Lost in La La Land(3)

That was the answer I was looking for. She’d had a lifetime with a man she loved, but she wasn't searching for him. She might even want to be young again and try something new.

Satisfied, I continued with the questions, certain she was exactly the sort of candidate the machine required.

When we finished, I put her into the machine for her first session. We always started small, two-hour sessions. We would then build up to four hours. The most a person could stay was six hours. Very few people could last that length of time hooked to a machine, dreaming.

She went into Lady Chatterley’s Lover and came out sparkling with secrets and satisfaction. Her cheeks flushed as she left the store with a new pep in her step.

Like a vampire or succubus, I gleaned something from it all. Her experience became mine. Her satisfaction fed me. Every one of my clients did. Their eyes sparkled again and their mouths twisted in revealing grins, never betraying everything they did in the book, but suggesting it was all more than they ever imagined possible.

I lived off that, the smiles and the sparkles and the happiness, and I imagined what it would be like to go into the machine and see him. I lived through them, closing my shop each day with a sigh of satisfaction.





Chapter Two


Manhattan, New York, 2025

Lana’s eyes lingered too long on the poster, before she finally spoke, “I’m ready, Emma.” She lay back in the chair, relaxing. It was the same as always for her, the mayor’s wife, Lana Delacroix. She never changed up her story. She came daily some weeks and always stayed as long as she could. The service had become something I had to book for the wee hours of the morning or after everyone had left, so I could fit in other clients.

Every time she arrived she seemed happy and paid her money, which essentially was all I asked of anyone. But no one came nearly as often as she did.

She had started a year ago, telling me she was obsessed with Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and needed to feel the book come to life the way it did when she read it. I told myself she was simply lost in the gowns and glamour of life before the Civil War. I told myself she hated her marriage and enjoyed living a dream.

Maybe I lied to myself a little.

Lana slipped her hands into the gloves that monitored her vitals as the forearm clamps clicked into place.

The microbiosensors, glowing pale blue and pulsating softly in the syringe, were pushed into her arm under the clamp when I pressed the start. I placed the mask over her eyes, putting her into a state of light deprivation. It helped with the dream.

The microbiosensor computers resembled a dot, or a tiny cluster of explorers under the skin, flashlights all pointing in the same direction. The moment my fingers touched the screen, starting the Gone with the Wind program, the nanobots deployed. The glowing small blue dot under her skin was gone.

They hurried to attach to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of her brain, hijacking the area, creating the world from within.

When we sleep and dream, our bodies go "offline” for lack of a better word. The primary motor cortex and primary somatosensory cortex are disconnected, so to speak. Since all dreams come from within us, my nanocomputers hooked into the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with the story already programmed. The whole system was linked to a virtual world, based entirely upon a novel. There had to be a base of control. Early on, I discovered when people were put into a dream, completely in their control, it usually involved nightmares.

We were slaves to our own fears.

No, the journey required a controlled environment where patients were placed into a world they knew and were comfortable with. They were limited to a select group of options, centered on the base story within their chosen novel.

My research had its humble beginnings as deep-brain stimulation for patients with severe disabilities and disorders. Being a romantic and a widow trapped together in the same body, clashing and fighting each other’s desires, prompted me to find a use for my life’s work. Neuroengineering had so many opportunities as far as careers went. However, watching Lana’s face when she entered the world created by a beloved author made them all seem so bland.

My system still improved the lives of the disabled and diseased, but in a whole new way. It not only gave them their families, but also the option to leave all that behind and enter a made-up world from the books or movies they loved.

Inside a work of fiction was a type of beauty we didn't have in the real world. It was mixed in a balanced way with chaos and romance. It was planned to be perfect. A precise amount of pain, pleasure, beauty, and horror. It was specifically what you desired, and that escape was in a controlled environment. Real life was nothing, compared to the possibilities I had brought to light with the technology.

If all you truly wanted in the world was to storm the beaches of Normandy or kiss Mr. Darcy, you could. The book set the parameters, but your actions allowed changes within the novel. I had set it up as a Choose Your Own Adventure, using the same concept as the children’s series I had found in my grandmother’s cellar when I was a girl, but I kept the possibilities for change limited. Back then, I had loved the idea of choosing my own possibility and outcome. Sometimes I died. Sometimes I lived. Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost. But no matter what, when I opened the book the real world was gone.

As an adult, I saw the need to limit personalization, to avoid confusing reality with fiction.

All of life’s mundaneness and boredom was replaced by excitement and possibility.