[ WP ] Scientists discover that certain people are able to enter parallel universes through their dreams . You are one of them , and with a device you are now able to record your travels .

The images on the screen clicked off. Nick and Sasha sat there for a long minute in the dark, neither of them moving. Outside of the lab, the grey sentinel trees shuddered against an unseen, unheard wind. Finally Sasha stood up and turned the lights on. The two of them sat at conference table, Chinese take-out boxes stacked in front, blinking. 
 
 “ Well, not much new there, ” Sasha said. She picked up a stack of papers, bisected with little colorful strips of papers, a poor attempt at organizing an increasingly complex case. 
 
 “ No, ” Nick said. “ There was something different. Same house, same girl, same everything… but something was different. You wouldn ’ t have seen it in the video. It was something I felt. ” 
 
 Sasha, who had barely said anything over the last three hours, cleared her throat. “ That was… disturbing. I mean, sorry. Most of these alternate time-fragments, these spatial diversions… they barely exist at all. These alternate time lines and universes pop up and collapse easily. They ’ re unstable. There is something very continuous about this one. Very concrete and physical. ” 
 
 “ This time it really felt like the girl knew I was there. The same things happened, pretty much, but she reacted a bit differently. She acted like she knew or suspected someone else was there, watching, ” Nick said. 
 “ At first I thought it was recurring, that I was going back to an identical spot in this world, back to the same moment to watch the same things happen. There were minor differences, but they didn ’ t seem important. Now I think that I ’ m going back to the same place but a different time. Days or weeks between them, maybe, but the man in my dream… he ’ s not just killing the same people. He ’ s killing new people and bringing them back. They ’ re different people every time. Maybe I ’ m going backwards in time. ” 
 
 “ Well, whatever world you ’ ve discovered, it ’ s fucking evil. ” 
 
 The wind tried to uproot old, ancient trees. A branch went flying against the window as a tree bowed, its branches scratching at the grass. Her eye twitched, barely perceptible. Neither of them said anything. 
 
 She looked down at her watch. “ Jesus, it ’ s late. ” 
 
 “ I think I ’ ll take the transponder with me. Home. For the night. I can ’ t spend another night sleeping in the lab. Last night really screwed up my neck. I can tell I ’ m going to have another one, especially after thinking about all this crap late at night. ” 
 
 “ I don ’ t see anything, ” Sasha said, a flicker of a smile around her mouth. “ But just so you know, those things are expensive as hell. ” 
 
 “ What about me? Aren ’ t I worth anything? From what your colleague says, guys like me are pretty rare. Everyone dreams, but not everyone does it like I do. ” 
 
 “ Rare enough, ” she said. 
 
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 Nick, who taught comparative literature at the University where Sasha taught neuroscience, lived in a little, dingy apartment, tucked above a local realtor ’ s office. The hand of the clock had just struck one by the time he got back from the lab. He stepped in his front door and stood there for a moment, shivering. The wind had done its best to suck the life out of him as he traversed the parking lot to his car, and again when he crossed the street from his parking spot to the apartment. 
 
 Glorious heat enveloped him, restoring sensation to his face and his bluish fingers. He peeled his coat and scarf off, brushed his teeth, and sat down on his bed. 
 
 He was so tired, so wrung out by the last five nights, that had nearly forgotten the transponder. He was just starting to lean towards the pillow when he shot up, remembering. He grabbed the machine and placed on the old wooden chair beside the shelf of books. His reading chair. He balanced it, plugged it in, and flipped a little switch. 
 
 Amazing, he thought, that the machine looked so primitive. It plugged into any old outlet, like any toaster or microwave, and looked like the projectors they used when he was in high school. Sasha had called it expensive, but the total sum of its parts cost no more than a thousand dollars. The university already had a dozen of them, eleven of them currently checked out for a new research project. They were getting dozens of test subjects, but Sasha, or Dr. Abramov, as everyone else called her, had taken a keen interest in Nick. 
 
 He attached two small stickers to his temples. They glowed with a faint green light, indicating that they had synced to the machine. He lay down and pulled the covers over him, staring at the slanted ceiling above his head. 
 
 A slight twist of anxiety gripped him. He was going to travel to another world, an unpleasant one, filling him with an awe that he had not felt since childhood. It was only natural, he supposed, that he would get anxious. This was a nightmare that, upon waking, took a few hours of powerful sunlight and good company to ward off, to forget. Of course, now that he had learned that this might be a *real* nightmare, no amount of sunlight or friendship or anything would shatter the vision ’ s effect. Nothing besides a fifth of vodka would stop the dreams from coming. 
 
 He slipped away, swallowed by the darkness, and came through into a different sort of darkness on the other side 
 
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 The house looked French somehow. Old World. It looked like it belonged on a plantation somewhere near Louisiana. It had long since fallen into disrepair, the paint scabbed, revealing the scarred wood underneath. He looked at the house from the cover of bushes, maybe fifty yards away. It sat against a backdrop of woods, the trees as gnarled and twisted as strands of rope. A few dead brown leaves clung to the branches, but they stood mostly bare. He looked around, everything wasted and dead looking, all of it a shade of brown or grey or dark red. Everything in this world existed in slightly wrong proportions. The roiling sky hung to close to the ground. The trees looked strange, growing into each other, their bark forming vague, hateful faces. It looked as if someone had poured a million gallons of Roundup on every living bit of vegetation for a thousand miles. 
 
 In this dream, just like his others, he approached the house, swinging around towards the foreboding woods. He kept low to the ground, a cold fear in his belly, an awareness that he should not get caught. He felt the way a mouse must feel as it crosses an open stretch of land, birds of prey overhead. 
 
 He reached the back and crouched against the side of an even older shed, leaning dangerously to one side. All of the windows of the house remained pitch black. Soon he saw the man, walking towards the house from a dirt trail. He lumbered along, a hunch in his back. He was made of metal, bulky plates of steel crudely welded together. He had begun to rust all over, turning into the color of the landscape around him. Two narrow slits opened in his round face, showing the cruel light of either electricity or biological eyes. Nick hesitated to call it human in anything but shape. 
 
 The thing it dragged beside it was human, or close enough that it didn ’ t matter. This time it was a girl of indeterminate age, squealing in horror. It dragged her by the hair with a viciousness and a coldness that churned his stomach. The girl screamed, tried to kick at the machine-man, but it ignored her dragging her along. When she pulled against it, it pulled back so hard it was amazing it didn ’ t rip out all of her hair at once. It dragged her whole body weight by the blonde mane of hair. 
 
 It kicked open the front door and threw the girl into the darkness. It followed after her, closing the door behind it. 
 
 Then the little girl came out. 
 
 The little girl and the machine-man lived in the house. They must have had some type of agreement worked out. When the little girl, who always wore flower print dresses that reminded Nick of pioneers and the American West, saw this thing coming down the road, its presence announced by the anguished screams of its victim, she quietly slipped outside and waited for this thing to do whatever it did. This time, like last, she sat on the stump of a tree and looked at him, though he was sure that he was concealed in the grass. She knew he was there. 
 
 Usually this was all that happened. Screams would begin echoing from the house, growing louder and louder, the little girl would hug her knees close to her chest, covering her ears, pulling her hat over her face. 
 
 This time she started running into the woods. 
 
 Somehow the machine-man knew and roared out of the house instantly, lumbering after her. The two of them crashed through the underbrush of the forest. Nick ’ s heart crashed along with them, but the machine-man snagged the little girl and dragged her back into the house. 
 
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 Nick woke up, sweating fiercely and freezing cold at the same time. He found that he had a perfectly formed, crystallized thought in his head. He didn ’ t quite understand it, why he should obey it, what it meant, but there it was. 
 
 *Next time, * he thought *, I ’ m going to help her escape. * 

