TRANSCRIPT: SOMNARIUM. S.014 – Past, Present, Future
Experiment Log of Subject 46, transferred to the closed testing facility for persistent sleep disturbance, recurrent nightmares, and prolonged grief response following the death of his girlfriend approximately nine months prior to intake.
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INTRO
[hdd spins up]
ALEX
Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down. Calm down.
I can’t make out a word you’re saying.
MADDY
[breathing heavily]
No, okay, so, listen. No, wait. Hold on, I had it in order in my head.
ALEX
Sit down first.
MADDY
I don’t want to sit down.
ALEX
Maddy.
MADDY
Okay, fine.
[she drops into a chair, still catching her breath]
There was an old man.
ALEX
What?
MADDY
In the apartment. My old apartment. There was an old man living there now. Not old old, but old enough that I actually felt bad about lying to him.
ALEX
You got in?
MADDY
Yes, I got in.
ALEX
How?
MADDY
I knocked on the door like a normal person, thank you very much.
ALEX
And he just let you in?
MADDY
Not immediately. First he looked at me like I was there to sell him something.
ALEX
Maddy.
MADDY
Right. Right. Sorry.
I told him I used to live there. That my mom and I lived there when I was younger.
ALEX
Your mom.
MADDY
Yeah, fake dead mom. Keep up.
I told him she had passed away recently and… I don’t know, I wanted to see the place one last time before leaving the city. Just for closure.
ALEX
And he believed that?
MADDY
Apparently I look sincere when I lie under pressure.
ALEX
That’s not reassuring.
MADDY
It gets worse.
He got all sympathetic. Started apologizing. Said of course I could come in.
ALEX
Wow.
MADDY
Yeah. And then he offered me coffee.
ALEX
Please tell me you didn’t stay for coffee.
MADDY
I had to!
ALEX
You did not have to.
MADDY
Alex, what was I supposed to do? Say “No thanks, grieving daughters don’t drink coffee” and sprint to the bedroom?
ALEX
Fair point.
MADDY
Exactly.
So now I’m sitting there in my old living room, holding this mug of coffee I don’t want, while this very kind man tells me about his back problems and the state of the building’s plumbing.
ALEX
Please tell me this is going somewhere.
MADDY
I’m building tension.
ALEX
You’re enjoying this.
MADDY
A little.
Anyway, I needed an excuse to get away from him, so eventually I asked if I could use the bathroom.
And he says yes.
Only the bathroom wasn’t the point.
ALEX
Your old room.
MADDY
My old room.
ALEX
And?
MADDY
And he hadn’t changed much, actually. Different furniture, different wallpaper, but… I don’t know. You ever walk into a place and your body remembers it before your head does?
ALEX
Yeah.
MADDY
Yeah. It was like that.
I shut the door, got down on the floor, and started prying up the board.
ALEX
With what?
MADDY
Hairpin.
ALEX
Of course.
MADDY
Don’t sound so surprised.
ALEX
Did it work?
MADDY
Eventually. But the whole time I’m on my knees in this stranger’s bedroom, thinking if he opens this door I am going to prison for being the world’s creepiest fake mourner.
ALEX
Maddy…
MADDY
And then I hear footsteps.
ALEX
No.
MADDY
Yes.
ALEX
What did you do?
MADDY
I froze. What do you think I did? I froze and stared at the floor like that was going to help.
ALEX
Did he come in?
MADDY
No. He just knocked and asked if I was alright.
ALEX
Unbelievable.
MADDY
I had to answer in my sad dead-mom voice.
ALEX
Your what?
MADDY
You know. Softer. Fragile. “Yeah, sorry, just… memories.”
ALEX
That’s horrible…
MADDY
It worked.
[pause]
And then I got it.
ALEX
The backup?
MADDY
The backup.
[pause]
Still wrapped exactly how I left it.
ALEX
You actually got it.
MADDY
I actually got it.
ALEX
So why are you still panicking?
MADDY
Because then I had to leave without looking like I’d just committed a felony.
ALEX
Ah.
MADDY
Yeah.
So I put the floorboard back, stood up, looked in the mirror for half a second and thought, “you look deeply suspicious”, then walked back out there and somehow had to continue being a grieving daughter while this man offered me more coffee.
ALEX
Please tell me you didn’t take more coffee.
MADDY
No, I said I should really get going.
Then he told me my mother would’ve been happy I came back.
ALEX
Ouch.
MADDY
That one almost got me, actually.
[pause]
Then I thanked him, left, got to the stairwell, and only started breathing properly again when I hit the street.
ALEX
And you came straight here?
MADDY
Straight here.
[Maddy searches through her bag]
ALEX
Is that it?
MADDY
Yep.
ALEX
You have it with you right now.
MADDY
I wasn’t going to leave it in the car, Alex.
ALEX
No, fair point. Better that it’s inside somewhere safe.
[awkward pause]
So… should we crack into it?
MADDY
I was hoping you’d ask.
[Maddy searches through her bag again]
[Keyboard typing]
Hmm… What was the password again?
ALEX
You’re fucking joking, right?
MADDY
[laughs]
Kidding! You shoulda seen the look on your face.
ALEX
Ha ha ha, very funny.
[pause]
So where do we start?
MADDY
Same way you did, we open the first file that presents itself and keep searching from there.
ALEX
[mic shuffling noise]
Alright, well.
She’s all yours.
MADDY
What, you want me to record this?
ALEX
And read it out loud, yes.
MADDY
Why?
ALEX
Documentation purposes.
MADDY
Fine.
Let’s see what we have here.
SUBJECT INTAKE
Subject: 46
Chamber: LO-03
Pattern: Loss
Subject transferred from institute to closed testing facility. Catalyst event likely already occurred.
Subject reports persistent sleep disturbance, recurrent nightmares, and prolonged grief response following the death of his girlfriend approximately nine months prior to intake.
Subject had intended to propose prior to catalyst event and remains fixated on an unrealized future with the deceased.
Preliminary interviews indicate persistent denial of final loss and continued preoccupation with the future the subject believes was taken from him.
Suitable for Loss-pattern reinforcement and guided threshold exposure.
Attached is the subject’s statement on intake.
Subject Statement
I don’t know how many times I’ve gone back over it now, trying to find the point where it could have gone differently.
People tell me that isn’t helping. That going over the same memories, the same conversations, the same plans, isn’t going to change anything. I know that. But knowing it and stopping are two different things.
Her name was Claire.
We were together for a little over four years. Long enough that everything in my life started to feel like it had her in it. Not in some dramatic way. Just normal things. Her shoes by the door. Her side of the bed. Her mug in the kitchen that I always pretended I was going to throw out because it was chipped and she always said she liked it better that way.
The kind of things you stop noticing when they’re there every day, and then can’t stop noticing once they’re not.
I was going to propose to her.
That’s the part I keep getting stuck on.
I had already decided. There wasn’t any doubt about that. I bought the ring months before she died. I spent longer choosing it than I want to admit. I kept thinking it had to be right. It didn’t have to be flashy, just right for her. Something simple. Something she’d actually wear.
I should have done it sooner.
That is probably the ugliest sentence in my head, because it never leaves. I kept waiting for the right moment. Work was busy. She was stressed. We had a trip planned later in the year and I thought maybe that would be the better time. I told myself I wanted it to be special. I told myself there was no rush. I told myself I had time.
I really believed that.
Then she died before any of it happened.
I don’t really want to write out every detail of that part. I can if I have to, but I don’t know what good it’ll do. It was sudden. Unexpected. One of those things people describe in short words because the longer version doesn’t feel more real, just more cruel.
What matters is that one day she was here, and then she wasn’t.
Since then I haven’t been sleeping properly. At first I thought that was normal. Or at least normal enough that it would pass on its own. Everyone says grief does strange things to sleep. They say to give it time. They say the body adjusts. They say a lot of things when they don’t know what else to tell you.
But it hasn’t gotten better. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
I have trouble falling asleep because as soon as everything gets quiet, my head starts going back through all the things I didn’t do. Not just the proposal. Everything. Trips we talked about taking. Places we said we’d go.
All the stupid little future things you build with another person without even realizing you’re building them.
I keep thinking about how solid it all felt at the time. Like our life was already there waiting for us and we just had to keep moving forward.
Now all I can think about is how much of it never happened.
When I do sleep, I dream about her. Or about us, I guess. Not always directly. Sometimes it’s just the feeling of her being there.
Sometimes it’s a memory that starts out normal and then turns into something else.
Sometimes I wake up with this awful sense that I was just talking to her, or that I almost reached her, and then it’s gone before I can hold onto it.
The mornings are usually the worst. Waking up and remembering all over again feels wrong in a way I still can’t explain. It’s like my body forgets for a few seconds, and then my mind catches up and I have to lose her again before I’ve even gotten out of bed.
I know people probably hear this and think I’m refusing to accept what happened. Maybe they’re right. I can say she’s dead. I’m not delusional. I know what happened. I know she’s not coming back.
But knowing it isn’t the same thing as feeling like it’s real.
What feels real is everything that was about to happen. Everything that was meant to happen. The version of our life that still feels close enough to touch if I think about it hard enough.
That’s the part I can’t let go of.
It isn’t just losing her. It’s losing the future that went with her.
And I know that probably sounds dramatic, but I don’t mean it that way. I mean very ordinary things. The life we would’ve had. The apartment we’d talked about moving out of eventually. The trip we kept putting off until we had more money.
The way I thought I’d ask her and the way I thought she’d laugh first because she’d figure it out before I got the words out properly. The things that were supposed to become memories and never got the chance.
I keep going back to the same thought, over and over. If I had done it sooner. If I hadn’t waited. If I had stopped treating the future like something guaranteed.
I know that isn’t rational. I know proposing sooner wouldn’t have changed what happened. At least I don’t think it would’ve. But grief has a strange way of planting doubt in your head.
That’s why I’m here, I guess.
I’m tired all the time. I dread going to sleep because I know it’ll just drag all of this back up again. And then I wake up, it feels like I haven’t rested at all. It feels like I’ve spent the whole night trapped inside the same few thoughts.
I don’t want to keep living like this.
I don’t know what “better” is supposed to look like right now. I don’t know if I want help sleeping, or help grieving, or help with whatever is wrong with me that keeps me circling the same unfinished parts of my life over and over again.
I just know I can’t keep doing this by myself.
Experiment Conditions
Chamber LO-03 was prepared prior to subject arrival as a close reconstruction of the bedroom formerly shared by the subject and the deceased.
Furniture placement, lighting, and personal effects were arranged to reflect the subject’s account of the space as accurately as possible.
Additional items associated with the couple’s shared routines and future plans were placed throughout the room.
The purpose of the chamber was to maintain emotional familiarity while reinforcing the subject’s fixation on interrupted domestic continuity, unrealized milestones, and unresolved attachment to the deceased.
Subject Journal – Day 1
I knew what they were trying to do the second they shut the door behind me.
The room’s wrong, but only in the way something can be wrong when it’s almost perfect.
It’s supposed to be our bedroom. Not exactly, not down to every inch, but close enough that I just stood there staring at it after they left. The bed’s in the right place. The wardrobe’s against the same wall. There’s a chair by the window where there used to be one in our room, and the curtains are close enough in color that for a second I thought they might actually be the same.
At first I thought maybe they’d just built it from what I told them. I probably told them too much. Every time someone asks me to explain what’s been happening, I end up talking longer than I mean to. So I saw the room and thought, fine. Alright. This is their idea of treatment. Make me sit in it. Make me look at it. Make me deal with it.
Then I started noticing the details.
There’s a sweater folded on the chair by the window. Not just thrown there. Folded neatly. Sleeves tucked in, collar turned under, flattened into that same careful square that Claire always did when she was trying to keep things tidy without actually putting things away. I don’t know why that was the thing that got to me, but it was. Anyone can copy furniture. Anyone can guess where the bed goes. But that wasn’t furniture. That was a habit. A small private thing. The sort of thing nobody should know.
There wasn’t all. The book on the bedside table on her side is one she used to keep meaning to finish. The wardrobe door catches before it opens all the way, just like ours did. One pillow’s flatter than the other. Her side.
That’s when it stopped feeling like a room and started feeling like something built to get inside my head.
I walked around it twice before I sat down. Checked the drawers. Looked under the bed. Opened the wardrobe. I don’t even know what I was expecting to find. Cameras maybe. Or something obvious that would make this feel less personal. Instead it just got worse the more I looked. A scarf over the chair. A hair tie on the dresser. A candle that smells close enough to the one she used to buy that I had to put it back down straight away.
They told me to write everything down. Said it was important that I keep a record of how the room affects me. What I remember. What I feel. Whether the familiarity helps or makes things worse.
It doesn’t help.
It feels like being watched by someone who studied us when we weren’t looking.
There’s one thing in here I still haven’t touched.
On the nightstand, on my side, there’s a small square box.
I haven’t opened it.
Just having it there is enough.
So far it’s just been quiet. I’ve been sitting here waiting for something to happen, which probably sounds stupid, but that’s what this place does. It makes everything feel like it’s about to mean something.
I keep catching myself listening for her anyway. Thinking I heard the smallest movement and then realizing it was nothing. That’s another thing I hate about it. It makes me expect her. Not in some impossible way. Just in small stupid ways. The kind you build up after living with someone for years. I keep thinking I can hear her in the other room. That I might turn and see her standing there folding that sweater.
Then remembering.
Again.
I don’t know how long they plan to keep me in here. I don’t know if this is really treatment or if I made a mistake agreeing to it.
What I do know is that whoever put this room together knew too much.
Subject Journal – Day 2
Something changed.
I noticed it as soon as I woke up, even before I could say what it was.
The sweater on the chair was still there, but folded differently. Not badly. Not obviously. Just wrong. Claire used to tuck the left sleeve in first. Here it was the other way around.
That sounds insane written down, I know. But when you’ve lived with someone that long, you notice things like that without meaning to.
There were other changes too. The book on her side of the bed was open now. I know it wasn’t yesterday. I never touched it. And there was a brochure on the dresser from the trip we were supposed to take. Same place. Same photos on the front. Except we never had one like that in our room. We talked about going. We planned it. But we never booked anything.
I heard something around midday. A soft sound from behind me, like someone shifting their weight on the bed.
I turned around right away.
No one was there.
Later I heard it again, this time from near the bathroom door. Not a voice. Just the sound of movement. Fabric maybe. I went to look and there was nothing there either.
I’ve started checking the room without thinking about it first. Drawers. Wardrobe. Under the bed. Corners. The bathroom even though I know she isn’t here. Every time I tell myself I’m finally done this time, I hear something and do it all over again.
I still haven’t opened that box.
Now it feels like it’s waiting for me.
Subject Journal – Day 3
They brought in the scrapbook today.
Not a copy. Not something made to look like it.
Mine.
Ours.
I knew it the second I saw the bent corner on the back cover. Claire dropped it once when she was moving things off the coffee table and it never sat flat properly after that. I know that book. We started it together but I spent hours on it after she died, compiling all of the little things she left behind. Tickets, photos, little scraps of paper, everything I was afraid I’d forget if I didn’t keep them somewhere.
I don’t know how it got here.
I don’t know if they took it from the apartment or if I told them enough that they made something close enough to fool me. I keep going back and forth on that, and I honestly don’t know which is worse.
The first few pages were normal. Or normal enough. Photos of us out to dinner. Her half hidden behind her hair because she hated noticing the camera. A picture of the two of us on the couch that I almost skipped past because looking at it made my chest hurt.
Then it started changing.
At first I thought I was just tired. One picture of her at the park looked slightly off. Not obviously wrong, just… different. Her smile looked tighter. Her eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were on the camera.
Further in, there was a picture of the two of us standing in front of a train station.
We never took that trip.
We talked about it for months. We looked at hotels. She kept sending me places she wanted to see. But we never went. There is no photo from that trip because there was no trip.
But there it was anyway. Me with one arm around her. Claire smiling at the camera like it had actually happened.
I kept turning pages after that even though I knew I shouldn’t.
Every few pages something was wrong. A restaurant we’d never been to. Her wearing a dress she never owned. The two of us somewhere beautiful and bright and impossible, all the things we said we’d do later laid out in glossy little squares like memories.
I got to a page near the back and there was a photo of her sitting on the edge of the bed in this room.
This room.
Same chair by the window. Same sweater folded on it. Same lamp. Same angle.
I dropped the book after that.
I know they can do a lot in here. I know they’ve been moving things around, changing details, waiting for me to notice. But I never told them enough for that. I never could have.
I was still staring at the floor where the scrapbook had fallen when I heard her voice.
Not from the door. Not from the bathroom. Not half-heard, not almost, not one of those sounds that could’ve been anything else if I wanted to lie to myself.
Her voice.
Right behind me.
Soft. Close.
“You were going to ask me.”
I turned around so fast I nearly fell.
No one was there.
The bed was pressed down on her side, like someone had just stood up from it.
But I heard her.
She was right behind me.
Subject Journal – Day 4
I don’t know what time it is anymore.
The room’s a mess. I did that. The chair’s on its side. The drawers are out. The wardrobe door’s hanging open. There are pages from the scrapbook all over the floor, some torn, some bent, some face down so I don’t have to look at them.
I kept thinking if I found where her voice was coming from, I could make it stop.
It started again not long after I woke up. At first I only heard my name. Quiet. Close enough that I turned around before I even thought about it. There was no one there. Then I heard her laugh, soft, from somewhere near the bed. Later it was by the wardrobe. Then by the door. Every time I moved toward it, it was somewhere else.
The box on the nightstand was open this morning.
I know I didn’t open it.
There was no ring inside. Just the shape where it should have been.
I stood there staring at it for a long time, longer than I want to admit. I kept thinking maybe I was remembering it wrong. Maybe I’d opened it yesterday and forgotten. Maybe they moved it while I was asleep. Maybe there was never anything in it at all and that was the point.
I don’t know.
I only know that after that, the room stopped feeling like a copy of something and started feeling like it knew exactly what it was doing.
I’ve been hearing her more clearly ever since.
Sometimes just my name. Sometimes “come here.” Once I swear she said, “You took too long.”
That’s the one I can’t get out of my head.
Because she’s right.
I tore the room apart after that. I checked under the bed again, even though I knew she wouldn’t be there. I pulled open every drawer. Went through the wardrobe. Checked the corners, pulled the curtains back, went into the bathroom, even pressed my ear against the wall like maybe she’d be on the other side of it.
Nothing.
I’d have a moment to sit and think, maybe I’m losing my mind?
Then I’d hear her again and start over.
I know how this sounds written down. I know she’s dead. I know that. I do.
But every time she calls out to me, some part of me still believes something else for a second. It believes I can still reach her. It believes there’s still time if I just move fast enough. If I open the right door, turn around at the right moment, get to the right side of the room before she goes quiet again.
I keep looking over my shoulder while I’m writing because I know I’m going to hear her again.
I can feel it now, right before it happens. The whole room has gone still so I know she’s close.
I’ll find you Claire.
Observation Log
Day 1
Subject remained at the chamber threshold for several moments before entering. Initial response was subdued but visibly tense. After entering, subject spent an extended period examining the room and its contents rather than settling into the space. Ring box placed on the right-side nightstand was noticed early and repeatedly, but left unopened during the initial observation period.
No active environmental changes were introduced on the first day. Chamber reconstruction alone was enough to provoke visible distress, repeated inspection of the room, and continued focus on selected objects tied to the deceased.
Day 2
Minor environmental changes were introduced during sleep period, including altered arrangement of selected personal items, placement of material linked to unrealized shared plans, and initial false proximity cues from elsewhere in the room.
Subject detected environmental inconsistencies quickly and responded with heightened agitation. Small domestic alterations produced stronger distress than broader chamber features. Subject repeatedly checked furniture, storage spaces, and adjoining bathroom following introduction of movement-adjacent audio cues. Response remained consistent with intended Loss-pattern progression.
Day 3
Scrapbook introduced at as planned. Subject’s distress increased as pages were reviewed. Subject became increasingly agitated when presented with altered images suggesting unrealized shared experiences and future events that never took place. Reaction intensified further upon discovery of a photograph linking the chamber itself to the scrapbook.
At 14:26, subject reacted to an apparent voice from within the room and turned sharply toward the bed. No corresponding stimulus had been introduced through approved chamber systems. A visible indentation was observed on the right side of the bed immediately following the event. Entity-linked manifestation confirmed.
Day 4
Additional destabilization measures were introduced during overnight period. Subject response escalated rapidly following morning wake cycle.
By 08:40, chamber contents had been heavily disturbed by the subject. Subject displayed repeated searching behavior in response to apparent voice events and continued to move through the chamber in an attempt to locate a speaker within the space.
The ring box was found open during morning review. Subject was observed fixating on the box for an extended period before distress increased further. No ring was present.
Subject resumed journal writing at 11:13. During this period, he repeatedly stopped, looked over his shoulder, and appeared to react to sounds or speech not introduced through chamber systems.
At 11:27, subject stopped writing, stood, and crossed to the far side of the room near the window chair. Subject then extended his right hand toward empty space at shoulder height and remained in that position for several seconds.
Subject collapsed immediately after.
No visible environmental change or manifestation was confirmed on chamber feed at the moment of collapse. Medical team entered at 11:31. Subject was pronounced dead on site.
Preliminary cause of death: cardiac arrest.
Experiment terminated.
MADDY
I knew these people were monsters, but this is just too…
[pause]
I don’t even know what word I’m looking for.
It’s cruel, obviously. But it’s more than that.
It’s… invasive.
[awkward silence]
ALEX
That was… fucked up.
[pause]
Renwyck’s files are different. Still disturbing, obviously, but… different.
She was trying to understand what was happening to these people.
MADDY
And these people were trying to drag it out of them.
ALEX
Looks that way.
MADDY
They weren’t just studying him.
They built that room from his grief.
They took the worst thing that ever happened to him and turned it into a procedure.
ALEX
Yeah…
[pause]
But what were they even trying to do? It sounds like they’re just torturing people.
They were clearly trying to accomplish something.
All of this was set up in a way unique to the subject. They were clearly trying to reach a specific outcome.
MADDY
Your guess is as good as mine, but this can’t be good.
[pause]
I’m afraid that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
ALEX
Near the end of the experiment he was hearing and seeing things that weren’t a part of the experiment, was he hallucinating?
MADDY
I wouldn’t be surprised after what they put the guy through.
ALEX
And then he just drops dead? Cardiac arrest, really?
MADDY
It’s strangely poetic but… it’s almost like he died of a broken heart.
ALEX
I feel sorry for for him.
[pause]
There’s definitely more going on than what we’re seeing.
Also what was that line about being transferred from the institute?
What institute?
MADDY
I don’t know, but the answer has got to be in here somewhere…
[pause]
So Renwyck’s files and now these experiments.
I think we’re looking at the same thing from two different ends.
What happened to May… what I found on that site… and now this?
It’s all connected.
ALEX
I’m afraid of what we’ll find next.
MADDY
We’re already in deeper than we thought we were.
[hdd disconnects]
OUTRO PLAYS