Artificial Dreamspace – Time

Elements of Artificial Dreamspace
Article: #: Time

At their own great expense, explorers and pioneers in artificial dreamspace made perhaps one of the most important discoveries since the first sedatives and injection systems were developed. They discovered that time can be stretched.

Part 1: Our Perception of Time in Real Life.

This is due to the fact that the mind functions much more quickly in artificial dreams than natural dreams or during waking hours. This discovery also lead to a growing number of hypotheses in the scientific community. These hypotheses center around a basic assumption: If the mind is smaller, it functions more quickly, therefore time is stretched, or ‘slower.’
This is based on the argument that if the brain is smaller, so is the mind, as there are brain nerve cells to accommodate brain function, and, the mind of the creature requires less brain cells to function.

So, not only is the world much larger for a small animal or an insect, but time is much longer for the creatures as well. This is not to imply that their whole lives are in slow motion, or fast-motion compared to human-perceived real time. Smaller animals and insects have their own perception of real time. Hamsters, mice, and insects may appear to be extremely quick and agile, but it is stressed that their minds are functioning much faster than ours; therefore they get more things done in a minute than we do. This also applies to their life spans in a way. A dog or cat lives up to 15 years. A hamster lives for 2-3 years, and insects’ lifespan are limited to months or even weeks. But because of the speed of their minds and their perception of time, 2-3 years is relatively a lifetime for a hamster; and 4 weeks for an ant or a wasp is roughly the same. If they were intelligent as humans, they would consider their life spans to be not too short.

Because they operate so quickly, insects probably view humans and larger animals as slow moving giants, the same way we would look at elephants or giant dinosaurs. A brontosaurs may look at the smaller animals around it and in its perception viewed them as moving too fast.

Even humans, time perception can change. For a baby or a small child; the mind is young, small, and functioning at a faster rate than an adult. For a six year old; an hour might seem like three hours, a week might seem like a month, and a year might seem like a life time. For adults, average perception of hours, days, weeks, and years are much quicker.

But time perception isn’t static and unchanging. Pending on the person’s life, their current activity (such as work, play, waiting, bored, etc), time seems to ‘speed up,’ or ‘slow down,’. During periods of intense activity, such as sports, or warfare, time may slow down a great deal. In a wrestling match, both athletes must fight to defeat one another, and do alot to achieve that goal. A minute in this case is much longer.

When someone is bored, time can feel like it’s slowed to a standstill. Someone bored out of their mind is working at the office and checks the clock: it’s 8:59 AM. When he feels twenty minutes have passed, he looks again: 9:04 AM.

When people are having fun, time seems to function more quickly. Two hours of video games may feel like half an hour.
The changing perception of time is based on how we feel, what we do and how we feel when we are doing what we do.

Part 2: Speed of Mind in Dream Space

After years of study, onierologists and other scientists researching the dream phenomenon have produced results backing the argument that time does not stretch or change in natural dreams, and is the same as real time.

In artificial dreams, however, that is a completely different story. Pending on the dream-inducer drugs and sedatives used, the speed of the mind is greatly accelerated. In the virtual world of artificial dream space, there is a virtual you. In the dream you are referred to as a sleeper projection (or sleeper). Your mind is now in the virtual brain of yours, and the data processing goes through no physical brain cells. It is data circulating through the structures of data that this dreamworld is made of. Because of this, the mind functions much faster (12x faster if you used Somnacin).

That means time is 12x longer. Five minutes of real time gives you an hour in the dream. If a sedative used, the effects of the sedative increase the speed of the mind, thus increasing the stretch of time. Somnacin and a powerful sedative will increase the speed of the mind up to 20x faster than normal. This chart explains the extent of this time dilation:
http://wolfboy183.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2ythx1

Part 3: Dreams within Dreams – Exponential Stretch of Time

If sleepers go into a dream within a dream within a dream, the speed of mind and stretch of time is increased exponentially. With Somnacin and a Yusuf’s brand sedative (and an effect of 20), in a dream within a dream, time is 400x longer. A minute in real time is 400 minutes in this second level dream. In the third level (dream within a dream within a dream), time is 8000x longer than real life. A minute of real time is 8000 minutes (roughly five days).

In the limbo of the mind (shore of the subconscious), the stretch of time is almost unimaginable, especially so since limbo never seems to be at any sort of level. When people go into dreams within dreams, they run the risk of going to limbo.

In earlier times, when understanding of the dream world was relatively primitive, it was assumed that limbo was the fourth level, and time stretch rations conformed to a 4th level. However limbo time has been equivalent to a 10th level or deeper. Dreamspace pioneers who have been trapped in limbo for fifty years (in a three hour sleep), are very fortunate compared to those trapped in Limbo for thousands of years; and returning with no memory of the real world.

Dreamspace explorers who returned from limbo with their memory still intact urgently spurred the start and progress of research into the time stretch factor. People who train for work in this occupation are well educated on the importance of time dilation.

Inception fanfic i posted on DA
http://wolfboy183.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d38hbwf