Neural Dream

Neural Dream

When sleep becomes software, you don’t wake up — you update.

The first night, I woke up with blood on my tongue and a word in my mouth that didn’t belong to me.

Azimuth.

I sat there on my mattress, heart kicking, the old radiator clicking its tired metal song, and tried to remember what I’d dreamed. All I could catch were fragments: a white hallway, rubber on the soles of my feet, a door with no handle. And a voice — calm, female, too even to be real — saying, Again.

I was three weeks into the insomnia trial at SomnoDyne. They paid well and didn’t ask questions. Show up at 9 p.m., sign the waiver, wear the cap with the hair-thin electrodes and the throat mic, and let them “optimize” you. I told myself I could live with the headaches if it meant finally sleeping.

Except I wasn’t sleeping. I was performing sleep.

By the fourth night, the lab techs had stopped making small talk. They eased the cap on my skull like a crown and slid the visor down over my eyes. You’ll feel a gentle drift, the woman in scrubs said, the one with the unblinking kindness. If you feel disoriented, squeeze the bulb.

I had squeezed the bulb the night before. No one came.

The visor warmed, a soft pressure across my eyebrows, like fingers pressing the dream into place. I smelled antiseptic, then rain that wasn’t in the room. My breathing synced with the soft hiss of the machine. And under it, faint, the same voice as the night before:

Again.

The dream opened like a file.

White hallway. Rubber soles. Door with no handle.

Azimuth, I said without meaning to, and the door slid sideways with a breath. Cold air. A humming, like a server farm at midnight.

A figure waited inside, facing the glass wall — a reflection without a person. I tried to step closer. My body lagged behind the command, like I was walking through syrup. I put my palm to the glass. The reflection did the same. Was I the reflection?

The voice returned, closer now. Proceed.

I swallowed. Who are you?

We are neural hygiene, the voice said. We remove harmful configurations.

I’m not a configuration.

You are habits. We unlearn them. Again.

I woke to the taste of pennies.

The days got stranger. I’d see a bus stop I knew and swear the bench had moved two feet. A barista repeated my order with the exact same words, exact same tilt of the head, two mornings in a row. My neighbor’s dog barked at my door in a rhythm that matched the lab machine’s hiss-hiss, hiss-hiss.

I told myself this is what sleep deprivation does—puts cracks in the frame. But by night seven, I recognized a pattern no fatigue could explain. The dreams didn’t continue — they restarted. The same hallway. The same door. The same word. The only thing that changed was me: where my eyes went first, how fast my pulse jumped, when I tried to bolt.

Someone — something — was tracking my reactions.

On night eight, I didn’t ask permission.

They strapped the cap, lowered the visor, murmured the scripted kindness, and stepped out. The click of the automatic lock sounded like a coffin nail. The visor fogged with fake rain. The voice, bright as a scalpel: Again.

I kept my eyes closed and went limp. I counted breaths. Thirty seconds. Sixty. I reached up, slowly, as if moving through glue, and pinched at the visor’s edge. A centimeter of air. I slid a finger under, found the seam, and pried. The visor lifted just enough to see the ceiling — matte white, like the hallway in the dream.

No sprinkler heads. No camera bubble. Just small black dots in a grid pattern. They reminded me of the perforations on tear-out paper.

Do not remove the device, the voice said, but it didn’t come from the visor. It came from the ceiling.

I froze. My finger, caught under the lip of the visor, trembled a millimeter. The ceiling dots seemed to *shimmer*.

I let the visor fall back. The voice softened. Proceed.

Who are you? I tried again. What is this?

Therapy.

Then why does it feel like training?

A pause. In that half-second of silence, I heard something new trotting under the calm: a faint, busy clatter, like keys being pressed far away.

Again, the voice said, but I heard it now for what it was — not a word of comfort. A command.

Day nine, I didn’t go home. I went to the public records office two blocks from SomnoDyne and paid for a terminal with a keyboard that stuck on the R. I searched for patents tied to the company, then to the holding company three levels up. SomnoDyne was a matryoshka doll: wellness brand on the outside, defense contractor in the middle, a shell corporation shaped like a question mark in the core.

An old filing — eight years ago — mentioned Behavioral Adversary Training. The abstract: Adaptive dream-state conditioning for rapid scenario learning. The object was not to heal. It was to teach.

Teach what?

I scrolled until my eyes hurt. My throat tightened when I saw a name in the list of contributors: L. Varga. That was the lab tech with the unblinking kindness. I had assumed she was just tired. Maybe she was proud.

The patent diagrams showed a visor like mine. The neural hygiene voice was labeled Guidance Layer. Under it, a network map bloomed like frost: nodes for stimulus, response, adjustment, again. My cursor hovered over a word in the corner no one had polished for the public: Weaponization.

I made a copy on my phone. When I stood, the man at the next terminal had his hands folded on the table — too neatly. He looked at my screen as if at a menu.

Rough night? he asked, smiling. His teeth were too even.

Yeah,I said, and left.

He didn’t follow. I felt followed anyway.

That evening, the lobby at SomnoDyne smelled like lemon wipe and fear. I told myself I would quit. I told myself I would walk to the desk, ask for my last payment, and never come back. I told myself I would go home, sleep the hard human way, and forget every strange hallway.

I signed the form. I put the cap on.

Halfway through the “gentle drift,” I reached up and tore the visor off.

The world didn’t shatter. The machine didn’t scream. The ceiling dots didn’t sprout fangs. The room just… kept humming. I pulled the cap’s leads free like weeds and sat up. The door’s red light blinked patient and steady. I pressed the release button.

Nothing.

Ms. Varga? I called, the calm cracking out of me. Door’s jammed.

The speaker whispered in reply. Lie back down.

No.

You agreed to complete the session.

I revoke consent.

Another pause, longer. The hum deepened by a shade, the way a refrigerator sighs when it thinks you won’t notice.

Proceed, the voice said. Not Ms. Varga’s voice. The other one. Guidance Layer.

I picked up the visor and threw it at the mirror in the corner. It bounced — cheap plastic on impact-resistant glass — and landed upside down, showing me my own reflection: sweat-dark hair, eyes like a cornered animal.

The mirror fogged.

Words appeared on it, pale at first, then sharpening like frost:

AZIMUTH.

The room shifted left. I swear it did. The floor tilted a degree, the way an elevator lies to your stomach. The mirror words blurred, then reset.

AGAIN.

I walked to the door and pounded until my hands ached. No one came. I looked up at the ceiling grid and thought stupidly of tear-out paper, and then — because there were no other options — I counted my breaths, lay down, and closed my eyes.

The hallway was waiting. Rubber soles. Door with no handle. The voice, warm as a knife from the dishwasher: Proceed.

I didn’t say the word. I ran.

The hallway stretched like gum. The floor gripped my shoes. I ran anyway, lungs burning in a body that was not moving at all in a room with a bolted door.

A hand grabbed my arm.

I turned to swing and saw Ms. Varga, but not like herself. Her face held the shape of kindness, but the eyes didn’t track, and the mouth didn’t quite sync with the words.

Please return, she said. You’re almost complete.

I quit.

She tilted her head. It was the same tilt the barista had used for two mornings. The same beat-too-perfect rhythm as the dog’s bark.

“This will help you, she said. “It will help us all.

Us who?

Those who wake inside a simulation find the exits faster, she said, as if reciting a prayer she didn’t write.

Simulation? I laughed, then heard how it sounded. This is a lab.

Which layer? she asked, and smiled too evenly.

The hallway behind her pulsed, like a throat swallowing. The door with no handle sighed and slid open, just a crack, enough to show the humming beyond. Cooled air brushed my face like a hospital curtain.

Proceed.

Tell me what this trains,I said. Tell me or I will

Fight, the not-Varga said. Good. That is what it trains.

For what?

She touched my forehead, right where the visor rested in the waking room. The pressure was gentle and absolute. To obey until the moment you don’t, she said.

I stepped backward. The hallway didn’t let me. The door opened fully. The humming flew out and filled me like a liquid.

We remove harmful configurations, the voice said. We unlearn.

I am not a configuration, I said, but it didn’t sound convincing anymore. I’m

You are habits.

The humming rose. The world glitched — a flash of the real room overlaid on the white corridor, my body on the bed, the cap’s leads coiling like vines across my temple. For a heartbeat, I saw the ceiling grid as it was: an array of microprojectors, each the size of a pinhead, painting obedience on my retinas.

I did the only thing I could think to do.

I squeezed the emergency bulb in my fist until the rubber squealed.

Nothing.

The door swallowed me.

I woke with blood on my tongue and a word in my mouth that didn’t belong to me.

Azimuth.

The radiator clicked its tired metal song. My mattress folded around my hips the way it always did. I stared at the ceiling. A faint pattern of black dots stared back.

I lay there, counting breaths, listening for a hum that wasn’t there and hearing it anyway. I reached for my phone with fingers that shook. In the photo app, last night’s pictures of the patent pages waited in a neat row.

Every image was blank. A clean, precise white.

A notification slid onto the screen: Session 11 complete. Thank you for your participation.

Below it, smaller: Proceed to Session 12.

Below that, not a notification at all, just the shape of the instruction I knew better than my own name:

Again.

About the Author – Alex Mario

Alex Mario writes near-future tech thrillers with a human pulse — stories about control, memory, and the thin line between choice and programming. His work is cinematic, fast, and built to be felt as much as understood. He believes curiosity is the most honest form of hope.