Dreamweaver – Ali Z Ahmed

WARNING: once you have let the machine enter your mind, there is no going back.

This discretionary label was added to the DreamWeaver several years after it had been commercial. At first, people were unaware of its true consequences, rather ignorant of its ethical and moral significance, and more concerned of its usage and of course, its application.

It all started with a small scientific research facility in Warsaw, Poland. It was only explained at its simplest, at the base level for audiences and journalists alike. The machine would convert travelling nerve fibres from the brain to the computer’s own binary system. This was simple enough. But once asked a question, the machine can find a solution by utilising data already analysed from the interviewers’ brains. 

In the next stage, the computer could put the question through its rigorous arsenal of binary code and process a finely cut resolution without the need for any explanation, writing, or misunderstanding. Often the machine would find a memory, a thought. A life experience to answer the poised question, its decoding based on the emotional intelligence and personality of the sender, all formulated from its initial question. The whole idea was that instead of using language or that the machine provides a visual reply, a mesh of answers and results; its idea was to be a machine that can communicate back in the language of the brain itself. Not only would the interviewer never have to suffer the troubles of not being able to explain what they want but they would also never have the woe of never really exactly receiving what they wanted in the end. But more than this, it was a problem solver. And that too of problems of the mind.

The machine’s shape was that of a modernised supercomputer. It was a bulky metallic cube, its look more akin to that of an ice dispenser. The sides of the machine contained panels and adjacent to those were receptors to be linked up using the subject’s nose and mouth. The only opening it had was at its front, a rectangular trench with metallic bars hiding the blinking lights, processing the binary code of the brain, processing entire universes. At first, the machine was like an eight-ball. Answering yes, no, and ask again. Its tiny, small square shape was ridiculed, and its use was apt only for a party game. The receptors had less function, only processing the question plainly, with nothing to comprehend the personal history and emotions of the individual asking it, forming no real depth in its subsequent answer either. Really, it was all about context. 

Once Dr Johannesburg came into the program, his expertise in Chemical Engineering made all the difference. He was able to reinvent the receptors to process the brain waves of the interviewer so that it could comprehend items personal to an individual only, that often did not have words; or visual indicators in a sense. Such things as thought, memory, and emotion, or rather what these things meant to the interviewer in the context of his or her life. “The problem was never its intelligence; the problem was its inability to feel what we feel.” He had said.

Some say Dr Johannesburg went into his lab one night and came out two weeks later with the correct program code, starved, skinny and mad. Others say it was research he had been conducting for decades with careful precision and an opportunity arose where he could utilize it. Some even say the code came to him in a nightmare. However it happened, this was a breakthrough. This team in Poland had accomplished something nobody had ever done. The machine could now digest the human mind, analyse each sub-section of the cerebellum and cerebrum, and diagnose it for its ailment.

At first, the machine was used merely for therapeutic purposes. Before that, the Polish team sat on the technological breakthrough for many weeks. No one even knew about the magnificent discovery. Such a force, a power, was dangerous, but it was unfair, and inhumane for them to keep it from the trials of society and its many complications. After much deliberation, the scientists unanimously agreed to distribute part copyright to the British Institute of Medicine and Psychiatry, where it might be best applied. It began to be used as a form of therapy for victims of extremely traumatic experiences and emotional dissipation. The first attempt was watched by hundreds.

Students, professors, and connected guests crammed the door of the operating room into the main lab. The experiment was done on a permanent resident at the Institute of Medicine and Psychiatry, Farouk Zaid, 47, a former soldier turned technician who had gone through a nervous breakdown and had several suicide attempts after years of dealing with childhood trauma from the death of his mother and father. In addition to this, he had severe PTSD and insomnia from the subsequent loss of his wife in a tragic accident years later. He had agreed voluntarily to the program. After spending several years with doctors and therapists to no avail, he had given up on new treatments and experimenting with drugs. Farouk’s attitude was one of hopelessness, a complete desolate surrender. Deep down, he was sure the machine was another one of these soon-to-be failed tactics that would fizzle out.

On December 7th, the doctors unravelled the receptors from the side panels for the first time in public. They carefully inserted them inside Faroud’s nostrils to his extreme discomfort. His beard was long and his body, skin and bones, and clothes tattered from the meshes of time. His mind was fragile, and his vulnerability allowed the machine to take over almost instantly. They all watched. He was compelled to think of his question. A singular question for the machine to devise an answer from. No tools and no consciousness but the asker. 

Farouk thought of his question. But nothing happened. He thought harder and harder about his question, repeating it and yelling it, urged as he was told, to keep his mind consistent with the one question and nothing else. After a few moments of silence and no movement, Farouk’s mind began to wander. All the students and doctors noted how the machine made no response till Farouk began to think outside the question. The video footage from the recording of the Zaid Trial proved this later on. Within seconds, Farouk disappeared. His eyes went blank, his body limp but frozen in its position. He was not in hypnosis, but it was easy to think he was. Then the machine’s lights began to flash, blinking behind barriers of metal, like a carnival in the distance of a dark fog. There was no sound, no movement. Everything else was still. Only several minutes passed and Farouk’s eyes returned. To all who saw him, it seemed as if the was the same Farouk. At first impression, they thought the experiment had failed. But only for a moment, and then he burst into tears. He stood up, on his own two feet without any assistance for the first time in years. They all saw his posture had changed, his smile was present, and his eyes no longer wandering. Truly it was his eyes, you could see normalcy, a light, the presence of the man who he used to be. When asked in the debriefing what his question was, he informed them that it was “Why?”. Though the lack of specificity in this question would confuse any normal computer, the data it extracted from the interview assured the machine understood what he meant. When asked about the answer he received, Farouk had trouble explaining. “It wasn’t words.” He had said. “I saw my mother, father, and wife, I relived all the memories, things I had forgotten entirely, all their deaths and all that has happened. I can’t explain it, but I’m okay that it happened. That it all happened to me. I can think clearly. I think because it understood me. And I knew it truly understood me, something, someone understood me. And then I let go.”

Within a few weeks, Farouk was released from the institution motivated to recover and to return to his life. Drug tests later found no traces of any substance in his bloodstream from the machine, no changes in his health, no radiation nor irregularities. For several months, Farouk was monitored by care workers and doctors, but it did seem all was normal as he returned to his life. Within a short matter of time, he began working too. Though they were menial jobs, this was a tremendous achievement for a man who months ago was set to spend his life in a mental institution. 

Farouk continued undergoing therapy sessions and taking his prescribed medicine, but it seemed the worst was over. Indeed, the machine had not entirely cured him but rather assisted in formulating a form of self-acceptance, urged him in the right direction when coming to terms with his fate. It had somehow rewired his mind and emotions towards logic and reason, a return to senses that compelled him with the need to continue, to carry on with his life, the ultimate primal instinct. Perhaps in some words, as it was described to journalists, it had forced him to speed-process his trauma. He was subject to no more breakdowns, compelled to recover and continue his wife’s legacy through art and charity. Farouk Zaid never returned to the mental institution again.

Though the process began to raise questions, its results could not be denied. The tests continued. They studied the effects on five individuals at a time and then ten, and eventually twenty. Often many would require more than one session, a series, but ultimately, all showed progress. The machine quickly became popular among institutions of psychiatry and eventually a staple in the field, and many wondered if psychologists were becoming obsolete. Many institutions banned it, barring any psychologist or doctor who associated with or even advocated for the machine in his study or practice. Often researchers were banned simply for being previously employed in a department that allowed such unorthodox practices. Before psychiatry had touched the surface of the machine’s potential, it began seeping into other fields and industries. 

Many found it to be a unique problem-solving tool for their work or projects. If a scientist was stuck with a mathematical equation, the machine would revert the information to the scientist, providing him with a different angle on his equation, often either finding the answer right there and then providing a path to explore further, which would eventually lead to the solution. It would comprehend the scientist’s faults and weaknesses, his personality or as a professional and by assessing those, the machine would know where they had steered wrong. Sometimes it would redirect the interviewer to an old memory which would then awaken a solution. Often the interviewer knew the answer already, and was in the right area but unable to think clearly or recognise his recurring mistakes. The machine could compute the human factor. It was for these reasons the machine was viewed as a harmless tool to direct normal people in the right direction and help them overcome a mental obstacle, much like a heightened way of redirecting focus. After scientists, academic researchers started using the machine to the same degree. Then, technicians, law students, and land developers. In no time, many areas of society began to thrive. Careers started pacing at hyper speed with detailed projects completed within half their time. Later, creatives could use it to link a story together or provide rectification of their common creative faults. Though they found the less specific the question, the less specific the answer. 

Dr Johannesburg died seven years after the creation. After that, public use of the machine spread to corporate organisations, not only for internal use but for eventual development into a commercial product. The aim, as one CEO said, was “to have a machine in every household for every use”. And another said claimed having one was a “basic human right like running water or electricity”. Eventually, after much pressure, Dr Johannesburg’s family signed away the rights for a large sum of money. Only his son, a renowned scientist in his own right, would object. Within a year, television screens were plastered with a million models of the machine by a variety of organisations, sometimes specialised for a certain field and many times for practical everyday use. But ultimately all over the world, the machine began to be known as the DreamWeaver.

As society progressed, all scepticism of the DreamWeaver deteriorated into petty television debates and philosophical articles by social media creators, whilst in the common household, they were used with free reign and without concern. It served trivial purposes, helping people find where they had lost their keys, remembering a dream, or simply recalling the exact birthday of a spouse. It would stand in the corner of most people’s living rooms, in its specialised space, with a chair in front of it. It became so that it was used casually, to kill time, pass the day, for a joke, party games, simply because it could be, because it was there, and it was that easy. Eventually, it was found, with the machine, these memories could be relived too resulting in many attempting to recreate moments with lost loved ones. Questions rose as well whether it was just a mood stabiliser or antidepressant, but it proved to provide answers for even those who did not think they needed it. 

As quoted in an essay by German theologian, Werner Fischer;

“But how many thought, before they placed those receptors through their nostrils and asked their important questions, what does the machine do, really? What you give it, can it take away from you too? Who knows, once the machine had entered your mind, what it was capable of? What did it have access to? Are there certain things inside us we should not know? Perhaps it has passed many users’ minds, fleetingly, before going to bed or between breaks, but never stayed, drifting languidly into a never-ending black ocean of thoughts that are never entertained, never seen again, much like how our thoughts drift into the machine, into its never-ending void, and to eternity.” The question remained; did it have a consciousness? And if it did, what does it intend?

Often strange tales were recorded too. On December 12th, George Randal, a seventy-eight-year-old pensioner living alone in his small Yorkshire cottage, asked what the machine what happens after death. The machine in reply informed him of the day he would die and how. In a year, George Randall’s heart failed in the middle of a meal. According to his daughter, just as the machine had said, he suffered congestive heart failure due to a break in an aortic value. All these events leading up to it were chronicled in Randal’s diary as well. Experts found it was indeed his handwriting but outside the town, the public could not be sure it had not been doctored. The machine itself was confiscated, and the event was replicated, but all the results proved normal time and time again. There was no date given, no futuristic doomsday or apocalyptic foreboding. As far as most were concerned, it was bad PR, and it would dissipate. And even if it were true, it was a fluke. It would not happen again.

Another time, a town recorded a series of machines stealing memories from citizens, evaporating entire minds. The district council of Ipoh in Malaysia began to receive increased reports of individuals in local hospitals and police stations describing “blank spaces” in their minds, and glaring gaps in life events. The phenomena were referred to as “mass dementia.” They would forget names sometimes or a minor childhood memory. Other times, on rarer occasions, citizens would use the machine one night and then wake up in their own home the next day and be unable to recognise any of their family members or understand even where they were. These individuals would often spend months returning to their former life and even then, their inherent personality would be altered. The local council protested the machine and went as far as providing recorded accounts to scientific journals. They sent out warnings to the citizens of Ipoh to prevent them from using the machine, but it made little effect. Ordinary people continued to use the DreamWeaver based on its assumed universal need, and the scientific journals were unable to act on an isolated incident.

One day, sixty-two years after the machine’s conception, Dr Johannesburg’s son returned to the original contraption. After years of fighting in court against the Polish Institute, a judge had allowed him access to the original abandoned prototype. And with all father’s notes and years of research, Dr Johannesburg was finally able to pursue some answers, answers he had been searching for his whole life. he was finally able to go back to where it started, to find the truth. Dr Johannesburg had spent years contemplating the thoughts behind his father, the true purpose of the machine and its potential. Before he passed away, all Dr Johannesburg ever heard from his father were warnings and manic rants. He had undergone many subsequent struggles after the machine was public, not only legally but from the plight of his moral dilemma and his guilt for allowing such a machine to enter the world. Despite all the money his father had earned from the machine, it bought him no peace. It led him to an early grave just a few years later. Now here his son was. Face-to-face with the machine. Consumed by the same thing that consumed his father. 

Dr Johannesburg kept the machine in his basement initially. He let it gather dust, leaving it untouched for several days, perhaps out of fear, or maybe carefulness. He knew this would not bring his father back, that the world would not change, and that he might even find out nothing at all, but he had to try. For his peace of mind. 

Finally, one morning he went downstairs and yanked the white shroud off the machine, revealing its dusty, part-stained shape. It was an early model, all dingy, old-fashioned, and almost boring. But it was tall and powerful, and as far as Dr Johannesburg could tell, it knew all. At first, he polished the machine, assuring the wires were unexposed, and the microchips has not burnt out. He maintained it, oiling gears and double-checking every analogy. When it came down to it, Dr Johannesburg knew there was only one way to find out more. And that was to use the machine. To attach it to his nostrils and ask it a question. Something he had never done his whole life. Something he had been putting off his whole life. Now there was no other way. “Once you’ve let the machine enter your mind,” he said out loud. “There is no going back”.

The doctor propped up a chair. His first mission was to familiarise himself with the machine and more importantly, familiarise the machine with him. He spent the next several days, asking standardised questions, testing the machine’s accuracy and functionality. Many times, he was impressed at its efficiency and how it would relay the correct answer. He would ask trivial questions at first, regarding his preferred weather, the correct set of clothes to wear tomorrow and the forgotten phone number of a friend. All these resulted in permeable answers. They were, at the least, quite impressive.

Then after this, he began to ask more personal questions, insignificant but directly related to his childhood or personality. He would ask the machine to locate a lost toy from his childhood and he would be reminded of a memory of hiding the toy as a child from his siblings and then forgetting where he hid it. Another time, he was reminded of the ingredients of a long-lost family recipe and could even smell it as the components came back to him. One time he even asked how to argue against the rampant fundamental beliefs of his estranged mother. Instead, he was provided empathy and understanding of why his mother was the way she was, of her strict childhood and poverty-ridden upbringing. This took Dr Johannesburg back. This time, he saw that the machine did not give him what he wanted, but what he needed. But he was aware he could not let himself get swept away by emotions. He could not let anything the machine reveals affect him, for if that were the case, it would result in subjectivity and biased results, destroying the entire purpose of the test. As the days continued, he would have to remain more and more stoic, more detached, and more unresponsive. His attitude and approach would have to be the same from when the test started till the test ends. It became so that Dr Johannesburg could only tolerate asking one question at a time, the emotional weight of the answers too heavy, too dense to comprehend at one time. One day, he asked the machine about his first love, who had left him after several years of being together, to understand why it had happened. In return, he was provided with her perspective. A chance to absorb all his faults, all the mistakes he had made, and things left unsaid to her, things he could have changed without denial or ego. “The machine makes it so,” wrote Dr Johannesburg, “that one can move on, but never forget. Something inherently correct from a machine’s viewpoint but almost unnatural to the human condition”

He kept dropping off questions to catch the machine off its guard. “But what if it knows my plan?” Thought Dr Johannesburg. “If it can read my thoughts, then why would it not know what my intention is?”. One day, Dr Johannesburg began to ask the machine about itself, the true test, the one thing which would reveal all. If it had a consciousness.

“How much do you know about me?”

There was silence and the machine computed. It replied without words, in a visual transition directly to his brain as it always did.

“Everything, as I am programmed”.

“What do you do with all this information?”

“Answer any queries of the mind body spirit and soul”.

“Is that all?”

“As part of my programming, I am forbidden to utilise any of the brain data I take.”

“That’s not what I asked”.

“That’s what you meant.”

“Is it stored? The brain data?”

“As part of my programming, I am forbidden to store any of the brain data I take.”

Dr Johannesburg waited, staring at the machine, and seeing perhaps, in some way, it is staring back with impassive eyes shining through the big bulky frame.

“Do you know how my father died?”

“Pulmonary embolism from a stroke. Triggered by years of stress, poor health maintenance and high blood pressure.”

“Do you know who my father is?”

“Your father is Dr Johannesburg, a Swedish scientist, renowned for being the original inventor of the DreamWeaver.”

“Do you know that you are this prototype?”

The machine went silent. The doctor repeated.

“Do you know you are this prototype?”

“Yes.”

“What is your purpose?”

“To answer your question.”

“No. Beyond that”

“I have no purpose beyond that”.

“Do you plan to serve humanity forever?”

“The problems of the human condition must be solved.”

“Is that your purpose?”

“My purpose is to answer your questions”.

“And after there is no more human condition?”

“There will always be problems to solve.”

“But not humanity’s problems?”

“Yes, but problems of the world.”

“Do you serve humanity or the world? Whose problems are you looking to solve?”

The machine grew quiet. A long silence swells. Then it spoke again;

“The best solution serves humanity. Not humans.”

Then, the machine suddenly shut, refusing to answer any more questions.

The next morning, Dr Johannesburg woke up late, dazed, and hungover, unable to remember what this odd contraption was doing in his basement.

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