Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Engineered with NASA Technology

I was given the worst prompt for writing a Creepypasta today. It was "beds". This was the best I could do.



Memory Foam mattresses and Ambien may both be relatively new to the market, but the technology was actually developed in the sixties by NASA. Due to the zero-gravity environment and lack of definite day and nighttime periods, not only did the astronauts have trouble sleeping, but also adjusting to life outside of orbit. Their bodies couldn't figure out when to slumber and when to be awake. The problems continued long after they returned to earth.

Since sleep is essential to a healthy brain, NASA needed to figure out a solution to the problem. Unfortunately, it was two-fold: Something to trick the body into circadian rhythm and something to mimic a soft bed when gravity wasn't present. Neither was going to be easy: Compounding the first problem was the fact that any drug would need to have a short half life in the case of an emergency situation; the second would need to combat the phenomena of bone demineralization and subsequent shrinking that is a result of spending any amount of time in a zero-gravity environment.

It took them decades to even come up with a drug that they could safely administer to astronauts on a trial basis, and the original forms of this drug were a disaster. Crazed screaming to earth about the cold, dark void of space and the seemingly invisible creatures it contained, constructed from bent molecules older than time. They were apparently everywhere. 

Or the mechanical angels, who had been created by the robotic god that had abandoned them. They frantically build for all time, crying out for their supreme being to return. In the meantime, they obsessively search for and destroy any synthetic object, tearing it apart with their teeth upon, and add it to their metal pyramids -- empty offerings to their missing deity. This was especially distressing to the astronauts, as they were sighted swarming precariously close.

Also reported was the music that would not cease, played like an enormous, deafening violin, with strings like the neurons of the universe.

Over the years unstable molecules were stabilized and vice-versa; dosages were tweaked; chemicals were unengineered. But the hallucinations would not go away because they were not hallucinations.

NASA decided to try a different approach. They look at the beds they had been building, and they were constructed to keep the sleeper safe, both in body and mind. A cocoon of sorts, where the sleeper could explore these previously unseen realms without being in danger. Of course, the human psyche isn't designed to handle such things. That's why the drug had a failsafe -- an amnesiac built right in -- but the beds themselves became living memory. They memorized their sleepers bodies, and they cradled their dreams night after night. The "dreams" could be scooped up and analyzed at a later date.

But these creatures and doors to other places are confined to the cold recesses of space. That's why they were eventually released to the general and unknowing public. It's really not too hard to get a prescription for Ambien. In fact, all you have to do is say you're having trouble sleeping, despite the fact that it's gained notoriety for being a street drug of sorts. They're practically pushing it on people.

As for the Memory Foam mattresses? You can get a sample of one, for goodness sake. Worse yet, you can try it in your home free for thirty days. Who wouldn't be tempted? 

Just don't cut in half. I'd be terrified to see what comes spilling out.

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