Dangerous Dreams: A Novel (93 page)

Allie looked at her notes scattered on the floor, stooped to pick them up. “Oh, thanks, but I can get them. Sorry again.” She smiled as she gathered the papers. Jeez, was I ever out to lunch. This is eating me up. Okay, shake it off, get a grip; where’s Steve? She thought of Emily again. Her lips drooped to the ready-to-cry position; she sniffled; her eyes filled with imminent tears. There he his. She walked toward the booth where Dressler sat flipping through a stack of papers. Thank God he didn’t see me clobber that poor guy.

Dressler saw her approaching, slid to the end of the booth, stood, faced her with a smile. “How’s Allie?”

Allie’s face was strained, taut, a portrait of sorrow; she lunged at Dressler, wrapped her arms around him, buried her face on his chest, and sobbed. “Steve . . . I’m so sad. Her life’s ruined: she’s pregnant, he’s killing Virginia if she doesn’t go to him, and she can’t tell anyone. And—”

“Hang on, Allie. Just cry it out for a few minutes, then we’ll talk.” He fashioned a Cheshire smile for the people watching the scene, held her close, whispered, “It’ll be okay; it’ll pass; just hang on, get it out.” He kissed her cheek. “Everything’ll be okay.”

After thirty seconds, Allie’s sobs diminished to quiet whimpers and sniffles. She leaned back, rubbed her eyes, looked at Dressler, then broached a tepid smile. “I’m alright. That was so weird. One minute I was feeling fine, going over my notes and conclusions, then whammo! This overwhelming gush of sadness and despair hit me like a shock wave, and I couldn’t control it, couldn’t hold it back. I’m sorry, Doc.”

“Don’t be.” He smiled, pointed at the booth, guided her to the seat, then sat himself on the opposite side of the table. “You’re living two lives’ worth of emotion; and that’s a lot to handle, especially when things are going badly. But I’ve got to be honest, Allie. Looks to me like your depression
is worsening, and we can’t just ignore it. What if we put you on anti-depressants for a week or so?”

“No!”

“Hear me out, Allie. In addition to helping with depression, they tend to make you stop dreaming, though they can also give you bizarre dreams. But that might be better than what you’re going through now, and—”

She glared combatively. “No way, Doc. I can’t be away from Emily for
any
amount of time, period.”

He sighed, tapped his fingers on the tabletop, stared expressionlessly into her unyielding eyes. “Okay, I understand, but
you
need to understand that we can’t keep pushing this into the closet. If it continues to worsen, we’re going to have to deal with it. Understand?”

She nodded, whispered, “Yes.”

“Okay, so tell me about last night.”

They’d been finished with lunch for an hour when Allie finally completed her dream overview, which had included several tearful interludes during which Dressler had reached across the table, held her hands. His touch had comforted her, spread a pleasant warmth throughout her body, aroused an involuntary flutter in her heart and mind. She’d stared sheepishly at him through her tears then smiled meekly as she’d resumed her story. When she’d finished, she said, “Well, that’s it, and now you understand why I’m depressed.”

He nodded. “I do indeed. Tayler’s not a nice guy.” He paused, assumed a contemplative expression. “You know, as I listen to you tell this—all the explicit detail, the feelings, the emotions—it’s like you’re hardwired to the collective memory and get on-demand replays of your dreams downloaded to your mind as you tell the story.” He shook his head. “It’s astounding.”

“Well, maybe I
am
hardwired. Never thought about it; but it’s true, the details are always right there when I think about them.”

“Something to think about . . . also a good segue to our discussion of formative causation and morphic resonance. Have you had a chance to think about theory, and challenging mine?”

She smiled. “Yes, but you’re going to think I’m a lightweight, because I agree with you.”

After overviewing her analysis and showing him the chart of her dreaming process, which impressed him, she presented her rationale for concluding that formative causation, via morphic resonance, was the only possible fit for what she’d experienced with her dreams. She argued that there could be no other way to access both her own ancestral memories and experiences
and
those of connected individuals like Elyoner, Tayler, Baylye, and Waters unless a collective memory that held those
connected
memories resided somewhere external to her own mind-brain. She then presented her logic that the
master
copy of each person’s
personal
memory resided in their mind-brain, while a
duplicate
copy resided permanently in the
collective
memory like books in a library, for all time. “Then when I looked at my dream characteristics, I found that they fell quite neatly under
morphic resonance
,
genetics
—which you’re going to tell me about in a minute—and
unknown
. The three
unknowns
were: first, why the dreams go into fast forward whenever I’m not dreaming; second, why I can’t change anything when I’m lucid; and third, the stuff about Ian, which my mom and I are going to dig into this weekend. By the way, I think the very fact that I
can’t
impact the dreams when I’m lucid is a great argument for why they’re true history. Remember, as you said, you can’t change history.”

He nodded. “I think you may be right, but I don’t have any ideas on the
fast forward
thing yet. Hopefully, a clue will pop up as we go along.” He stared silently at her for a moment. “So you and your mom are going to get into your great-great-grandma’s belongings when you’re home?”

“Yeah. Mom’s got a box of Ian’s stuff in the attic that she’s never even opened. Could be interesting. Hope there’s a picture of her, even though I feel like I know her already.”

“That
could
be an incredibly interesting experience.”

“Yup.” She nodded, wondered what they’d find, wondered if it would help or hurt the study . . . or her. Her mind raced through possible discoveries and their consequences. She blinked as if suddenly awakened from a deep sleep. “I also looked at Domhoff’s critique of the Solms-Hobson debate; and frankly, I didn’t get much out of it because there wasn’t any real empirical proof for their claims. But what I
did
find interesting was Hobson’s belief that the origin of activation synthesis is in the pons, the
same region of the brain that generates REM sleep, and that it activates the forebrain to conduct the synthesis of random, noisy inputs that result in bizarre dreams. But then the paper says Hobson has now acknowledged greater
forebrain
influence on the REM mechanism than he originally thought, especially through the hypothalamus. It also says he currently believes that the
emotional
brain, in the limbic and paralimbic regions, plays a big role in the process, while the executive planning areas of the prefrontal cortex do not. Solms, on the other hand, believes the origin of dreaming is in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain. So I think we should monitor all the suspect parts of
my
brain with advanced neuroimaging equipment and see what happens when I dream—like where the commands come from, where they show up, where the resulting signals go, what parts respond to the commands and signals and with what activities—explore all the possibilities. I mean, with my precisely accurate and admittedly emotional reporting”—she smiled—“plus the EEG data, shouldn’t we be able to time-and-event correlate with the neuro-imaging data to see where and how much activity occurs with specific events, emotions, and feelings?

“Yes, we should because your unique capabilities give us the scientific opportunity of several lifetimes, possibly centuries. And my hope is that, at a minimum, we’ll figure out how to measure the back-and-forth signal traffic you depict on your chart.” He exhaled long and slow. “However, I’m at a loss as to how we’re going to measure the collective memory part of it; but hopefully, we’ll get some good leads when we learn exactly where things happen in your brain. And if there’s signal flow of any type between your brain and the collective memory, whether it ends up being in your unconscious mind or somewhere out in space, we might be able to detect and measure it.”

Allie nodded her head. “This is neat. I’m ready; when do we start?”

“As soon as I think about where in your brain things are happening and match those locations and activities with the most appropriate neuroimaging techniques. Meanwhile, we have excellent correlation between your reports and the EEG data already and should have more after your long weekend if you aren’t out chasing cows twenty-four seven.” He smiled.

Allie snickered. “I wish. I really need that right now.”

“I know you do, Allie. Hope you can relax and unwind a bit. And while you’re doing that, I’ll lay out a draft test plan for you to tweak when you get back. So what do you know about PET, CT, MRI, SPECT and functional MRI?”

“Not a lot.” She held up the index finger and thumb of her left hand in the shape of a zero.

“Okay. Then here’s a quick tutorial.
Tomography
is imaging by sections, or slices, through the use of penetrating waves of various types; and
functional neuroimaging
is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure brain-part functions to discover the relationship between activity in certain areas of the brain and specific mental functions, such as dreaming.” His eyes asked if she understood.

She nodded.

“Good. And PET,
positron emission tomography
, is a nuclear medicine functional-imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional image of functional processes in the brain, and other places, by detecting gamma rays emitted by an introduced radioactive substance. It actually maps human brain functions by detecting the areas of high radioactivity in the increased blood flow stimulated by brain activity; and because of your undoubtedly high level of spontaneous activity in the temporo-parietal junction and median prefrontal cortex, PET should provide us a lot of data that correlate with your dream reports and the EEG data.”

Allie’s eyes widened, filled with doubt. “Radioactive substance?”

“Yeah, but a very safe amount.”

She smiled, replied slowly, tentatively, “Okay.”

“Next is CT, or
computed
tomography, which is a technology that uses computer-processed x-rays to produce tomographic images, or virtual slices, of the brain area scanned, which in turn allow us to see what’s going on inside the brain without cutting it open. Good deal, huh?”

“Uhhhh, yeah.”

“So if we combine PET and CT in the same machine, we get the excellent
functional
imagery of PET
and
the more-precisely aligned and correlated imagery of the CT scan, which will allow us to more easily correlate
the data with the precise event timelines and data stimulations mapped out by the dream reports and EEGs.”

“I feel like a test monkey—radioactive drinks and x-rays? I mean, how much of this stuff can I take before I mutate?”

He chuckled. “We use benign levels of both that are well below the threshold of concern, but obviously, we’ll monitor it very closely.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Okay . . . if you say so. Now what about MRI? I’ve had a couple for sports injuries, but how do they work for brain measurements?”

“Thusly: MRI is
magnetic resonance imaging
; and as you point out, it’s a medical imaging technique used in radiology to investigate the anatomy and function of both healthy and unhealthy bodies. And because it uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to form images, it’s a great alternative to bombarding the body with radiation.”

“Good.”

“And a
one-up
from MRI is the
functional
MRI, which, like PET, measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow attributable to brain activity in the target area, but without the introduced radioactive substance. So again, if we capture this kind of data on the parts of your brain that are energized when you’re dreaming and correlate them with your reports and EEGs, we’ll learn a lot about what’s going on in there.” He pointed at Allie’s head. “Saturated yet?”

“Almost, but there’s a little room left, so let’s finish.”

“Very well. Next is PET-MRI, which combines the excellent functional imagery of PET with the less-invasive structural and functional tissue characterization of MRI—measurement of radioactivity
plus
magnetic resonance. And like PET-CT, PET-MRI aims at getting a more precise matching of brain activity and location than PET alone could get.” He paused for several seconds. “And last is SPECT, or
single photon emission computed tomography
, another nuclear medicine technique, which again, like PET, uses gamma-ray measurement to provide true 3-D information. So, that’s it. As I said, I’ll try to match the theoretical activity location in your brain with the most appropriate measuring technique for that area, and you can sanity check it when you get back from the ranch. Okay?”

“Sounds good, Doc. I really feel like we’re onto something here and gonna hit pay dirt.”

“We are, Allie; and like I said, your dreaming precision—vividness, lucidity, recall—is the only reason we can even hope to make this work. I’m really excited about it.” He smiled, nodded repeatedly. “Hope it doesn’t sound too intimidating.”

“No way. I’m as excited as you are, maybe more.” She looked at her watch. “Got time to talk genetics a bit? I think it may be the cornerstone of the gift, and I desperately need a refresher in it.”

“I do indeed.” He pulled a stapled clump of papers from his stack, handed them across the table to Allie. “Here’s a quick overview you can maybe look at before you leave for the ranch, or while you’re there.”

She scanned the list, looked up at him. “Yeah, I’ve seen some of this stuff before, but I need to get into it again and go deeper.”

“Good. So digest the basics, and we’ll get into the deep details when you get back. Meanwhile, I’ll look into setting up some genetic analysis for you.” He pondered something for a moment. “You know, let’s wait on the genetics review until next week. You need to drop out of all this for a while and just take it easy. Okay? ”