Muffin Man

Sleepatron™ 6000

I drove around in fancy cars. I traveled the world for no other reason than to spend obscene amounts of money. I was a financial titan. Jake Palmer, king of the universe.

BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP!

It took a few seconds to remember where the alarm was - built right into the Sleepatron™ 6000 mask I was wearing. I switched it off, tossed it aside, and stretched my arms to the wall behind me. What a fantastic dream! I tried to hang onto it, but it was already fading when I climbed into the shower. I sang loudly to the occasional beat of my neighbor banging on the wall and screaming. It was a small duplex with bad insulation.

My work clothes were pitiful. The pants were a bit short -or I was a bit tall- and the grocery smock was faded. I could barely make out the words ‘Big Time Market’ above the front pocket. How many years had I worked there? Seven? Eight? Man, did I wish that dream was real. Something about having a lot of money wasn’t it? It made me feel good anyway, unlike the reoccurring nightmares I’d been having for so long. Sleepatron™ 6000, good dreams guaranteed.

I pulled my car into an empty spot and went to join the line in the coffee shop. It was still somewhat dark out.

“Hey, don’t I know you?” asked a pretty girl in front of me.

I brushed the hair out of my eyes and looked around, but I was last in line.

“Yes, you. Have we met? You seem really familiar.”

I wish we had met. I wish I knew what to say. She was all legs and happiness, wearing one of those skirt-suits and just the right amount of makeup. “Buh. Duh.”

“Can I buy you a coffee? Your name is Jake, isn’t it?”

“Buh. Duh.” I was making words in my head, but they fizzled out fast. Yes, that would be great. Sure, Thanks. How do you know my name? “Buh. Yeah.”

I left the coffee shop with her number, even though the conversation hadn’t gotten much better. I practically held my breath the entire time. What a knockout! What luck! It’d been almost six months since I’d been on a date. Maybe things were looking up.

“Heya Jake,” somebody in the parking lot called out.

I waved confusedly at the stranger and got into my car. The grocery store was only a couple of blocks away. When I got there, my boss, Mr. Sheffield, was waiting for me out front. We usually opened the store together. Big Time Market wasn’t very big time, but the job was steady and the people were fairly nice (except old Sheffield). He worried too much about his job and didn’t trust any of us, but actually looked happy to see me today.

“Jake! You’ll never guess what I dreamt last night. What a strange one.” He handed me the key to the security gate, and I fumbled with it as he talked. “It was about you!” He rarely looked so happy. In all the years I had known him, he had mostly skulked around, pushing hair over his ever-growing bald spot and grumbling at customers and employees alike.

He rambled on as I opened the gate and the door behind it. Between the rattling and the key getting stuck once or twice, I didn’t catch much of what he said.

I humored him, “Yeah, strange.”

“What do you feel like doing today? I’ll work the floor if you want, there’s some work in the back you can tackle.”

He’d never been this helpful, and everyone knew that the easy, backroom work was for the supervisor.

“Uh, sure. Thanks Bob.” Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

He clapped me on the back and grinned, “No problem, bud.”

It was a little after four when I finished up and headed for home. I pulled onto my street, but it didn’t look like my street. There wasn’t an empty parking spot for three blocks. When I passed my duplex, I was surprised to see a mass of people gathered on the lawn, holding signs that I couldn’t make out. There was even a news van. Oh God, did something happen to my house? I parked and hurried back towards the crowd.

“There he is!” a man shouted, pointing at me. I wanted to run, but I was frozen with fear. People began to cheer and rush towards me. A few caught hold of my legs, hoisted me up, and sang round after round of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. Up and down the street they paraded me, singing in unison like I was the hero of some damn football game. The signs they carried said things like ‘Jake For President!’ and ‘Jake, King of the Universe!’. The news camera was zeroed in as they finally delivered me to my front door.

“Well?” someone shouted. There was a hush.

I fumbled with my keys, opened the door, ran in, and locked it behind me.

“Jake!” they shouted. They pleaded with me to open back up. I put my back to the door and slumped to the floor. Was this the twilight zone? Was I still asleep? I pinched myself hard and yowled. Yep, I was awake.

Someone banged on the door and I looked through the peephole. Thank God, a policeman! I opened the door. Another policeman was holding the crowd back.

"Are you Jake Palmer?” he asked.

“Um, yeah.”

He turned back towards the crowd and yelled triumphantly, “It’s him!” The people whooped and hollered louder than ever.

I screamed in terror and barricaded myself back in the house.

#

The big brains eventually traced the phenomenon to a glitch in the Sleepatron™ 6000. Instead of downloading its nightly update, it uploaded a residual portion of my dream and beamed it to half of America. What did that gobbledygook mean to me? Money. A gigantic corporate settlement.

After all, I couldn’t go back to work. I couldn’t even get out of my house. There was a group of whacked out futuristic nuts gathered under tents on my lawn. They called themselves the Palmerists –which I thought was brilliantly original- and wore aluminum foil hats of various shapes and designs. They claimed that we had all seen a glimpse into the future, and that I was destined to be one of the most powerful men in the world.

I guess nobody told them that I wasn’t very smart, or that I was just a cashier at Big Time Market. They didn’t seem to care that I was a classic underachiever, without much drive -and even less ambition. And with a newfound hundred million dollars in my pocket, who was I to change their minds?

My new life was one of ‘spare no expense’. Twenty dollars went to the bellboy, thirty to the waiter, and fifty to the chauffeur. I slipped money into everyone’s pockets. I could afford it, since my broker had turned my measly hundred million into a billion-dollar net worth over the last two years –and I slipped a good chunk of cash to him as well.

I even let those confounded Palmerists establish a commune on the fifty acres that was my backyard. I couldn’t deny the fact that I had become a very powerful man, and I was beginning to believe that the vision shared by millions of people wasn’t just a glitch. Maybe it was a glimpse into the future.

#

Bombs. Explosions. Death. Chaos. Fear.

BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP!

I sat bolt upright, ripped off my dream mask, and tossed aside satin sheets. My pillow was soaked with sweat. What a horrible nightmare, it was the end of the world! So much for the Sleepatron™ guarantee. I took a cup of water from my nightstand and sipped slowly.

RING!

The phone scared me half to death, and I dumped water every which way in a scramble to answer it.

RING!

“Hello?”

“Jake?” It was Bill Baxter, my broker.

“Jesus, Bill. Do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry Jake, I didn’t know who else to call. I just had the worst dream. It was the end of the world…”

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"Me and Mike, ve vork in mine,
Holy shit, ve have good time.
Vunce a veek ve get our pay,
Holy shit, no vork next day."

- Kurt Vonnegut
- Slaughterhouse-Five

magikpumpkin

hi muffin man.

strange idea, i kinda liked it, i'm a bit too hungover and dizzy rite now to work out whether the Sleepatron 6000 thing broadcasts the future before it happens or whether it's a prediction of the future where maybe the character(s) would perhaps end up striving to alter themselves. Liked it though. Works as a short story, so i don't think you'd want to develop it anymore than it is in my opinion, else you'd have to explain how a dream alters reality and realism and that would just defeat fantasy completely.

Ilan Bouchard

Heh heh, very entertaining.

Believe it or not, there exists a machine similar to the Sleepatron, although it works differently (it induces lucid dreams, which are close to the same thing, if not better).

You might want to mention this takes place in the future or something of the sort, for I would find it very unlikely for half the world to be using the same brand product of anything, let alone a dream machine.

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Ruthless comments encouraged!

Wyndstar

This story reminds me of 'The Lathe of Heaven' by Ursula LeGuin---though the machine used was by the doctor exploiting him.

This isn't bad, except for the problem with why this man was singled out. If he's just a clerk somehwere, then I'm assuming anyone can own one of these machines. Why him? Why did his do what it did? There had to be more of an explanation than it just 'being a glitch'. Then, it goes right back on the market, the same guy has acess. Even in the future, I'd expect this guy to come under heavy experimentation by the company, and not be able to use the machine again except under controlled conditions.
Just a thought...

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Old enough to know better, young enough to think I can still get away with it.

gohn67

Hi MuffinMan,
I liked the concept. The dream within a dream within a dream and so on. Kind of thing. Makes you not know what is reality. Kind of like that story Brain in a Vat or something like that.

My favorite part was the part about the Palmerists and their tin foil hats of different shapes.

This part actually threw me off. Had to read it a few times. I think this was probably just me though.

Maybe take out the confusedly. Very awkward Adverb.

I liked the humor in this also.

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The Frowning Dog Blog

Discreet

i really enjoyed this story. great start, ending was a little slow though, would like to see more of this.