So one point for Dreemz, one point for 4, one point for sale. I figured I had nothing to lose by just opening the letter. I know you can get a virus that way, but I'm paying good dollars for protection from viruses. Let the antivirus software company earn its money for once.
That sign, BTW, the "g" inside the funny angle marks, is computerese for "grin." And BTW stands for By the Way. BTW.
The email is from a company called Dreemz.biz. I've never heard of them before but obviously they've heard of me. The letter is addressed to me by name, c/o the email address I use for my home office. I don't know how the heck I got onto Dreemz.biz's mailing list, but here I am. Here's what the letter says. I saved it to my hard drive and I'll give you a link to it. Here we go:
Dear Webster Sloat,
The average person spends one-third of his or her life sleeping. For most of us, the other two-thirds of our lives are divided roughly in half. Half the time is spent working. That leaves just one-third of your lifetime for everything else, and that includes necessities like washing, dressing and undressing, traveling to and from our jobs, preparing meals, folding laundry, and countless other tasks.
How many hours a day are your own? Really your own, to use however you choose? University studies show that for the average person, the answer is barely more than one hour a day!
By joining Dreemz.biz you can get back the one-third of your life that you spend asleep. By ordering Dreemz from our huge catalog you can live those eight hours every night. You need not rely on random chance to determine the contents of your Dreemz. You can choose anything you want. Be anyone you want. Experience adventure, romance, excitement. Explore outer space. Win an athletic championship. Have a rich, rewarding relationship with the person of your choice. Or use our DreamLearning™ experiences to learn a new language, complete courses in physics, chemistry, sociology. Learn anatomy, mechanics, accounting. Prepare yourself for a new career!
Dreemz.biz offers a choice of over 10,000 Dreemz in our ever-expanding catalog. Or tell us your dream and for a modest additional fee we'll create a custom dream just for you. Our Dreemz are fully interactive and participatory. This feature is unique, and I'm sure you'll love it once you try it out.
For a free sample membership in Dreemz.biz just go to the URL below and fill out a simple application. We here at Dreemz.biz are sure that you'll want to become a full member once you've tried our Dreemz. If you have any questions, feel free to write to me personally c/o the Dreemz.biz website. Every letter receives my prompt and personal attention.
Yours truly,
Carter Thurston Hull
Maybe I was a fool to follow up on that one, but I figured there was nothing to lose by just writing to Mr. Carter Thurston Hull. I wasn't joining Dreemz.biz, I wasn't even signing up for their free trial offer. All I did was send them a simple question in an email one line long. It was this:
How did you get my name, business identification, and email address?
I figured they'd bought a mailing list somewhere. Or—ah, this was the answer!—I'd filled out a little questionnaire at the electronics store down at the plaza when I took my daughter there to pick out her birthday present. I'd long since given up trying to choose anything that would please her, not even a brand of breakfast cereal, but giving your own pre-pubescent offspring cash for her birthday seemed pretty cold to me. So we compromised. She could pick the store. She could pick the gift. I would hover at a distance and pretend not to know her until it was time to pony up the moolah, then the gift would go on my plastic not hers.
Mr. Hull actually replied, and he was impressively candid as well as prompt. He acknowledged that Dreemz.biz purchased mailing lists, and that they'd got my information from the electronics outlet where I'd filled out the questionnaire.
Was there anything else I'd like to know? If so, Mr. Carter Thurston Hull would be happy to furnish the information. In any case, he would be delighted if I would accept that free trial membership in his organization, but of course he would not try to pressure me and I was still, he emphasized, under no obligation whatever.
In fact I had a couple more questions for Mr. Hull. I sent him another email:
What do you mean by "fully interactive and participatory?" Sounds like one of those Role-Playing Games that my daughter buys at the software store. What's so special about your product? And, BTW, why do you spell Dreemz.biz that way? Why not Dreams.biz?
I thought Hull would be annoyed by that, but he played it straight and I kind of liked his answer:
By "fully interactive and participatory" I mean that our Dreemz are your Dreemz. When you enter one of our Dreemz you won't just be an observer—not unless you want to be, and that's a choice you can make. But if your Dream is, let's say, Washington Crossing the Delaware, you won't just see our First President in action, you can be one of the soldiers in his Continental Army. You can be right there in the boat with him, that cold December night. If you choose, you can be General Washington. It's up to you!
You can be Babe Ruth or Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe or Eleanor Roosevelt or Madame Curie or Rosa Parks. You can be anyone you choose, for the duration of your Dream. And when you wake up, you'll be yourself again, but very likely you'll be a happier and maybe a wiser self.
You'll find that our Dreemz are as different from any Role-Playing Game and provide as much better an experience as a full symphony orchestra is from a child playing a tin whistle!
Please—give us a try!
Yours truly,
Carter Thurston Hull
P.S.—We call ourselves Dreemz.biz because somebody else already has the domain name Dreamz.com.
Of course, I might merely have been tapping into an automated FAQ routine that produced those seemingly personalized answers. Or there might have been some low-paid computer science major working at an entry-level job, picking canned answers out of a catalog and assembling replies. But I didn't think so. These answers really seemed, if you'll excuse my saying so, real. And I liked the candor of the "P.S."
Carter Thurston Hull and Dreemz.biz seemed to be on the up-and-up, don't you agree? I even got hold of my guru and invited her over to the house for a sandwich and a glass of beer, which my daughter watched us consume with undisguised scorn. I showed my guru printouts of our emails, and she reluctantly conceded that the catch, if there was one, was so well concealed that she couldn't find it.
After she left I took a second beer with me into my study. I booted up the computer, clicked on my ISP's icon, and shortly found myself in cyberspace. I went back to Mr. Hull's first email and clicked on the URL at the bottom of the screen.
The application that popped up was pretty simple and definitely nonthreatening. It asked for some personal data but not for my credit card number or driver's license number or Social Security number, so I figured this wasn't an identity theft racket. It asked me to create a user ID for myself. I picked Dudley Batson after a minor comic book character of my childhood. It asked me to create a password of six characters minimum and I keyed in
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Next came a screen that said I'd need some software to participate in Dreemz.biz. I muttered, Ahah! At last! Here comes the pitch. How much are they going to want for this?
But there was no pitch. I could either download the software or they'd send it to me on a CD. My option. No charge either way. And in either case they recommended that I save it on my hard drive for future reference.
And my selected Dreemz would be sent to me the same way—via download or on CDs, as I preferred. They offered any three chosen from their online catalog. Once I'd used them I could order more. I didn't have to return the used Dreemz, they were mine to keep.
I clicked on CDs—see, that's more of my Luddism coming out, I still like things I can see and touch, not just invisible electrons that come whirring along wires or out of the ether.
Finally Dreemz.biz provided a link to their catalog. It was as big as Car
ter Thurston Hull had said. My first choice was easy.
I'd always been a rock and roll fan, and when the Beatles played San Francisco in 1966 I was frantic to attend their concert.
Wouldn't you know, I was at school that day and started feeling queasy over my Sloppy Joe and soda at lunchtime. I tried to keep going but my friends said I was literally turning green before their eyes. They dragged me to the nurse's office and an hour later I was in SF General having my appendix yanked.
It was a routine operation. The doc told me later that if I'd tried to go the concert I would never have made it. My appendix would have burst and then I would have been in real trouble. But as it was, I was out of the hospital in two days and back to school in a week.
And the Beatles had played at Candlestick Park and I'd missed the show.
I still have my unused ticket. Could probably sell it on eBay for a king's ransom.
I clicked on the little box and a check mark appeared.
What was my second choice?
I was starting to feel slightly more ambitious. I've always loved history and wished I could have witnessed the events that decided the course mankind would take. The Manhattan Project fascinates me, the dramatic events, Albert Einstein's famous letter to President Roosevelt, the development and testing process, Robert Oppenheimer, Leslie Groves, Klaus Fuchs.
Would Dreemz.biz have a file on the original test, the world's first nuclear explosion? I scrolled through the online catalog with my fingers crossed and there it was. Trinity, White Sands, New Mexico, July 16, 1945.
Click.
Check.
And what would my third free sample be?
Right then I was sitting at the computer, filling out the form. I swung around in my chair and scanned the walls of my study. The room was lined with bookcases, the books arranged by category. One bookcase was devoted to computer manuals and user's guides. One was filled with reference books—almanacs, dictionaries, atlases, collections of quotations and records and trivia of every sort. And one was filled with my relaxation reading, my guilty pleasures, what my favorite literary critic calls lurid trash.
I rolled over to the last of those and pulled down a volume of collected stories by H. P. Lovecraft, the eccentric antiquarian pulp author of Providence, Rhode Island. I flipped through the pages reading a striking phrase here, a familiar scene there, in one after another of my favorite stories. There was "The Dunwich Horror," "The Rats in the Walls," "The Shadow over Innsmouth," "The Colour out of Space," "The Shadow out of Time." I dropped the book on my desk and let it open where it would, and it fell open to "The Call of Cthulhu," probably Lovecraft's most famous story.
With the book lying open on my desk I keyed in my specs for a custom Dream. I wouldn't Dream "The Call of Cthulhu." I would be there in the room in Providence as Lovecraft wrote the story. I would be Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Once I'd sent off my order to Dreemz.biz I experienced buyer's remorse. What was I getting into? Was this some new internet scheme? Was Carter Thurston Hull a racketeer who would empty my bank account, ruin my credit rating, and destroy my life? Was Dreemz.biz a cult? Would a couple of men in black come calling at my door while ominously silent helicopters hovered overhead? I considered logging onto the website again and canceling my order, but I didn't do it. My curiosity was fighting my caution, and curiosity was winning.
A couple of days later a FedEx truck pulled up in front of my house and the driver handed me a package. I'd ordered software this way in the past and the driver was a regular. We exchanged some small talk, then he said, "I've been delivering a lot of these lately. Never heard of Dreemz.biz myself."
I told him this was the first time I'd dealt with them and I'd let him know what I thought of their product after I'd tried it out.
You understand, I was still working as a technical editor for a Silicon Valley startup that had barely survived the dotcom bust and was struggling to get back into profit. They let me telecommute part-time and show up at the office the rest of the time. On top of this I was raising a thirteen-year-old girl, which, if you've ever tried it, you know can keep you busy forty-eight hours a day. But eventually I was caught up with my work, or as caught up as I ever managed to get, and my daughter was in bed for the night. I felt I was entitled to relax.
A glass of good Scotch helped, and some fine music cleared my mind and elevated my soul. I'm not a religious man, but Mozart's Coronation Mass can almost make me believe there is a God. By eleven o'clock I was ready for sleep. I climbed into my pajamas, performed my ablutions, and was ready to climb into bed when I remembered the disks that had arrived from Dreemz.biz.
All right, I thought, I'll give this thing a try.
I slid the first Dreemz.biz CD into my computer. It booted up just fine. I found myself answering some more questions about what I wanted to dream—or dreem—and hit enter. My monitor screen went nuts for about half a minute, with a variety of colors and images swirling around. Then it seemed as if a bolt of light shot out of it and bathed me for a few seconds. It was like the aura that Sri Babaloo-boom-a-lam-bam-boom claims he can see, send $14.95 for his book, only it was my aura. I felt a tingling and I think my hair stood on end although I can't swear to that. Then everything went back to normal, except I felt very tired. I shut the thing down and went to bed.
The jet set down at SFO and Astrid and I put down our drinks and peered out the window. It was nice being back in San Francisco, although I had my doubts about playing in a football stadium. Brian got to the door first and made sure everything was copasetic before any of the boys climbed down the stairway.
It was a quick ride to the football stadium and they put us in a smelly locker room where they told us the local baseball team dressed for games. It was August, baseball season in America, and the baseball team shared facilities with the footballers. A couple of the guys had wives or girlfriends with them. I felt lucky that Astrid Kirchherr stuck with me. She's really a mothering type, and I've been having these dreadful headaches since that yobbo in Liverpool let me have it in the noggin with a steel-tipped boot after a show. I should have killed the thug but I was too stunned and nauseous to move.
There was a nice spread of American grub, fried chicken and potatoes and greens, and after the long flight I was ready to pitch in, and I did. Astrid said, "You haff ein schmear uff schmutz on your chin, liebchen," and leaned over and licked my chin with her pink little tongue.
We could hear the other performers from the locker room. They weren't very interesting except the Ronettes, but for some reason Ronnie Spector wasn't with them tonight. The other acts finished, I took a big hit off a joint and a slug of tequila, picked up my bass and headed for the runway.
They had to provide bodyguards for us, believe it or not. Some fool preachers had picked up on John's comment about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ and there were a few demonstrators at the show who thought we were Agents of Satan and wanted to skin us alive for the greater glory of the Prince of Peace and the God of Love.
We made it onto the stage and some disk jockey from a local radio station gave us the big build-up which we really didn't need after all, but that was the way it was. There was a big crowd, mostly young girls. Some of them were screaming, some were crying, some were throwing things at us but the platform was set up in the middle of the field, too far for them to reach.
John gave a signal, Ringo started his countdown, and the three guitars rang out. I stayed in the back, near the drum-kit, laying down a bass line. We were playing "Rock and Roll Music." The sound wasn't what you'd call really perfect or even very good, I'm afraid, but it was good and loud and the kids in the stands went nuts.
Brian had told us to keep the numbers short, loud, and fast, and that's the way we played. We wrapped up with "Long Tall Sally" and got off the stage in half an hour, and that was that.
We didn't head back to the airport after the show. They actually put us in an armored car and took us downtown to a posh hotel. It was sti
ll early enough to do something else, so Astrid and I showered and dressed again and asked if anybody wanted to head out with us. George was alone on this trip and he said he'd like to, and we managed to sneak out of the hotel without anybody seeing us.
We wound up at a little club called the Keystone Corner. Muddy Waters was playing there. Can you imagine, a genius like Muddy Waters sitting on a rickety wooden stage all alone, McKinley Morganfield sitting in front of a room with maybe seventy-five seats, maybe a hundred seats, playing his guitar and singing that gorgeous blues and probably getting a couple of hundred dollars and a free meal out of it. And the Beatles just finished a show at a football stadium with, I don't know, thirty thousand, fifty thousand, I don't know how many teenaged girls wetting their pants for us.
After the show I went up to Muddy and introduced myself and my girlfriend and George Harrison and told him I was one of the Beatles and I really loved his music.
He said, "I done hoid of the Beatles. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Sutcliffe and Mr. Harrison, Miss Kirchherr."
That was the whole of our conversation. We had a couple of drinks. I offered to buy one for Muddy but he said he was tired and had to go wash up. We caught a cab back to the hotel and went to bed.
That was the high point of my trip to America.
My radio turned itself on with news of the latest political scandal in Washington and the latest war in the Middle East. I climbed out of bed and resumed my life. My name is Webster Sloat and I am a single dad with a thirteen-year-old daughter whom I love madly and who drives me crazy.
So that was the Dreemz.biz experience.
And today there was an all-day meeting scheduled at the office. Could I ever have done without that! But the bills don't stop coming, month after month. I think if I'd been alone I would have quit my job, sold my modest house in Sunnyvale for an absurd profit over the price I'd paid when I was married, and moved into a skuzzy apartment in the city. But having a teenager changes everything, and I mean everything.
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