What dreams are made of

[Razorwing]

Don't ask me why, but I just had an extremely vivid dream that I just had to write down. It's happened to me a few times in the past, but this was the first time it wasn't a nightmare. Rather, it was a movie. My mind was racing for half an hour afterwards as I lied in bed to 'finish the story'.

So for what it's worth I figured I'd post it here.

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black[/HR]

"What dreams are made of"

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WHAT APPEARS TO BE
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The movie starts when Walter wakes up in a hotel bed of a sunny Mexican resort. Rays of sunlight shine in through the white curtains of the nearby sliding glass door, beyond which sounds from the resort's pool can be heard. He has no memory of who he is or why he finds himself lying in that bed, and wouldn't have known his name either had not a woman in the room who appears to be his wife called him that.

Walter tries to keep up with the conversation with this total stranger calling herself his wife, giving bland and general remarks as she spurts trivial information and questions about their very much ordinary lives. From his bed he examines the room for clues. His eyes fall on a calender, which has "2018" printed in large red letters above the date grid. Through a voiceover he starts to think if he remembers anything connected to that year, while the camera pans across the date grid giving the impression that Walter's mind is wandering. Suddenly the camera stops as Walter notices something odd. One of the weeks on the date grid has two Fridays. This is the first of many small indiscrepancies that gives Walter a stronger and stronger sense that there is something wrong with the world he's experiencing.

Walter continues the uninteresting conversation with his wife, who gives no indication whatsoever that she's aware of his amnesia, nor does she give any clues to something that has happened - like an accident - that would explain his memory loss. Finally Walter decides not to dwell on it and try to get on with his life, confident that his memory will return before long. No need to get his wife worried over it and spoil what appears to be their vacation. The scene ends with his wife asking which skirt he thinks she should wear when they go out to dinner that night.

In the next scene Walter and his wife are walking through the local town on their way to the restaurant. The sun is setting, turning the sky a fiery red and giving the appearance he and his wife are glowing. The scene looks like a rosy, romantic memory. Walter is wakened from his romantic daze by the realization that the postcard kiosk he just passed looks like a perfectly mirrored copy of the postcard kiosk on the other side of the street. He has little time to ponder that discrepancy because at that moment a white van pulls up on the street next to them. Masked men pour out of the back of the van. One man knocks back Walter so he hits his head on the stone wall behind him. As Walter falls to the ground he sees how the men kidnap his wife.

Now Walter has to start unraven the mystery. But how can you find out the secrets behind your wife's abduction when you don't even know who you are?

By interviewing locals on the street Walter learns that the kidnappers were from the Arico crime family, who have gained infamy for several similar kidnappings lately. They grab female tourists at random and then research their financial status (from their ID's in their purses); if the victim's loved ones are wealthy they demand a ransom, if they're not... they have their way with them and then kill them. Walter looks down to examine his clothes and watch, which make it obvious he is not in a position to pay a ransom that would make it worth the Arico's while. He says to one local that he will take the information to the police, but the local only laughs, saying "How do you think the Arico get away with that kind of brazen practice in public to begin with?" His only option for saving his wife is to go after the Arico family himself.

Walter meets several people on his journey to learn about the Arico family and where they have hid his wife. From the kid on the corner who sells drugs for the family to the arms dealer who sells him a shotgun. He knows he has a period of time to find her, since the locals told him the Aricos will research his finances before deciding if it's worth demanding ransom. The general mood is that Walter feels pressed for time but still confident that he will succeed. Whether he's confident because he really is, or because he has to tell himself he will succeed in rescuing his wife and survive to tell the tale to keep his nerve, is another question.

All of the people Walter encounter, from the locals near the scene of the kidnapping to others he meet on his journey, have three things in common. They take an unnaturally long time to answer his questions, they don't seem quite real, and they give subtle hints that he should stop his pursuit. If Walter wasn't so focused on rescuing his wife he might have found it strange that the Hispanic arms dealer spoke with a German accent, or that one of the locals wore clothes from the 70's.

Walter's investigation leads him to the head of the Arico family, who live in a lush villa on the outskirts of town. He introduces himself by kicking down the door to his office and bursting in with his gun drawn. The head of the family sits behind his desk on the far side of the room. He calmly rises from his chair and walks towards Walter, so that they meet up in the center of the room. Walter knows that if there is any chance to get his wife back he needs the head of the family alive, if for nothing else than as a hostage to convince others in the family to let him and his wife leave, so he restrains himself from shooting him.

Here is where it gets interesting (if I do say so myself).

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THE MYSTERY UNTANGLED
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The head of the Arico family holds out his hands to the sides, and sighs "Walter..." with a mild grin on his face that signals both bafflement and humor. "You really have no clue what's going on here, do you?" Through the head's story the mystery is untangled.

It's the year 2075. Walter is not the 23-year-old he sees in the mirror. He is, in fact, eighty years old and lying in a hospital bed in New York. A few years back humanity discovered the final cure - being, the cure for death. The head of the Arico family holds up a pill, which the camera focuses on. "Who knew the genes that control aging could be fooled by something as seemingly simplistic as a red-and-white pill?"

However, while humanity will enjoy everlasting life, their memories do not. Stem cells may replenish dying brain cells and logistical puzzles may keep the mind alert, but memories can't be replenished. They invariably slip away like grains of sand through a fist.

Normal memories are digested versions of what really happened. Insignificant details were forgotten and in their stead, the person's mind just filled in the blanks with what seemed reasonable. Memories of what you ate and when are forgotten, replaced by a feeling that the food tasted great. You remember the table at the restaurant, but you didn't pay much attention to the rest of the room, so your mind filled in the blanks. As time goes on and your mind has to remind more and more, the details of the memory become more and more streamlined. Soon you'll forget what year you took that vacation, and eventually you'll forget where you went, in the end just leaving you with a hazy memory of taking a pleasant trip in your youth.

A method was developed that allowed memories to become imprinted permanently into a person's mind and stored like a movie. Says the head of the Arico family: "And if for some reason this method should prove not to be as long-lasting as we believe it will, you can take a copy home with you." Then he holds up a small disc in front of Walter. To perform the recording, the memory has to be relived before the patient's inner eye, which is what Walter has been experiencing. The reenactment in the patient's mind works together with a computer program that replaces blurry or forgotten parts with pre-programmed replicas that have been researched to be as accurate as possible, for instance from old photographs someone took of a particular restaurant years ago.

The amnesia Walter experienced was simply the computer program initializing, whereby other memories were blocked out to prevent the feelings and assessments of those memories from contamining the one that's being recorded. Walter was never meant to conciously realize he had amnesia, nor was he meant to be able to take conscious actions that swerved from what really happened. The days on the calender in his hotel room were mixed up because Walter's memory only recorded that there was a calender in the room and not what days were printed on the grid. The people he encountered took a long time to answer questions because his mind was diverging from the data in the computer program that smoothes gaps and blurs; they didn't seem quite real because his mind had invented the characters as he went along; and a failsafe in the program hinted that he should stop his pursuit. "Why didn't the failsafe simply shut down the recording then?" Walter asks. The head of the family replies, "Recordings take a lot of time - and your money - to set up. You wouldn't want a teller to cancel you out just because your mind decides you bought a different magazine in a supermarket than you really did. It's just a computer program, not some kind of AI, and it doesn't get what's important or not. It can recognize that you're proceeding along an unprogrammed path and nudge you to return to what's been programmed."

The head of the Arico family gives Walter a sad look. "Your wife really was kidnapped, Walter. She died 57 years ago. You wanted to record this memory because it was the last you had of her."

Walter struggles between his urge to rescue his wife in this twisted dream and his emerging realization that what the head of the Arico family is telling him is the truth. He slowly lowers his arm and lets the gun drop to the floor. The head of the Arico family pulls off his face with one hand, revealing a robotic face underneath. "Let's get you woken up Walter." He pulls a device from his throat, and continues - but this time in a dull, monotonous, robotic voice: "My secretary will schedule you for another appointment next week."

The head of the Arico family was simply a figment of Walter's imagination; a character he dreamt up on the fly, drawing on his expectations of what a crime family boss was like from unconcscious memories from movies and books.

The head of the Arico family starts to blur and disintegrate, at the same time as the location morphs from an office to a hospital room. A new person materializes where the head of the Arico family used to stand - a doctor. There is a chord going from his head to Walter's, explaining how he could communicate with him inside his dream world. Walter, lying in a hospital bed, looks disoriented for a while as he regains all the memories he lost during the dream-induced amnesia. He strokes his cheeks, reaquainting himself with the wrinkles of his aged face. Suddenly he gets flashbacks of his wife from various moments of his life; when they first met, when they first kissed, their wedding and so on - ending with a scene from the vacation portrayed in the botched recording. So close, but so far away. He bursts into tears over his loss.

The doctor pats him on the shoulder. "Don't forget you won't die, Walter. If us in the medical profession can cure death, how far can the science profession be from realizing time travel?"

The movie ends with an top-down shot of Walter's determined face, then zooming into his left eye, then fade direct to black.

- The end -

[TheImperialDragon]

*SPOILER ALERT*

An interesting story. :applause:

Walter is pretty much living a personal Hell, living through confused versions of events in his previous life. It reminds me of a few movies I'd seen, though they weren't quite the same.

[Razorwing]

Thanks for reading it

I think my dream drew plot points from Vanilla Sky (trapped in a dream that seem like reality) and Minority Report (recording events from someone's mind) though adding an original explanation. I guess Vanilla Sky in turn drew a plot point from The Matrix, that of being trapped in a dream that seem like reality. Anyway, it was a great dream in that it was so vivid, like watching a movie never before made and never to be seen. I hope I have the fortune of experiencing more dreams like that.

[Siegfried]

Wow, interesting story Razorwing, you might actually be able to go somewhere with that if you fleshed it out and got real in-depth-- maybe not a movie per-say, as the director would probably screw around with your idea a lot, but perhaps a book, or a short story of some sort.

[cruxvader]

Yeah it would work as a short film format, say 20-30 minutes

[A_flyboy]

I actually read it all the way through.
Great story. I agree that this would be excelent for one of those 30 minute shows that are always on the scifi channel in the mornings.