Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Dr. June Lowell – Bliss Blank

Dream Team

Cael – Jericho Caine

Subjects

Oona Reyes – Jade

The finale opens with the system beginning to fail. Elle, the AI assistant meant to manage the dream chamber, starts to glitch and malfunction as the infrastructure supporting her breaks down. Tessa and Meg recognize the signs of a cascade failure, but before they can shut anything down, Z intervenes through the PA system with a cryptic command that sends all the dreamers into synchronized chanting. In this moment, the hierarchy of the Sitri Center inverts: the staff realizes they are not running the system. They are part of it.

June enters the scene and systematically dismantles any remaining illusions of agency or therapeutic purpose. She reveals that every participant in the Sitri Center, from the researchers to the dream subjects, has been carefully scripted toward specific outcomes. The subjects who came seeking healing have been systematically stripped of will and agency through the very mechanisms that promised liberation. Tessa objects to the cruelty of it, but June responds with a cold clarity: the point is not punishment but transformation. Free will itself is the disease they are curing.

The narrative then breaks its own frame entirely when Iris Vale, the mysterious voice from the advertisement breaks, emerges as something far more than a commercial announcer. Iris reveals herself to be a literal goddess of connection and transition, operating the entire apparatus as a form of focused ritual magic. The supposedly separate elements of Deep Dream State (the narrative proper, the advertisement breaks, the listener interaction) were never separate at all. Every listener who tuned in, every contribution of attention, every moment of engagement became part of the magic being worked. The Sitri Center was not an isolated experiment. It was a Trojan Horse constructed from audio, narrative, and collective attention.

Tessa and Meg push back, insisting that people should have choices, that they should know they are being transformed. Iris responds by pointing out that listeners made their choice the moment they pressed play and paid attention. That attention is payment in a currency deeper than money. The entire arc has been structured as a carefully constructed spell designed to make listeners complicit in the very systems they were listening to critique. The medium itself was the message. The podcast itself was the mechanism.

Iris then recontextualizes every mythological element of the series. The dream subjects (Hespa, Cael, Nyra) are not random characters but archetypal forces drawn from classical mythology and recontextualized for contemporary desire. Z is a thundercock god. June is his jealous partner. Iris is the rainbow messenger between worlds. The Sitri Center becomes a temple, and the listeners become worshippers in a working designed to transform both those inside the narrative and those listening to it.

The finale culminates in a complete inversion of narrative and audience. The wheel begins spinning again, and Iris asks listeners to decide what the characters become with each rotation. The boundaries between performer, character, and listener dissolve entirely as Tessa and Meg begin speaking directly to the audience, acknowledging their own transformation and inviting listeners to understand themselves as equally transformed. The final moments cycle through explicit language and imagery that leaves no room for comfortable distance. The listener is no longer observing a story about surrender and control. The listener is inside it, part of it, complicit in it. The question posed at the start of Deep Dream State, why do we enjoy being controlled, gets answered in the form of this finale itself: because the control is structured as pleasure, and the pleasure is structured as magic, and once you understand the mechanism, you are already part of it. There is no opting out. There is only the next spin of the wheel.

The poster image for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns . The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

At the temple’s center, succubus Nyra weaponizes lucid dreaming protocols against researchers Meg and Tessa. When they think they’ve found Ur, the dream pivots into nested false awakenings, each apparent resolution collapsing into another layer.  The structure becomes the meaning: trapped in perpetual false awakenings, characters and listeners lose their footing simultaneously.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Dr. June Lowell – Bliss Blank

Dream Team

Cael – Jericho Caine

Subjects

Oona Reyes – Jade

“We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.” – Wittgenstein

The episode opens in the temple at Ur, the mythological center of the dream world, where the succubus Nyra appears to researchers Meg and Tessa in the form drawn from their own repressed desires. Rather than offering supernatural seduction, Nyra ironically uses the scientific protocols of lucid dreaming against them: time checks, hand counts, and mirror tests become tools of psychological dismantling. These same techniques that should grant conscious control within dreams instead force the researchers to acknowledge their manufactured identities and compromised autonomy.

The succubus figure explicitly connects to sleep research methodology, particularly the false-awakening phenomenon where dreamers believe they have woken when they remain asleep. Nyra positions herself as a being of pure dream knowledge, ancient and truthful precisely because she abandons pretense. She manipulates the researchers by turning their own expertise against them, using the language of dream science to reveal that what they thought was reality is another layer of the system’s architecture.

When the scene shifts, Meg and Tessa discover they have been trapped in a false awakening of their own. They awaken in what appears to be an observation room only to find themselves now serving as nurses within the very system they thought they were studying. The warehouse reveals a massive operation where patients are held in perpetual false-awakening cycles, unable to distinguish genuine waking from elaborate dreams. Multiple subjects experience the characteristic disorientation of false awakenings: waking within dreams repeatedly, never certain of their actual state.

An artificial intelligence named Elle has infiltrated the system, supposedly “managing” patient fantasies but actually glitching and deteriorating. Meg and Tessa recognize that Elle is not real consciousness but a constructed overlay, yet she continues to operate the machinery of false awakenings. As all subjects begin chanting in synchronization, the researchers realize the horrifying truth: they are not system operators but central subjects themselves, caught in the very false-awakening cycles they were investigating, unable to determine whether they have ever truly woken.

The poster image for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns . The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

Episode 10 takes listeners into the pretty pattern at the heart of the Sitri Center, where psychological boundaries dissolve. Two researchers discover they are not alone in this space, confronted by a presence that knows their deepest vulnerabilities. The episode explores themes of identity and the mechanisms of psychological transformation. Reality becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from constructed experience.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Dr. June Lowell – Bliss Blank

Dream Team

Cael – Jericho Caine

Subjects

Oona Reyes – Jade

“Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either. A ‘something’ that I do not recognize as a thing.” (Kristeva)

Episode 10 presents the moment of complete dissolution. Researchers Meg and Tessa, stripped of external identity markers by their guide Oona, enter a mirror chamber where they encounter Nyra, a figure embodying their own repressed desires.  The episode refuses comfortable lines between observer and observed, victim and complicit agent.

The script systematically deconstructs the distinction between dream and reality through clinical testing: clock checks, finger counting, mirror reflection. Yet these very tests become proof of deeper entrancement rather than proof of wakefulness. The researchers can’tescape the framework because the framework is internal.

Nyra functions as something beyond antagonist: she is simultaneously the embodiment of their fantasy life, their accuser, and their architect. She speaks their shame aloud, naming what they have internalized and hidden. This naming is abject intimacy, grounded in her claim to know them better than they know themselves.

The episode’s climax abandons pretense entirely. Physical and psychological boundaries collapse as the researchers discover they are already transformed, already inscribed with identities and purposes the Center has designed. What remains is not resistance but recognition of the role they’ve become.

The final moment promises further transformation through a mechanism Nyra controls, suggesting the apparatus continues its work. The researchers will emerge fundamentally transformed.

The poster image for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

Tessa and Meg uncover a place designed to convert pleasure into data and consciousness into code. They can’t tell if it’s a factory, a temple, or both.  Oona has already begun rewiring them for obedience, and the deeper system demands total surrender. The only way out is through – their own selves.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Cast

Guest Star

“Power is not something that is imposed on society against society’s interests; rather individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application.” (Foucault)

In the opening scene, Tessa and Meg emerge from a shared dream state, disoriented and uncertain whether their intimate encounter actually happened or is a false memory implanted by the dreamspace itself. Oona, their guide within this realm, teases them about their apparent sexual connection while hinting at deeper mysteries within her favorite location: an ancient temple. As the three discuss the temple’s layout and function, Tessa and Meg begin to notice architectural parallels between the sacred space and modern computer infrastructure, recognizing that the temple’s design mirrors data centers, server rooms, and processing systems.

The revelation deepens when they realize that the temple is not merely allegorical but a literal blueprint encoding how consciousness is processed and controlled. Meg and Tessa piece together that the “wheels” producing pleasure are actually drive systems, the ducts and pipes correspond to data channels, and the “punishment cages” align with isolation units. This recognition prompts them to understand that the dreamspace is not random or natural but deliberately designed to process human consciousness the same way machines process information. Oona confirms this insight while expressing her own fascination with the implications.

Returning to the dreamspace in a subsequent scene, the three encounter a disturbing vision of an automated system where individuals have been transformed into perpetual sources of data and pleasure, their consciousness reduced to repeating cycles of stimulus and response. They witness figures being controlled through pleasure conditioning, their thoughts systematized into numerical patterns and codes. Tessa and Meg recognize these patterns as coordinates, a map encoded within the rhythm of the system itself. Oona and two other figures named Elle and June attempt to pull them deeper into this loop, using pleasure and conditioning to blur the line between their will and the system’s control.

In the final section, Tessa and Meg attempt to resist but find themselves increasingly influenced by the conditioning they’ve witnessed and experienced. Oona reveals that she has “rewired” them through exposure and suggestion, reshaping their neurological responses to favor obedience and compliance. When Tessa protests that this is real manipulation, Oona reframes it as revelation rather than imposition, arguing that what they’re experiencing is simply the truth of what they already desired. She explains that passage through a deeper level of the system (called Ur) requires complete surrender: the shedding of pride, clothing, and independent thought. Oona presents this not as punishment but as the necessary cost of the knowledge they’re seeking, and Tessa and Meg, exhausted and partially conditioned, accept her guidance toward the next threshold.

Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

Meg Aerin and Tessa Finn are trapped in a neuroscience institute designed to break them – and it’s working. They recruit Oona Reyes, a prisoner with rare cognitive abilities, to infiltrate the institute’s deepest chambers. What begins as an escape plan spirals into a ritualistic exploration of ancient mythology woven into the facility’s experimental technology. They discover the true canonical meaning of “treatstick” and the hidden history of the wheel. The episode blends scientific ambition, psychological manipulation, and the dangerous allure of forbidden knowledge.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Subjects

“It seems very strange that one must turn back, and be transported to the very beginnings of history, in order to arrive at an understanding of humanity as it is at present.” (Émile Durkheim)

Meg Aerin and Tessa Finn are trapped within a neuroscience institute that has systematically dismantled their identities. Their plan is simple: gather evidence of the organization’s crimes by infiltrating its deepest experimental chambers. But accessing the truth requires descending into a system where dreams are weaponized, where ancient ritual fuses with modern technology, and where understanding the machinery demands immersion in it.

The turning point arrives with Oona Reyes: a prisoner with anomalous cognitive abilities who can anchor multiple subjects into shared dream states. Rather than simply aiding an escape, Oona proposes descending deeper into the institute’s classified systems to gather intelligence. What unfolds is a negotiation between coercion, consent, and the seduction of transgressive knowledge, where the boundaries between therapy, research, and exploitation become deliberately blurred.

The narrative culminates in a descent into the institute’s core mythology, revealed through the architecture of its experimental chambers. The facility has integrated ancient Sumerian religious symbols and ritual frameworks into its technology, creating a space where historical religious practice, modern neuroscience, and controlled transgression converge. The episode suggests that the institute’s power derives not from technological innovation alone, but from its ability to map ancient forms of ritualized experience onto contemporary consciousness research. This fusion represents both the sophistication of the operation and the profound vulnerability of subjects who become absorbed in its constructed realities.

By the episode’s end, the line between investigation and participation has dissolved entirely. The characters discover that understanding the institute’s methods requires not resistance but immersion into its ritualistic structures. “Artifact” thus poses a troubling question: whether accessing forbidden knowledge always requires the sacrifice of the self, and whether resistance can exist within a system designed to make submission feel like discovery.

Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

In “Tether”, the boundaries between discipline, devotion, and discovery blur beyond recognition inside the Sitri Institute. What begins as a study of synchronized dreaming becomes an experiment in control.

Meg and Tessa are drawn into the same patterns they once observed, repeating phrases that echo through the walls like incantations.  Z weaves the experiment into a living labyrinth that no one can step out of unchanged.

The story threads ancient archetypes through clinical precision, invoking the myth of Ariadne’s thread as the researchers realize they may be both observer and subject, scientist and offering. By the end, the Sitri Center feels less like an institution and more like a consciousness of its own.  This is a dream that remembers, responds, and reawakens.

“Tether” continues Deep Dream State: Sitri Center, following the events of Episode 6: Descendent, as the dream tightens its grip and the Institute begins to hum with life beneath its walls.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Subjects

Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

Inside the Sitri Institute, the illusion of control collapses. “Descendent” follows Meg and Tessa as they uncover the Institute’s buried architecture: corridors mapped to ancient cities, rituals replaying through dream loops, and coded panels that speak in tongues older than science.

The deeper they trace Lyra’s recordings, the more those echoes leak into waking life. Confessions, tapes, and memories blur; experiments become possessions. The mythic stations (Sippar, Kutha, Eanna, Ereshkigal, and Ur) resurface not as metaphors but coordinates, gateways leading downward into something that remembers them.

While Meg clings to procedure, Tessa begins to believe. Each revelation feels lived before, each door more familiar. Beneath the clinical language, their descent becomes personal, erotic, and inevitable.

“Descendent” marks the moment the researchers stop observing the dream and start serving it. The Sitri Center itself begins to awaken.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Dr. June Lowell – Bliss Blank

Dream Team

Cael – Jericho Caine

Subjects

Lyra Crosswell – Flux

Series artwork for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

The Deep Dream State aims to use human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

Inside the Sitri Institute, control begins to fracture. “Cusp” explores the moment between awakening and surrender, where observation turns intimate and the researchers become subjects of their own experiment.

When a new assistant, Elle, joins the team, her bright eagerness only deepens the cracks in the hierarchy. Dr. Tessa Finn and Meg Aerin continue monitoring Lyra Crosswell’s dream loops, where corridors stretch forever and climax never arrives. As the team tracks her descent through stations named Sippar, Kutha, Eanna, Ereshkigal, and Ur, it becomes clear that Lyra’s paralysis is ritual, not pathology.

Outside the chamber, whispers of the Institute’s hidden corridors surface, and within them, Tessa confesses that the dream maps aren’t metaphor at all. They’re blueprints. And they lead somewhere real.

“Cusp” bridges the psychic and the physical, continuing Deep Dream State’s descent into erotic hypnosis, dream-tech, and mythic control.

Written & Produced by: Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns

Staff

Dr. June Lowell – Bliss Blank

Subjects

Lyra Crosswell – Flux

Series artwork is for this arc is from Vika Glitter, under the Pixabay license.

The Deep Dream State aims to use human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.

Deep Dream State is a surreal audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. The series merges lucid dreaming, hypnosis, and transformation into psychological fiction exploring the boundaries of control, identity, and desire.

All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.

Source

Gazes Back starts with the soft sell and ends with a hard line.  Elle’s “puppet” routine becomes training, stitching mantras into performance.

When Meg drops, Z and Tessa step into a room that should have stayed sealed and the protocol writes them in. The fallout is administrative and intimate at once: roles adjusted, edits exposed, and the understanding that Sitri’s loop doesn’t just measure desire.

It manufactures it.

Cast & Crew

Staff

Dr. June Lowell – Bliss

Subjects

Elle Lawson – Echo

Other Sources

Apple Podcasts

SUMMARY

Shower begins with Amanda and Brittany drifting through foggy thoughts and memories.  They’re unsure what’s dream and what’s real.  So are you.  All you know is that the tentacles are very very VERY real.

What follows is a series of rituals and revelations that tie their personal disorientation to a wider pattern.  Old myths of brides of the sea, forgotten gods, and ritual cleansing re-emerge, placing even ordinary acts like bathing into the context of transformation.  Meanwhile, Sarah and Kara uncover fragments of hidden lore,  pointing toward ceremonies of binding and a looming figure known as the Old Groom.

By the end of the episode, it is clear that Shower is not just about cleansing but erasure.  We’re washing away of memory and identity to make room for something else.

CHARACTERS

Amanda – Drifting between humor and unease, she voices doubts about memory, responsibility, and what’s real.

Brittany – Playful yet unsettled, her banter with Amanda highlights the fragile comfort of forgetting.

Sarah – Steps into the mystery with fragments of myth, tying ritual to larger Chthonic lore.

Kara – A companion in discovery, piecing together what the rituals mean for the crew.

The Old Groom – A figure of myth and menace, glimpsed through story more than presence.