Written by Laura V.C
Now, this is based upon a true story, but all the names have been changed and there have been elaborations. Just so you know, there really was a sleep chamber.:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“The project’s going well, Professor, but I’m thinking of something a little more risky. What do you think?”
Mike loved the enthusiasm of his top psychology student, Krystal Wiser. She had begun this project earlier that week, and by the results they were receiving, she could be fast approaching a winning paper.
The subject was sleep, and how losing it might affect the lives of humans, but Mike liked to keep it safe and tame so as not to hurt the students they tested. Krystal was excited to present her idea to him and he was just as excited to hear it.
“R.E.M sleep,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “I’ve discovered how sleep can effect how the brain functions, but who hasn’t stayed up for days on end and been a little woozy or 2 stomach sick? The body breaks down, and the brain can’t do its work, right?”
Mike nodded. “Right.” He really wanted to know where all this was going.
Krystal smiled. “Okay, I’d show you a chart, but I left it at home. How would losing R.E.M sleep effect the brain state? I believe more damage could be done by losing this, then by sleep alone.”
Mike sat down very slowly. There was a look in Krystal’s eyes that he had never seen before, and the thought of going through with her idea seemed to be something he’d regret if he said yes so soon.
“Professor Carrier, I know what I’m doing. You’ve trusted me this far, haven’t you? When have I ever steered you wrong?” She said in a voice of determination. “I know someone who will go through with it. He knows it’s risky, but he also knows that I wouldn’t hurt him.”
Mike stared at her, amazed by what she was proposing. She was going to experiment on her boyfriend, Chris. He was also an excellent Psychology major and they made quite a team whenever they worked on an experiment together, but using Chris to experiment on did not sound like the greatest of ideas. “I don’t know, Krystal, maybe you should just use what you have for your paper. I guarantee an A.”
Krystal spun on him, her green eyes blazing. “That’s not the point, Professor, this is all about the project, the knowledge of the human brain and what can be done to it. Wouldn’t you feel better with that knowledge then without it?”
Mike sat back with the urge to massage his forehead, but he continued to look at Krystal, instead and in a very resigned voice, he gave in to her proposition. “Look, we’ll test it 3 out.
Don’t let it go longer then three days. You’ll get what you need and end it, alright? Do not go longer then three days,” he emphasized.
A smile split across Krystal’s face. “Yes, Professor. Thank you, Professor,” she sighed, and turned to leave. Mike stood up.
“When?” Was all he could ask.
She turned part way, revealing a very professional stature. “Tomorrow afternoon, at 1.”
“That’s when this class starts, Krystal,” he said firmly.
She nodded. “I know, professor.”
With that, she had left the classroom, and Mike had to massage his forehead more then ever before.
Day one of the experiment came quick and Mike cancelled his one o’clock class the next day. He had never done that before, and he knew he’d be questioned before too long. He headed through the school’s tunnels straight into the psychology building where his office was located. He didn’t like the look of the building with it’s narrow hallway, and rusty orange carpet that went on for six floors.
He climbed the steps to the sixth floor, not wanting to take the elevator since he needed time to think. Plus, he didn’t trust the elevators in this building anyway. He came to the hall of the sixth floor and found himself outside a locked door. He knocked gently. The door opened and Krystal stood there, looking determinedly ready to begin.
“How is Chris?” He asked without even a hello to his best student. She was wild with ideas, and although she was always so full of good intentions, he knew that determination was not always a good thing in the field of psychology.
“Shush, Professor, he’s asleep.”
“You started…”
He didn’t even get to finish since Krystal was already turning to walk straight to the side of a long flat platform that stood a few feet off the shiny grey floor. Across it lay Chris Fields, looking very relaxed on his back. Krystal picked up a clipboard from the small table near the back of the room and began documenting the brain waves that came up on the monitor just next to Chris’s head.
“Krystal, you weren’t supposed to start without me,” he said in a lecturing tone of voice.
Krystal merely turned to him, clutching the clipboard and looking very serious. “He’s very close to entering REM sleep. I’ve been watching his eye movement. Now, come close and watch this,” she urged. Mike stepped to her side on the verge of massaging his temples to ease his worry. Krystal bent over Chris’s face, examining his eyes and glancing over to the monitor. “Alright, he’s just entered REM sleep.” Mike watched her, and couldn’t help, but be fascinated by all this. Krystal suddenly gripped Chris’s shoulders and gave him a hard shake. The brain waves rose high on the monitor and Chris awoke with a start, staring at Krystal.
“How are you feeling, Chris?” She asked him.
His eyes went to Mike and he tried to hide his obvious concern from the Fourth year Psychology major. “I feel tired,” came Chris’s groggy tone.
“Good, good,” murmured Krystal, and scribbled this bit of information onto her clipboard. “Alright, we’ll try it one more time.”
Chris lay down, clearing his throat. “I really feel tired,” he muttered.
Mike shook his head as Krystal, Chris and him left the sleep chamber. Chris kept complaining that he was feeling very tired and needed to get a good night’s rest, but Krystal interrupted him.
“Chris, that’s the experiment. For three days you have to go without real REM sleep.”
“But I have to get some sleep, honey or I’ll be dead on my feet,” he argued, swaying a little as they all made their way through the school tunnels.
Krystal stopped to grip his shoulders, and Mike was sure it wasn’t because Chris had suddenly looked as though he might fall over. Her eyes remained intense on his face. “You can’t back out on me now. I’m counting on you. It’s only three days.”
“Lets cut it down to two,” Mike spoke, and Krystal turned on him next.
“I’m graduating this year, Professor, and I wanted to do something really big for my last year. Do you know how hard it is to find a job without recognition, especially in this field? I do not want to go through all this for nothing!”
Mike gazed at her, being reminded of his days, trying to find himself a position that required his expertise in psychology. It had taken him years to find a real paying job and he knew from the first year when he had met Krystal that she would be just like him. She would be someone important, able to show the world things even the best experts couldn’t show. He felt his heart give way to this. “All I ask is to be careful while doing this. Don’t overdo it and don’t go longer then three days.”
The heart isn’t always right is what he fast realized as the days passed and he hadn’t seen Krystal in any one of her classes, nor her boyfriend, Chris. He taught with a restricted voice, and his mind in the sleep chamber with his two top students. When the class had finally ended and questions had been answered, he left the classroom to take long, deep breaths. Worry was overpowering his senses, and he wasn’t one to believe in the sixth sense, but if he happened to have one, it had just kicked in. Something was wrong. A student he recognized as one his students had come racing down the hall, gasping and looking terrified.
“Professor, Krystal sent me. It’s Chris- he won’t stop screaming,” she breathed.
He didn’t thank her, although he should have, but he couldn’t think properly. He couldn’t put the image out of his mind of Chris, screaming on the flat, metal platform inside the sleep chamber. He didn’t realize it, but he was being followed through the tunnels as he ran, climbing the steps three at a time and only stopping when he had burst through the door into the sleep chamber. He was faced with a teary Krystal who looked suddenly more helpless then a child. She shook her head.
“I can’t- I can’t wake him up,” she choked.
Upon the platform was the writhing, screaming form of Chris Fields. At times he laughed like a maniac and at others he screamed as though his brain had gone out of control and didn’t know what to do next.
“Chris,” Mike called feebly, and gripped the shoulders of the boy, who wouldn’t stop thrashing. “CHRIS!”
Krystal screamed also in a fruitless attempt to wake him up, but nothing was working and Mike had to grab her before she smashed the monitor. He had a hold of her arms, forcing her eyes to his while her entire body shook. “This is my fault. I don’t know what to do, Mike…”
Krystal had never called him by his first name before. She was always on business terms with him and the only reason he could understand for her to call him by something other then formal was if this was personal. Her teary green eyes stared at him through wild black hair as she spoke. “This is the fourth day…”
Mike felt suddenly sick to his stomach. “I told you-”
“I had so much information and I thought with just one more day I should be able to have all I need for the best project ever, but I didn’t think- not this- I never meant this, you have to believe that…”
He stared over at Chris, still writhing and thrashing on the table and embraced his student while tears came to his own eyes. “In a way this is my fault too,” he admitted.
A crowd of students gathered just inside the doorway of the sleep chamber and Mike couldn’t remember which one he had asked to call an ambulance, but he soon heard the sound of sirens, blaring outside, and he watched as Chris was carried onto a stretcher and rolled out of the chamber, still thrashing, still screaming, and still asleep. He closed his eyes briefly and didn’t even watch as Krystal left to ride with Chris in the ambulance.
Mike never left the chamber, instead he picked up the clipboard from the table and read the contents. Krystal had written her observations for three days and Mike flipped the pages to the fourth one, documenting the fourth day which never should’ve happened. “Today is the fourth day,” he read. “Chris is asleep, soon to be in REM sleep. Brain waves are rising on monitor. Chris is in REM sleep. Chris won’t wake up. Chris won’t wake up. Chris won’t wake up.” Mike steadied his breathing as the image came fast to his brain of Krystal, frantically trying to awaken her boyfriend. “Chris is screaming. Something’s gone wrong. I don’t know why he’s screaming.” The scribbling was growing shakier and shakier until there was no documentation left. Krystal must’ve dropped the clipboard. Mike dropped the clipboard and fell back, holding his mouth. It occurred to him that Krystal had discovered something that would enter a textbook one day. No one can function normally without REM sleep.
There was a knock at the door, and Mike spun around to face a tall, thin faced man with a pencil thin moustache. Mike knew at once that this was the headmaster, Travis Crane. His eyes were a watery blue as he looked around the room and handed Mike a small, gold key and a thick metal chain.
“Mike Carrier, I do not wish to let you go. You are a brilliant Psychology professor and many of the students would be heartbroken, but I will tell you this. No one must know what happened here. This would not look good for the school or for you, do you understand?”
“Chris…”
“He will not recover, and no more talk of that. What I want you to do for me, Professor, is lock this room up, put a chain on it and be certain that this floor is never occupied. This will be the last that’s known about this- sleep chamber and the events inside. When you leave this floor, you will never speak of it again. Do you understand Professor?”
Mike stared into those two watery blue eyes and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Now, go on and lock it up.”
Mike entered the room to grab Krystal’s clipboard off the floor when Travis’s low, solemn voice stopped him. “Leave it. The less people know, the better.”
Mike lifted and exited the room, locking it and wrapping the chain around it’s handle. He handed the keys to Travis, who shook his head as though they were contaminated. “You will keep those, professor. Keep them somewhere away from here.”
With that, Travis left down the long hallway and turned the corner to head for the elevator. Mike stared at the keys, gleaming in his hand, and stared at the door. With a quick glance down the hall, he unlocked the chain and the door to enter the darkened chamber. He swiped the clipboard and held it to his chest. He would keep the secret, even if it ate at him for the rest of his life. He stared at the clipboard and decided then that Krystal’s work, no matter how dangerous it had been, needed to be acknowledged. It was wrong, he thought, but nobody’s perfect, and neither is science. He left the chamber for the last time and locked it, slipping the two keys into his breast pocket. He planned on visiting Chris and Krystal at the hospital, and with the keys and the secret in place, he left the sixth floor.
The End
