| abstract | - It started off with a simple discovery near the end of 2011, that the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) we experienced while in the dream state could be harnessed to create energy. Experts made little jokes about how there would be huge factories where people could make money just by sleeping. This discovery went on as more of a novelty for many years since the technology it took to harness the energy cost more than it was worth. It wasn’t until around the middle of 2013 that we were scraping the bottom of the oil barrel; gas stations were closed, cars were recalled. Society was brought to a standstill. Every government on earth was scrambling trying to find a new effective source of energy, and that’s when they came forward. Dream Power Incorporated is a company that supposedly had been working on the technology to harness dream energy. The whole deal seemed sketchy especially since no one had heard about them before. There would have been an investigation, but cities were shutting down and the world was running out of options, so they were given all the money they would need to put up plants in all the major countries of the world. In about a month, Dream Power had become the major energy producer in the world and one of its biggest employers. It took in people of all demographics and backgrounds, even people with disabilities. Anyone could dream, so anyone was a potential source of energy, and it was a cushy job- come in, sleep for a couple hours, then head home, no one could turn that down. For a while Dream Power seemed to be the greatest thing in the world, but what we didn’t know at the time was that things were about to take a turn for the worse. In the early months of 2014, a discovery was made in a Dream Power facility in China. The REM that people experienced during nightmares produced twice the amount of energy as they did when having normal dreams. To most countries this didn’t mean anything but China, North Korea and a few countries in the EU began research on a drug that could cause nightmares. After weeks of failure at finding a drug, they found another way, by showing the one who would be sleeping many disturbing images and videos before they went to sleep; this was usually enough to stimulate a nightmare. If that didn’t work they’d dig up their past, find some disturbing events, and play them music with a subliminal message of someone explaining the event in detail hidden inside causing them to relive the event in their dreams. It worked and soon, these countries were putting these methods to work, causing them to produce twice the power and rise into the spots of super powers. With this development, other countries broke down and began using the same methods wanting to become more powerful as well. Soon every country was using nightmares in their Dream Power facilities and everything sort of stabilized till Dream Power brought up a brand new way of harvesting the energy of dreams; it wasn’t the big clunky pods used in their facilities. It was a simple little box you could put anywhere and it wouldn’t get in the way. Governments were rushing to get the contracts to Dream Power for the mass production of the devices. Dream Power was happy to oblige passing them out almost for free. Now how they worked was that you just put it near your bed or the couch and when you slept and it could gather energy and you got paid for how much energy you produced every week, but because people wanted to make more money the government made the Nightmare channel a channel on the radio or television that constantly produced disturbing sounds, stories, and images. Energy wasn’t even a problem anymore. It was greed, governments wanted more energy, and kept coming up with new ways to harvest it. Putting the boxes everywhere in schools, busses, even under park benches anyplace where someone might fall asleep, but it didn’t stop there. Soon, they were posting disturbing images and videos anywhere they could. You couldn’t look anywhere without seeing a rape, murder or some unholy creature staring you in the face. People were afraid and barely getting any sleep, being too afraid of the Nightmares they might have, limiting themselves to as little sleep as possible. Even the world leaders who had been so gung-ho about these projects couldn’t sleep. The only ones not affected were the people from Dream Power; it seemed like none of this affected them while the rest of humanity lived in a daze. The line between the images of their nightmares and the images of the waking world were so blurred that some began to see the monsters of their nightmares when they were awake. No one knows why this has happened, except for me. It was all them from the beginning, Dream Power. I realized it between my nightmare filled dreams and my fear filled daily life. It happened when I broke open that stupid box and saw the truth- it's empty, there’s nothing inside the boxes. It doesn’t collect power; after I found that out I broke into one of the old Dream Power plants and looked inside the pods, no circuitry nothing to collect power it was just an empty shell, even the screen that showed those disturbing images was empty, I was confused and scared when I heard something coming. That’s when I saw it. It wasn’t human; it was about 9 feet tall, its skin was a sickly grey-purple, vein lines going all around it like a road map. Its eyes were pitch black and bulbous, the only color in them were small red dots that darted around. I assumed it was its pupils. It had no nose or ears but it had a mouth lined with sharp fangs. I hid for what seemed like hours before it left and I was able to slip out. That’s how I realized the truth. Dreams never produced energy, those creatures did, and they used it to control us. So we’d give them our fear to fuel them. All along they’d been feeding on us but it’s too late to stop them now, they’re everywhere and nothing can stop them. The human race is now just a battery and dreams are the source of power.
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