Dream Recording Machine (4 and 5)

He couldn’t even stay still, and in such cases, he always thought of dreams. His obsession with thoughts had usually been digested in dreams, many of which had pointed to his university honour and saved his presidential career. “I must dream a good dream,” the president’s voice spoke to his head, “it’s my last resort.”

But he felt an omen for a very serious dream. He was afraid. He tried not to sleep. He worked overnight.

The next morning his citizens were disappointed to hear that it was going to be a no-show day, as their president hadn’t slept a wink. Despite that, many started to show sympathy for the president, “I’ve never thought that the president also overworks like us.”

As things went according to his intention, the president fell awfully asleep that afternoon, resulting in an almost dead nap, which the workers, farmers and street people of this country hadn’t reckoned.

He went into a dream real quick. It happened in front of his eyes, so vividly, that composites were self-creating everywhere. As soon as a new prime was born, that prime would be forced to multiply by other numbers, prime or composite, to form a new composite.

“Everything is adding to the power of us composites,” with a big grin, Miss Eighteen knocked on the president, now just like a nineteen-year-old boy.

Right next to her stood Sir 2^43,112,609 − 1, who the president knew for sure was too old to speak. “I understand how hopeless you are. It’s hard to find out new primes,” the president showed his sympathy; Sir 2^43,112,609 − 1 nodded…

Little Two raised her radiant voice, “No worry! Euclid said we have infinitely many prime numbers. New primes will come, sooner or later!”

“Will they?” the president intended to ask back, but instead, he uttered the primes he knew, without any stop of breath, as if afraid there was a race and he had to run. It drove him crazy to decide if Little Two was optimistic or naïve. “Is it that we have an unquestioned faith in the so-called bigger-richer-happier? One day the prime world will stop expanding?”

Breathless. Something banged on him. A pack of letters suddenly encircled the president. Another pack, resting just some inches from the first pack, tried to reach out for him. “Nooo!”

He lifted his head up as if getting himself out of a battlefield where some forces were chasing him, shooting and screaming. He quickly contemplated the last scene. The first pack contained {C, E, I, M, O, P, S, T} while the second {E, I, M, P, R}. It couldn’t be more obvious to him that COMPOSITE included all parts of PRIME, except “R.” “Will a deteriorative part of PRIME, that is, ‘R,’ have to die so that COMPOSITE can have everything that PRIME has?”

The president trembled and cheated himself that it was all a dream—he shouldn’t be over-worried. “I must be awake. Euclid is right, should be right!”

Unfortunately, the president couldn’t separate himself from the dream and its implications, thus sneaking into a plan that would detect the deteriorative potential.

Sensing a close connection between the deteriorative potential and numbers, the president asked his people to think of a number, and “Only numbers in your dreams can tell the truth,” he asked his spokesperson to include that last sentence in the announcement, giving away the pretext that he needed to consider everyone’s say to set the right objective for next year’s GDP growth rate.

Just as the president’s anticipation, everyone, being stimulated and enjoying the so-called national participatory decision-making process, submitted their dreams. Even the one-time monks, soldiers, police and businesspeople made good collaboration in the hope that the president would help them regain their status. What the president hadn’t quite anticipated was that the majority of them saw number Five. As a means to test the reliability of this one-night research project, he commanded his underlings to secretly bring a thought recording machine to each household and probe the people there for their daytime thoughts on the proposed GDP growth rate.

Everything went collaboratively and beautifully, so much so that nobody could know the master group LOLLY had been detained after the dream and thought findings were cross-analysed.

LOLLY had been working beyond the knowledge of ordinary citizens, but now, they’d managed to contact the inventors of the dream recording machine, making the president’s dreams and thoughts, paranoid and repressive, all of a sudden go public.

“The wall you leaned on too long will make you weaker.” mumbled, the president. Now the LOLLY also turned his back to him, leaving his dreams to the hands of public, to the people who can lynch him in a few seconds once he is out there. He needed to think quick, needed to find an exit as soon as possible before the volcano erupts and wipes out everything on its way. Suddenly, he remembered the good old days where the dreams remained as dreams and life continued regardless of their complicated meanings. Perhaps, banning both dream-recording and thought-reading machines will be the only solutions to reach the days which were glorious for the rich and powerful of the country.

With the idea emerged like the bubbles in the water, he ran to one of his advisors and asked him to announce the ban. But the advisor warned him that “Sir, it is the fun of people. Once we have given them we cannot take it back because the rule of progress is simple. Everything starts as a luxury, then becomes ordinary, then becomes necessity, then becomes obsolete. This is the evolution of the commodities. We can fasten it, slow it down but we cannot stop it. The consequences will be unpredictably brutal.” The president did not like the advice he was getting from his advisor. “So what do you suggest, then? What shall we do now? Outside is like a pot of milk boiling and we are here watching it, doing nothing.”

No sir, the advisor said. Outside is fine as long as we can control their reaction to your dreams. Remember what Juvenal said centuries ago, “Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.” We will organize more fun for the people, sports competitions, music and film festivals, silly but noisy games for kids. The whole country will be blessed by the entertainment facilities, people will not have time to think about your dreams, or even about their own dreams. Then the dream-recording machines will become obsolete. Then we can take them silently, without letting them know anything, like pulling a hair from the butter, as easy as that.

President thought about it and asked him if the government has sufficient budget for this. The advisor said, “This is our last chance, sir. In the expense of getting in a deep debt, we must do this. Otherwise, the country will fall into the hands of a bunch of ignorant workers and their union leaders who know only talking about seizing the power from the bourgeoisie but do not know how to handle it afterwards.”

President finally dropped his doubts and succumbed to the temptation of getting his power back. He ordered big sports events in every city of the country so that young people will spend their times watching football matches, cheering or even fighting for one team without knowing why they support that one, but not the other one. He ordered huge venues for pop concerts where youth can found nothing but screaming meaningless lyrics and dances. He ordered huge amusement parks and electronic game facilities so the kids will spend their times without making their parents worry about their futures or education plans. Giant shopping centres have been built for the families to spend their entire days inside without needing to leave. The new temples for middle class were where they can do their window shopping and they can entertain their kids. A lot of money has been spent from public funds and when the bottom of the treasury is seen president asked more from the neighbouring countries. When all that money has gone and the creditors started shouldering his door, he started selling huge lands to foreign investors, the lakes and rivers to the rich hotel owners and real estate tycoons. Money was leaving the country but the people were happy as they had never been before.

The entire country became the place of festivities and games, never ending concerts, glamorous sports tournaments and of course the paparazzi media whose main discussion topic was which celebrity was wearing what and which beauty caught her husband in the bed with the house maid. Having big boobs became the most important wisdom for the young girls while they were singing “Sexy, naughty bitchy me” songs on the streets. The young boys, besides appreciating the girls with big boobs, spent all their free time in discussing the next weekend’s football matches or trying to fit in fitness centres so that they will look bigger than they actually are. A few months later, no one was remembering the use of dream-recording machine as they were living in a dreamland thanks to their great leader. The more fun they had, the more they find out that as long as their stomach is full and nothing makes them worry, life is worth to live without causing troubles to those who make it affordable for them. Then why to bother to turn on dream recording machines and peep into other people’s secret world?

President was happy as monks, soldiers and even the business people once more gathered around him to re-constitute his power and cement it with superstitious faiths. President was a hero, a farsighted man in every aspect of life, an ultimate source of wisdom and a great leader who know what his people needs and when they really need it. His handsome pictures returned to the entertainment venues, his giant statues populated in the cities like mushrooms following rain, his inarguably wise words entered into the school books for students to learn by heart and to recite whenever they feel they are losing the debate. Once things returned to its usual routine, he re-introduced his “sufficiency economy” so that poor will be content with what they eat and the with the surplus coming from their hard labour, he will make sure that the country will re-create its billionaires who can pull the debt-ridden economy out of the rubbles. However, it would not be easy to send people back to the miserable life conditions again after giving them so much fun.

When the entertainment venues are closed and people are left without pop music and the pictures of celebrities, they started to think that the bubble has blasted and it is time to get back to reality. The dream recording machines were returning to living rooms once more as if they were forgotten house pets under the couch. From the dusty dirty shelves, it became all clear that president did all these games to create a mass-amnesia in the cost of selling his own country to foreigners. He was so afraid of losing his power, so coward that he could not confront the upper class of his country. That unwatched or ignored dream, no matter how old it was, was enough to make people angry against their beloved great leader. However, this was not enough for them to get together against the main stream. More things were needed and they did not need to wait long to see the frustrations coming along from all sections of society.

When poor peasants are asked to pay for the water they were using to irrigate their rice farms for the centuries because the rivers are now belong to a company, many villagers raised their voices. Then young city dwellers are blocked to enter the lake with their lovers as the lake as well is sold to an investor who will soon build a luxury residence at the middle of the water. The people living in mountainous regions are asked to pay for the air they were breathing because the clean air of the mountains was sold to the rich city people of the neighbour country. Like the deafening silence after a dazzling party pushes the host into an imminent melancholy, all these disappointments of the people added together to make a huge effect. While they were playing President’s games, the country was sold to foreigners in the name of development. The voices get louder and louder after the dreams of the president fell on people’s minds like a glass of water being poured on already burning oil. One more time the rebels took over the streets, angry crowds started to shout their final slogans which was the motto of a famous rebel in 14^th century: Share all you have, apart from the lips of your beloved one.

Dream-Recording Machine

This story is written 4 months ago but since it is not completed, I did not publish it. The idea was to write a story with a student, piece by piece, in six parts. First part I have written. Then my student wrote the second part. Then I wrote the third etc... After I wrote the 5th, my student gave up on writing the end. It was fun but perhaps it was too much for a beginner. So the story is still incomplete.

I am going to publish it in coming days and finish it by the end of this process. Let's see if I can remember what message I wanted to give at the beginning and if it is still possible to do it after all the deviations caused by the change of writers/perspectives.

Here is the first three parts:

The news of the invention of a dream-recording machine which helps you to watch your dream in the day time spread to the public like the spring wind carrying the sweet smell of flowers right before pouring down a heavy rain on the unprepared citizens of the city. Wealthy housewives giggled incessantly in their never ending tea parties, monks and politicians worried about the future of their privacies, university professors discussed the ethical dilemmas this machine can bring to one’s social network and artists felt extremely excited with the possible avalanche of new inspirations. Everyone was expecting something revolutionary from this machine except for the farmers and workers who easily sleep after a hardworking day and dream nothing most of the times. They simply did not understand the use of dreaming a dream second time and wasting the valuable day time for something very superfluous.

But as it happens in all technological inventions, no matter what people say or think about its harm or uselessness, technology always wins with the help of mass production, mass marketing and of course the comodified values of mass cultures. First they are advertised in newspapers and televisions: “No more hard time to remember your dreams!”. A psychoanalyst who used to sit next to a divan is seen watching a large TV set and taking notes in these commercials. Big companies got in the queue to grab their shares from the market. “Sleep tight in the night and play the fun in the day” became the motto of the multi-national companies. Second by second, every detail of the dreams is put on the recorder’s memory. Some felt depressed when they wake up and see nothing on the screen as if their sleep was a waste of time, some were having a masochistic pleasure to see the frightening nightmares once more, some were happy to watch their extreme fantasies clearly on the screen when they are fully awake and some were quite embarrassed to see how their minds play tricks on them in their most intimate moments.

Things were fine and the huge sales of the sets made big companies bigger, rich men richer, happy women happier till one day a TV channel asked a worker on the street about his opinion on this recorder. He stared at the camera’s objective as if he sees who is watching him at the other side and said “I have no interest in my own dreams but I want to see the dreams of our president. I want them to be broadcasted. He is ruling our country so his dreams cannot be private. I want to see the dreams of the monks too as they guide poor ignorant people, the businesspeople who bid for public services, and the policemen who seek for opportunities to beat protesting wor…” The broadcast was cut at this point but the words were already on air. His offer spread even faster than the machine itself and a few months later, after tens of violent protests on the streets, the president has accepted to his dreams to be broadcasted.

Two days before the president’s acceptance, a master group called LOLLY had come to the final stage of testing a thought recording machine. This project had been launched at exactly the same time as the one on dream recording. The difference was that LOLLY worked under the president’s command—secretly, while the dream freaking stuff, thought the president, was initiated by a group of middle-class students.

LOLLY sent him a letter, trying to explain why their thought recording machine would have to produce things in audio form, not visual form as dream recording machines, already available on the market nationwide, now did. Impatient after reading the first few pages of scientific evidence, he jumped to the last paragraph: “When we dream, we tend to see things, and those images, when controlled, will last long enough on the retinas so that a machine, working like a camera, can capture them. However, when we’re in a mood of ongoing thinking, it’s our inner-voice that reads our own thoughts to us.”

The machine could now follow human thoughts easily unless one faced a long frozen time. In such cases, the machine may lose some data. “But to make it run smoothly is just a matter of days,” said LOLLY at the end of the letter.

“Fuck off,” the president said to himself, afraid that his rudeness would be heard by some potential leisured journalists.

If the thought recording machine had come before the dream stuff, he would have known what was in the minds of those workers and asked the massive media apparatus under his arms to silence them all. Better, though, would be that he had known about the dream recording project and anticipated its consequences right when it got started, so that he could have abandoned it once and for all.

A professional person in all aspects of life that he was, the president quickly had some ideas analysed before his first dream went public.

Bullet point number one, he wrote: Making fabricated dreams—showing people well-directed, eight-hour movies. It won’t work, he thought, for a tiny dream recording machine had been implanted on his left hand and connected to the national TV network and some other networks of neighbouring countries.

Bullet point number two: Writing scripts and taking medicine that helps to cook the scripts into dreams. “Wow,” he cheered himself up, but “it takes science plenty of time to make such a revolution,” he smartly relied on his rationality and scientific background. “But it’s OK, I’ll invest in such a project if I’m still in power,” the calm president tried not to joke, not even to himself, because according to Freud, jokes would just make his dreams more sexually embarrassing.

He would now love to suffer from insomnia and work overnight. As he was waiting for a thick coffee, he remembered, from his university days, that he sometimes got stuck with a mathematical problem, and when his stress turned into a good sleep, he would find the answer there!

That night, perhaps because of the math problem in his head, he dreamed of a war of prime numbers against the composites. He was 19 and at the front line enjoying the initial victories of primes. It was a fierce bloodbath as primes claim that they constitute the noble class and without them composites cannot exist. But at the same time, composites claim that they were the ones filling the spaces in the number line therefore make the whole number system works efficiently. Without composites, there will be no meaning in the nobility of primes at all. Although at the beginning prime numbers were strong as their cardinalities are proportionally high for small sets, as the war dissolved, the composites made great advances in organizing themselves into small groups, then bigger and bigger groups. Once primes understood that they are losing the war they tried to escape from the battle zone but most of them were caught and forced to multiply by each other so that there will be no more primes in the system and all numbers will be treated equally.

He woke up from his dream with the extreme fear in his eyes like a cat staring at the headlights of an approaching car and he asked his advisors to edit his dream and if possible reverse the ending with the victory of primes. The advisors edited the dream by cutting the hidden messages and reversing the end so that the sleeping spectre will not wake up and cause any trouble. After that day he asked help from LOLLY and managed to use the thought-reading machine to analyse his suppressed appetites before he goes to sleep so that his unconscious consternations will not come to the surface while he is asleep. So he achieved to filter his dreams and keep himself away from all sorts of accusations from the public.

President was lucky to handle his dreams before they are being broadcasted. What people usually see on their TVs were happy middle-class families in large clean houses, beautiful youth with their recently developed electronic gadgets and smiling people returning from the morning masses with the monks and priests bless them one by one while the sun rises behind the mountains, promising a happier, more elegant, richer future… None of the dreams included the poor farmers or miserable workers. None mentioned how they live in tough conditions and try very hard to keep alive if not only healthy and happy under the almost obnoxiously named “sufficiency economy”.

But not everybody was as lucky and powerful as the president. The dirty dreams of the abbot did not even give him a chance to apologize. He was forced to resign and no other monk wanted to replace him as none was cleaner than him when all their secrets made them slaves of their unconscious desires. One by one, monks left their temples and started their lives as farmers or workers. Finally they were making their own livings without requiring the alms of the people. The temples are turned to schools where the illiterate people can learn reading and writing, jobless people can learn designing small tools and poor disadvantaged people can learn developing basic technical skills.

The same trouble also made many business persons to avoid bidding for huge investments as their dreams include corrupting the system and cheating people with poor quality of service while receiving extortionate money from the people. And finally the police and the soldiers lost the trust of the people with their dreams showing their brutal acts just to keep their own pockets full with the money from the elites. What people learnt is these so-called armed professionals who are supposed to protect people from the external danger can turn their guns which are bought by the same people’s tax money to anyone who stands against their profit-hungry wills.

Losing the support of the monks, the soldiers, the police and the businesspeople, the president started to feel the danger coming from all directions. His dreams were still calm and surreal as long as they were censored. However, he knew that even though the head looked healthy it was impossible to keep it intact while the tumours were popping up almost everywhere on the body. He was feeling more and more trapped and sometimes because the censorship committee cuts 90% of the dream, there was nothing to show on TV for people to view.