Tag: dream research audio fiction

Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns cover art, Deep Dream State Arc 3 Episode 4 Gazes Back
Arc 3: Sitri Center – Episode 4: Gazes Back

Arc 3: Sitri Center – Episode 4: Gazes Back

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Plot Outline

Gazes Back transforms Elle’s puppet dream into systematic training, where mantras become muscle memory under the guidance of dream figures and an eager Tessa. The lucid dreaming techniques MILD and VILD shift from consciousness tools to compliance protocols, stitching phrases like “service is our purpose” into both waking and sleeping states. When Dr. Lowell declares the program failing, she demands Meg enter the chamber as a subject to provide a contrasting profile. Inside the dream, Meg encounters the same figures who have been shaping Elle, but this time, they tell her she’s the template, not the experiment. While Meg lies paralyzed, Z and Tessa enter her chamber and use her immobility as permission. Back in the observation room, June weaponizes Meg’s journals (journals that Tessa has been quietly editing to show alignment rather than resistance). Meg’s demotion is framed as realignment, her protests dismissed as she’s offered a path forward that strips her authority while keeping her inside the protocol. The episode concludes with Meg’s forced confession letter, admitting to tampering with logs, building simulations, and wanting to stay despite (or because of) having lost all control. The Sitri Institute doesn’t just measure desire. It manufactures it, then makes you write the letter proving you asked for it all along.

Cast

Dive Deeper (More Information)

Artwork (Human, Not AI Generated)

The Deep Dream State aims to use human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.

Content Warnings

Sleep paralysis, dream manipulation, institutional coercion, power abuse, non-consensual recording and observation, psychological manipulation, forced confession, demotion as punishment, loss of bodily autonomy, submissive themes, voyeurism, edited documentation used as leverage

Full Plot Synopsis (Caution: Spoilers)

The episode opens in Elle’s dream as she performs a puppet routine for Cael, Nyra, and Hespa. The dream figures mock her enthusiasm while rewarding her compliance, and when Cael demands “two sluts,” Nyra summons Tessa, reimagined within the dream as “Teehee,” a gleefully submissive figure who teaches Elle the lucid dreaming techniques MILD and VILD. But these aren’t consciousness tools anymore; they’re compliance protocols. Tessa instructs Elle to repeat “Service is our purpose” as a mnemonic anchor and to visualize herself as puppet, pet, and subject. When Cael orders them into his chamber, both voices chant together, blurring dream logic with institutional language. The dream ends with both figures gasping “Never wake up.”

Elle awakens to find Tessa standing over her, having overridden the monitoring feed to prevent the research team from seeing Elle’s physical reenactment of the dream. Tessa admits she was impressed rather than concerned, revealing that she has undergone similar experiences herself. In their conversation, Tessa describes how her clothing, hair, and even her ringtone were gradually removed by Z under the justification that “waking cues” interfered with dream latency. She confesses that she now uses the phrase “I serve when I dream” as her MILD anchor and rehearses detailed submissive scenarios as VILD practice. When Elle asks what happens in Tessa’s visualizations, Tessa describes crawling to a mirror and watching herself transform into a doll while other figures appear beside her. Both women realize they’ve been seeing each other in their dreams, not as coincidence, but as design.

In the observation chamber, Dr. June Lowell declares the program a failure, noting that Elle’s escalation is nonlinear and that her dream journals now contain phrases like “I need to serve” written repeatedly for hours. When Meg attempts to deflect blame onto the subject, June asks pointedly who the “perfect subject” would be, and Tessa quietly suggests it should be someone who “understands all of it.” June proposes that Meg enter the chamber as a subject to provide a contrasting profile, framing it as research rather than punishment. Meg reluctantly agrees but insists on choosing her own phrase and anchor. Tessa offers to “lace her in,” a statement loaded with both technical and intimate implications that Meg acknowledges with resignation.

Inside Meg’s dream, Nyra and Hespa greet her as someone who “always comes back,” and Cael tells her she’s brought them with her, implying that the dream figures are projections of the researchers themselves. When Meg protests that she’s not a subject, Hespa corrects her: “You’re the template.” The dream shifts to reveal Z and Tessa entering Meg’s chamber in the waking world, believing her to be safely unconscious. While Meg lies paralyzed and aware, the two begin an intimate encounter, treating her presence as negligible. In the dream, Nyra and Hespa narrate the violation, telling Meg to touch herself as the waking-world encounter escalates. Tessa notices Meg’s physical response and hears her repeating a phrase: “Bitch in heat.”

Back in the observation chamber, June confronts Meg with her own journals, but these have been edited by Tessa, who describes her role as “organizing” and “cleaning up for clarity.” June reads aloud passages that suggest complete submission, and when Meg protests that the words have been twisted, Tessa cheerfully admits to “correcting the cadence” and “quoting” Meg’s own subconscious desires. Z frames this as validation of Meg’s scholarship, claiming that alignment is the most effective indicator of dream compliance. When Meg realizes she’s being demoted, June reframes it as “realignment,” explaining that Meg will still have a place at the Institute, just not a supervisory one. The position structure has already been updated, and Meg’s access codes have been changed. Tessa gleefully offers to help Meg write the required letter.

The episode concludes with Meg’s confession letter to the Sitri Institute’s adjudicating board. She admits to taking liberties with subjects, keeping unauthorized files, building simulations, annotating her own arousal markers, and tampering with logs to make Tessa appear unstable. She confesses that she stopped pretending her work was clinical “the night I came without needing headphones” and acknowledges that she tried to manipulate records to reclaim control she never truly possessed. Her letter ends not with a resignation but with a plea to remain inside the protocol in any capacity: unpaid, unnumbered, stripped of authority. The final line is simply “Please. Let me stay.” This conclusion demonstrates how Deep Dream State uses dystopian fiction to explore ethical kink practice. By depicting a world where consent is systematically violated and institutional power is weaponized, the narrative creates a clear contrast with real-world ethical frameworks. The viewer is invited to recognize the horror of these violations precisely because they understand what consent should look like. The dystopian framing doesn’t endorse these dynamics; it exposes their mechanisms, allowing audiences to engage critically with power exchange fantasies while maintaining awareness of the boundaries that protect autonomy in reality. Fiction becomes a space where we can examine dangerous desires safely, understanding them better by seeing them taken to their logical extremes in worlds we would never want to inhabit.

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Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns cover art – Arc 3 Ep 2 Adapt
Arc 3: Sitri Center – Episode 2: Adapt

Arc 3: Sitri Center – Episode 2: Adapt

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Plot Outline

Adapt picks up where Drill left off. The subjects of the Sitri Center are asked to bend, to change, to let themselves be reshaped. What begins as a calm suggestion becomes a pattern they cannot refuse — each dream folding into the next, each voice reinforcing the same instruction. Adaptation is survival, but it also becomes surrender.

Cael deep dream state character art
Cael – Deep Dream State Character Art

Cast

Artwork (Human, Not AI Generated)

Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

The Deep Dream State aims to use human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.

Content Warnings

Dream manipulation, enforced conformity, group hypnosis dynamics, submissive themes

Dive Deeper (More Information)

Full Plot Synoposis (Caution: Spoilers)

The story opens with Phoebe in a session with Dr. Meg Aerin at the Deep Dream State Sitri Institute, where she reports that her dreams are becoming increasingly vivid and overwhelming. Dr. Aerin explains that this intensity is expected when subjects follow strict sleep hygiene protocols that deny them physical release, causing the subconscious to seek alternative outlets. The conversation is interrupted when Dr. Zev Talcott summons Meg to the corridor, where their professional relationship quickly dissolves into a sexual encounter. Meg, competing with another researcher named Tessa for Zev’s attention, eagerly proves her superiority while warning that their affair must remain hidden from Dr. June Lowell.

Meanwhile, Phoebe’s dreams take her to a pornography store where she and a companion named Hespa contemplate stealing a double-headed dildo. They are caught by security officers Cael and Nyra, who take them to a backroom and demand a demonstration as punishment. What begins as humiliation transforms into compulsion as Phoebe finds herself unable to resist the physical sensations and the rhythmic commands from her captors. The dream blurs the line between punishment and pleasure, with Nyra declaring that Phoebe’s body will make the decisions her broken brain cannot.

In the observation chamber, the research team watches Phoebe’s responses with growing concern and conflict. Dr. Tessa Finn defends her experimental construct as needing more time to achieve breakthrough results, but colleagues Dr. June Lowell and Dr. Meg Aerin argue that the approach is degenerating rather than healing. Zev initially supports Tessa’s innovative methods, but June accuses him of bias due to his personal involvement with her. The team debates whether Phoebe’s increasingly explicit dreams represent therapeutic progress or dangerous reinforcement of harmful patterns.

Phoebe’s dream intensifies as Nyra, Cael, and Hespa inform her that she has passed a threshold and will now perform publicly in the dream room. They guide her hand to touch herself while repeating degrading phrases about becoming a puppet whose strings will be pulled by observers. The dream figures promise that she will be stripped of clothing and dignity, left wearing only sensors and restraints while researchers watch and record her responses. Phoebe repeats their words in fragmented speech, her resistance collapsing into desperate need.

Back in the observation chamber, the team listens to Phoebe’s vocalizations over the intercom as she begs to be used and displayed. June coldly declares that Tessa’s experiment has failed catastrophically. Rather than teaching Phoebe to escape her fears, the construct has taught her to eroticize her own humiliation, with each orgasm reinforcing the compulsive loop. Meg savors Tessa’s defeat while Zev turns cruel, mocking Tessa for not understanding that she was training Phoebe rather than saving her. June clinically notes that the subject is now fully compliant, admitting the approach is effective even if it represents complete ethical failure.

The story concludes with Dr. Tessa Finn’s written confession to the Sitri Institute’s adjudicating committee. She accepts full responsibility for her failure, acknowledging that she created a spiral rather than a ladder and that her own boundaries dissolved as she became a voyeur to Phoebe’s dreams. Tessa admits that she began using institute equipment to simulate the same response loops on herself, touching herself while watching the feeds and eventually camming at night. She confesses that she stopped wanting to lead the project and simply wanted to experience what Phoebe felt. Despite accepting that she deserves removal from any leadership position, Tessa begs to remain at the institute in any capacity, even as a junior assistant, because the center represents her dream.

 

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