People come to me for all sorts of reasons. When we sit down and talk about what I can offer them, it becomes apparent that what I have, and what they need arent always the same thing. This is less of a problem than you may think. Let me explain.
I offer a service to the people of this world that no one else can. People from all corners of the planet, all walks of life, come to me and ask for my services. I accept everyone. There is no one too rich or too poor, no one too guilty or too innocent. Too young or too old. If you can speak your desires, you are welcome in my store.
But its often not the desires that people articulate for me. Its their doubts and fears and insecurities. From my point of view, though, sitting in my chair across from them, they are the same thing. When someone tells me they are afraid of something, what I understand is that they desire that fear to be removed. Its more technical than that, more clinical, but the idea is the same. They dont want to ask me to take the fear away. Mostly because they know I cant do that, but partly because they are too proud to admit that thats what they actually want.
But even that isnt why its all the same to me. Everything in my store could run without me. I could set it up with the simplest instructions and let people just do their thing. But it wouldnt work, or it wouldnt be the same. Part of the draw of what I offer is the ability to sit with me, to talk to me and to tell me what it is you want; or think you want.
Dont get me wrong, I actually listen. I take in what theyre saying and I have an honest conversation with them. A lot of people who come to me to begin with, thats all they need. They cant get it from their loved ones, or they cant afford a professional. Me, I guess not being one of you gets me some leeway.
But my machines, my services, it doesnt matter how I calibrate them. I could put in the most fucked up shit and nothing would change about what you see. What you experience. Because Im a placebo. Im the icon people latched on to. The truth is, what you see when youre plugged into my machines is something that you create yourself. It always has been. It always will be. You call me your unofficial therapist? Your subconscious is always going to be better.
I dont advertise my services as therapy. I cant, apparently. I never intended for it to be this way. Originally, after reading as much as I could about your people, I thought this would work in the same way a gaming arcade would. Let your own mind generate the games and you could be dropped into it to play whatever your subconscious could give.
But humans have issues. In many cases, their subconscious is not their friend. The scenarios and concepts they create often represent repressed fears. They cant control the way their subconscious works, which is something I couldnt anticipate on my arrival here.
On the other hand, letting the humans guide the way these things work has offered a slew of advantages that I dont think I could have come up with on my own. The lack of control over their subconscious is almost a benefit. Ever since I started offering these services, and letting them – without telling them explicitly – control their own paths, Ive heard story after story about how my machines, my services, my conversations have made the users better people. They are less scared, less insecure and in many cases, less hateful. To me, that is a victory. A success.
But every success comes with failure. Im not proud when my services do not serve to help someone. When someone comes through my machines, usually skeptical or cynical about me and what I do and do not claim about what I offer, I have to tell them that that attitude often doesnt result in things they expect.
When I see them roll their eyes, I know that they are never going to take me seriously, they are never going to listen to me or follow my guidelines. Yet they still ask to be strapped in, to go through the motions.
When it backfires on them, when the things I say will happen end up happening, they blame me. Viciously and without mercy. Its only my size and their fear that I can harm them that prevents them from offering violence to me.
Thankfully, these people – the cynics and the skeptics – are few and far between. In my experience, these people are not representative of humans. They are not a major factor in your society, even though they try to be. Their voices are loud, but only because the void they exist in is empty.
The other failures I get tend to be young people. I should specify, though, because its a rather distinct subgroup of young people. Its really those who are between 9 or 10 and 18 or 19.
I do not understand how that works, but Im guessing it has something to do with those years being when young people struggle with identity. When they start to understand that the world they exist in is far larger than themselves and they have to come to terms with finding their place, their role, in it. This is something that is taught to the young of my kind in school. We are told this from almost the moment we can talk. I believe this to be advantageous, but apparently humans disagree.
Anyway, prior to the age of 9 or 10, the children are naive, innocent. I dont mean this in an accusatory way either, its mere facts. The children are blank slates and know very little. Their parents are usually the source of their information, and parents are often sensitive to ensuring their children are not harmed – physically, of course, but also mentally and emotionally – and this can often lead to the watering down of certain realities and leave the children believing that the world is as they have seen in their television programs and childrens novels.
But the veil is lifted and the truth of the world is able to seep in as the children age. So theres this gap where the children are angry at everything and they cannot understand either the emotion they feel, or how to deal with it.
I will still offer my services to these people. Everyone is welcome, even those who are angry at everything they do not understand. Only some of these children will grow into the cynics and the skeptics, and there is a good chance that experiencing my machines will snap them out of it early. I can usually tell when I sit down to talk with them. And after that, the conversation with their parents is either rather pleasant or very awkward. I do not lie to people, nor do I sugarcoat the truth. I find it very condescending to pretend that people arent ready to understand what I believe, particularly those who are spending a lot of money to participate in what I offer.
My machines allow you to dream. That is a very simplistic understanding of how they work. In a lot of ways, I dont think that I can explain everything. What all the things inside them do, how they connect together, what they do to the participants brain. Its not that I dont know, but a lot of it is something that I call empathic learning. I learned it because someone I loved knew it. I do not talk about that to anyone. Do not misunderstand, the transfer of knowledge is different to how humans learn but is just as, if not more, effective than sitting in a lecture hall.
I am absolutely qualified to operate, maintain and build these machines. I am not, however, qualified to teach anyone the same. Not to mention, humans are not – physiologically – capable of empathic learning, even if the kind of love that is required was reciprocated between myself and a human, itself a very unlikely scenario, said human would not be able to absorb what I know. But even if humans were capable of empathic learning, theres no guarantee that they would learn anything specific. My kind is a strange people.
When you are engaged with my machines, when I press the sequence of buttons that lull you to sleep and trigger the dream receptors allowing you to, not only dream, but actively engage with the dream, you are allowed to treat yourself. I will maintain that I do nothing to shape what you see. It is your brain, your subconscious that does all the work. All I do is open the door. I offer you the chance to explore what it is inside you. What your brain, in a lot of cases, refuses to let you be aware of. And it is that experience that I wish for this world and its inhabitants.
Which brings me to the end of this story. And at the end of the story is my shame. I have said to everyone who will listen that I offer these services to everyone. That it doesnt matter who you are, where you come from – physically and metaphorically – you are welcome here and I will let you use my machines. You can experience what I can offer.
I had thought that humans were a simple species. That their brains would be easily altered to fit my machines. As I have explained here, that is mostly true. Even the cynics, the skeptics and those angry children have the ability to sit here and experience something.
I have let more than three million people sit here, three million people have conversed with me. Have told me their fears and desires. Have got to experience them.
But there are people who see nothing. They are hooked up correctly. Their brain sends off the right signals. But when it gets fed back to them, they get nothing. Its as if their receptors dont work. Or, in an idea that keeps me up at night, they dont have any to begin with.
I have only met a few people, less than a percent of those who have visited me, who act like this. They always walk away disappointed, remarking something about how they never remember their dreams and they thought this would help. Interestingly, they never blame me, or my machines. They, rightly, blame themselves. There is something wrong with them, not what I offer.
And there is. Something wrong with them. I dont know what, but it needs to be fixed before long. We cannot have people unavailable to us.