My job is charting and analyzing the dreams of sleep study subjects... and I think something's gone horribly wrong

--------- I have a fairly boring job, but the pay is good. Technically, I guess I’m a scientist even though I don’t have a degree. I was hired because my background and my tests showed I’m good at math and analysis. I’ve always been naturally talented in that area. Here’s what they do: people spend the night on our compound. They hook you up to a bunch of sensors, monitor your vitals and chart your different states of sleep. The most important tests are in the REM stages. That’s when people dream. My co-workers and our boss have advanced degrees and careers in neuroscience and psychology. They’re the ones who actually interview the subjects and get the data from the sensors. My role is to take their data, plug it into a formula, then run the results through our software. Ultimately, my charted results give people in the government and private industry a very accurate prediction of what a person will dream about. There are lots of variables, so many that no computer on earth can chart them all. In the end, the most reliable results come from a human doing the math. I guess that’s why they hired someone who’s “good with numbers”. I plug in all the data from a subject’s interview, then add in the results from the sleep sensors. Then I run those numbers through a special program on our computer. Ultimately, what I get at the end is a very detailed picture of what the subject dreams during their stay with us. I can see elements that are consistent from dream to dream. I can chart areas where every subject dreams similarly, no matter their background or personality. I can also chart dream patterns that are unique to each subject. There’s usually a “common” element and a “personal” element present in every subject. For example, a subject will dream that they’re walking down a hallway. That’s the common area in this case. Then they’ll open a door to a room that reminds them of their childhood. That’s the personal element. Now, our compound is set up as a grid, with the subject’s rooms in the center. On all sides of the subject’s rooms, we have hallways and doorways and staircases and corridors leading in all directions. We try to mimic as many different types of transitions and pathways as possible. I wasn’t aware that the compound was laid out this way when I first started, and when I learned about it, it made sense. If we want to chart every different type of dream someone has, we should try to recreate the settings that are present in dreams. It’s a lot easier to analyze someone’s dreams if we can understand what they’re seeing. For the first several months of my job, it was all incredibly dry. Every subject dreamed about the same things, with personalized elements sprinkled in. I got pretty good at recognizing certain common dream archetypes in my charts. I saw a lot of hallways and corridors and stairs and doors and elevators and all kinds of transitions leading to places that were personalized for each subject. It was all very predictable and usually boring. Then I started seeing anomalies. At first it was just chart readings that didn’t make sense. Values and numbers I couldn’t recognize. I thought it was an error in my own math or a problem with the computer program. A few times, I second-guessed myself and re-ran the same numbers, thinking there was some kind of mistake. But I was never wrong. I decided to look at some of the actual dream data charted from those anomaly sets. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. Instead of the transition rooms, subjects were dreaming about vast open spaces filled with blinding light. The details weren’t like the details present in someone’s personal dream space. It was too perfect. Too real. There was no personal element. It was just... a space. An endless white space filled with light. I didn’t chart enough to determine if there was any common element in the anomaly dreams. But I was concerned enough to mention it to my boss. I showed him my work, pointed out the anomalies, showed him the charts. He was very… abrupt. Like, pulling me aside, putting his hand on my arm and leaning in close. Looking into my eyes while he talked, like he wanted to chart my pupils or something. Telling me charting was my job, not wondering why. Then he took all my paperwork and told me to focus on doing my job. I didn’t want to, but I let it go. I figured my boss knew what he was doing. I started to think maybe I was just confused, maybe those readings weren’t actually anomalies. I was still new to all this. It was silly of me to think I knew better. Then I saw chart readings that I couldn’t even understand. Like, numbers that literally made no sense. Nothing I recognized. There was no place to even start plugging these numbers in. I decided to take a different approach. I generated a chart for the.Management… meaning, the dream space our compound was designed for… and then ran the anomaly numbers through that. The result was shocking. It charted the.Management perfectly. Every transition room was represented. Every detail was so spot-on, it was like the anomaly numbers were the ideal. I ran more charts. The results were astounding. In the anomaly dreams, every subject saw the exact same thing. Perfectly detailed transition rooms. Hallways and corridors and staircases and doors and elevators. In every conceivable layout and design, representing every conceivable possibility of room transitions. But there was no personal element in the anomaly dreams. It was perfectly… management. Like management, without any personal connection. Something about that phrase stuck with me. Like management, without connection. I decided to run my own dream charts. I mean, I’d stayed on the compound plenty of times. I’d… well, you’ll see why this is important. I ran my dream charts. They matched the.Management. Perfectly. I took a day off. I went to a park. I sat on a bench. I tried to clear my head. I thought about all these things. In the end, I just knew I had to go back to my boss. “Sir, I charted my own dream tests. I stayed on the compound for a week and took all the standard dream tests when I was done. When I ran those tests, my charts came out just like the anomaly tests. They matched the.Management chart. Do you know what that means, sir?” He looked at me like I was a child. For the first time, I noticed he had no pupils, just clear blue eyes. “It means you’re doing your job well,” he said. “Sir, my dream states were charted exactly like all the anomaly dream states. But I don’t… sir, I’m not a subject who stayed on the compound. I’ve been working for you for years. Sir, I think that…” “Enough!” I jerked at his tone. He’d never talked like that before. But now he looked at me with…… concern. “I understand that this job can be challenging. But you’ve done excellent work so far. Don’t second-guess yourself. You’re charting dream patterns with incredible accuracy. In the end, that’s all that matters.” “Sir, do I… do I dream?” “What do you mean, of course you do.” “Sir, what am I?” I don’t know why I asked. I just knew in my heart I had to ask that question. In retrospect, maybe I knew. Maybe that’s why I asked. He leaned in close, like a father telling his son the truth. “You’re like management, without connection. You’re like the rooms and the hallways, without any… content. Because you’re like…” he waved his arm, gesturing to the entire compound. “You’re like the… management. You’re like the rooms, the transitions, the corridors and staircases and doors and elevators.” He leaned back. I thought he was done, but then he talked again. “I’m like management, charting the dream tests. My co-workers are like management, running the interview… and the tests. You are like management, charting the dream states. The subjects are like the dreamers, dreaming inside management. Do you understand?” I did. I understood. I was a.Management… and I didn’t know who or what was dreaming.

My job is charting and analyzing the dreams of sleep study subjects... and I think something's gone horribly wrong

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