A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 19

This is the 12th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers in Breakthrough.

Humanity has been able reach distant vistas, such as the Moon, the deep oceans, and the wild expanses at Earth’s poles. Now, scientists have made a new breakthrough in the exploration of a very different type of frontier — the hallucinatory world inside dreams.

An international team of researchers was able to achieve real-time dialogues with people in the midst of lucid dreams, a phenomenon that is called “interactive dreaming,” according to a study published on Thursday in Current Biology.

Participants in the study were able to correctly respond to questions, such as simple math problems, while they were deep in the throes of rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep. The research reveals a “relatively unexplored communication channel” that could enable “a new strategy for the empirical exploration of dreams,” the study reports.

“There are studies of lucid dreamers communicating out of dreams, and also remembering to do tasks,” said Karen Konkoly, a PhD student at Northwestern University and first author of the paper, in a call. “But there’s a fairly limited amount of research on the stimuli going into lucid dreams.”

“One thing that surprised us is that you could just say a sentence to somebody, and they could understand it just as it actually is,” she added.

The team plans to build on this study with more experiments that will probe the possibilities of two-way communication with lucid dreamers.

“We’ve thought of so many experiments we could do with this,” Konkoly said. “I think one predicate that we’re working on now is: how can we optimize the procedure? How can we have this happen more? How can we have people have more lucid dreams? How can we communicate more reliably?”

“We have a lot of different ideas,” she concluded, “and we’re excited to test them.”

Okay, how about this? Imagine a former hacker named Jade. Busted, she escaped jail time for her illicit activities when she was brought into a top-secret program to explore the area of hacking dreams. The focus of the experiments was to use behavioral modification (like the movie Inception) to curb people’s various addictions to smoking, drugs, drinking, etc.

Jade was particularly good at this and moved up the food chain, but when it was discovered she was doing some experimentation outside the program, she was let go.

Cut to a few years later. Jade frequents a coffee shop, always seated at the back corner table for two reasons. First, she doesn’t want anyone to see the work she’s doing on her laptop. Second, the spot gives her the best vantage point to keep her eyes on Caitlyn, one of the servers. Jade, who is obsessive by nature, has fallen in love with Caitlyn. The fact Jade has not said one word to her, except to order the same coffee drink every time, suggests that it is a completely one-sided romance. Indeed, a fantasy on Jade’s part.

What Jade has been working on is a way to transmit messages via electromagnetic pulse-waves to another person’s brain. The experiments she was involved with for the project from which she was let go used clunky gear strapped across a person’s skull. What if you could send messages into someone’s brain without them even knowing it?

Jade — did I mention she’s really obsessive — has been furiously at work on this message-delivery system because she has a plan: She’s going to get Caitlyn to fall in love with her by hacking her brain when Caitlyn is asleep.

A few problems with this plan.

First, Jade’s experiments have yet to work. She resolves that when she tests the transmitter on the neighbor’s dog causing the animal to leap out the apartment’s 10th story window. Yes, Jade’s test involved the dog committing suicide. And yes, Jade is becoming more and more creepy.

Next, there is the issue of proximity. For the transmitter to work, it needs to be within 20 feet of the subject. Jade has — of course — stalked Caitlyn and knows where she lives. Unfortunately, the two apartments on either side of Caitlyn’s place are occupied by long-term tenants. A few nighttime visits up the building’s outdoor fire escape ladder, messages transmitted from Jade’s laptop… what, you didn’t hear about the seventy-year-old man strangling his beloved wife in the middle of the night?

The apartment hasn’t even been listed when Jade shows up at the landlord’s office. Lease signed. Jade moves in next door to Caitlyn.

Two other obstacles. Caitlyn is currently in a long-term relationship with Abe. Jade gets to work on Abe who suddenly starts arguing with Caitlyn… like constantly. It only takes a few weeks of transmitted messages into Abe’s brain to see him stalking off leaving Caitlyn heartbroken.

The final obstacle: Caitlyn is a heterosexual. Jade is not. So Jade is not only going to have to bend Caitlyn’s mind-set to be attracted to Jade, but also alter Caitlyn’s sexual orientation.

But so far, Jade’s electromagnetic pulse-wave messaging system seems to be working perfectly.

And don’t you supposed in Act Three, the system gets turned toward Jade as a means of revenge?

This is Single White Female meets Inception.

There you have it, my 19th story idea of the month. What would YOU do with it?

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.