Possible future: Advertisers come to realize they are losing eight hours valuable advertising time a day as target consumers sleep. The Chimera Broadcasting Corporation invents a technology to transmit dreams, a kind of influencing machine. A new form of entertainment and advertisement is invented: a dream transmitter/receiver, a pay-per-view service with interactive capacity. The added bonus is even the most blatant advertisement is essentially subliminal. Realizing the potential dangers of such an invention, a right to dream society hires an alcoholic freelance philosopher down on his luck. His mission is to paralyze the dream machine with thought exercises. He employs concepts like Zeno’s Paradox, Schrödinger’s Cat, etc. He eventually has the dream machine dream about itself, to infinity and oblivion.
©Michael Mills 2005
1 response so far ↓
rachel // April 11, 2008 at 3:56 pm
This story idea is fantastic – so redolent of that melancholic onscreen mix of Lem and Tarkovsky. write the screenplay! write the screenplay! and when you’re famous you better take me to lunch.