REM Job

Eli awoke with a start. The sensor attached to his left pectoral tugged painfully at gray scrub as he jerked back into the conscious realm.

It was just a dream, Eli told Eli.

“Good morning, Mr. Trainer! Please stay as still as possible until we can remove the leads.” The voice was somehow, simultaneously, cloying and utterly perfunctory, practiced and patient, and, as a result, Eli absurdly, simultaneously, somehow felt the desire to please and to bitch-slap the man in the observation booth.

“Did you sleep well? Do you feel rested?”

Eli worked his jaws, his tongue. “Uhhh,” he grunted. “Yeah. Sure. Considering.”

A chuckle. “I know. Not a conducive environment for slumber, right? But you did very well, and we generated some really great data.”

“You caught me during my peak productive period.”

A staccato chuckle, chockfull of bullshit camaraderie. “Just lay back and relax — we’ll be in in a bit.”

“Maybe I’ll grab a nap.” The mic dropped raggedly, from the other end. Tough room, Eli reflected.

He’d been brought here against his will, and the resentment flared as Eli wrestled the inadequate blanket back over his socked feet. He felt like a marionette, and was certain more than one Criminal Minds had started just this way. Eli wondered what sketchy Stephen King school counselor had mentored Booth Guy toward an exciting career lurking over the unconscious.

BG showed up after a bit, in his teal scrubs and who’s-he-kidding lab coat. Kyle, as the lanyard attested, was a fast-and-merciful yanker, and Eli patiently endured the complementary North Brazilian.

“So, you dream any?” Kyle murmured as he pulled another patch of brittle curlies free. Eli looked up abruptly, but the kid was engaged in nuanced sadism. Where Lynn thrived on unsubs with bad mommies, 30 Rock had been more his speed, and Eli recalled a particular Dr. Spaceman gem: “Unfortunately, there is no field of science that deals with the brain…”

“Wouldn’t you know if I did?”

Kyle looked up and blinked. “Well, I mean, the EEG tracks dream periods — actually, REM sleep, which is like when people usually dream. Usually, REM starts about 90 minutes after you fall asleep, and cycles back around every 90 minutes, for longer and longer periods. We also got got the EOG, the electrooculogram, that records rapid eye movements, so we can pretty much pinpoint when you’re dreaming. It’s very cool.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Eli mumbled. “Any idea what I was dreaming?”

“I could barely make out what you were screaming,” Kyle said, pulling the last lead. Eli looked at him.

“And just what did I say?” the subject asked with enough quiet permafrost the tech nearly stumbled on a tangle of detached wires.

“Dude,” Kyle choked out. “I was just fucki--, just shitting with you.”

Eli abruptly smiled. “Yeah, me too. Where’s my pants?”

**

"It appears you’ve been experiencing some rather serious episodes of obstructive sleep apnea,” Dr. Flentz informed the now-trousered Mr. Trainer and the somewhat overdressed Mrs. Trainer.

You didn’t fuck or shit with Flentz – Eli’d tried light chatter at the scheduling appointment, and discovered the doctor took nighty-night damned seriously. The Fauci of Millington Sleep Science Solutions continued. “With OSA, your airway becomes blocked during sleep, leading to interrupted breathing and reduced oxygen levels. We recorded several incidents when your breathing halted for at least 11 seconds. Apnea’s defined by a complete cessation of breathing for at least 10 seconds, and we measure severe OSA by the patient experiencing more than 30 such episodes of apnea or hypopnea per hour of sleep. You averaged 27.”

Lynn had coerced Eli into getting wired up and sleeping for an audience on the basis of his increasingly Richter-scale snoring, and he felt a certain counterintuitively venal satisfaction that her nagging had paid off with a glimpse into his potential mortality. Indeed, she’d now taken his hand in hers – the one she used to bat him awake four of five nights the last year or so.

“Well, I’m going to recommend use of a CPAP machine,” the doctor breathed, turning to Eli. “You aware of the CPAP?”

Eli was neither Amish nor resided in 1875. He’d had to bunk in with one of the office guys at a conference, and after the lumbering asshole had hauled out his life support system, Eli’d spent the night finding the presidents in the Radisson’s stippled ceiling waiting for his roomie to expire. “Yeah.”

“The device will provide a continuous flow of air through a mask, keeping your airway open and ensuring you receive adequate oxygen throughout the night,” Flentz elaborated anyway. “This treatment is essential to improve your sleep quality, reduce daytime fatigue, and lower the risk of associated health issues such as high blood pressure and heart disease. And given her issues with your snoring," the bald fuck grinned, “your wife will like it, too.”

“Hold up, Frank Thomas. I’m 44. I run. Well, on a regular basis. Aren’t I a little young for the ventilator?”

“That’s a rather extreme characterization. I realize that for a man of your age and, um, relative physical health, the revelation of having to accommodate a condition like apnea can be disconcerting. But there are a variety of models available, and you don’t have to have a full-face mask. The nasal pillow mask is the most lightweight, and offers a full range of vision for reading or TV. Probably not for you. The oral mask is another option, but you don’t appear to be a mouth-breather.” The nicest thing anybody’d said to Eli all morning. “So that leaves the nasal mask, which fits over your nose and is ideal if you move around in your sleep.”

That had been the model of choice for his old bunk buddy -- he’d looked like an elephant who’d found the tribal graveyard on the fifth floor of the Loop Radisson.

“I saw some deal on TV, a chip they can put in you like a lost dog…”

“Yes,” Flentz responded coldly. “The hypoglossal nerve implant. It controls tongue movement, and theoretically keeps the airway open during sleep. Despite what they pitch on late-night TV, the implant’s generally only for cases where CPAP therapy is ineffective or impossible. And, well, it’s more effective in patients with a BMI lower than, well, yours. I mean, we could look at some extensive lifestyle adjustments, like working on that BMI issue, or maybe cutting out that late-night TV…”

This was devolving into a bad Comedy Central Roast. Lynn squeezed his arm. “Honey, wouldn’t it be great if we could fix the snoring thing, and you wouldn’t have to sleep in the guest room?”

“And, of course, the not breathing thing, too, right?” Eli looked to Doctor Sleep, who appeared perched on the brink of triumph. “How long I gotta use this thing?”

Flentz simply looked hopelessly to Lynn.

“Fuck,” Eli conceded.

**

The backpack missed the couch by a foot – Kyle’s NBA career had died about toilet training – but he’d already retrieved the flash drive he’d managed to load while Dr. F. was busy pitching the Trainers. Flentz never fudged data, but he knew too well how crucial greasing vendors and selling units were to keeping the Center’s ambient lights on. And the dude, asshole or not, clearly needed the thing – when the switch keeps flipping off, someday it just won’t flip back on.

Kyle was uncertain just how much of an asshole Trainer actually might be. Or what kind. That look the guy gave him – Kyle may well have peed himself just maybe a tiny. Of course, Trainer hadn’t screamed, yipped, or bawled during the session – nothing beyond a few mewling murmurs. But as he observed the dozing millennial, Kyle had recalled Oscar.

The chihuahua/Jack mix had been Kyle’s BFF through much of his geekish adolescence, and the teen had delighted in watching the creature slumber during TV time. It had in fact fueled Kyle’s eventual fascination with sleep science and the dream universe. As Supernatural and Flash played out, Oscar plastered himself to his boy’s thigh, falling into a fitful sleep of growls, plaintive whimpers, toothy snarls, and pedaling legs. Fight or flight? Hunter or hunted?

He nudged the thumb drive into the HP’s port, and thumbed out a hot chicken GrubHub as the laptop recognized the 2TB media. The self-modifed 8TB hard drive readily gobbled Eli Trainer’s sleep data – a bank of equally robust externals were lined up on the IKEA workstation. Given Kyle’s cybercrimes, he couldn’t just text MIT for a playdate with the Lincoln Lab Supercomputer.

Difficult enough getting through hospital and university and federal firewalls, especially when the good stuff – the raw data – was usually tucked deeper in encrypted archives. He brought up BESA – well, an open-source version of Brain Electrical Source Analysis – and pulled up Trainer’s scan, then opened the QUANTICO folder where both DARPA’s original RESTORE data, designed to optimize how military personnel handled extreme sleep deprivation in combat situations, and RESTORE’s darker offshoot research into the sleep patterns and dream states of the psychotic and sociopathic mind. He sorted through a number of files – BUNDY5074.e, RADER6721.e., MANSON3912.e, et al -- and vertically tiled the juiciest under ETRAINER4_23_25.e.

Blazing chicken and Dew at 9:30 p.m. seemed counter-indicated for a somnologist, but Kyle was off the next two days and intended to spend at least the next contiguous 24 hours on the algorithm. For the next 43 minutes, he surfed the theta waves, the sleep spindles, the K-complex spikes and delta waves leading up to the calmer, theoretically deeper REM stage before remembering the business side. Practical science wanted a revenue stream. And it was for the advancement of knowledge, a greater understanding of human consciousness.

“DEAR ANTHONY WINFORD: WE’VE BEEN MONITORING YOUR ACTIVITY, AND WE ARE AWARE OF YOUR INTERESTS AND INTENTIONS,” Kyle stroked. It was spaghetti-throwing time – most patients were cyber-savvy enough these days to chuckle it off, but what stuck – the uncertainty, the deep-seated weight, the terror of the mask slipping away at the office or the Super Bowl party – had at least helped keep the research going and the monitors on. “IF YOU DO NOT WISH YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO LEARN OF YOUR DARKEST IMPULSES, PLEASE VENMO $500 TO THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT…”

**

Kyle awoke amid a shower of chicken bones, hot sauce, and neon soda, and he intercepted the HP before it hit the carpet.

It was just a dream. But one fuck of a Jordan Peele/Freddie Kruger/James Wan lollapaloozalyptic extravaganza. Which was odd – they’d padlocked Kyle’s REM Cineplex years ago, even to the occasional adult feature. His chest was still pounding as he spotted the LED display on the cable box – 3:17, an Amityville callback good for a nervous chuckle.

What had they put in the chicken? Kyle pondered. Then he glanced at the laptop monitor, at the last image he’d seen before blanking out. Trainer’s EEG and its accompanying AI chatbox.

“Fuck yeah,” Kyle grinned.   

**

It happened about two weeks later.

“It’s our worst nightmare,” Flentz announced, wholly without irony. Kyle’s BPMs hit a techno tempo until the doctor mentioned Trainer. “So they took him to the St. Mark’s ICU overnight with arrhythmia and pulmonary hypertension.” Flentz had left his St. Mark’s credentials behind seven years ago to set up shop just east of the Beltway, but he still had golf buds in cardiology and trauma. “The wife’s already screaming the FreshMed’s defective, it never stopped the snoring and he was fatigued, which I told her was the manufacturer’s issue but she wants to sue all of us. Any rate, I want all of you who helped do Eli Trainer’s study to pull every megabyte of data together, get your stories tight and together.”

Kyle had another nanomoment, but remembered nothing he’d done could leave any footprint in the system. “We got the SD card, I hope?”

Flentz nodded vigorously. “Yup, yup – luckily, Marty at ServCare pulled it before the lawyers could get into the mix, and he cloned a copy for us. Kyle?”

“On it,” the tech pledged. He who holds the data…

**

“He never used the thing,” Kyle reported a half-hour later. “Well, I mean, the first couple of nights, he apparently did, but after that, the unit was only active maybe 20 minutes a night, at the beginning of the sleep cycle. And then it was manually deactivated.”

Dr. Flentz sighed and creaked back in his office chair. “Man. Great. I’ll get Marty to confirm, and our guy will let Mrs. Trainer’s guy know she’s SOL.”

“Soooo,” Kyle dawdled in the doorway. His mom always said he never left well enough alone. “What do you think? Trainer tried to fake his old lady out, turned the thing off after she was out? I mean, when he started snoring, you’d think she’d’ve caught on pretty quick. Or, shit. Maybe the wife cut it off after he fell asleep.”

“And why? She insisted on him getting the thing.”

“I dunno. Maybe the CPAP was an alibi. She knew he was at risk, and wanted him out of the way.”

“Why?”

Kyle didn’t want to say.

“Yuh,” the doctor grunted. “We’re in the clear, is all I give a shit about. Your problem is, you just can’t leave well enough alone.”

**

Kyle rapped twice on the doorjamb. Eli Trainer looked up blearily, and then, as recognition sunk in, his bloodshot eyes widened above the respirator mask. He glanced into the dark corner of the hospital room, then tapped an index finger to the plastic covering his lips and sharply waved the tech to his bedside. Trainer pulled the mask down over Eli’s protests and again shushed him.

“What the fuck do you want?” Eli whispered hoarsely. “We’re not suing. I told your guys I just couldn’t do the CPAP thing, which I guess now was a poor decision.”

“Hey, just glad you’re OK,” Kyle offered weakly. He had some contacts, too, albeit in far lower places, and it was well after visiting hours. “I wanted to check in on you. Worried about you, ah, Dude.”

Trainer again looked warily into the darkness beyond the wheeled monitor Etch-a-Sketching his vitals. “Bullshit, Dude. Just what did I say during the sleep session?”

Kyle held up a hand. “Jesus. Honestly, nothing. But I could see you freaked when I joked about it? Just what did you think you said?”

Trainer shook his head and slipped the mask back into place – the medical version of taking the Fifth. Kyle eyed a packet of Saltines on the bedside cart – he needed some Bell or maybe some hot honey wings on the way home.

“You know,” Kyle murmured, “A lot of psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killer types, have shorter sleep cycles, more fragmented? A lotta times, all they need is four to six hours a night. They lack REM sleep, and that can interfere with emotional processing and memory. And the psychopath’s lack of emotional control interferes with them relaxing or falling asleep.”

Trainer glared.

“I’ve made it a hobby to analyze REM patterns to figure out how folks dream, and when you did hit your REM cycle, your scan was off the charts.”

Eli’s head plopped back on the thin St. Mark’s pillow, and he closed his eyes. Then, as Kyle started to turn, they popped open, and the mask came down. “You got it all wrong.”

“I know,” Kyle said, patting Trainer’s arm. “It was the nightmares. I realized I was looking at the wrong dataset, the wrong benchmarks. So I, uh, dug up some research from the UN, the CDC and National Institutes for Health and the Sleep Foundation. Stuff on sleep patterns in refugees, political hostages, and trauma victims. You fit that profile much better, including the bad dreams. It isn’t your demons haunting your sleep, is it? You thought maybe you’d given something away during the study, right? And that’s why you turned your CPAP off.”

“You need to get out of here,” Eli rasped. “Seriously.”

And that’s when Kyle heard the momentary rustling in the darkness. The tech smiled excitedly. “On your admission form, ‘Past Patient’ was checked in the referral box. So I took at a peek in the files.” Trainer’s eyes flashed angrily. “Go ahead, Dude, sue me, again. Your wife had had a couple accidents in a somnambulistic – sleepwalking – state. Happens during the slow wave stage, in a state of low consciousness, and patients might talk in their sleep, sit up in bed, unconsciously raid the fridge, clean, or even cook, drive, or make violent gestures or grab at imaginary objects. There was this case, in 1987, dude drove 14 miles in his sleep to kill his mother-in-law and beat the bloody shit out of his father-in-law. In Mrs. Trainer’s case, Dr. Flentz prescribed counseling, hypnosis, and paroxetine. Did it work?”

“For a while,” Trainer muttered, staring at the acoustic ceiling tile. “Or maybe so I thought. It was the things she brought back, the blood when there weren’t any injuries. That I could deal with – I was usually up before Lynn, and could clean things up and get rid of, what do they call them, the ‘souvenirs’? She’s a sound sleeper – fact, she thinks you fixed her. But the sleep-talking. God. That’s the worst. This goes back to her childhood, apparently, and I’m not sure she has any conscious idea what I think she’s done.” Eli paused with a glance into the shadows. “I was grateful for the snoring, frankly. I couldn’t subject myself to that any more. Until she pushed you guys on me. Hey, what happened to the guy killed his mother-in-law?”

“Kenneth Parks. Oh, he got acquitted – they decided he wasn’t aware of his actions. Thanksgiving gotta be a shitstorm, though, right?”

“My mother-in-law died when Lynn was a teenager,” Trainer stated. His eyes shifted. “By the way. What happens if you wake a sleepwalker?”

Kyle grinned. “That’s an urban myth, Dude. Why do you--?”