Dream Machine

   Hazel and Chester sat in complete darkness. The two of them were locked in a Cranial Pressure Chamber. They dealt in the manipulation of the subconscious, a pseudo-scientific endeavor, spearheaded by the great Dr. Glaznoch. Their current mission was the extraction of a dream from a new patient. The patient was some fellow in a coma that Dr. Glaznoch had brought in for special treatment. He had said it was of utmost urgency. Neither Chester nor Hazel were given more information than that. They did not need more information. All they needed to know was the description of the dream they were hunting and removing.

   Hazel pushed a button on a hand held remote and a small dial in front of them lit the tiny chamber with a dull glow. "Mental Pressure is reaching target point. We'll be entering the subconscious state in just about forty seconds."

    "Roger that," replied Chester. He tugged a little at his helmet. This item protected his head from the building pressure in the chamber, and it also connected him to the patient.

   "Ten seconds," Hazel said, "Five, four, three, two, one." Both Hazel and Chester felt a tug at the base off their skulls. Both went limp at the controls and both entered the subconsciousness of their patient. They felt a jostle from side to side, then a sort of drop with a sudden stop. They were now in the patient's subconscious mind. In front of them a door opened, flooding the room with light. They stepped out into a strange, ever changing, ever solid, landscape.

   The world into which they stepped, was brightly lit, with a sky blue dome over head. The ground seemed to be made of a dull pink stone, which shimmered and swirled. The patterns shifted this way and that, but the physical structure of the material stayed the same shape. These two colors, the pink and blue, dominated the landscape. In fact, nothing else was present. Hazel and Chester stood in a veritable desert of pink.

   "Well this is quite unexpected." Hazel said. She pulled a tool from her belt and powered it on. It whirred and whistled for a few seconds and then displayed a few numbers. "It looks as though we are the only things here. Literally, nothing else seems to exist in his subconscious."

   "That can't be right." Chester glanced at the numbers on the tool. "Scan again. If those numbers come up again we'll need to contact Doctor Glaznoch pronto."

   Hazel ran the machine again, and the result was the same.

   Chester clenched his jaw, "I'll establish the connection. We have to contact Glaznoch to figure out what is happening." There was an urgency in Chester's voice that Hazel didn't argue with.

   "Okay," she replied, "What do you think is going on here?"

   Chester looked around, "I don't know, I've never seen anything like it. It is sort of like the patient has ceased to think altogether."

   Hazel looked around as Chester prepared the Convo-Link.

   "Chester, what's that over there." She pointed to a small round disc sitting on a pile of rocks. Chester looked up, but now that he was establishing the link, could not reply due to the concentration required. He could only watch with a slightly detached expression.

   Hazel walked over to the disc and picked it up. The disc was only five inches in diameter, and on its face was inscribed. "Subconscious compromised and deleted. Source code in hibernation. Machine in permanent shut down mode."

   "Uh, Chester." Hazel said, "I think we entered a machine, not a human."