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“You feeling ready to sleep?”
“God, yes,” Namjoon blurts out, and the lab assistant chuckles. “It’s progress report season, you know how it is.”
“I do know how it is. I’ve been working on mine for two weeks. Does your department make you present, too?”
Namjoon climbs onto the cot, trying very hard not to mess up the sheets. “Thankfully not. I already have my hands full with a fifteen-page report, I can’t imagine having to make a presentation on top of that.”
"I hope I'm not taking up too much of your time," says the assistant, lightly.
"Of course not," says Namjoon in a hurry. "I'm working almost every other hour of the day. This is actually quite relaxing."
“Well, you already know most of the details,” says the assistant, clipping pulse monitors onto Namjoon’s extremities and sticking electrodes on his forehead. “Two hours, you sleep as much as you can, and if you can’t, no pressure. We’re monitoring vitals—breathing, heart rate, that sort of thing—and measuring brain activity. There’s a little button on the table for you to press when you wake up and you feel like you can’t go back to sleep. I’ll just be in the next room over—feel free to press the button if you need help with something as well.”
“Thank you,” says Namjoon. Even though he’s in a lab, hooked up to at least three different machines and carefully arranged in a sleeping position that will disrupt the wires as little as possible, the exhaustion settles over him remarkably quickly. Perfect subject for a sleep study, he thinks to himself, given that he’s prone to being able to fall asleep almost anywhere, in any position, no matter how uncomfortable—
His dream is quiet.
He stands atop a pier, eyes fixed on the fiery golden horizon. Waves come and go, crashing against the weathered stone beneath him. He can feel the stinging spray of sea water on his ankles. Back, forth. Back, forth. The sea is relentless. Everything is muted, hazy, but not hazy enough-
For as long as he can remember, which is really quite long, Namjoon has dreamed in full color. Shockingly vivid color; he retains nearly all of his sight. He can also hear things. The sound varies—sometimes it's a little dull, like he's underwater, and sometimes he dreams in surround-sound. But he almost always remembers. He remembers, and if he gets lucky, sometimes he can control them. He has never really paid attention to them, not in any significant way; it’s just something he knows about himself in the same way he knows that his eyes are dark brown and that strong coffee makes him extremely anxious.
On his third sleep study session, the assistant says, "You've been getting a little restless."
"Have I?" asks Namjoon, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "I don't really feel all that restless."
The assistant nods. "Physiologically, you have been. It's hard for you to tell when you're in deep sleep, but there's a lot of activity. Can you usually remember your dreams?"
Can he remember—
On his fifth session, as he swings his legs off the side of the cot, the assistant says, “I was wondering if you would be interested in meeting some colleagues of mine.”
“Another sleep study?” asks Namjoon, reaching for his sweater. The lab runs a little cold.
“Sort of,” says the assistant. She helps Namjoon take off all of his monitors—gently plucks the pulse oximeters off of his finger, first, and then his big toe. “They’re both grad students too. They’ve been interested in studying dreams lately, and they asked me to keep an eye on potential participants from our lab’s studies. And you and I have been talking about dreams for the last couple of weeks, so…”
To Namjoon, two things are worth considering, here. The first is meeting researchers who have intriguing academic interests. The second is simply meeting new people—meeting anyone other than his supervisor and the two other graduate students in his own lab. The prospect is as nerve-wracking as it is exciting.
“That sounds great,” he says, smiling. “I would love to meet them. Um, how should I—”
“I’ll email you their contact info,” the assistant assures, “as soon as I get a moment. But I have someone else coming in like, five minutes, so—”
“I’ll get out of your way,” says Namjoon, grabbing his backpack and nearly running into the doorframe. The assistant chuckles. “Thank you!”
The aforementioned grad students are Min Yoongi and Jung Hoseok, from the Department of Psychology.
The aforementioned grad students put Namjoon at east almost immediately. They ask him about the sleep studies, they ask about his work, they tell him about theirs, they debate the pros and cons of various types of coffee and coffee-flavored drinks. Namjoon isn’t particularly invested either way, but Min Yoongi and Jung Hoseok are excellent conversation partners, even when they’re lightly bickering between themselves about whether vanilla or caramel flavor shots are more versatile. Especially when they’re lightly bickering between themselves.
They take him to their lab, which is in an empty classroom in the basement of the natural sciences building. This, for obvious reasons, strikes Namjoon as odd, but as Yoongi unlocks the door, he explains that they need a quiet, safe place for their setup.
The setup in question looks remarkably simple, but then Yoongi says, “This is what we use to share dreams.”
“I’m sorry,” says Namjoon, after his brain has processed the words, “did you say share?”
“Yoongi-hyung and I have tested it,” supplies Hoseok helpfully. “It works. It seems crazy, I know, but it works.”
Namjoon runs his fingers across the edge of the desk, trying to make sense of the components. “You know how to work this thing?”
"Well, yes,” says Yoongi, as though it were obvious, “I built it.”
"You… built this yourself?"
“Not from scratch,” says Yoongi, waving a hand. “There are a lot of pre-existing components, but I put it together, yeah.”
Namjoon raises an eyebrow. “That’s very impressive.”
"I'm really just the tech guy."
"He is not 'just' the tech guy," says Hoseok, lightly shoving Yoongi's shoulder. They're easy with each other; comfortable and familiar. (Namjoon is not sure why he notices this, but he does.) "He knows his neuroscience, too."
"I know it looks suspicious," says Yoongi, no doubt catching Namjoon's extremely wary glances towards the machine. "I promise you it's safe. It's based on the same tech used in EEG studies—all I did was find a way to connect it."
“If it works,” says Namjoon, “and it’s safe, why all the secrecy?”
Yoongi and Hoseok share a Look. Undoubtedly, thinks Namjoon, they’re communicating via telepathy.
“It’s new,” says Hoseok finally. “It’s pretty new and it’s kind of— well, it’s actually just kind of crazy. We haven’t even begun to process the implications of something like this. We’re using it to explore, to learn more, and we’re barely even scratching the surface.”
“He’s being too nice,” mutters Yoongi, and then he turns to Namjoon and says, “We can’t have, like, the government finding out about this before we’ve figured out every single way it can be used.”
"You're hiding this," says Namjoon, feeling his heart rate pick up, "from the government?"
“Yes.”
“This is a public research university.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t your money,” asks Namjoon, with mounting confusion, “coming from the government?”
“It.. doesn’t. We didn't need to spend much, and whatever we did have to spend, we did it ourselves.”
Namjoon rubs his temples. “So you’re working completely off-the-record.”
“Exactly,” says Yoongi, looking pleased that it’s finally clicked, and then immediately assuming a much more muted expression once he sees the look on Namjoon’s face. “Listen,” he says. “You don’t have to do this. Like, at all. You can walk away from this right now. But if you choose to take part, I honestly think—I feel like we have an amazing shot at learning something new.”
There is a recurring motif in Namjoon’s dreams—one where he stands at the edge of a short cliff, simply observing the drop, never actually falling. For all intents and purposes, it looks only mildly dangerous, but Namjoon’s body will never let him jump—just in case. This feels rather like he’s standing on the edge of that cliff—there’s little reason he should not take the offer, but one tiny part of his brain is still worried, hesitant, like it knows things will one day go terribly wrong.
Namjoon jumps.
“I’m down,” he says. “I’ll do it. Where do we start?”
Can you hear me?
Namjoon spins around.
There’s no one there, of course. No one but the nameless villagers milling about their business, selling food and crafting weapons and talking. The background noise is as it always is, a quiet hum of unidentifiable chatter. Except—
Except for the first time, he feels as though if he just concentrated really hard, even for just a second, he might be able to discern actual words among the white noise.
We’ll step in soon.
This voice, Namjoon realizes, is in his head. But he is also in his head, technically speaking, so the voice seems to reverberate around a little more than voices usually do when they are in one’s head. He takes another look at the village itself, at the ground beneath his feet, at the buildings and people and stray cats. Everything is just a little more detailed, slightly brighter.
“Nicely done,” says Yoongi’s voice again, but it's right next to his ear this time. Namjoon jumps. “I really like the roof design on these houses. Hey, is that guy selling fresh bread?”
It’s one thing to have it described to him, but it’s another thing entirely to actually see two other human beings—in painfully sharp clarity—standing next to him in his dream.
“What is this place?” asks Hoseok, taking tentative steps forward. “Like, in your dreams?”
“It’s the village,” says Namjoon. “I revisit it a lot. Sometimes I can come back to it on purpose, too.” He’s seen the village a million times, but never like this—senses dialed up just enough for him to know something is different.
“So you can lucid dream,” says Hoseok. “Nice. That would have been useful knowledge to have before we stepped into this, but I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Namjoon stares. “Please elaborate.”
“We didn’t think we’d start off with that,” explains Yoongi. His eyes dart around the scene in front of him—almost like he’s looking for something. “We thought we’d just be able to join in and watch, because that’s how most dreams are—like movies; you just watch it all play out.”
“We want to see how someone would go about changing the dream environment,” says Hoseok, “but we didn’t think we’d actually be there so soon.”
Namjoon stares at the weathered cobblestone underneath his shoes. Maybe, if he tries…
The ground begins to tremble, just a tad.
“Well that’s interesting,” says Yoongi calmly, steadying himself against a lamppost. “Namjoon, what are you thinking about?”
Namjoon concentrates really, really hard. He visualizes his target. He visualizes what it would look like here, on the ground in front of him—
“Namjoon,” says Hoseok, “what are you—”
A cat brushes up against Namjoon’s leg, and the dream implodes.
Namjoon jolts upright, gasping for air, and ten entire seconds pass before he remembers who and where he is. Beside him, Yoongi delicately plucks the electrodes off of his forearm. On his other side, Hoseok does the same, and puts a steady arm behind Namjoon’s back to sit him up straight. He presses a glass of water into Namjoon’s hands.
“What the hell was that,” rasps Namjoon, after he’s downed the entire glass.
“A cat,” says Hoseok, and though he looks startled, there’s a growing smile on his face. “You created a cat.”
“I wanted to do that.”
“And you did,” says Yoongi, shutting off the machine and coming to Namjoon’s other side. “In a shared dream, not just your own. I saw that cat appear out of nowhere.”
“Okay,” says Namjoon, “then why—everything just exploded. What’s all that about?”
“I only have an educated guess.”
“Guess, then.”
“The more you think about the distinction between the dream and reality, the more unstable it gets. When you’re in a dream, you think it’s real. When you start to think about the real world, when you start to become aware of the fact that what’s in front of you isn’t actually real, you get closer to waking up.”
“So the more I try—”
“The worse it will get,” suggests Yoongi. He doesn’t look particularly bothered by it, which, in turn, soothes Namjoon’s nerves just a tad. “But I mean, as far as we know, the worst it could possibly get is just… waking up in real life.”
"You were in my head," says Namjoon, after a beat of silence. "Literally."
The adrenaline and surprise are wearing off, little by little, and with every passing second Namjoon feels slightly more vulnerable. The truth sinks in painfully slowly—he is no longer the only person who has been privy to his dreams. Were he less attuned to his own mind, perhaps it would matter less, but he isn’t. He’s painfully aware, he treasures the peace and quiet in his head, and now two other people are there with him—
—in his dreams, and also in reality, collecting their stuff and discussing the experiment. This is Namjoon’s cue to leave. He should go. This was just an experiment. For science. They’re not friends or anything. It’s dark outside and they’re done here and he should go. He stays rooted to the spot.
“Jjajangmyeon?” asks Hoseok suddenly. With a jolt, Namjoon realizes it’s addressed to him. “There’s a place down the street from my apartment. It’s really good. And I’m starving. Shall we go get some?”
He swallows.
“Yes,” he finds himself saying, “I’d like that a lot.”
This dream is cold.
He finds himself at the village and walks. He keeps walking. He passes the pier, he passes the marketplace. He keeps walking. He notices the chill, the barely-perceptible drizzle of rain—a storm so light, it may as well be mist. He tugs his jacket tighter and keeps walking. When he looks up again, he sees a wooden mansion in the distance. He’s sure he’s never seen this before. There are tiny pinpricks of green light visible through the windows— they shift and blur and move once he notices them, as if they’re agitated, as if they don’t like him there, as if he doesn’t belong—
“Try to keep your cool,” says Yoongi, as they set up for their second experiment. “I know it’s probably easier said than done, but the deeper you go into the dream, the more you need to try convincing yourself that it’s real. We’re already starting off fairly unstable because we’re all going in knowing it’s just a dream.”
“I’ll try my best,” says Namjoon apprehensively, as Hoseok hooks him up to the machine. He feels himself slipping under, wants to ask how they do it, wants to know, for certain, that they’ll all be okay—
Namjoon finds himself in a forest.
He vaguely recognizes the scene, but it’s just vague enough so that he can’t pinpoint whether the forest is from his dreams or from real life. He looks around. Yoongi and Hoseok are nowhere to be found, though they said they would be joining him in the dream shortly after he went in—
He takes a deep breath and walks.
He has no goal. He walks along the forest trail, trying his best to stomp out any thoughts about the real world, trying his best to lose himself in this. The human brain, however, is a stubborn thing—the more he tries, the harder it gets. He becomes aware of a certain tension between his body and everything outside of it—a nearly tangible pull, a tug at his core, a tug at his fingertips. He can feel it now. In the distance, the world begins to fold.
Namjoon remembers Yoongi saying you need to try convincing yourself that it’s real. He remembers it. He looks at the dream collapsing in front of him and it feels… real. His heartbeat is pounding in his own ears, and it feels real. His fear feels real. Not a single thing about the dream feels fake, but he knows he’s only making it more unstable with every passing second—everything feels much too real, too strong, too much—
His hands shake. The ground shakes with them.
Breathe, Namjoon, says Hoseok’s voice, calm and collected, all around him.
Namjoon breathes.
It is, after all, only a dream.
"This is a whole lot for a university sleep lab," says Hoseok, letting out a nervous laugh, and then promptly going silent.
“We’re not even an actual sleep lab, Hoseok-ah.”
Namjoon cradles his ramen with both hands and stares at the placemat in front of him as though it will give him all the answers. Yoongi is across from him, delicately sipping on a cup of tea. (I have the kind you like, Hoseok had said, when he’d brought them to his apartment, and Namjoon felt his heart give a sudden, unbearable clench for no reason at all.)
“You’ll be safe, Namjoon,” says Hoseok now, as they huddle around his dining table, and though he means well, Namjoon feels himself shiver under the weight his own brain has added to those words. “We’ll keep you safe, don’t worry. We might want to wait before we go in again, though—”
“That’s up to him,” interrupts Yoongi. “He has to decide whether or not he’s ready.”
Namjoon finishes chewing his noodles. He feels a little exhausted, his head is heavy, but the thing is—
The thing is, there is a part of him that wants to push this as far as it can possibly go. There’s a part of him that wants to know exactly how much he can do, and though he is tired and afraid, his curiosity has not waned in the least.
The thing is, if he were to do it at all, he wants to do it with these two by his side.
“I want to keep going,” he says, finally. “I think—I feel like I can see it now, how powerful this could be. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know there’s something here, and I want to find it.”
He meets Yoongi’s eyes. He wonders if Yoongi can tell what he feels about the two of them, even though he can’t say it out loud—not yet, not so soon. Namjoon thinks he can.
“Then we’ll get you there,” he says, simply.
His dream is breezy, warm.
He looks out the window. The snowfall is mesmerizing—a pleasure to observe, especially from inside a warm, wintry cabin. He turns to Hoseok and Yoongi. He says, "I feel safe here."
Hoseok says, "I know," and smiles.
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