Dr. Paul continued walking down the long corridor of sleep. He looked at the dozens of people lying to his right and left, lined up like frozen human pods from a spaceship. He checked his notes again and continued walking towards patient 332, where his students were gathered. The red alert. For the first time after 10 years of work.
As he approached the students gathered in front of the sleep pod, one of them turned to Dr. Paul and reported.
"Sir, the patient is somehow overloading his harvesting capacity. It's been like this for the last minute."
"This must have been a very long dream," the doctor said. Then he checked the patient's vitals. His heart rate and hormone levels. He saw that the serotonin hormone was very low. This told him that the patient was not having a good or pleasent dream, probably a nightmare.
Could this be the endless cycle of nightmares he had seen in books before? Normally, nightmares would only last for a few seconds. And then they would end. During this time the energy would peak and after it was over it would go back to normal level.
He had two options, either to wake the dreaming patient and show humanity and conscience, or to continue collecting the psychic energy from his dreams. Dr. Paul thought about what he could achieve. He had already collected over a minute of energy. Even this much was huge amount.
If he continued, all his students in the class would know that he was unscrupulous and not following protocol. If they found themselves in the same position when they entered the next sleep and dream period, they would know what the doctor had done. This could have caused an uproar. Maybe they would refuse to return to sleep until Doctor Paul is resigned or fired.
But if he stopped, he would be shutting off a source of psychic energy that he could perhaps get more of in the coming week from the psychic energy released by many other dreaming patients.
He had to make an instant decision and his students knew it. Every second was a nightmare for the dreamer.
Because the stakes were so high, Dr. Paul pressed the red button to keep his job and his career. The wake-up button. The sleep pod instantly released a gas and the dream subject inside woke up. He took a deep breath. His eyes opened wide. He looked around, frightened. Before Dr. Paul started to calm him down, he checked his vitals again. Everything looked fine. Only his heart rate was elevated, but the rest of his vitals were returning to normal.
"Hello there. I saved you from a nightmare. I'm Dr. Paul. You must remember me. You are now on the planet Mars at the Celebrenium facility, a psychic energy harvesting laboratory. I'm going to remove your mask and give you a glass of water to regain taste, your bearings and proper consciousness."
Dr. Paul slowly removed the oxygen and gas mask, took a glass of water from his student and handed it to the dream subject volunteer.
He was the hero now. Students were cheering but he was dreaming about the lost psychic energy...
...
Thank you so much for reading. This is inspired by and Written for Inkwell prompt Dream.
Image is generated by me using Leonardo AI.