Crane's basement was a dingy place; there was no drywall cover on the dusty cinderblocks containing the space, and the floor was given minimal treatment. It was just a slab of smoothed concrete that rebelled with a long crack or two. The lights were far from decorative, just two bare, filmy bulbs hanging from the ceiling, controlled by ball-chains dangling next to them. Their incandescent glow barely reached the room's four dim corners. But it wasn't cobwebby niches that needed the illumination, anyway. All that was necessary was that the bulbs were placed towards the center of the basement, right where they were needed.
Not that his guests would be any less impressed by the living conditions. Their states left little allowance to retain much of their surroundings, much to Crane's pleasure.
All four of his new pets were set-up and already prepared, lying on surgical steel gurneys, positioned side by side in order of the diminutive blonde woman, the black man, the frazzled brunette, and the second man, younger than the first. Crane paced down the row, each of his specimens upside-down to his perspective. He noticed the blonde's head had gravitationally lolled sideways, her lips parted. Touching his long, spindly fingers to her cheeks, Crane gracefully righted her back into starting position.
Now they were perfect. Helplessly perfect.
Thunder rumbled outdoors. Lightning flashes couldn't be seen through the boarded window, but Crane could hear most of what went on beyond it.
He left the gurneys for a moment to revisit his lab table where he'd deposited their licenses and other forms of identification they carried. He cared little of their identities, who they were, or even their monikers. It was just a formality to record their names so to differentiate them in his notes besides using physical traits.
Amber. Levi. Deanna. Casey.
Randomized was the way to go, picking his guinea pigs out of a crowd.
Each were flat on their backs, arms neatly to their sides. None of these people were likely to know each other. The methods chosen to nurture them through life would be different, thus making them unique enough from the other to allow for more dispersed traits, likewise thus expanding the breadth of his results. For control's sake, the subjects were harnessed to their gurneys by two brown leather belt-straps, one cutting across the chest, the other maintaining the pelvic area. Crane expected quite a bit of thrashing at certain points, and it wouldn't do to constantly march over to heave their dead weight back into place.
Their bodies remained clothed, save for the removal of their shoes, the brunette's over-sized sweatshirt, and the hoodies belonging to the younger man and the blonde woman, leaving them in their t-shirts. It was necessary that their hands be entirely exposed in order for Crane to keep note on the frequency of muscle spasm. Facial twitches were the most telling, but extremities such as the fingers and toes had a beautiful harmony all their own. That minimalistic jolt of the bones beneath the skin gave a satisfying solidity where eyelids and lips could not.
Of course, movements based on sight alone were not the only thing he would rely on. Outdated but still reliable heart monitors were hooked up to them, the machines supported on wheel trays, one to each gurney's left side. Just some hospital surplus from one that didn't need them anymore.
Best of all, his special four were unable to wake. Paradoxically, that also made them ignorant of just how lucky they really were to be the firsts. Had it not been necessary to induce sleep during the experiment process, Crane would have almost thought it unfortunate that the strangers couldn't physically see it all unfold for themselves. Then again, entrapment within their mind sounded positively appealing to him. No escape was a good thing.
This was the monumental test, the maiden voyage of his new, most potent serum to date, and they were the chosen. The horrors they'd theoretically face were not stronger, they were stealthier—not watered down in the slightest. Smarter. It would be an even bigger psychological test than any strain Crane created before it. The dread of awaiting the next wave of one's corporealized nightmares could be just as agonizing as the actual onset. He could already imagine through their mind's eyes them begging with body-seizing anticipation to just let their fears manifest, just to stop the ache of knowing that they were doomed anyway.
12 AM Eternal's chemical structure made it difficult for the body to flush out naturally within an hour or two. Potentially, one singular dose contained the energy to accelerate the effects for many weeks, maybe even months. Crane didn't even really know its official shelf life just yet. Oxygen revitalized the toxin and extended its hold on the subject's red blood cells, which in turn kept the toxin circulating through the system.
Eternal was not just a fancy tack-on. Theoretically, the contagion really could last an eternity, given that the subject's body is preserved from the outside—which was why Crane also obtained IV drips to take care of the perenteral nutrition factor. It wouldn't do to have the four strangers starve to death during this expectedly long process, thus ending his experiment for good. He supervised the clear, hanging bags and the needle connections to their veins one more time to be certain they were in proper working order.
He took a reflective step back to admire all his hard work coming to fruition, raking back dangling strands of sandy brown from his eyes. His hair was getting to be a little longer than he liked, but time was of the essence, of course. He didn't even possess the time to realize how far the length had gotten away from him.
Three months it took to get to this point. Not to get ahead of himself, but gaining the clearance to finally see his hard work in action was nothing short of glorious. Just before this official launch, his initial tests on lab mice had concluded with an unfortunate side-effect of brain swelling, but Crane was sure he'd been able to alter the formula successfully. His special four had no need to worry.
From the outside, of course.
He surveyed his subjects hungrily. He felt an urge to brush away the mousy brunette's bangs as a mockery of the soothing caretaker role, but he put away that inkling so to put his hands to better use on checking her heart monitor. After all, Crane was their only caretaker right now, whether they liked it or not. They were at his mercy. He could choose, if he be so willing, to abandon the house at any moment, stranding each of them to their induced comas, leaving them perpetually stuck in a cycle of neverending fear for as long as their bodies could withstand.
Their blank, sleeping faces were serene for the moment, but not entirely strain-free. Minor tension was tightening each of their eyelids, indicated by the very fine lines cracking the delicate skin there, implying a non-peaceful sleep.
Crane tried to subdue the thrilling skip in his normally monotone heart. 12 AM Eternal's first phase was active. He had doled out their first doses intravenously ten minutes earlier, and clearly it didn't take long for the tell-tale signs to start revealing themselves. Panic onset had begun.
Crane's underused facial muscles stretched with a small, rigid, but pleased smile, only as wide as he would allow himself. Time was of the essence. He had to get to his desk and record these initial results immediately, he needed to study them, there was no time for self-congratulation.
The large machine's monitors were primitive, like early radar. Black served as the screen's backdrop color, while the images showed themselves in an electronic green. Crane couldn't see their hallucinations play out like a T.V. program, but judging by their vital signs feeding into the machine, shaping the images to display high stress, or the activation of certain recesses in the brain which controlled specific functions, he'd be able to fill in the blanks where visuals could not.
The machine's history was a short-lived one. Its purpose was to assist in the visual animation of dreams through a monitor. It never got past its bulky prototype stage. The majority of the funding went into a sleeker design, and then all news went dark afterward. Funding dried up, and the prototype was moved into storage. Crane found little wrong with putting it to good use. A couple streets toughs on his payroll moved it, piece by piece, from the dusty storage basement of a dying, dwindling hospital, and brought it to an only slightly less dusty home. It was even given a name back then: the doltishly uncreative Dream Machine, so named for the kitschy rhyme, Crane was sure.
Fixed on a flexible stem, the device came with an attached microphone, currently sitting in its cradle at the side of the cabinet, close to the control panel for easy access. Its intention was to be used to test what amount of suggestibility an outside voice would have on the subject's dream and whether it was possible to manipulate them from the outside. The microphone user's voice would transmit to the subject via earsets. Subjects tended to shift multiple times in their sleep, as was typical, so the earsets had to be designed to stay put. They wrapped behind the ear shell to hold the foam speaker in place over the ear canal.
If it weren't for their civilian clothing, the four strangers looked as though they were merely being prepped for surgery. Cords and tubes spilled from their wrists like exposed wiring, as if they were cyborgs in need of rerouting. In a sense, they were about to be rerouted—by way of the brain.
Even when no one was watching, Crane sought more than anything to retain some semblance of professionalism whilst enacting his experiments, but that tight smile reappeared as he looked down on them all. He was almost gleeful at the unlikelihood of any of them being the same again. How he lamented not possessing the ability or the equipment to see through their eyes. Technology had yet to make such a breakthrough, but the Machine was the closest he would get.
Thunder boomed relentlessly beyond the basement's border, so hard that Crane felt the rumble in the cement floor. It vibrated up the bones in his feet and crawled through his ankles. He glanced above his spectacle lenses, irked at the disruptive weather.
Then there was nothing but stark black.
Before Crane could react or even inhale, the lights suddenly returned, blazing brighter for a split second due to the kick-back, then whirred down to their natural output.
The back-up generator worked to perfection. His quick scan of the monitors showed uninterrupted feeds.