On Thursday night, Linda arrived early. The Dream Lab was much more Spartan than the regular Psychology department offices. A girl at the front reception area greeted her and said that Jay, the night supervisor, would come back to take her to orientation. Moments later a bearded guy wearing aviator glasses called for her. He wore a white lab coat with a pocket protector for his pens.
Jay gave Linda a quick tour of the sleep rooms, small, windowless cubicles with a plain twin bed set against the wall. Plain blankets and bright white sheets adorned the beds and each room contained an office chair on wheels. Linda knew that the cataloger would use the chair to write notes about the dreams.
Further down the hall, Jay opened the door on a room with three plain desks in it, which Linda assumed was an administrative area for the program directors and supervisors. Jay showed her the special sleep mask that the Psychology department was testing. On the side of it that would cover her face, she saw three tiny bubbles near where the eyeholes would normally be. "Those are very, very, very small light bulbs," Jay said, flashing a goofy grin, giggling. He suddenly reminded Linda of her cousin Jerry, a science nut who'd once destroyed the family room rug after noxious spills from his chemistry set.
"How does it work?" Linda asked.
Jay pointed again to the tiny light bulbs. "At regular intervals, these little light bulbs blink on and off, like Christmas tree lights. The theory is that you'll be able to sense the light while you're sleeping. During your dream, when the lights go off, well, it's your cue that you're dreaming and you can become lucid in your dream." He pointed to a socket on the mask's edge.
A wire would connect there, which led to a battery back that sent power to the light bulbs.
"It gives a whole new meaning to the saying 'A light bulb went off in my head,' doesn't it?" Linda observed.
Jay giggled again in his innocent but oddly disconcerting way. When he calmed down, he added "Did Dr. Ling tell you about the other sensors you'll be wearing?"
Once again, Linda envisioned having her arms bound and her eyelids forced open. "No. She didn't. What is it?"
"Well the other sensors track your eye movements," he said. "In psych class you may have even heard of Rapid Eye Movements, or REM. It clues us to the fact that you may be dreaming. We then wake you and find out whether or not you were lucid."