It arrived mysteriously – weathered, beaten and stamped "classified." But after thumbing through its dirty and heavily redacted pages, it's clear that the Dream-Share: Tactical Employment Procedures manual is a puzzling mind-wipe.
The clues arrive in seven choppy chapters with graphic illustrations and loads of black ink: "Specialists/Operatives," "Environment Creation," "The Dream/Waking World Relationship," "The Hostile Subconscious," "Warfare in the Dream" and "Interrogation Techniques."
The technical manual connects concretely to the real world in the clever cryptonym of its final chapter, "PASIV Device Instructions." That section's rough illustration presents a well-dressed agent carrying a suspicious briefcase, as well as an online address where readers can download a copy of the PASIV Device Technical Manual.
What a head trip.
We need Wired.com detectives like you to help nail down its mysterious origin, so we've uploaded the entire Dream-Share: Tactical Employment Procedures manual. If you've sussed out this surreal mystery's meaning, let us know in the comments section below.
The manual's first chapter, "Specialists/Operatives," seems a mostly straightforward affair. Although thick black boxes blot out whatever textual direction existed before the Dream-Share's censors got hold of it, the illustrations present a diverse crew of possible agents: a soldier, an architect and what looks like a very cautious chemist. Careful with that beaker, Eugene!
The second chapter, "Environment Creation," is a bit more confusing, with its series of settings, some crossed out in the manual's nearly ubiquitous black. One is a natural outdoor labyrinth, which looks like a less-snowy version of the one that led ax-wielding maniac Jack Torrance to his icy death in Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shining. Another is a crude rendering of a metropolitan cityscape.
But the illustration below, also featuring a city scene that looks much like New York's Times Square, is crossed out. Meanwhile, its companion image picturing a military encampment is given no such treatment. A last image from the chapter, shown on the next page of our gallery, is also crossed out. But why?
The third chapter, "The Dream/Waking World Relationship," is a bit more direct, ironically enough, in its conjoined imagery. A man is roughly slapped while asleep in one illustration, while what looks like a different man tumbles across a crowded room in another. Some whitecoat dumps water on a sleeping man's head, while his victim imagines a tidal wave in a companion picture. A different man is suffocated in his sleep, while his double suffers some kind of pain in a corresponding image.
If you're having MK-ULTRA flashbacks, stop reading this and seek immediate medical attention.
The next chapter, "The Hostile Subconscious," seems to have crawled out of the minds of Sigmund Freud and E.T.A. Hoffmann. A man peers at his watch, while another peers at him. A torch-and-pitchfork mob amasses near a dark castle. A crowd breaks down a door to an office, as its inhabitant slips through another. Everyone's running late, and losing their noodles. With nightmares like this, who needs enemies?
The only thing confusing about the next chapter, "Warfare in the Dream," is the fact that its conflict and carnage look just like war in real life. Perhaps we're missing something? It seems to all be there: The phallic tank weaponry, the death-bringing explosions, impassive soldiers dealing out destruction. What's the hitch?
We're not sure, so we're happy our Dream-Share scan mashed in the stale first image from the next chapter, "Interrogation Techniques." Sure, it looks like a boring job interview. But one dreamer's boring job interview is another dreamer's brutal torture.
Like the previous chapter, "Interrogation Techniques" is a head-scratcher. There are no illustrations of iron maidens, Gestapo tactics or Abu Ghraib pyramids.
Instead, some mark is pick-pocketed in a con game; a perpetrator picks a lock and perhaps prints up some counterfeit cash. There are suits on phones, a confused crowd of witnesses and a codger rifling through filing cabinets. Who's interrogating who?
The briefcase shown in Chapter 7, "PASIV Device Instructions," is reminiscent of similarly ominous attaches found in films like Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, Alex Cox's Repo Man and Quentin Tarantino's nakedly derivative Pulp Fiction.
After the final chapter, and its mention of the online address for the PASIV Device Technical Manual, there's nothing to see, folks – move along. The Dream-Share manual's back cover is a mostly blank slate, give or take a doodle or dirt stain. But we're rigorists, so we included it for the deep-thinkers out there who might want to nerd out on it.
After you've gone through the manual, follow the trail to the similarly intriguing PASIV Device Technical Manual on the internet. You'll undoubtedly learn more about what kind of device is inside that suggestive attache. Happy detecting, dream weavers – be sure to brief us on your tumble down the rabbit hole in the comments section below.
