1 Episode 1: The Start of A Dream

Alan was fidgeting with a tiny inductor on his left hand while scratching furiously at the back of his head with another. It seemed like he was stuck in a difficult problem as his furrow was almost imprinted onto his face. Apparently, for Alan, it was not just any difficult problem at all.

In the 5x5m room that he barely could stand in, all the kinds of furniture were messily pushed onto the side to make place for a gigantic 2.5m long capsule-like container laying at the center. Wires were coming out from one place to another without a proper orientation as he could not be bothered spending his time and mind on organizing those. But as if he had a photographic memory, he knew exactly what each wire for, where they were from and where are they going to. At one end of the capsule, towards the door leading into the room, the wiring was especially disorganized, it also seemed like the most complicated part of all machine as layers and layers stacking on top of each other like a miniature city made out of semiconductors. Even as unkempt as he was, Alan strangely had a liking towards being eye-catching. The "building" had different colors as Alan specifically dye the whole circuit boards himself in different shades of colors. Emerald green, shiny purple to odd yellow, the stacks of circuit board creates a colorful and modernized style of a city. But how can he still be messy and unorganized you might ask. To other people, the entire machine looked like it had survived an apocalypse with only a city "remaining" intact, and surrounded by swarms and swarms of worms. But to him, the machine, the wiring, the logic that only he could see was the most beautiful thing.

But turns out, human had their own limit and even for an unparallel genius like Alan. Today was the day he supposed to finalize his reports and test his invention but it seemed like there was a part that he totally forgot about. A stupid, small extra inductor that can come from any circuit board within the semiconductor city or from any part of the city. He checked the back-up inductors the 10th time and it was still 20 identical inductors as he remembered when he first bought them. He checked the schematics, again and again, tried to take apart each part of the machine but he could not find a single mistake. How could this happen to me? He was dumbfounded. Never in his life that he was caught up in a stupid mistake where he forgot about a single component of a circuit that he designed. To him, it was as if a money grubber forgot to collect 1 dollar from his debtor. Something must have happened to him while he was working on the machine.

Most likely not, as he did not have a friend. In fact, since three years ago, the concept of friends had become so vague and so mysterious. It was like a number that did not belong to a set called Alan. But yes, he had friends, and he was or at least had been, a very socially gifted person. He had a group of friends he always went with after schools, a band to play in and a fencing club to lead. Even though he was not very handsome, he was smart and charming with his glasses on and was admired by multiple girls in his school. And there was ######, his girlfriend, a cute, mischievous childhood friend that he has always been with ever since he was little. The moment of confession was one of the most anxious time that he had ever had because he thought that it was going to ruin their years-long precious friendship. However, the moment of her acceptance was instead one of the most joyful time of his parentless life...

-Hey Alan, tell me why do you like me so much? There were so many beautiful girls that you can choose from... - She always asked that when we were just to make herself happy after listen to my answer. Every like that, she would raise her face towards mine and immediately took my breath away with her moist and crystal clear blue eyes.

-Obviously, it was because....

DO NOT! Alan painfully broked out of his past. She was gone, like other friends I had. He clenched his teeth tightly and squeeze the inductor in his palm tightly as if he wanted to ground it into dust like his own past. He gave up after a while though, since the inductor was stubbornly hard and his muscle had been dystrophied after 3 years of not picking up his fencing sword. It was like the problem that he had currently, it will not going to disappear by his own will. What was he going to do? Mixed with melancholic emotions, it was definitely not the best time to work on his research.

However, time was tight and the professor-in-charge had been constantly nagging him behind his back and even threatened to empty the room if he asked for an extension. Escalated by his unstable emotion, he decided to abandon everything and just go with it.

Poor Alan, he could have done better with his life, maybe try to reach a balance between social and work could have made him more productive and happier but he was just too stubborn, to obstinate. This did not only make him miserable but also caused the ones who used to cherish him suffered. Sometimes, some choices are just not right. But for his justification, he kept blaming himself that his trauma was too miserable for him to share with anyone. And because of this, he brought upon himself an "unforeseen" consequence.

Snapping out of his hesitation, Alan tucked the inductor in his pocket and tried to navigate around the room to get to the switches. Red top crane crank up, blue bottom crane pulled right, key in clockwise, button pressed then switched left. He systematically followed the pattern that he had in mind but fluidly at a constant pace. LED lights were ignited on different parts of the machine under every movement he made. It was as if Alan was a conductor and the machine was his own masterpiece.

Hmmmm...

The machine made a soft hum like it was glad to be alive. It seems like the initiation did not stumble into much trouble. Alan sighed in satisfaction.

At least this is going to be enough to fool the old guys, I could just make up some reasons that the software's debugging had not been done yet.

No, but this is not what I wanted yet, I needed it to work to get her back. Tugging his messy and pull harshly, he tried to shoo away the fake satisfaction that his brain tried to give him. Decisively, he turned on the LCD screen that he installed for monitoring and controlling the condition of the machine. Everything seemed fine. Heating systems were all functional, the main chamber was kept steady at 25 degree Celsius, optimal for long-term sleeping. The power regulators were working fine too, there were no noticeable spikes that could have caused a surge in the main circuitry. It was surprising to him that nothing had gone wrong...yet. He would not dare to try it yet until he let it run for 24 hours in maximum working condition. Steady and slowly, the system reached the booting stage and going slowly from 0-100%.

Haha, it seemed like nothing had gone wrong. He almost cried in happiness because he lost too much, sacrificed too much for something that was out of his reach so turning back was not the option for him. Ruthlessly, he bit hard on his lips, he had sworn that he would never cry after that incident. Trying to regain his focus, he looked back at the screen again, 10 minutes had gone past and the booting progress was at 67%. He tried to stop his mind from wandering by admiring the beauty of his colorful circuit buildings that he built. Those times that he spent on decorating and dying his work was not for naught. They were an especially good mental alleviation that kept him from falling down on this precarious road. Those colorful buildings were so much different from the black ones that he had to see every day when he came back to his house, or more like a concentration camp that the government could not be bothered to spend much money on maintaining it.

"Hey Alan, would you promise me that you were not going to look for me? Please promise me Alan. Get someone better than me, have your own life, your own family in the Rainbow District. Please Alan, please..."

An old memory arose up from his wandering mind again, his last memory of her. He chuckled silently by himself, I am afraid that was not possible. His stubborn mind would not surrender: I will find you and I will get you back, no matter what cost...

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Someone was ruthlessly knocking on the door, knocking Alan out of his wandering. Carefully stepping towards his monitors without tripping himself onto the coiling wires under his feet, he looked rather annoyed. This was definitely not the first time he was confronted by the rude knocks.

There was a camera looking towards the hallway of his room, there were multiple people shouting angrily, a middle-aged man, a beautiful senior college girl, and a security guard. Alan recognized the smugly shouting guy was his supposedly "in-charge" professor, who did not seem to be very friendly today. He was calming to the female student next to him in an infatuated voice and at the same time yelling and knocking heavily on the door. It appeared like he was not going to be giving me any extra time at all.

Frustrated he looked at the loading screen, 90% huh, almost done but I bet the professor would not even wait for any second more with his girlfriend next to him.

Despite Alan hard-working and genius mind, he had not produced any research at all so not many professors believed that he could do something on his own. It took great effort and flattery to persuade this shameless professor in giving him a room for his own research in the school.

But my luck ended here then. Alan could imagine his invention being trampled upon, with most of the equipment going to be taken away to the dumpster. Alan started to become desperate. Quick, use your mind, Alan, think of a way. Quick! A light bulb was lit up in his head, and he hesitantly looked towards the capsule, booting was at 98%. Every time in the future when he looked back at this moment, he almost felt how lucky he was to stay alive after putting on himself in an untested machine. Most of it was driven by his unstable state of mind, but some of it told him that if he got into a machine, at least the professor was going to wait until he finished testing it right? That was the only chance he could show the professor concrete evidence of his achievement, or this was going to be his downfall as a genius daredevil.

100%. Booting sequence completed, there was no trace of hesitation in his eye. He was determined to put himself upon the risk. He slowly navigated himself through the wires to the capsule but paced himself faster when he heard the keys clanking on the door. He could not be stopped now! And there, he was laying soundless in the capsule chamber and slowly closing the lid.

[All state ready, proceed to the first stage of sleep. Chance of lucid dream 78%, duration 5 hours, in dream duration 30 seconds, after that the second state of sleep would proceed. Approximate time to deep sleep, stage 6 of sleep, is 24 hours from initiation] The mechanical voice emotionlessly announced the information. There is no turning back for Alan.

Slowly, he closed his eyes.

{A world without an end or a beginning, a world without impossibility, a world of fantasy but it was a world with infinite danger and sorrow, so please Alan, don't follow me}