In the complete darkness of my dreams I can hear someone laughing. There is nothing special about this laugh or the voice that forms it. In fact if you heard it the chance that you would bother taking any time to figure it out in the real world is minimal. But this is not the real world, this is the most absolutely black prison of my dreams. It is blindness combined with taunting over unfamiliar terrain, the features I could not even guess at. Every night it's the same thing and every day I wake with just a blank echo in my head before it retreats into complete silence. The reason this is so vivid to me is that it is the only dream I have, it's all they feature and all they seem to mean, nothing.
One day I decided to keep a log of these dreams and what may be causing them in my life or in my own mind to repeat as often as they do. That was when I first noticed as I wrote my schedule the complete lack of variety in my day. Every day close enough to the same exact moments and movements happened with only the very occasional difference in thought from day to day. In a controlled experiment I did something I usually don't and took a walk around the suburbs I reside in, noticing that while it was broad daylight and there were cars parked out in front of houses there was a disturbing lack of people. Every house had at least one car in front of it, every lawn was properly cared for and even the occasional park were kept perfectly, yet no effort seemed to be put into it today. After this journey I reflected on what I had experienced. There seemed to be no day to day human activities happening on a noticeable level outside. Although when I began to think about it I could not remember having ever met any neighbors in this place.
Expanding on that point I can never remember having had any lovers, friends, pets, colleagues, rivals, etc. I was still reflecting on these things when I decided to lay down for bed. Again I had the exact same dream I usually do, no difference nor the slightest deviation. Just that simple laugh and complete nothingness. When I awoke I decided to make my own breakfast instead of grabbing one on the run like I normally do. The refrigerator had nothing in it bar the shelving, and it didn't even feel cold like it should have. Another thing came to me at this point, I could never remember being to a supermarket, having ever stocked the refrigerator or freezer, never eating out, in fact never eating. The question looming over me was a very simple "why?". There must have been something going on in my head that was causing an alteration of my memories and my perceptions of everything, because all I could remember is this lame existence in this lame house with a cycle of work-home-work-home-work-home. And under all of these things the only dream I have is the laugh, the single element that remains unchanged in any blip of my memory.
I decided then that I must force myself to sleep, as the dream was obviously the key to uncovering the truths about me. This thing would be solved quickly and maybe then I could find some purpose to my life and how I was being like this. I thought that this would be the end of my story and everything would simply return to normal with such dedication to a silly fantasy, but I was wrong. I drifted off to sleep as I usually do and although this time I'd added sleep enhancers as an experiment. Again I heard that laughing in my dreams and I saw absolute nothingness. However this was soon replaced by a vision, a simple infinity of depthless, lengthless, widthless dark shaded grey. Still there was that laugh and shortly after this I woke from my slumber. This perplexed me, and I cannot recall much of a next day (if there truly was a "next day" between these experiments).
The next sleeping cycles I ingested more of the sleeping aids and again I had the same dreams of the grey landscape (which was becoming an increasingly light shade) and the laugh. Again I woke up. I repeated this process for several days with increasing amounts of the sleeping aid until I had reached the point where I had to answer a question based on the weight of my health, morality, and the discovery behind whatever has been happening to me for however long that laugh has been haunting my dreamscapes. I had finally resolved to continue this experimentation with significantly higher doses of pills, to almost assuredly suicidal levels, every single night for the rest of the time I live. I began with twenty five in one got.
As I dreamed that night the previously blank grey landscape in front of me became littered with shapes that were a mixture of both darker and lighter than the mist of my vision. I tried to look around but I couldn't move at all and just off to my left I could identify that noise, the laughter just out of my field of vision taunting me. I tried, I focused, I madly threw all of my energy into moving my head enough just to see, but it was to no avail. Almost immediately after I woke up and became conscious and almost shocked by how quickly it had happened. Not even two hours had passed since I fell asleep. I waited for the drugs I had taken to release their affects upon me, but hours passed without incident. I then took the final step and ingest a full bottle of the little pills.
Almost immediately I was taken by nausea and vertigo, and I heard more than felt the myself hitting the ground with a thud that blanked my vision to the calm blankness I knew in my dreams. For perhaps a minute there was a nothing, and I had to wonder "is this death?". Then distantly I heard that laughing again and I couldn't help but think it was directing itself at me. I lay defeated and writhing with feelings of loss, hatred, depression and worthlessness, having just thrown my life away over some silly fantasy without meaning. Then something amazing happened that gave me hope.
From complete nothingness came a very slow lightening of my vision, and instead of just stopping at the mass of blurred shapes of indiscriminate color they continued to to focus and become actual things. They all looked like some sort of technical operati with wires carelessly strewn about the chamber and all leading towards something in the middle of the room near me. I forced myself into moving my eyes and I saw that I was in some fluid-filled case with a pump sticking out at a 45* angle, squeaking in a manner that was very reminiscent of the same laughing I've been hearing this whole time. As I looked around more I saw something begin to glide over towards me. It looked like an oversized black soda can with a small panel on the front of it. It reached a distance of about two meters from me and a small poker came out of the panel and connected to one of the wires that was carelessly placed on the ground. Instantly alarms went off in my head and some words just seemed to appear in my mind.
"human memory storage unit proceeding to inactive mode."
I replied with "Halt Action!" in my head, not realizing I hadn't simply yelled this out. Luckily for me the creation seemed to understand what I was saying in my head and could communicate with me.
"Free Choice module program activated."
Instantly I became more calm and the simple words in my head were replaced with a calming but authoritative voice in my head.
"You're awake. This usually doesn't happen. You have two options, either return to stasis rest or be released into the world." This seemed like an odd thing to me, so I asked the voice what the resting was about, as though this was simply a bad dream and that I was simply getting ready to wake up in my familiar land again.
"Everything you know will be erased and you will restart again from wherever you want to in your life.
I thought about these options for a while. Did I really want to give up this new discovery of a whole new world and chance for adventure? Or did I want to simply live in comfort and peace, blissfully unaware of the true nature of the world? With the noise fixed I will have no interference in my new, happy life of resting. Anyone would much rather live in an undisturbed peace rather than the hopeless struggle. I think I'll bide my time in what amounts to heaven, and here I go now in a simple, memoryless eternal bliss.
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