Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    DreamBase
    DreamBase
    DreamBase
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    DreamBase

    By Paul Stephanus

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A social outcast has become an internet celebrity on DreamBase, a social networking site that connects people using the content of their dreams. When his prescient dreams are suddenly invaded by endless Google imagery he seeks the help of a bumbling psychologist. With the distinction between fantasy and reality crumbling all around them, they must take on vast and corrupt world of corporate dream control.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPaul Stephanus
    Release dateMar 8, 2016
    ISBN9781310727788
    DreamBase
    Author

    Paul Stephanus

    Paul Stephanus is an American who was born in Tokyo and raised in Singpore. He's lived in many countries and done all sorts of things - mountiain guide, engilsh teacher, theatre director, creative event organizer - but the thing he likes doing most is writing. He currently lives in Melbourne.

    Related to DreamBase

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Editor’s Letter

      Aug 10, 2019

      A few years ago, I misplaced a cat. My friend’s feline, Leo, was staying with me while her mom was travelling, and on Day 2, I woke up to find him missing. I spent all day and night searching the streets, putting up ‘Lost Cat’ posters, going door to

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Cautionary Tale

      Apr 1, 2019

      A Cautionary Tale
      2 min read

    • Article

      Focus (if You Still Can)

      Jan 7, 2022

      Focus (if You Still Can)
      13 min read

    • Article

      Thinkyour Dreamsreal

      Aug 20, 2021

      Thinkyour Dreamsreal
      6 min read

    • Article

      DO YOU WANT TO KNOW a secret?

      Mar 16, 2021

      DO YOU WANT TO KNOW a secret?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Susannah Wise

      Sep 2, 2021

      Susannah Wise
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Form Of A Sentence

      Jan 4, 2022

      The Form Of A Sentence
      4 min read

    • Article

      Everybody Has A Story

      Feb 6, 2022

      Everybody Has A Story
      5 min read

    • Article

      Miranda July

      Sep 15, 2020

      Miranda July
      4 min read

    • Article

      Everywhere Around Us

      Sep 23, 2023

      Everywhere Around Us
      5 min read

    • Article

      I'm A Real-life SLEEPING BEAUTY

      Jul 21, 2021

      Sitting in front of my computer at work, I felt my eyes start to droop again. Then, I nodded off into another mini-sleep, before quickly shaking myself awake. I’m exhausted! I thought, feeling confused. A single mum to my two beautiful kids, Kati, t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Learning The Secret

      Apr 22, 2018

      Learning The Secret
      2 min read

    • Article

      World Of Difference

      Apr 11, 2021

      World Of Difference
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Physics Of Connection

      Sep 1, 2020

      IF I HELD A HAMMER CORRECTLY, the way my father taught me, and then swung it down on a rock, the rock would break. I would have caused that to happen. I would have transferred kinetic energy from my arm to the hammer’s handle and then to the hammer’s

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fatal Distraction

      Jun 5, 2022

      Fatal Distraction
      13 min read

    • Article

      Jack Unfiltered Monroe

      Oct 29, 2021

      Jack Unfiltered Monroe
      9 min read

    • Article

      Footprints in the Snow

      Nov 19, 2017

      What is memory, if not a bundle of errors, a poem covered with edits? The post Footprints in the Snow appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      Footprints in the Snow

      Nov 17, 2017

      What is memory, if not a bundle of errors, a poem covered with edits? The post Footprints in the Snow appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for DreamBase

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      DreamBase - Paul Stephanus

      DreamBase

      By

      Paul Stephanus

      Table of Contents

      Part 1 - DreamBase

      Part 2 - Devon Lives

      "Every dream has at least one point at which it is unfathomable; a central point, as it were, connecting it with the unknown."

      -Sigmund Freud

      It was after dreaming of that gigantic floating Google emblem rotating in a dark void for the 12th night in a row that I decided to erase my profile from DreamBase. I could call it a ‘recurring’ dream, but that’s not quite true, it was never exactly the same. Perhaps enough aspects of it were the same to call it recurring though: always that upper case G, an infinity of o’s and all their lesser friends swirling around in flamboyant excess, in all variety of colors, in every imaginable theme. My perspective in the dream never changed; I was always a static and obedient observer, watching the procession: the bright red capital G roaring towards my head and then twirling away at the last minute before impact. The baby o’s bubbling up in myriad colors beneath me, rising between my legs, bouncing off my crotch, getting caught between my armpits. The tail of the lower case g baiting the ravenous and malnourished chomps of the poor blue e, while lanky l stands to the side, watching the ordeal, bent over in hysterics.

      Or the letters would all back away from me and play with Santa in the snow, or shrink to a 500th of the size and rush to take a place right before my retina where they’d perform some sort of comical vaudeville number while trying to find their order in line, or race around me like greyhounds round a rabbit, italicized with speed, poor lanky l of course lagging behind, huffing and puffing, hindered by his immense surface area pressed up against the wind.

      These dreams may sound fascinating, fun even, a great way to spend a night, and writing them down at this moment I could almost fool myself to think just that. However, the fact is that every time I had this dream I felt nothing but utter boredom. I couldn’t wait for it to end, the acts performed by the letters seemed so contrived, lacking in conflict. I felt no empathy for the characters. As if the dream was just trying too hard. I’d never had that kind of feeling about a dream until these started.

      My dreams had always been the best aspect, the highlight of my life, so you can imagine how distressing this whole ordeal was for me. As I grew older and my aspirations one by one failed to materialize, or materialized and then shattered, my dreams remained the one thing that connected me to my childhood and my creativity, and my hopes. My dark imagination had no end of plot twists and potent images for my consciousness to contemplate the morning after. I had a reason to live through the drudgeries of the day so I could once again frolic in my fantasies at night. Then, suddenly, I had nothing. These Google dreams were about to destroy me. For the first time in my life my dreams had become more boring than the time I spent awake. This was unacceptable, and proved, to me, the nonexistence of God, for how could he allow such a thing to occur?

      * * *

      So yes, I did the unthinkable and quit DreamBase, and left my countless followers behind, and my years of hard work behind. It was a difficult step to take and my psychiatrist insisted that I start handwriting my dreams in a journal as a way to ease off the addiction slowly. It was odd having the words go down on a piece of paper that I was sure no one would ever look at, and at times I was tempted beyond temptation to log back into DreamBase, but somehow I held out. I held out in hope that the horrid Google dreams would cease. My psychiatrist was convinced that the dreams were a result of my heightened profile on the network. He thought that Google had been subliminally advertising through the website for some time, and using dreams as a sort of marketing vehicle and that the whole experiment had broken down and distorted some important mechanism in my subconscious. The result: I am suddenly left with never-ending, real-time, Google-dreams. He dumped all this on me during my first session with him.

      It was after the sixth Google dream in a row that I scheduled an appointment, as I was convinced I’d gone insane. I searched high and low for a psychiatrist who’d see me every day of the week and for two hours at a time. If I was going to give in to the idea that I was going crazy, I wanted to go all out, and no just dabble. So I finally found a someone who’d take me on those terms, Dr. Cambria. I went in to see him three days later, and he told me Google had been advertising in my brain before even introducing himself. He said it was something he’d been investigating for a long time.

      Hold on, I said, DreamBase isn’t even related to Google.

      They use GoogleAds, don’t they? And I think they’re ‘powered by Google’ now. And the board of directors for the two companies are virtually identical. They’ve held off on an official merger, but that’s so they can keep things sufficiently clandestine. Do your research, he replied calmly.

      Look, I don’t think your secretary briefed you on my problem. These dreams don’t advertise any product. They’re just the Google letters, not advertisements. I said.

      "Google letters, and themes," he replied.

      Yeah themes, but not product themes. The themes are like Christmas and Singapore and cell phones, and Buddhism— I was listing out on my fingers.

      Ha! Cellphones? He interrupted.

      Yeah, I replied, slightly exasperated, hoping that something other than a vague conspiracy theory would come out of this appointment, but not a particular brand…just a medley of all different phones, of all shapes, colors, sizes, makes. I don’t see why Google would advertise cellphones in general.

      So you’ll buy one, probably, he reasoned.

      I have one! I said, sitting up abruptly on the ‘relaxation couch’.

      They want you to buy a new one, he pestered.

      Who is ‘they’? I pleaded.

      Google!

      "But Google doesn’t make cellphones. Why would

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1