Chapter 8

The first step is dream recall.

The second step is reality testing.

The third step is taking control.

My microwave beeps three times. I open it, and remove the cardboard sleeve from my Sausage Pizza Hot Pocket®. My teeth sink into it, through the crispy, cheesy crust and directly into the filling of savory chunks of sausage, mozzarella cheese and zesty pizza sauce.

Of course, the entire thing — the meat, the cheese, the crust — is still entirely frozen.

Device failure.

My watch reads 88:12. Which almost makes sense to me.

It’s not until I see my face on CNN that I piece it together. There’s my headshot above the headline: Nazi Pianist Invents Herpes Vaccine.

That seems only partially plausible.

If I’m dreaming, then I’m in control. But what to do? Spread my arms and fly? Transport to the Pyramids or Japan? But then what?

In a world without restrictions, how would we ever get anything done?

Stop. Think.

I’m in control. You can have whatever you’ve always wanted.

Without thinking about it, my leg muscles stretch and strain and are growing inside me. I’m now a solid 6-foot plus.

I’m now wearing leather pants, just because I can.

And like that, I’m whisked away to downtown Naples, Italy. Napoli if you prefer. I’m standing in the presence of a friendly man named Antonio. I can’t understand a word he’s saying besides pizza. He says “Pizza, Fritta” and I assume he’s going to make me a pizza and some french fries.

He better — it’s my dream.

He starts kneading balls of dough into flat discs, and spreads one with a tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and sausage. He covers it with the other dough disc and seals it tightly, before dropping it into a bubbling vat of hot oil. He spoons the oil over my pizza, turning it into a rich, golden brown.

After it’s done, he drains and cuts it and serves it to me on parchment paper.

“Pizza, Fritta,” Antonio tells me.

I’ve never been to Italy, but now I feel like I have to go. I mean, in real life.

I wake up filled with a spirit.

Like a little boy seeing his first baseball game. Or when someone takes a bite of fudge for the first time in her life.

I am filled with a sense of possibility. That I’ve stumbled upon a new and exciting thing. If I were Columbus: I’ve discovered India.

But spirits can be deceiving. Perhaps I’ve discovered the West Indies. Or maybe it’s just Greenland.

No one cares that they can’t control their dreams. We just accept that.

But does anyone stop and think that if we’re not controlling our dreams, that they’re controlling us?

Lara thought I was doing this just to cope. I thought I was doing this because I didn’t want to burn alive.

But why am I doing this? I guess I still don’t know.

I can’t even tell her the truth about why I started. Now I don’t know the truth about how this is going to finish.

Maybe I just need a nap. Or some food.

Four beer brats sizzle on my charcoal grill. Charlie is standing with me on my balcony taking in the smells before the Cubs-Sox game comes on.

I ask him if he’s ever heard of lucid dreaming. I try to explain it without sounding like I’ve gone crazy.

“I mean, have you ever wondered what it would be like to be awake while you’re dreaming. So you could control what happens to you?”

“Is that possible? Even if you were aware that you were dreaming, would you be able to make anything happen? Aren’t there rules?

“I don’t think so.”

“Wouldn’t that create problems? I mean, wouldn’t everyone just go around in their dreams having sex with everyone they always wanted to have sex with. Wouldn’t it get messy?”

“Only in your head.”

“I suppose. You know, someone once told me a theory about dreams. Freud’s, maybe. That says they’re practice for real life.”

I take a bite of a brat. With my mouth full of meat and mustard, I say “So if I dream about sex, I’ll get better in real life? I don’t get it.”

“Well, maybe it’s only for nightmares. Like if you dream that you’re in a car accident, maybe you’ll be better prepared next time, and you can avoid the accident.”

I think to myself: Or maybe if you get bad news, you’ll be better prepared to handle it.

“Hmm, maybe you should write a book about dreams. What are you working on now?

“This one, this is the one. It’s half science fiction, half romantic comedy set in 1880, Tombstone, Arizona. The only thing that I’m afraid of is that it’s ahead of its time. You know, too advanced for modern society. The greatest luminaries are never appreciated in their lifetime.”

“Your imagination is your curse,” I say.

“Yeah, tell me about it. I mean, a book about dreams? Dreams are only interesting to the person that’s having them.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Stick to what you know. But Charlie, if you do ever write a novel about them, don’t have a twist where it was all a dream. I hate that. Remember what happened on Dallas?”

Charlie says, “I didn’t watch Dallas.”

“Oh, come on. Who shot J.R?”

“Who cares?”

“Well, they had to bring a character back to life, so they made a whole season into a dream. Don’t do that.”

Charlie asks, “What if you know it’s all a dream before the character dies?”

“I guess that’s okay…maybe we should write a book together. A sort of how-to guide to lucid dreaming. A guide to controlling your life 24/7.”

“Doesn’t something like that probably already exist? It seems like you would need more than a book. Plus, reference material isn’t really my forte.”

To date, finishing any book isn’t really his forte.

“What did you have in mind that was more than a book? Like a website or DVDs or something?”

Charlie finishes his beer. “No, I mean, I know at sleep labs they have devices that they hook up to you, to try and monitor sleeping disorders. I think someone invented a headset that you wear in order to stop you from snoring. Maybe you could invent one to help people control their dreams.”

I need to do more research.

Having a doctor for a wife has certain advantages. Free band-aids. The confidence that if I ever have a heart attack, she’ll know what to do. And I can drop her name and meet exciting people like Sleep Technicians at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

I enter the lab of Kilgore Studebaker. He’s an enormous man with whiskers like a cat. I can smell French fries on his breath from across the room. And it’s 9:45 in the morning.

“So you’re Lara’s husband, right? Nice to meet you. Call me Kilgore.”

“James Delmar. Thanks for making time to see me.”

“Sure, what can I do for you?”

“Lara told me that you mostly study sleep apnea — what can you tell me about that?”

“Sleep apnea is a disorder where people have pauses of breathing while they sleep. I specialize in obstructive sleep apnea — that’s caused by a blockage of the airway, usually when the soft tissue in the rear of the throat collapses and closes during sleep.”

“So what do you do to treat that?”

“We bring patients in and monitor their levels while they sleep. From there, it can vary from surgery to telling people to sleep on an incline. It just depends.”

“Okay, what about lucid dreaming? Do you do any sort of treatment to help people become lucid?”

“Oh, no. This is a hospital, James. We only focus on trying to help people with problems.”

My disappointment is plainly visible. “I heard that lucid dreams could help people overcome fears?”

“It’s possible. The science is still pretty sketchy on that sort of thing. I think it’s a bunch of baloney, myself. But don’t let me discourage you. I’ve been surprised a bunch of times in my career.”

“Yeah, I understand. I was interested in some sort of device to induce lucid dreaming. Ever heard of something like that?”

He coughs and wheezes for a bit before answering. “Can’t say that I have. I know there are books and audiotapes for people, you could try those.”

“Right. Thing is, I wasn’t really interested in finding an induction device — so much as I was thinking about inventing one. You think it’s possible?”

“Possible, sure. Practical or useful, not really. But don’t let me kill your dreams.” I think the pun was not intended. He continues, “Without getting too complex, you dream during REM sleep. If you watch their EEG levels you can tell when that it is. Then you would need to produce dream signals and help them take control. Taking control is probably the hardest part.”

“Right.” The third step always is.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s this for? Lara told me you were an architect. I assumed you were having some difficulties sleeping?”

“Oh, um, you’re right. I mean, I am an architect. And I’m having difficulties. But not with sleeping.”

His large frame rises out of his chair and angles me towards the exit, “Well, I think we’re done. Good luck with your difficulties. And tell Lara, I’m still sorry for your loss.”

“Oh, thanks. Say, know any place to get some good fries around here?”

I leave his office semi-inspired. At least he didn’t laugh me out of the lab. It’s possible, he said. I’m sure in the same way he thinks that it’s possible that a Flying Spaghetti Monster is responsible for the creation of the universe. Anything’s possible.

There’s a lot we don’t know in this world. I know how to design buildings, not devices.

I know craftsman style porches, not electrical engineering. I grew up studying buttresses, not circuits. Also, I don’t know how much money it’s going to cost to build a dream machine. But I’m pretty sure it’s more than we have lying around. So I should just forget about all this. Just go back to drawing blueprints, designing crappy buildings. That’s what I should do. Give up. Say it’s too complicated for me. Stick to what I know. Be safe. Always do what’s safe.

Faith is a funny thing. There are people around the world with the deepest faith in things that they can’t possibly know about. And that’s just fine, because that’s what faith is. But then there’s me, and I can’t seem to find enough faith in myself to do anything outside my comfort zone. Trying a Middle Eastern restaurant is a bit outside my wheelhouse. Mojitos make me a bit nervous.

I need to talk to Charlie again.

“Hello.”

“Hey, can you talk now?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just dropped a plate of crispy honey-chipotle chicken crispers in someone’s lap, so now I’m taking a cigarette break.”

“You remember the other day when you said I should invent a dream machine — I mean, a device to help people lucid dream. Do you really think I can do that?”

“I said that? I don’t remember that, but sure, go for it.” He wasn’t filling me with confidence either.

“Do you think there’s a market for something like that?”

He says, “Well, I wouldn’t use it, because I’m sensitive about plugging shit into my brain. But I think there are enough whack-jobs out there looking for help that there’s a market for everything. If they can make multipleLegally Blonde movies, there’s a niche for everything.”

Right. It’s all about niche marketing.

“Well, I’d like to build this, but I don’t know where to start.”

“Have I ever told you my video game postulate?”

“I didn’t think you knew what a postulate was.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. But here’s the thing. When you start playing a game, you start on the easy difficulty setting. And it’s hard. And eventually you get good at it, and then you try it out on medium. And it’s hard. But eventually you work your way though hard and expert. At every step up it feels really hard, but when you go back to medium or hard, you realize that’s really easy. The point is, everything in life that seems hard, only seems that way because you’ve never done it before.”

“That’s a pretty good postulate. Are you sure that’s not a theorem or an axiom?”

“Now you’re just fucking with me.”

“Yeah. So how do I get started?”

“Well, start with what you know. How did you have your first lucid dream?”

I tell him about the three steps. Dream recall. Reality testing. Taking control.

Charlie thinks about it, “So it sounds like you need some sort of mask or goggles that can ask people if they’re dreaming. Start from there, and then just go up a difficulty level. Life is just like video games.”

That’s funny — I’ve never been good at video games.