Seven Wildflowers Under Glass

Maya pressed her palm against the laboratory's reinforced window, watching the protesters below wave their signs like prayer flags in the summer wind. MY DAUGHTER THINKS SHE'S MARRIED TO A DEAD MAN, one placard read. REALITY IS NOT OPTIONAL, declared another.

"Seventeen years," she whispered to the glass. Seventeen years since she'd first sketched the neural interface designs on napkins in her grandmother's kitchen, three days before the old woman died still believing Maya was wasting her gifts on "parlor tricks."

Dr. Chen cleared his throat behind her. "The board meeting starts in five minutes."

Maya turned from the window. Her reflection in the darkened monitor screens showed a woman who'd aged a decade in the past two years—ever since the prototype had started working. Ever since the dreams had become real.

"They're going to pull funding," she said. It wasn't a question.

"The investors are nervous. Yesterday's incident with Subject 47—"

"Sarah. Her name is Sarah." Maya's voice carried the weight of every sleepless night spent refining the calibrations. "And she's fine. The temporal displacement was minimal."

"She dreamed she was married to someone who died three years ago, Maya. She woke up believing it had actually happened. For six hours, she insisted they'd had children together." Chen's voice dropped. "The Beijing facility reported similar incidents last week."

The laboratory hummed around them, servers processing terabytes of dream data, mapping the neurochemical pathways that transformed sleeping thoughts into shared experiences. On the central workstation, seven small vials contained flower essences—digitally encoded memories of midsummer nights when the boundary between possible and impossible grew thin.

Maya had discovered the connection by accident. A childhood memory of her grandmother's stories about seven wildflowers placed under a pillow, combined with her doctoral research in consciousness transfer, had sparked the breakthrough that changed everything. Dreams weren't just random neural firing. They were doorways.

"Ma'am?" Dr. Chen's voice seemed to come from underwater. "The board?"

She followed him down the corridor lined with patents and awards, past the rooms where volunteers lay sleeping, their dreams being recorded, analyzed, sometimes shared. The technology that was supposed to revolutionize therapy, education, even entertainment. The technology that was making people question the nature of reality itself.

The boardroom's polished table reflected the faces of twelve investors, their expressions ranging from skeptical to hostile. Maya had seen those same faces two years ago, bright with possibility and dollar signs. Now they looked like people who'd awakened from a beautiful dream to find their bank accounts lighter and their ethics lawyers speed-dialing.

"Dr. Patel," the chairman began, his wedding ring catching the light as he drummed his fingers. Maya knew his wife had early-onset Alzheimer's. She also knew he'd never admit publicly what drew him to dream-sharing technology. "We've reviewed the quarterly reports. The safety incidents are mounting."

"Every revolutionary technology has growing pains—"

"Growing pains?" Margaret Wessler, the pharmaceutical VP, leaned forward. "People are losing track of what's real. We have subjects who think they've lived entire lives that never happened. Others who can't sleep without the device because regular dreams feel empty by comparison."

Maya's hands found the small pendant at her throat—a pressed flower her grandmother had given her, though she'd never told anyone what happened in the dreams where she still wore it. "The applications are limitless. Trauma therapy where patients can safely revisit and reframe painful memories. Educational simulations that feel completely real. Artists collaborating in shared dream spaces—"

"Pipe dreams," interrupted the chairman. "The FDA is circling. Congress is asking questions. Our liability insurance has tripled."

The room fell silent except for the whisper of air conditioning and the distant sound of protesters chanting outside. Maya closed her eyes and saw her grandmother's face, weathered hands placing seven wildflowers under a young girl's pillow. Some dreams are meant to be shared, little bird. Some dreams are too important to keep to yourself.

"What if I told you," Maya said slowly, "that we're one calibration away from controlled precognitive dreaming? That three of our test subjects have accurately described tomorrow's weather patterns? That Beijing is already weaponizing their version?"

The silence deepened. Margaret's pen stopped moving across her notepad.

"What if I told you that the military applications alone could be worth billions? That foreign governments are already trying to replicate our work? That shutting down this project would be like the Chinese deciding gunpowder was too dangerous to develop?"

Dr. Chen shifted uncomfortably beside her. They both knew the precognitive results were promising but inconclusive. Weather patterns could be coincidence. But the fear in the investors' eyes was real, and fear had always been more profitable than truth.

"How long?" the chairman asked.

"Six months. Maybe less."

Maya watched their faces transform, greed wrestling with caution. In the distance, a church bell tolled the noon hour, and she remembered another summer day when everything had seemed possible.

She'd been seven years old, lying in her grandmother's garden while seven wildflowers pressed against her pillow. In her dream that night, she'd seen herself as a grown woman, standing in a room full of important people, holding the key to something magnificent and terrible. In the dream, her grandmother had been there too, though she'd refused to speak.

Because some truths are too bright to look at directly, little bird. Sometimes we need shadows to see the light.

"Six months," the chairman repeated. "But no more incidents. No more subjects thinking they've lived other lives. And I want daily reports on the precognitive research."

"Of course."

The meeting dissolved into technical discussions and liability frameworks, but Maya's attention drifted to the window. The protesters had multiplied, their signs now joined by news vans and police barriers. She could see reporters interviewing a woman who clutched a photograph—probably the mother from the placard. The woman's mouth moved soundlessly behind the glass, but Maya could read the grief in her posture.

Later, as the executives filed out, Dr. Chen lingered. "Maya, the precognitive data—"

"I know."

"We can't promise them something that doesn't exist."

She turned to face him. "Can't we? How many of humanity's greatest achievements started as impossible promises? The moon landing. The internet. The idea that people could share dreams."

"This is different. You're talking about predicting the future."

"No." Maya walked to the window, watching the crowd below. "I'm talking about creating it."

That evening, she stood alone in the laboratory, surrounded by the gentle hum of sleeping minds connected to her machines. On her desk lay seven small vials, each containing the molecular signature of a different wildflower—digitally preserved memories of summers when magic felt possible and grandmothers still answered when you called their names.

Subject 47—Sarah—had volunteered to return despite yesterday's incident. She lay in Room Three, electrodes mapping her brain activity as she dreamed of reunions that could never happen. In Room Seven, Marcus was exploring a shared dreamscape with his daughter, who lived three thousand miles away. Room Twelve hosted Dr. Annika Svensson, the Swedish researcher who'd first told Maya about midsummer traditions, now helping to bridge the gap between ancient folklore and quantum consciousness.

Maya activated her personal interface, feeling the familiar tingle as the neural bridge connected her to the collective unconscious of the laboratory. The addiction specialists would call this dangerous—three hours of dream-time every night for six months. But they didn't understand that some conversations were worth the risk.

The old woman was there, tending flowers that bloomed in impossible colors. "You're worried about them," she said without looking up.

"They don't understand what we're building. They see the risks but not the possibilities."

"And what are we building, little bird?"

Maya knelt beside her grandmother among the dream-flowers. "A world where loneliness is optional. Where healing doesn't have to happen in isolation. Where the boundaries between minds become as permeable as the boundaries between sleeping and waking."

"And the price?"

"People might forget where dreams end and reality begins."

Her grandmother's laugh was like wind through summer grass. "Child, that boundary was always an illusion. We're just making it official."

In the distance, Maya could hear the chanting of protesters, feel the weight of investors' expectations, see the faces of colleagues who trusted her to lead them into an uncertain future. The dream-garden shimmered around her, beautiful and fragile as spun glass.

"They'll shut us down if the precognitive experiments don't work," she said.

"Then make them work."

"I can't manufacture miracles, Grandmother."

The old woman finally looked up, her eyes bright with mischief. "Who said anything about manufacturing? You've been thinking too small, Maya. Dreams don't predict the future—they create it. Every great change in human history started as someone's impossible dream."

Maya felt the neural interface fluctuating, reality bleeding through the edges of the shared space. "But what if it all falls apart? What if they're right and we're just chasing fantasies?"

Her grandmother stood, brushing earth from her hands. Around them, the garden began to fade, replaced by the sterile walls of the laboratory. "Then it was all just a dream, little bird. But what a beautiful dream it was."

Maya opened her eyes to find Dr. Chen shaking her shoulder gently. "You've been under for six hours. The board chairman called—he wants to see preliminary precognitive data by Friday."

She sat up slowly, the dream-garden still vivid in her memory. Outside, dawn was breaking over the protest camp, painting the sky in shades of possibility. In the distance, a church bell tolled, and Maya smiled.

"Cancel my appointments," she said. "We're going to need more flowers."

Dr. Chen looked confused. "Flowers?"

"Seven varieties. And Dr. Chen?" She stood, feeling the weight of seventeen years of impossible dreams settling into focus. "Start preparing the subjects for long-term immersion. We're not trying to predict the future anymore."

"Then what are we doing?"

Maya walked to the window and pressed her palm against the glass. Below, protesters were waking up in their tents, preparing for another day of demanding that dreams conform to reality. Beyond them, the city stretched toward the horizon, millions of minds carrying their own impossible dreams.

"We're going to dream a better world into existence," she said. "And when we're done, they'll never be able to call it 'just a dream' again."

The laboratory hummed around them, servers processing the night's accumulated dreams. On Maya's desk, seven empty vials waited to be filled with possibilities. Outside, the protesters began their morning chant, but Maya was no longer listening to their words of limitation.

Instead, she heard her grandmother's voice carried on the summer wind: Some dreams are too important to keep to yourself, little bird. Some dreams are meant to change the world.

It was all just a dream—until it wasn't.

Maya stepped out into the morning sunshine, feeling the warmth on her face as she walked toward the garden center across the street. She had flowers to collect and futures to plant. Behind her, the laboratory windows reflected the growing light, and inside, sleeping minds continued to weave tomorrow's reality from the threads of today's impossible dreams.

The protesters watched her go, their signs suddenly feeling heavier in their hands. Because something in Maya's smile suggested that the boundary between dreaming and waking was about to shift forever, and the phrase "it was all just a dream" was about to lose its power to diminish the magnificent possibilities that bloomed in the garden of human consciousness.

In seven months, the headlines would read differently. The protesters would become pilgrims. And children around the world would fall asleep with flowers under their pillows, knowing that their dreams might just save us all.

But for now, it was all just a dream—the most important dream humanity had ever dared to share.