Conundrum

  Return of The Dream Machine

  The Dream Machine was invented purely by chance, but it had become instrumental to some practitioners in the field of psychotherapy. It allowed an observer to actually see inside somebody's mind while they were asleep, with their dreams appearing on a computer screen.

  In spite of his grey hair, beard and decidedly middle aged dress sense, Dr Douglas Greenstreet was one of the earliest users of this new technology at his alternative therapy centre, which had been built at the edge of Victoria Park in the town of Ashford.

  The majority of established medical experts viewed using the machine with suspicion. They couldn't envisage how viewing a patient's innermost thoughts on a screen could aid their recovery. After all, the therapist wouldn't be able to actually feel the patient's emotions, which seemed the most important aspect to understand. Dr Greenstreet's peers tended to view his use of the machine as little more than voyeurism, and consequently he had found himself isolated from many of his colleagues. To top it all, the bloke who invented the machine was a crackpot!

  Vincent Smithfield was originally one of Dr Greenstreet's patients. In one of his therapy sessions he informed the doctor about the machine he was working on. Initially he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and the very existence of the machine was considered a fantasy. The doctor even went to Vincent's house to check the validity of the inventor's claims. It was after Mr Smithfield had destroyed the machine in one of his destructive episodes that a female patient came to the doctor and described her experience as a guinea pig for Vincent's experiment. It turned out that there was something in this nonsense after all.

  Dr Greenstreet was fascinated with the idea and paid the inventor out of his own pocket to build another 'dream machine.' Vincent thought this was a waste of time, but as he was being paid the most he'd ever earned for a project, he humoured the doctor and recreated the program to his original design. The doctor then helped him to take out a patent on his invention, but sadly Vincent died before his machine's potential had been realised.

  Dr Greenstreet was a pioneer in its use and the first patient the machine was used on at his clinic was called Bob. So here we find Bob reclining on the couch with various wires attached to his head, feeding into the back of a black, metal box beneath a computer screen. Dr Greenstreet would be dividing his attention between the patient and the screen from behind a large, mahogany desk.

  Bob's problem was a seemingly endless cycle of negative thinking, triggered by his inability to find employment. “If the government cut all the jobs, how dare they preach at me for being a sponger? No, they just want to demonise ordinary people so that attention is diverted from the excesses of the rich,” he expounded, as he stared out of the window at the ornate Victorian fountain in a distant corner of the park.

  Raising his gaze upwards, the large tower block of Charter House almost dwarfed the town's central church of St Mary, both seeming to gaze out from the centre of town, across the plethora of railway lines to the suburban park and beyond. Bob had never liked this huge concrete rectangle, or the similar presence of International House by the station. For him they represented big business trampling over the market town of old.

  Bob turned his gaze back to the room, where Dr Greenstreet was reaching up to one of the shelves, pulling down a large, red hardback entitled 'Our Universe.'

  Bob was confused as to the reason a tome on the cosmos might be found among the doctor's volumes by Freud, Jung and the like. He was worried that the hypnotherapist might be about to attempt to cure his problem with a load of astrological mumbo jumbo.

  Dr Greenstreet could sense this. “Don't worry. It's just an illustration I like to use,” he reassured, as he wandered across to the lounger. The book just seemed to fall open at page 48, upon which there was a diagram showing the phases of the moon. It was clearly an illustration the doctor had used many times.

  “Imagine that you are travelling around the earth in a continuous cycle, just like the moon,” he suggested, pointing at the black ball representing the 'invisible' new moon; “This is where you are when you are depressed – darkness.”

  It made sense.

  Following his finger around the curving line, the therapist pointed to an image showing the moon half in darkness and half in light; “This is where you are each time that you decide to say 'to hell with it,' and resolve to do whatever it takes to get your mind out of that dark place. After this, you feel remorse for things said and done in frustration and you want to think of yourself as making a new start.” He moved his finger round to the next diagram - the full moon represented as a white ball.

  “This is that new start. You feel fine, and in the light you can view things as they really are.”

  The finger of destiny moved round to the final illustration, another moon half in light and half in darkness; “But after a while those old familiar thoughts begin to creep back in, and before you know it you are here again.” There was a element of theatrical drama about the way he pointed back at the dark new moon and then closed the book with a loud bang, causing a puff of dusty air to emanate from the pages; “We need to break this cycle.”

  “The only thing that will break the cycle is getting a job,” replied Bob pragmatically.

  Sitting back at his desk the therapist announced, “I believe that you are doing all you can about that. You need to see that you are not alone and then change the way it affects you.

  I am going to put you into a state of deep relaxation. You are going to have some experiences which I will be able to view on my screen.” Bob was so used to this mantra which was trotted out before each session of Machine Assisted Hypnotherapy (MAH) that he could recite it word for word, and indeed this is what he sometimes did inaudibly under his breath.

  Within a couple of minutes Bob was under.

  Dr Greenstreet casually swivelled on his black revolving chair; an image of a rural railway station appeared on the screen. He recognised it, because it was the same station that the machine's inventor, Vincent Smithfield, used to use. Ham Street station had two staggered platforms, a small booking office in a typical Victorian building with a veranda around it, and trees on either side of the parallel tracks which ran dead straight in either direction as far as the eye could see. “What are you thinking?” he ventured

  Bob paused, “I am at the railway station waiting for the 8.15 to work. And it is very busy.” Bob had worked in one of the shops in Ashford's Park Mall shopping arcade, prior to being laid off in the latest recession. One would guess that we were about to witness his daily commute.

  “How do you feel about this?” the hypnotherapist inquired.

  “This is good. Very good. People are using the trains - it's good for the environment. Actually, I've never seen it like this. There are people everywhere. The ticket office is rammed solid!”

  He paused.

  “Ah – the train is coming now. I had better get onto the platform, as there will be a rush to get a seat and I don't want to stand all the way into town.”

  The two-carriage diesel train grew from a white speck on the horizon, at first barely imperceptibly, with the only clear evidence of movement being that every now and again it appeared darker as the shadows of trees fell across the front of the train. Gradually, the front of the train grew larger.

  Then the sound caught up and the rails began to hiss as it approached. The passengers jostled with one another, each aiming to be the first on, in order to gain those all-important seats. Having caught the train every day for many years, Bob knew that if he stood to the right-hand-side of the first bench along the platform, he would be lined up perfectly for the doors to open in front of him.

  The carriage stopped and Bob stepped aboard, smugly ahead of the mêlée.

  The doors closed and the train pulled away, gathering momentum as it headed off out of the platform, climbing slowly up the long incline onto the ridge of hills behind the village, with its traditional, white, weatherboard buildings at the centre
surrounded by more recent developments.

  “What's happening now?”

  “Well, I have a seat. There are people standing all around me, but no pregnant ladies or old people, so I think it's OK for me to stay seated.”

  Bob stared out of the window as the fields rolled slowly past, with a bush whipping by every now and again, seemingly at break-neck speed. Bob mused that this was like life; the troubles of each day may fill one's entire point of view but whizz past very quickly, but it is the things going on in the background that pass more slowly and leave more of a lasting impression.

  Being somewhat fixated with space, Dr Greenstreet was prompted to recall his own thoughts on life's problems. His analogy involved travelling out into the depths of the universe, passing planets. A major problem would be like a huge planet which occupies the field of vision long after it has been left behind. As you travel away from this, you will pass smaller planets and asteroids. These troubles will briefly occupy one's entire field of vision, but when they have shrunk to the merest distant speck, the huge, more distant planet is still there, appearing to recede at a much slower pace.

  Noticing that Bob had drifted into some kind of reverie the therapist again prompted him, “What's the deal?”

  “The train is climbing up through the woods now. I can only see a blur of leaves. Oh hang on...”

  Bob felt a niggle. All of a sudden there was something very peculiar about this journey, so he got up to investigate, allowing a girl in her twenties, with tinny music drifting from her headphones, to quickly occupy the seat, as though a vacuum had been created that needed filling immediately to maintain equilibrium.

  Pushing past the people as politely as was physically possible, Bob reached the end of the carriage. Knowing he was at the front of the train, he leaned against the door through to the driver's compartment, which was sensibly always kept locked. The surprise was that there was nothing to support his weight. The door fell open into the cab and Bob stepped through, barely keeping his balance. Startled, the cap-wearing train driver turned around.

  The view from the front window of the train did not make sense at all. The trees were still whipping past in their usual dark-green blur, but it appeared that the conduit that the train was running through was less like a railway line and more like a wide grassy footpath. It was clearly still the main rail route to Ashford because it was beginning to curve towards the familiar red-brick bridge that Poundhurst Lane ran across, but there was one thing missing - the rails!

  “Do you find that odd?” asked the hypnotherapist.

  ”To be honest. I did at first, but now it just seems the same as usual really, so I guess not! I am just walking along the trackbed now.”

  “Walking?” exclaimed the hypnotherapist, “I thought you was on a train!”

  The path reminded Bob of one of those old, redundant rail routes that had been converted into cycleways, except that there had been no conversion of his local line. The diesel trains were still thundering up and down it from the Sussex coast as ever. Still, the stroll was pleasant, so Bob thought nothing of this, and continued stoically along the route.

  It seemed to take a while to reach the brick road bridge, about a mile up the line from the station - at least a lot longer than it did on a train, and when Bob finally got there, it was a lot smaller than he remembered. In fact, there was no way that a train would have been able to pass beneath it at all.

  As he took the last few paces towards the bridge, Bob could see that it was even going to be a struggle to get through on foot. He knelt down on the gravelly trail, realising that his light-brown trousers would probably be in no condition for work now. He would think of an excuse later for his dishevelled appearance, but for now, getting to the other side of that bridge was the main objective. He would have to go through the round archway on his belly and drag himself through with his arms. It was like one of those shrinking rooms in 'Alice in Wonderland.'

  “Do you think you will get to work on time?” inquired the hypnotherapist.

  “Well, I am starting to worry now. This is taking a lot longer than I thought.”

  Bob glanced at his watch; it was 8.50.

  “I have four miles to walk in ten minutes. The shop opens at 9. I don't think I am going to make it.”

  Inching his way through the tiny bridge became a somewhat claustrophobic experience, for the top of the bridge was pressing onto his back, and his arms were both jammed tight against the sides.

  “I don't think I can get through!” he exclaimed, but somehow Bob managed it and freed himself, like pulling a cork from a bottle.

  Then the dream ended and Dr Greenstreet's computer screen went blank. The patient was returned to full consciousness, ready for an expert analysis of his dream's imagery.

  The doctor began, “This scenario is clearly a representation of your thoughts about your life. Things began very positively, with a clear sense of direction, and suddenly you found yourself jobless, and there was a realisation that there are no rails, no plan to life, just a random series of events, some fortunate, some not.

  Then you get stuck, like being trapped beneath that bridge, surrounded by a whirlpool of thoughts, wondering why it is others who get lucky, wondering why your life cannot be like theirs. Does this seem a rational explanation to you?”

  Bob nodded.

  The session was almost over, but the therapist felt that his analysis was, at best, cursory. Luckily the machine always recorded the dreams of the patients, providing an opportunity of watching them again for further scrutiny.

  “Would you agree that a lot of the thoughts that trouble you arise because you feel that your life is very different to those of other people you know?” asked the doctor, to conclude.

  “That's pretty much it,” replied Bob, “Just go on 'Friends Reunited' – everybody I grew up with is forging ahead in the workplace. They are managers, ambassadors, doctors, lawyers - I can't even get a job serving fast food these days. They have money to go on holidays and pursue their interests. The lives they live are a million miles from mine. It's as though happiness is behind glass for me. I can see it in others but I can't get there myself. Unless you have been inside my head, you really have no idea what this feels like.”

  It always came back to that. Whilst the dream machine was brilliant at showing exactly what images were going through an unconscious patient's head, ultimately the doctor was none the wiser as to how they actually felt than when everything was done verbally, 'pre-MAH.'

  It was later, during the evening meal at home, that the doctor remembered a story he had heard about the machine's inventor, one Vincent Smithfield. Apparently, in trying to record his own dreams, he had accidentally found that other people's dreams could be played back into his own mind while he was asleep. If this piece of psychological folklore was true, there was just a chance that the therapist really could experience the thoughts and feelings of his patients first hand. Now this really would be a breakthrough.

  “Alice,” he addressed his wife, “I am going to have to spend the night at the clinic tonight.”

  “For goodness sake, don't you think you spend enough time there?” came the irritated response.

  “I know it's a pain, but I've got to do some research on that new machine I've been using.”

  “Doug, you're obsessed with that flaming device!” Alice responded, “Can't you bring it back here if you really have to look at it tonight?'”

  “It's a very delicate piece of machinery, so I can't remove it from the clinic. We were only going watch television anyway, so one night away isn't going to be so bad, is it?”

  Alice was not amused and collected up the empty cutlery in silence.

  So, as night fell, Dr Greenstreet returned to the clinic, which now seemed strangely eerie without the presence of any other therapists, receptionists or patients. He walked along the corridor to his consultation room, unlocked the door with a loud reverberating clunk and simultaneously switched on the computer scre
en and the 'dream machine' that it sat upon. After a quick wash in the bathroom across the corridor, he was pretty much ready to sleep. Grabbing a woollen blanket from out of the cupboards, he attached the wires to his head, feeling a little foolish in doing so. The process of finding out how his patients felt had begun already, it seemed!

  So with a flick of a switch, Dr Douglas turned out the light and lay down upon his own couch to blow some zeds. The healer had become the patient.

  The blind was orange from the streetlight outside, and as he lay in the semi-dark, the doctor wondered which of the dreams from Bob's many sessions might be pumped through his slumbering brain. Or would it simply not work at all and merely serve as yet another work related irritation for his wife to hold against him? Such a notion made him feel almost jealous of Bob, with no intrusions from a working life to mar his relationship!

  The next thing Douglas was aware of was of riding in a jeep, speeding along a slick, tarmac road into a desert.

  'Oh yes, I remember Bob having this dream,' he thought, but even so, Dr Douglas Greenstreet felt completely immersed in what was happening. He couldn't remember how it ended at all, and so all the thoughts that were going through his head, which had been Bob's thoughts originally, seemed completely natural.

  To the left of the dead straight carriageway was a huge dune of golden sand, to the right were flat, green fields and farmland, and the sky above was a harsh and unrelenting blue. It was as though his field of vision was divided into three equal parts of green, blue and gold. Such a sudden divide between desert and arable land didn't seem peculiar, although logically it made no sense. 'I suppose the desert has to start and end somewhere,' thought the doctor, but he did feel increasingly concerned that as his vehicle continued speeding down this road, he was getting further and further away from civilization.

  He eased his foot off of the throttle, but the grey jeep continued relentlessly plunging into the desert. All Douglas wanted to do was to turn the thing around and drive safely back to the nearest town. In such a bleak environment, he had no idea how far he would have to travel before reaching the next settlement proffering food, water and fuel.

  Gazing at the distant horizon, it became apparent that the green half of the scenery came to an abrupt finish several miles ahead. Beyond here was nothing but a sandy void, with the seemingly endless road piercing it like a needle. Douglas resolved to stop before he reached that point, yet pushing the brake pedal was as ineffective as easing off of the gas had been.

  Using a bit of lateral thinking, the doctor surmised that best option would be to steer across to the left, so that half the vehicle was off the road – the friction of the sand on the tyres would slow things down.

  The plan worked well; too well in fact, for the jeep came right off the road altogether and ploughed into the sandy dune, coming to a juddering halt, with a flurry of dust flying into the air. The engine had stalled.

  Turning the key in the ignition, it spluttered and died once more. This was not good news; the whole vehicle was clogged with sand, eddies of which were shimmering across the bonnet in the warm breeze.

  After several attempts to restart, Douglas stepped from the car and wandered back to the road. He would have to abandon the vehicle and seek help, but where? He was in the middle of a desert!

  The most sensible thing to do would be to cross the green fields on the other side of the road. There had to be a farmstead or small community at some point, surely? But as Douglas crossed the road, he was startled by an almighty bang to the head which sent him reeling, falling back onto the tarmac, dazed.

  In his bewildered state upon the ground, he reached with his left hand and to his surprise he felt glass. This made no sense at all.

  Douglas stood up and ran his hands along what should have been nothing more than fresh air. The entire pastoral scene beyond the road appeared to be behind a huge pane of glass. Doug imagined that somebody on the other side would have viewed him like one of those mime artists, trapped behind an invisible screen.

  It was then when he remembered that it was a dream; “Of course – my mind is inside that machine, so this must be the glass computer screen, with the normal world beyond it. I am stuck in the desert of Bob's depressed mind, and the green and pleasant land where people merrily get on with their daily lives is on the other side of that pane.”

  This sensation was not pleasant, for Doug was now totally at the mercy of things beyond his control. He was sure to wake up eventually, but for how long would he remain stuck in this barren landscape, or thoughtscape, or whatever you wanted to call it?

  Doug felt very alone.

  He decided to return to the vehicle, so he could at least sit the wait out in comfort, but upon turning around, there was now no sign of the abandoned '4 by 4.' It had been buried in the sand.

  For all his life the doctor had diagnosed and attempted to treat disorders with no real comprehension of what they were like to live through, but now he was trapped in another man's hopeless situation. And so, he sat at the side of the road and drew swirling patterns in the sand with his fingers, waiting and waiting...

  At 7am, the cleaner arrived at Victoria Park Therapy Centre. She was a Filipino lady and she was surprised to open the door to find the doctor fast asleep upon the couch. She realised that even hypnotherapists were under a lot of pressure, so she left the curtains drawn and tried to make as little noise as possible as she dusted around him.

  One pet hate of hers was wasting electricity. She came from a relatively poor part of the world and knew all too well of the threats that climate change made upon her family. She hated wastage and was not impressed by the blasé attitude most people seemed to have about this in 'comfortable little England.' She would routinely turn off any light-switches and plug sockets that had been left on overnight, as she worked her way through the surgery. As the doctor snoozed, she bent down and flicked the switch on a socket which was bulging with plugs. The quiet whirring sound, that she hadn't noticed until then, fell in pitch and stopped, and the multi-coloured LEDs on the front of the machine went out.

  Dr Greenstreet was still fast asleep, or so it appeared.

  The cleaner left the room and closed the door quietly behind her.

  Somewhere inside that machine, the essence of Doug was still sitting at the side of a dusty road feeling disconsolate. So many questions buzzed around his mind, but one in particular worried him.

  He had noticed the morning cleaner's penchant for switching things off before. If she turned the machine off, would he be trapped in the dream until somebody switched it back on again? And knowing the dim view most of his colleagues had of the device, just how long might that be?

  He kicked away the sand that he had swirled into a jumble of meaningless patterns and stared up at the deep blue sky. The heat was searing, and he felt around to undo the top few buttons on his long-sleeved shirt. As his hand touched his chest, it felt oddly motionless; there was no heartbeat.

  Poor Douglas really had no idea how long he would be stuck there at all.