Wake me up before you oh no

BRIEF #0307-LUC

Josie, Ted and Bea stood there staring at the brief. Not talking, not even touching it. Just circled around it like they had never seen a print-out before.

It was Ted who broke the silence. “That” he pointed down at the piece of paper on the table, finally taking his eyes off of it and looking at his collegues “that’s a Lucid Ops Brief. What the actual fuck is it doing here?”

Bea still couldn’t look away. She’d never seen one of these before. ‘Lucid tone protocol’ was like, maybe coolest thing she might have ever heard. Nestled realities? Like what does that even mean?

“Well… um…” Josie stammered, eyes still gluded to the wayward brief. “Obviously we need to… I guess reroute it or something?” Ted nodded.

This finally broke Bea out of her stupor. “No way, no WAY! We can do this! Come on, this is like absolute fun. The coolest thing to come our way since ever! We HAVE to do this.”

“We absolutely do NOT have to do this” Ted said, backing away “it’s looking for no fewer than three reality shifts. I don’t even know how to do one reality shift. We are way out of our league here.”

Nash had walked in, unnoticed so everyone jumped a bit when she said “That’s not true, we do reality shifts all the time, we just call them openers.” She took a bite of an apple, looking down at the brief “Oh, Lucid Ops brief. Reroute that shit” and then sat down at the table, still chewing.

“Nash” Bea started, sitting down next to her “what if we were to…you know…not reroute it and just kind of…you know…do it?” Nash’s face didn’t change at all. She took another bite of her apple. Chewed. Swallowed. “That would be dumb. We can’t handle this sort of thing.” She took another bite of apple. Case closed.

Josie surprisingly was kind of feeling this brief, too. “Look, I get that it’s a challenge but I mean, aren’t you the least bit curious what goes on in one of these? What The Dreamer is like? I mean” she looked directly at Ted “you were just saying that if you have to do one more tooth loss thing, you’re going to start pulling your own teeth out.”

He rubbed his tounge around his mouth, feeling his teeth. She did have a point. This certainly wasn’t the same old feeling of loss sort of deal. “Ok, but who is going to take, it, though? I mean, I don’t feel like I could handle” he scanned the brief “avoiding changing matter states, like how do I know when I’m even doing that? So how do I acttually avoid doing something that I don’t know if I’m doing? See, brain already bent.” He sat down next to Nash.

Bea sat down as well. “It obviously can’t be one of us. It has to be all of us. Working together. Because together we can do anything!” She finished with a flourish, arms outstretched like the most positive airplane you’ve ever seen.

“Ok, I’m with my little pony over here, just with a little less “friendship is magical.” Josie finally sat as well. But we need to have a solid plan, really good props and importantly, an exit strategy if things get too wonky.” She looked over at Bea “And if we can do that, I’m in.” Bea clapped her hands in front of her excidtedly, looking over at Nash and Ted.

Ted just kind of shrugged and gave a thumbs up. If everyone else is going, he wasn’t going to stay behind, but he made a mental note to figure this glass thing out.  Which was quickly overwritten by thoughts about lunch.

Nash was quiet. She looked at the brief again. The locked door thing seemed simple enough. The object that shouldn’t exist is pretty basic, getting it to know it would be a bit harder, but not impossible. Two versions of the same person who are both wrong, child’s play. And getting the phrase in there, no brainer. What concerned her most was this thing about ending in a room that’s also a memory that’s also a lie. With a non-lucid dreamer, that’s just a basic bedroom set with a post it note that says “childhood” next to a bus stop sign that says bus stop. But for a lucid dreamer, it’s going to have ot be better than that. Dream logic won’t be doing as much of the heavy lifting as usual, so they need to be really polished.

“If we use mirrors for the person, so it’s them but not, and coat one of them with vassoline then The Dreamer will see themselves, hopefully, as a younger version of themselves. That works for basic, at least. I think I can put together something with a tape loop that can “feel” like an object that shouldn’t exist, the knowing it part, we’ll have to wing.”

Bea and Josie looked at each other, omg it’s happening! “So you’re down?” Bea asked.

“Sure” Nash said, finishing her apple and tossing it into the bin. “Let’s do this thing, but we need to do it now, before Bharat comes back because he used to work Lucid and won’t even talk about it. He would reroute this so fast.”

Ted was excited. Adventure time! “I’m going to bring some dream fuel for us!” Bea looked at him with a giant question mark on her face. “Snacks!” Bea shook her head.

Do not distribute

“I am not calling you ‘Version 7’, Ted.” Bharat said, shaking his head. “And in a few hours you won’t want me to anyway, trust and believe. I can’t understand how you guys thought you could handle this?”

Josie looked up from her magazine and shrugged. “Ainakaan se ei ollut taas vitun hammasuni.”