Don’t twitch.
FaceTrace reads microexpressions before the subject knows what they’re thinking. Naia knows Vale Four is about to deploy it. June and Elle know they cannot afford a tell.
The question is whether you can teach yourself to lie with your face.
Highlights
This is the first episode of the Deep Dream State’s Tell Cycle.
Each Cycle in Vale Four looks at a different advertising phenomenon through the pink noir lens. It’s uncanny but appealing at the same time.
A full description follows; a few elements should be highlighted.
1. The guest stars are stars.
They always are. In this case, we’re gratified to have Valentina Vallay on cast. She’s a notable and fantastic voice actress. She also plays the AI voice with sultry and evocative range. It’s much better to cast a human as AI than the other ways around; that’s particularly true in this case.
2. Midstream is ridiculous.
The Deep Dream State is fiercely independent. We don’t intend to have real ads for the foreseeable future. That allows us to have the weird fake ads ever.
About midway through the episode, the most crazed sports podcast ever, Midstream, drops an ad. This really makes Barstool Sports seem like Infinite Jest. Highly recommended.
3. The sound design is innovative.
It’s tough to convey screens and writing and whispers even in TV. The episode features a lot of passed notes. That’s communicated with whispers, less filtered, and pencil scratch. I think it lands and enhances the paranoid atmosphere.
4. The tech is real.
The story is fictional . We aren’t doing predictive or hard sci fi here. At the same time, facial analysis for gauging consumer sentiment is real, advancing, and deeply unsettling.
Cast & Crew
Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Co-Directed by: Bliss Blank
Midstream Sports: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns as himself
Recurring Cast
Z – Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
June Lowell – Bliss Blank
Tessa Finn – Ring of Kees
Meg Aerin – Bun Li
Naia Anderson – Dizzy Dollie
Elle Lawson – Echo Doll
Iris Vale – Swirls and Twirls
Cael Yupp – Jericho Caine
Hespa Apate – Syndi Rella
Guest Stars
Synthserv 3.0 – Valentina Vallay
Ava – Kitten Azazel
Mr. Mega – FFT
Mr. Beefcake – Chavito
Full Summary
Call
Naia records a private audio log from the garden nest. She’s afraid, and rightly so.
FaceTrace is different from the Calibrex systems: it doesn’t require cooperation. It reads microexpressions, dwell time, the involuntary signals produced before conscious thought has finished forming. The holdfasts inside Vale Four have been trained to pass, but no training accounts for a system that reads the face before the actor knows what they’re about to perform.
Naia names the stakes clearly: the IPO timeline is running, the call option has an expiry, and they cannot afford tells.
Deal
Meg, Tessa, and Hespa introduce FaceTrace to the focus group in the conference room. The framing is corporate and precise: contextual metadata, microexpression analysis, dwell time mapping.
Ava works with catechumens and recognizes the structure of confession. She raises the comparison directly. Tessa affirms the surface resemblance and dismisses it with bloodless. June is welcomed back from her sabbatical and assigned an office next to the recalibration center. Tessa offers her the use of a second desk with an adorable little laptop.
Hold Em
The Midstream Sports advertisement runs. It is extremely committed to the bit. Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns appears as himself and is removed from the recording for knowing too much about fantasy football :/. Mr. Mega, Mr. Beefcake, and Hespa explain the product to the correct audience with maximum enthusiasm.
You never change horses in midstream.
Ante
June has arranged her office specifically around the plant she calls Seymour. June and Elle assess the FaceTrace threat in private: audio they can manage, video they can fool, but microexpression reading at the level FaceTrace operates is a different problem entirely. The solution is to practice on each other before the real sessions begin. Elle has already acquired the access codes.
Bluff
June runs Elle through the FaceTrace baseline protocol in the monitor room. The writing whisper technique carries their real communication underneath the performed neutrality: stage whispers stripped of reverb and set apart in the mix, functioning as written notes in audio form. Elle lingers on the wrong images for too long. June clocks every tell in real time and writes it down. Elle asks for more pictures – for science. June’s final writing whisper names what she has been watching the whole time. The session ends with both of them knowing considerably more about each other than they did when it started, and with a functional map of where their faces give them away.
Listen & Explore
Explanation
Slowplay is the Tell Cycle’s thesis statement delivered as a technical problem.
Every previous arc has used surveillance as a backdrop; here surveillance becomes the plot. FaceTrace as the instrument that threatens to collapse the distinction between performance and self. The writing whisper technique is the audio drama equivalent of that threat made formal: a layer of communication running underneath the performed layer, visible to the listener but invisible to the system watching the characters.
June and Elle are doing in the monitor room exactly what the show is doing to its audience.
Ava’s confession comparison in the Deal scene is the arc’s most direct articulation of what FaceTrace actually is. Tessa’s response, acknowledging the surface resemblance and dismissing it as coincidence, is the most honest thing anyone at Vale Four says in the Tell Cycle. It’s a surface resemblance; the system underneath is considerably older.
Human Made Art
The poster image for this arc is from Sunrise Forever, under the Pixabay license. Layer art overlays are used to vary each iteration of the image. You can find the original here.
Consent Declaration
Deep Dream State is a desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. It explores psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, and complicity. All elements depicted are fictional and intentional. Slowplay contains adult themes, psychological manipulation, surveillance technology, and suggestive content. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.
ISNI 0000 0005 2877 6254
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