Tag: subterranean world

A silhouetted female figure drifts suspended and weightless inside a luminous amber and orange eclipse ring, arms outstretched, long hair trailing, positioned at the center of a dark cosmic background rendered in deep blue, violet, and red nebula tones. The ring glows with the intensity of a solar corona, suggesting both ritual containment and the threshold between states. Text above reads Sitri Center E8 in spaced teal capital letters. Text below reads Artifact in large teal serif capitals. The overall composition evokes surrender, suspension, and the aesthetics of desire horror: a figure caught between descent and flight, neither falling nor free, inside a circle that has no exit visible from this angle.
Artifact | Sitri Center: Collective Dreaming Cycle

Artifact | Sitri Center: Collective Dreaming Cycle

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The Naditu Empire never ended.

Meg and Tessa are still inside the Institute and still losing ground. The restriction protocols are working. The pulse patterns are working. The wheel is on the schedule and they both know what that means. Their only remaining move is Oona Reyes: a prisoner with a court-ordered stay, a colorful file, and the rare ability to anchor multiple minds into a single shared dream. Oona has already dreamed the corridors they’ve been tracing. She knows where Ur is. She’ll take them there. Her conditions are non-negotiable and extremely reasonable.

Cast & Crew

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Principal Cast

Explanation

The Sitri Center stops being a research facility with ancient architecture underneath it and becomes the ancient architecture.

The TempleBridge documentation in the observation chamber is doing more than establishing Oona’s credentials. It’s establishing the pattern the Institute has always been running. Oona didn’t invent this at the compound. She inherited it.  They were all drawing from the same source.

The Ereshkigal sequence is the center. The nin-dur device, two subjects locked face-to-face on a wheel that tightens with each spin, is presented as ancient engineering with a precision that makes it more unsettling than any modern apparatus could be.

Oona she operates differently from every other subject in the facility. She is not confused. She is not being processed. She has already dreamed the map, she knows where Ur is, and her conditions are gummy clusters, Rivals support, and a decent wardrobe. That lightness is not a character flaw. It is the episode’s argument that the most dangerous person in the Institute is the one who went through the system before and came out the other side still finding it interesting.

Oona is not escaping. She’s going deeper. She just wants company.

Full Plot Synopsis (Caution: Spoilers)

Z opens with a direct address, distinguishing between his role as author of the series and his role as Z inside the Institute, before inviting the listener all the way under. Iris Vale follows with the Better Self Bridge Program advertisement, promising a private circle where heartbeats sync by design and a single cue unlocks a release the listener never knew they needed. The ad is not metaphor. It is a preview.

In the observation chamber, Meg and Tessa debrief the file on Oona Reyes: former pole dancer, fitness influencer, TikTok breakout, wellness guru, and most recently the subject of extensive legal documentation following the TempleBridge retreats she ran. The retreats lasted weeks. Mindsync headbands, embedded treatsticks, and ritual realignment produced  dream linking: a unified experience in which eight participants entered identical dream states.

In the service corridors, Meg and Tessa speak freely. The restriction protocols are in effect. The pulse patterns and the lotus and the wheel are on the schedule.  Their remaining move is the door they could not open at the end of Descendent, and to get through it they need someone who can build a hiding place inside a shared dream. They both know who that is.

In the dream chamber, Oona receives them with the ease of someone who has already seen this conversation coming. She has dreamed the corridors they have been tracing. She knows the path past the mirrored rooms, Sippar, the threshold chambers, and the Freudian nightmare parlor, right down to Ur. She’s been there.

When Meg and Tessa ask for her help, she agrees immediately, on the grounds that she is extremely bored. Her conditions: nerd gummy clusters on demand, reliable Rivals support, and a decent wardrobe.

Inside the shared dream, Oona delivers on her promise. The space is Ereshkigal: the first wheels, cuneiform on the walls that Meg can read because she coded her own Sumerian Duolingo as a special interest. Nyra greets them with the precision of someone who’s been running this operation for longer than the Institute has existed. She demonstrates the nin-dur device. Oona asks if there’s another available. Nyra tells her that a foreigner wishing to share with a priestess must first demonstrate knowledge of the rites. Oona indicates she knows all the rites.  The episode ends at the bell, with Nyra calling everyone to recite, and the full group assembled at the threshold of what comes next.

Listen & Explore

Human Made Art

Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter on Pixabay, under the Pixabay license. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.

Content Warnings

Shared dreaming, ritual coercion, institutional surveillance, cult dynamics, Sumerian mythology, desire horror, power dynamics, haptic technology, submissive themes, loss of bodily autonomy, ancient ritual geography.

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. The elements depicted are fictional and intentional. Artifact contains shared dreaming,, institutional surveillance, Sumerian mythology, and desire horror themes. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Producer ISNI

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Deep dream state arc 3 sitri center e6 descendent
Descendent | Sitri Center: Liminal Spaces Cycle

Descendent | Sitri Center: Liminal Spaces Cycle

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Here be dream dragons.

After Cusp mapped the threshold, Descendent crosses it. Meg and Tessa follow Lyra’s dream coordinates into the Sitri Institute’s buried architecture, tracing corridors that run older than the building above them.

The stations are real. The map is real. And somewhere at the end of it, behind a soundproofed door with a keypad neither of them can crack, something is running that neither of them can explain.

Cast & Crew

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns
Directed by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Principal Cast

Explanation

Descendent is the episode where the Sitri Center stops being a research facility with a strange secret and becomes something that predates the research entirely. The Mesopotamian station sequence in the dream establishes this with precision: Sippar, Kutha, Eanna, Ereshkigal, and Ur are not metaphors for institutional control. They are the original architecture of it, the first recorded systems for organizing bodies, labor, desire, and compliance into something measurable and reproducible. The naditu were temple workers in ancient Sumer. The Sitri Center has not invented anything.  It has found the blueprint and built on top of it.

Tessa does not pitch the discovery as liberation or justice. She pitches it as a pre-IPO scandal, the kind of documented depravity that collapses investor confidence and triggers control reversion. Meg, the engineer, follows the logic before she follows the feeling. They’re complicit in what they find: they have dreamed these stations themselves, they feel the pull of each one as they walk the corridors, and they resist with effort rather than ease. The map they are following is also a map of their own desire, and they know it.

The soundproofed room at the end of the corridor is the final movement. Something is running behind that door. It leaks through the seal. Both researchers feel it standing close. They recognize the voice on the other side without naming it.   It establishes that Ur is real, that it is operational, and that the Institute has been running it the whole time underneath everything else.

Full Summary (with spoilers)

Z opens with a recap of the Cusp revelation: the Sitri Institute’s maintenance infrastructure encodes the same ancient Mesopotamian geography that Lyra Crosswell has been dreaming. Sippar, Kutha, Eanna, Ereshkigal, Ur. The stations are real. Iris Vale follows with the Better Self advertisement, promising to smooth the spaces between tasks and restore focus on demand.

The episode picks up in the unmonitored service corridors where Cusp ended, with Meg and Tessa processing what they’ve just found. Tessa pushes toward the implications: if the architecture is real and the map is real, then whatever is happening inside the Institute is documentable. In a heavily capitalized pre-IPO tech venture, documentation of this kind is leverage. Meg is slower to commit, but she has already dreamed it. When Tessa asks which station, Meg describes the ziggurat at Ereshkigal, the carvings, the wheel, and the naditu strapped to it together. She tells Tessa it was her in the dream. Their conversation is interrupted by June and Elle, who find them in the corridor and mock their cover story. Tessa and Meg retreat.

Inside Lyra’s dream, the stations present themselves not as mythology but as roles with physical memory. Cael, Nyra, and Hespa narrate each one: Sippar as the place of the first plow and the yoke, Kutha as the human terrarium, Eanna as the scribe hall where every training was marked, Ereshkigal as the wheel. Each station is a role Lyra has played before, in other echoes, other lives. When Lyra asks about Ur, the train cuts her off before she can finish the question. The Please Space midroll follows, selling ambient soundscapes for threshold moments: waiting in line, stepping off a train, closing a laptop. Real life happens in the spaces between. Back in the dream chamber, Meg and Tessa have five minutes before the dream fades. They work through the stations methodically, drawing Lyra’s memories out one node at a time. Eanna: wet stone, pulsing columns, instruction carved into the walls. Sippar: the yoke, the crawl, the presentation. Ereshkigal: the cord, the oath, the wheel. When Lyra asks for release by the Sumerian term ĝidru, Tessa tells her not yet. Kutha: kept under glass, treats through the surface, tapping. When Lyra asks for help at the end, Tessa tells her she has earned it. Meg tells her she is not stuck. She just needs yes.

Meg and Tessa enter the service corridors with the map from Lyra’s dream and follow it station by station. Sippar is recognizable and pulls at both of them. The wheels of Ereshkigal stop them both in their tracks. They resist and keep moving. At the end of the corridor they find a soundproofed room they cannot enter: the keypad sequence is unknown, and Lyra dreamed the numbers but was never asked. They hear something through the seal. It sounds spacy. Standing close to the door, they both feel it. Tessa notes they can go around, through an adjacent room. Meg recognizes the voice coming through the wall. They both do. That recognition is all the scandal they need. The episode closes with the map in hand, the door still locked, and something on the other side that knows the shape of everyone inside the Institute.

Listen & Explore

Human Made Art – free range!

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

Additional artwork is provided by Echo Doll.

Nyra deep dream state character ar
Nyra 

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

Consent Declaration

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download