* * * * *
                                        
                              Requiem for a dream
                                        
> One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the
> lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but… just‥ wrong. (It was a
> square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I
> was transfixed, I couldn't look away from it. I stayed up all night staring
> at it, the next morning I didn't go to work, something was just not right
> about that lamp.
> 
> I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon
> I stopped that too as I wasn't eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking
> lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and
> try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife
> was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother's house just before I had
> my epiphany…. the lamp is not real…. the house is not real, my wife, my
> kids… none of that is real… the last 10 years of my life are not fucking
> real!
> 

Via Jason Kottke [1], “temptotosssoon comments on Have you ever felt a deep
personal connection to a person you met in a dream only to wake up feeling
terrible because you realize they never existed? [2]”

There's a Star Trek: The Next Generation [3] episode, “The Inner Light [4],”
where Picard [5] is knocked unconscience by an alien probe for about half an
hour, but Picard spends a subjective thirty years living life on an alient
planet. It's considered one of the best Star Trek episodes [6] and won a ton
of awards.

The article presented above appears to be a real-life occurrence of
subjectively living years of your life in a dream-like state. Only without
the alien probes. And the flute.

[1] http://kottke.org/15/02/living-
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oc7rc/have_you_ever_felt_a_
[3] http://www.startrek.com/page/star-trek
[4] http://www.startrek.com/database_article/inner-light-
[5] http://www.startrek.com/database_article/picard-jean-luc
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Gen

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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