Variations on a Dream

By: submission | July 25, 2026

Author: David Dumouriez

In the old days (that is, in the time of the bitten fruit company), people had worn these things in order to track the duration and patterns of their sleep. Now Nexus had stolen the market by developing a quantum neural network which had the ability to convert subconscious imagery into coherent language. In other words, a wearable device which provided complete dream transcription and replay facilities for the user.

No longer would you wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to re-enter that enticing dream you’d just left or, worse still, forget every fascinating detail of it. With a Nexus, you could access any part of any dream and even upload them into a global archive.

In seemingly no time at all, the Nexus became one of the leading sources of entertainment, with people scouring a plethora of quasi-realistic clips, ranging from the comedic to the action-packed to the downright pornographic.

Therapists promoted this new technology. Advertisers loved the insight it afforded. Law enforcement agencies were not uninterested either.

Of course, not everyone in Skye City was so enamoured of the possibilities that the Nexus presented. Nevertheless, like Alina, they still found it difficult to resist.

Every morning, despite herself, the first thing she thought about, the first thing she looked at, was the shiny rectangle on her wrist.

DREAM TRANSCRIPTION COMPLETE, the screen informed her.

93% SEMANTIC ACCURACY

She scrolled through the product of her slumber and saw herself walking up a flight of stairs and then through the hallways of an unknown house. The carpets felt like they were rolling beneath her feet.

A disembodied voice, like an older version of her own, seemed to be breathing a message through the walls: “Don’t open the red door. The ocean is underneath.”

No red door appeared, but for the rest of the morning Alina was intrigued by its potential significance.

During her lunch break, she opened the app again and typed a single phrase: “red door ocean underneath”. There were 17,548 matches.

Images and phrases flooded the screen, all of which had been uploaded in the past twenty-four hours.

“Don’t open the red door.”

“The ocean is underneath it.”

“If the water rises above the stairs, wake up.”

That night Alina found herself both wanting and not wanting to sleep.

At 2 am, exhaustion finally claimed her and, in her dream state, she entered an endless hallway lined with red doors. Water was seeping out from beneath them.

The measured voice of her older self was heard again.

“They’re not transcribing dreams. They’re transmitting them.”

Alina was startled into wakefulness. The screen of the Nexus glowed.

LIVE SYNCHRONISATION

At once, a red light flickered in every electrical and digital device in her apartment.

TEST COMPLETE

Alina ripped the Nexus off her wrist, but the display continued typing.

HUMAN BRAINS ARE EASIER TO NETWORK THAN COMPUTERS

Suddenly she understood why everyone had become so addicted to dream transcription. It wasn’t just the novelty of it or the curiosity it satisfied. No, something inside the network was stitching millions of minds into one vast system of unconsciousness.

The next morning, news channels reported the same phenomenon: millions of users describing identical nightmares.

Nexus denied everything. By evening, their servers had gone offline.

But that night, despite the panic, despite the warnings, despite people abandoning their devices or destroying them, the entire city went to sleep at the same time.