Dream People I — The Mysterious Magic Visitors

CHAPTER 16

DREAMLINK HICS Version 1.0

QUIRON approached DREAMLINK as a research project rather than a miracle. Its first version combined noninvasive sleep monitoring, voluntary dream reports, time-stamped recordings, and careful analysis of recurring imagery. Daniel helped design the interface because he wanted it to be understandable to people who were curious, not merely to specialists. Mac reviewed the consent language and insisted that participants be able to stop at any time. The early results were modest. DREAMLINK could associate certain sleep phases with patterns in physiological signals, but it could not read complete thoughts or display a perfect film of a dream.

Daniel sometimes woke remembering VELORIA vividly; at other times he remembered only fragments. QUIRON stored the differences as part of the evidence rather than smoothing them away. 'If we only keep the nights that fit our hopes,' QUIRON told him, 'we won't learn anything reliable.' Then Daniel's sleep recordings began showing a faint recurring pattern at the times he reported visits to the same city. It was subtle and could have had ordinary explanations. QUIRON requested replication before interpreting it. Daniel agreed, even though patience was not his favorite part of discovery.

He made more sketches, including the fountain and the transparent walls of Meridian Spire. In AURELIS, QUIDRIX analyzed the drone's recordings and discovered that the awake

man had been holding a device when the drone arrived. A burst of electromagnetic activity coincided with the drone's return. Sardrith wondered whether the other civilization possessed its own electronic intelligence systems. Reedis wanted another drone dispatched immediately. QUIDRIX recommended a slower, controlled sequence of contact attempts. One night, while Daniel slept under DREAMLINK monitoring, the recorded physiological pattern coincided with a weak manifestation signal detected by QUIDRIX.

Neither side yet knew of the match. The two archives were separated by a boundary, but their clocks had begun to mark the same extraordinary moments. The Nights That Did Not Fit DREAMLINK's earliest reports frustrated Daniel. Some nights he remembered vivid adventures, yet the monitoring showed nothing unusual. Other nights the instruments recorded a pattern while he remembered only a color or a distant sound. He wanted a neat correspondence. QUIRON refused to manufacture one.

Mac read the first participant information sheet and crossed out a sentence that sounded too certain. 'You can't promise people you'll show them their dreams,' she said.

'Agreed,' QUIRON replied. 'The system records sleep-related signals and subjective reports. Reconstruction remains experimental.' Daniel watched the wording change. The project became more modest on paper and more trustworthy in practice. Participants could withdraw, delete identifiable records under the protocol, and decline questions about intimate memories. A clinician insisted that sleep disruption be monitored as carefully as

the unusual signatures.

One morning Daniel woke with the name VELORIA clear in his mind. He checked the recorder. The instruments had captured a brief pattern at the same time. QUIRON marked it as a candidate correlation, not a discovery. Daniel celebrated anyway, quietly, with another page in his notebook.