A couple of nights ago I had two unusually vivid dreams. They both exhibited a high level of detail, and, uncharacteristically, I remember much of it; usually specifics slip away pretty quickly after I wake up.
Both dreams took place in settings that could be described as more or less cyberpunk. Both also prominently featured technology that augmented reality to nigh-virtual (but not entirely fabricated) levels. They were quite separate and distinct, however.
The first dream was far more morbid and twisted than the other. People who entered a house became trapped in its self-contained world and were forced to abide by its rules. Inside the house was a fantastic, dark fairy tale type of place, with swords and monsters and such. Certain individuals were apparently relaying instructions to the denizens of the house regarding how they were to behave. With these instructions came weak promises of privilege and vague suggestions of an eventual opportunity to escape for those who obeyed most readily and completely. These instructions were varied, but they came on a regular basis in the form of demands for the death of particular residents of the house.
At some point, a few bold souls rallied to escape the "haunted house", as it were, by their own means, which resulted in successfully shutting down the power of the house... but, shockingly, quite a bit of what was going on was apparently not virtual, because it remained even after the haunted house was powered down. I remember being impressed with the idea that these elements had indeed been illusions at the start, but they had somehow, over time, manifested themselves in reality. Around this point I woke up. I don't think I was awake for long before I fell asleep again and had the second dream.
The second dream apparently took place in some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario in a future ruled by machines. The artificial intelligence oppressing humankind created a false reality that all people were perceiving. They were still apparently moving about in real space, but much of what they saw and experienced was entirely fabricated. Very, very few humans were left alive, and only by the will of the computer(s) controlling the world. They were keeping the humans alive for purposes of observation, and the false reality in which the humans dwelt was supposed to be to the advantage of the computer(s); it was an ideal environment for them to learn the details of the human brain. Apparently, the purpose of the artificial intelligence was to mimic humanity as exactly as possible. This may have been because the AI was originally created (by man) with the goal of preserving the human race, and it continued to do so, but in an abstracted fashion untainted by care for humans as individuals... Regardless of reason, though, the AI was definitely seeking to improve itself to a point where it could act exactly like humans. It sent out fake humans, existing only as software (but perceived literally in the false world of human experience), to interact with the true humans in order to learn their behavior in practical situations.
All the real humans had somehow become aware of what was going on, but it was extremely difficult to tell the difference between actual people and AI programs. People generally lived with resigned attitudes, trusting others, but keeping an understanding that any time all their friends could turn out not to exist at all. The common knowledge seemed to be that the AI fakes far, far outnumbered the real humans, of which there were only a small handful left in the world.
The critical flaw in the AI was that it was unable to accurately reproduce deep human emotion, so it was the goal of the humans (and, consequently, the claimed goal of the software beings, which attempted to act just like the real humans) to forge strong personal connections with others until they reached a point where they could comfortably affirm that they could only be genuine humans. Presumably, the goal was for all the living humans to find each other and band together so they could find a way to remove themselves from the false reality and take down the computer system controlling the world... However, it did seem some did not have such lofty aspirations, and they pessimistically hoped only to forge true friendships and fall in love with real humans as some sort of comfort from the harsh reality that their entire lives were under the control of machines.
I don't remember much from the second dream eventwise, but as you can see, I do recall the setting. Shortly after I arose, my waking brain began piecing the dream together and filling in holes so it could actually be a story and not just a setting in which a story or stories could take place... While the two dreams both have great potential for becoming short stories or something (even full-length novels, really), the second is probably the one I'll be more likely to end up doing something with, because somehow, it just came together really naturally after I woke up, and now there's a lot of potential for a good story there. It'd be really great to write out both these as short stories someday, and I already have an idea for another from before (also based on a dream I had)... but I have a lot going on right now, so we'll have to see when and whether it happens.
I don't know if that was interesting to any of you, but I figured it might be for somebody, so I thought I would share it.
I'm trying to post more regularly; sorry for the slow pace.
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