames of envy and drove enough demand on which to base a business.
Eventually, anybody prepared to pay the charges could sign up for a week, a month, even a year of recording, and have their dreams polished and sent back before the end of each day for them to view. It should have been a great success story. But then the problems began to emerge.
It didn’t take long before people realized they could sell their dreams. Or worse, that recorded dreams could be stolen and sold on the black market for a good price if they were entertaining enough.
Humanity has always had a hankering to be entertained, and here was a new form just waiting to be exploited. Sexy, terrifying, disturbing, poignant, mystifying, thrilling: dreams offered it all, and there was always someone somewhere prepared to pay to watch it. More than one of our critics described our business as producing just another form of pornography.
Then came the more entrepreneurial activity. Someone worked out that here was a wonderful means by which to blackmail the rich and vulnerable. They would threaten to make public a stolen copy of a more problematic dream if the targeted victim failed to pay a significant sum of money. Needless to say, the willingness of victims to pay increased markedly after the blackmailers released the dream of one notable public figure who tried to call their bluff.
We couldn’t work out how the dreams were being stolen. We tried beefing up system security, but to no avail. Much to my anger and disgust I eventually had to accept that at least one of our own staff was involved. It seemed that not only were the rich happy to pay for our unique service, but sometimes those wanting to be rich were prepared to break the rules to join them.
It’s fair to say the clients weren’t impressed. Most of them received sizable and discreet payments from the company for their trouble. All part of doing business, according to the company executives.
As troubling as this was, it was far from the worst of it.
As troubling as this was, it was far from the worst of it.
The government took an interest in our system, seeing it as a potential tool in the fight against crime and terrorism. Why wait until someone is stupid enough to let slip their plans, or to act on them? Why not catch them in the act of dreaming about it and use it as preemptory evidence against them instead?
Now I’ve nothing against public safety, but using our technology in this way leaves us in a difficult situation. Are we obliged to report any dreams that might be suggestive of criminal intent? What if poor old client X had watched a particularly violent film the night before, and then had a dream influenced by it? What if client Y had suffered an intense trauma and their unconscious mind played it over and over again in an attempt to make sense of it? Would these dreams be sufficient to warrant intervention by the authorities, and therefore require us to report them? And whose job would it be to try to interpret and justify the dreams as being a reliable indicator of criminality? Or for that matter, to explain how an unconscious desire will invariably lead to conscious action?
The libertarian lawyers and philosophers have had a field day with it so far. Dreams are private property they argue, and shouldn’t be interfered with or used against someone, regardless of the circumstances. They decry the trampling of human rights and question the morality of this newfound omniscient justice.
And where might it end? There are rumors the government will soon mandate that everyone have a unit installed at home to record their dreams and transmit them to some government agency for monitoring. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what that might lead to next.
Perhaps I’m imagining the worst, but I’m not alone. There’s a small but growing protest movement speaking out these days. Much of their effort is directed at the government, but not surprisingly, they have also taken aim at us. Online harassment of the company is now a daily occurrence, and I’ve read more than my fair share of nasty emails and social media posts directed at me.
They’re mostly demanding the technology be banned, claiming it’s dangerous and that we don’t know what we are doing. Worse are the suggestions that we are part of a government conspiracy which can only be fixed by violent revolutionary means.
Several of my colleagues left recently, spooked supposedly by the more unpleasant attacks. I heard one or two were offered considerable sums to work for dream recording outfits starting up in countries with less stringent regulatory controls.
So be it. I have no right to judge them. Others can.
The time of my own reckoning is now close.
Yesterday I dreamt I was standing in the vast processing vault beneath our lab that houses the row after row of computer servers. In the dream I walked over to a terminal, logged in, then hesitated as I looked around at the quietly humming machines that store a million dreams and more. I knew what I had to do, but what person wouldn’t pause at the thought of destroying their own creation?
Then cold certainty took over and I entered the command, ignored the alert that came up, and re-entered it. A moment passed, and then it was done. The servers powered down and left me sitting in an eerily silent space. I felt a pang of sadness, followed by a growing sense of dread, then the dream ended.
That was yesterday morning.
Today I sit in my apartment under house arrest, awaiting the arrival of the authorities. No reason was given in the notification, but I know my dream must have been the cause.
I should have known my dreams would be monitored when I recorded them. I had found watching them a strangely cathartic experience after focusing intently on those of others. Naively, I overlooked the prospect of the company and the government being interested in them as well.
Now I wait to be judged by some government inquisitor, and, I suppose, by you in time.
I wonder what advice Oppenheimer would have for me if he were here today.
In moments of despondent clarity I have wondered if we were meant to fully know our dreams; whether we opened a door to the unconscious world that was never meant to be opened. Perhaps we should just accept the notion that dreams serve a useful purpose and leave it at that. To accept that there are some things that will and should remain unknowable. After all, do we really want to confront the proposition that part of our brain is working autonomously, almost like a separate mind of its own? Based on some of my own dreams it seems my unconscious mind is more than ready to cast harsh judgment on me for my role in this.
Enough for now. There’s little hope for me, but perhaps it’s not too late for someone else to act. For someone to not just protest against the sinister future we are hurtling towards, but to lead a movement to prevent it. For someone brave enough to try to do what Pandora could not; to put the evils of the world back inside the box.
Discussion Questions (Respond In Comment Section)
If you could buy, and watch, the dreams of others, would you do it? Why or why not?
Would you allow your own dreams to be recorded? Would you allow them to be sold, or watched by others? What do you think our dreams reveal?
If you could buy and watch (or have) a particular dream, what topics or stories would you want to try out?
Do you think people who have (or want to buy) violent or deviant dreams are (or will become) violent or deviant people? Do you think dreams should be used to provide cause for believing a future crime will take place?
Do you think there are areas of scientific research, like atomic bombs, viruses, human cloning, or dream recording, that should be banned from ever being researched?
I'm curious to hear what you all think of one of the questions that goes with the story, "If you could buy, and watch, the dreams of others, would you do it?" Would you?
If someone I knew changed the password in my phone and then died, yeah I would go through their dreams to see if it’s there. Other than that, I would prefer to show others to see how they would approach me knowing all about my dreams but not knowing about their own. Would my dreams help them to see themselves more?