Dreamcorder

"Hang on-" Olver slammed what looked like a translucent computer chip onto the lunch table. "Dream check!"

"Seriously," Allany groaned, taking out her own Dreamcording, which she had painted clouds on. "You chose the worst day for me, I swear..."

Megn snorted when she saw her friends' Cords. "Ally, I don't think it even can work with the holo-board being covered. And yours looks fake as hell, Ol."

"It is not!" He held up the nanoplastic chip to the light, iridescent glints reflecting off of it. "I'll be pissed if it is, do you know how much I paid for it?"

"Don't know, don't care." She put down her own custom "Neon-Hued Nightmares" Cord, and they traded over their rationed MetaMeals.

The friends each snapped the Dreamcorders into their phones, each device showing a compilation of short videos. Each one varied from seven seconds to twenty minutes, was labled 1-6. What Olver, Allany, and Megn were looking at were playbacks of their dreams from last night.

"So, who wants to start?" Olver's Plexi-Glasses flashed, showing his confidence in the situation. They immediately dimmed down again when Meg answered.

"How about we start with you, since you wanted to do this in the first place." Her own Mood-dyed hair changed with the shift in power between them.

"Fine. But be warned: there might be a weird one in there." He smirked.

"We've both seen plenty of dreams. How weird can they get?" With a click, she started the recording on her device of Dream 1: "AwoKdhajOahdhG1842".

"I still don't get why they all have titles like that." Allany scooted over to get a better view of the screen. "Do you think it means anything?"

"Naw." Meg flipped her phone horizontally as the video started. "It looks like a Wi-Fi password to me. They probably represent how irrational these things can be." She was talking about the dream sequences the Cordings filtered.

From Olver's thick skull to the sticky electrodes he had slept with on his temples to the Dreamcorder device on his nightstand, the sequences came back as physical acid trips; distorted, vaguely-familiar plots and settings that looked cursed in some way or another to the waking human eye.

His first Dream began in the gym of their school, in the third person. The shaky "camera", his brain's line of vision, only focused on his hazy upper half as he played what looked like soccer. Then, the image began to pan downward.

"Woah, censor tha-" Meg started, quickly jumping to the conclusion that her friend was going to be naked in class (one of the most common dreams many got played out as blackmail material). "Nevermi..." But when she saw what was really happening, she rolled back laughing.

Olver's legs were that of a chicken's, so thin that they were missing the glitchy soccer balls every single time. The clip ended with him tripping on his own talons and falling into the floor, the beginning of the next dream.

"Wait, but it looked just like you normally! HahaHA-" His face and glasses shown scarlet as Meg was making a commotion in the cafeteria, earning them all some questionable glances.

"O-okay, okay, I'm done." Her laughs finally devolved into tired wheezes, and she regained the ability to click on the next video.

This one began with Olver, this time in the first person, diving into a pool of melting colors and sound. When he broke back to the surface, all of the warped music was replaced with screams.

"I don't remember having this nightmare," he muttered, focusing on the screen.

The camera cut from him climbing out of the water to the other side of the pool, where a blurred person lay covered in gasoline-colored blood. Olver seemed to get tunnel vision, the screen blackening at the edges to represent his panic. He tried to run to help the faceless swimmer, but his feet were frozen.

"Oh, I hate when that happens," Allany said.

He looked down almost too slowly, but before they could get a full image of what had been grabbing him, Olver was thrown to the ground and his own lavender blood poured over his eyes. The video cut off with his scream, Meg having to lower the volume as it only grew louder and louder.

She looked back to see real Ol with goosebumps, visibly shaken by what he had forgotten. "Next one?"

"Yeah, it's okay..."

The final video, entitled Dream 3: *&ihUqpwkL(), opened with third-person Olver at his locker. His kleidoscope eyes seemed to be staring off into the hallway, waiting for something to happen. Within seconds, something did: a boy, their friend Waelan, ran up and crashed his lips into his.

"ShIT!" Real Olver threw out his hand to shut off the screen, but Meg had grabbed his hand.

"No, you said it was okay! Let's see the rest-"

"Rest of what?" As if part of a comedic sketch, real Waelan had appeared with his lunch at hand.

"Nothing!" Ol had finally exited the video and taken out his chip. "We're just looking at each other's Cordings, that's all. Meg, how about you go next?"

"Sure." She gave him a 'I'll never let you live that one down' look as Allany turned on her compilation. "Ooh, I like the title on this one."

Dream 1: +_=OVNWqmxz{} was yet another school dream. Meg, in first-person, was taking a test in what really looked like the band room. Every time she looked at the clock, it changed to a random time. The test's sentences wriggled around the page the more she looked at it, and she was "writing" with a screwdriver. She was the only one in the room.

"Yo, this one's kinda creepy." Waelan sat down next to them. "Did those lights just flicker.

Sure enough, the lights suddenly shut off, the "darkness" a toxic-waste yellow filter over the room. What had sounded like a distant orchestral performance faded away.

The video ended with a raspy whisper directed to dream Meg. "Why are you here, bitch?"

"Hmm." Allany raised an eyebrow, then pressed the next video.

The next three seemed like remixes of the same scenerio: Meg is doing something mundane in a random classroom, then things begin to get off in some way. In math, she recited Shakespeare to her zombified history teacher, but it ended with her teeth falling out and her being unable to finish. In science, she dissected a pair of sunglasses, which kept growing bigger and smaller depending on which side she was dismantling, finally stabbing her with a giant shard of glass. And in PE, she was running the mile but didn't stop until she fell off a ravine in the middle of the track field, her feet (with sandwiches for shoes) continuing to move as the screen went dark.

"Now those were some classic ones." Allany shut off the screen. "My turn now, I guess..." She was already covering her eyes.

Olver gingerly pressed play on her Dream 1: 081?/cviyy*^kaLEO.

Ally, in the third person, was sitting upon a throne made of what appeared to be bismuth, dressed in her homecoming dress. Before her was a knight in shining armor who looked like Jadirel, one of their classmates that Meg saw in fourth-period bio.

"My loyal subject," Allany was saying. "I command you to reveal yourself."

The knight took off his helmat, and sure enough, it was him.

"More."

Jad removed his armor with echoing clanks.

"More."

He started to take off his shirt.

"More."

Meg's oohing in the background turned into a half-gasp as Jadirel began tearing off the skin from his face, revealing sunlight. "Wait wait wait, what the hell, Al..."

The video cut off as Jad's glowing face overwhelmed the recording, the edges peeling away into the next dream.

"I told you this was going to be a bad one," Allany scowled.

"That was a little cool though," Waelan shrugged. "Maybe you should show him for fun. Jad, I mean. After all, I made friends with you guys after showing y'all my Cording of me meeting Harry Styles as a giraffe."

"Yeah, but that one was funnier. This one was just plain weird. And I don't even remember the second one..."

"It doesn't matter." Megn grinned, clicking the next button. "We're seeing it!"

This dream, III~7289482skfb, was in the first person this time. Allany was walking around in her neighborhood's empty playground aimlessly.

"This one's a nightmare, I can tell." She chewed nervously at her granola bar.

Sure enough, a shadow fell over the woodchip-covered land, and dream Ally broke into a hysteric run. The trees and cars and houses in the neighborhood seemed to fall away until it was only her and whatever was chasing her.

"Go, go, go!" Once again, Meg was making a scene at the table by rooting for the subconscious version of her friend. "Come on, haul that ass!"

Just when they thought that Allany had outrun the monster, the screen panned to the ground.

"Damn, I hate that too!" Waelan was also yelling at the phone. "Get up, get u-!"

Dream Ally tried to scream, but it came out as a paralyzed whisper. They saw the shadow darken around her, and the creature pulled her onto her back so she could get a full view of it growling demonically, showing itself as-

"A freaking furby?!" Meg was on the floor again, practically screaming. "You- you were right, a furb- I hate it here!"

The shaking mass of rainbow feathers and a teeth-layered beak loomed over them, emitting sounds similar to a microwave's beep.

"I... I think we've seen enough." Olver took out the chip for her. "If my dream shows my unconscious feelings like Meg thinks, Ally, do you have an irrational fear of nostalgic toys?"

Allany shook her head a little too hard. "Only when I was like, five!"

"But the screen flashed red at the last second, meaning that you jerked awake, right?"

"Whatever! Let's talk about you too, then, you and W-"

At that moment, the bell rang.

Olver hastily grabbed his Dreamcording as the rest of them put away their half-finished lunches. "Huh, 'saved by the bell', right?"

Allany narrowed her eyes. "Right... cya." She vanished into the moving crowd out the door.

"Yeah, see you in algebra, Mr. Friend-Crush." Before snatch her phone, Megn was gone too.

"Friend crush?" Waelen shrugged once more, waving him goodbye. "Well, lik they said, whatever."

Olver nodded back, his glasses turning ever so slightly rose-colored.

He would have to ask him for his Dreamcordings tomorrow. You know, to make everyone even. See some more things that aren't supposed to be seen.