Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

Summary:

An isolated church with a guardian angel

Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

AgentAX 14 Jan 2020 17:32

An isolated church with a guardian angel that waits to put your worries at ease… with a price (?)

I trimmed your thread summary above, since it was taking up a lot of space on the forum listing. Try to keep thread descriptions and titles under 7 lines so you don't visually crowd out other people's threads. ~Zyn

Notice to potential reviewers: As I already have a mainsite article, I don't really need those two greenlights. I wanted to see what experienced member's thought of the idea and polish it a bit before writing up the draft, so feel free to give priority to other threads.

A large Catholic church in the middle of Manhattan whose interior is empty, except for a small wooden bed without bedsheets and pillows, with the phrase "manufactured by James Simons" carved on its side. Any attempt to place a bedsheet or a pillow will result in it falling on the floor, and attempting to secure them on the bed will be unsuccessful.

Those that lie on the bed generally describe it as uncomfortable. However, subjects will fall asleep 60% faster than usual. No anomalous effects are observed during their sleep, and their brainwaves are completely normal.

When they wake up, subjects are able to completely recall their dreams. They report to dream of an entity (designated XXXX-1), dressed up as a Catholic priest, which "shows them around" several moments in their past, particularly what it refers to as "their sins". These range from inappropriately talking to an elder, to serious crimes like murder or assassination. During the dream, the entity is usually said to be talking to them, and explaining them the reasons that apparently caused them to act the way they did.

+ show the rest of the concept

When subjects wake up, the first thing they mention is how comfortable the bed feels, contrary to what they said earlier. Even though they are able to remember and give a detailed description of the dream, they usually don't give it a lot of attention, dismissing it as completely normal. However, within two weeks, the subjects' behavior will start changing. Subjects will be rendered more docile, they will cooperate easier, and they are overly helpful, although not to an unhealthy degree. This change is done slowly, to a point where it's not easily observable, and subjects don't seem to understand it.

A side effect that was noted from the researchers is that after the two weeks pass, subjects won't retain any memories of the events they witnessed in their dreams. Although they perfectly recall them, as always, in the context of the dream, they're not able to associate them with real life events.

Last edited on 15 Jan 2020 05:41 by Zyn Show more

Re: Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

Zyn 16 Jan 2020 00:27

Taking a quick look at this since it fell to page 5 with no replies.

So… I admit that the initial setup makes me kind of skeptical. Do people often attend or hang out at large empty churches? Or is this something discovered by people breaking in?

However, subjects will fall asleep 60% faster than usual.

This is… kind of a silly statistic, given that tons of variables can affect sleep, and it's pretty damn hard to determine someone's unarguably accurate "average time to fall asleep" without addressing lots of conditions to replicate and running lots of tests. I don't know if the Foundation would bother with all the legwork needed to obtain this data.

I will say that the core premise seems kind of… boring, I guess? Also, it might be negatively interpreted as the Catholic church's teachings effectively brainwashing people, especially since the affected individuals don't really understand the changes, and said changes happen without them intentionally engaging in altering their behavior. It also seems to kind of cheapen the struggle that a lot of new believers go through when they declare their faith and start on the road to recover from negative life events/choices. Having this thing just magically make them start to be cooperative and helpful without any effort on their part, after just having a one-session dream talk, feels… anticlimactic and honestly a little uncomfortable for me as a reader. This is especially weird-feeling if people who aren't religious still experience the same effects—it doesn't feel like a counseling session so much as unaware reprogramming.

I definitely recommend getting more opinions from other readers, though.

Last edited on 16 Jan 2020 01:16 by Zyn Show more

Re: Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

AgentAX 16 Jan 2020 13:38

Thanks for the reply!

First of, my intention had nothing to do with a reference to religion. I wanted to have a helpful entity that helps people feel better and/or forget their mistakes, and the setting of the anomaly inside a church just felt right. I didn't intend to connect it to the catholic church's teachings in any way.

I must say though that I understand your concerns, and perhaps I should change the location and the form of the entity to something different, to prevent misinterpretations.

Re: Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

Zyn 17 Jan 2020 06:40

I wanted to have a helpful entity that helps people feel better and/or forget their mistakes, and the setting of the anomaly inside a church just felt right.

Maybe try for something like a park bench, or a particularly quiet table at a small cafe. Somewhere you'd expect a friend or mentor to be.

Re: Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

Doctor Fullham 17 Jan 2020 19:52

I agree with Zyn, it's really odd to just have a single bed in an abandoned church that people are just sleeping on randomly. The only two groups of people I can imagine doing that are homeless people and people on dares, neither of which would be taken particularly seriously when reporting something like this, if they even did. You also point out that the change takes place so slowly that even the affected doesn't notice it, so how would anyone else? What is the trigger that makes the Foundation find out about this anomaly?

The part where they just slowly become a better person also feels…cheap. It's too easy. There's a happy ending for them but all they had to do was sleep in this bed? Like, it doesn't feel earned. Following the catholic iconography, a big part of forgiveness in that religion is penance - the price you pay for your sin to be forgiven. I see none of that here. It also feels a bit 'Ghost of Christmas Past'-ish, that like, somehow just showing someone the bad things they did makes them a better person.

There's the seed of a good idea in here but what you have needs some work, for sure.

Re: Sleep well... your guardian angel's watching

AgentAX 17 Jan 2020 20:01

Thank you for your review!

I guess I'll start reworking the idea until it's ready to be re-submitted.