Chapter Two

I had seen Atlas Labs on my computer screen over one hundred times, but no amount of pictures could have prepared me for standing in front of their headquarters. The building represented more of a compound, rather than the headquarters of an innovation laboratory. The walls were entirely concrete with dark window panels at seemingly random points. The front lawn was manicured with spring plants in full bloom. In the center of the lawn was a circular monument with a flagpole in the center. I took a seat on one of the concrete benches­– two minutes to kill. Next to the flagpole stood a three foot tall plaque with three simple lines that give me chills to this day.

WELCOME TO THE CUBE

YOUR MIND IS FREE

WELCOME HOME

Mom, I’m home. I’m ready to meet my new family.

I opened the front door and my head immediately went up. The concrete fortress on the outside was completely different than the interior design. Clear glass made up the lobby ceiling, allowing streams of natural light to fill the room. Past the front desk, was a forest. I’m serious; an actual forest was in the heart of the building with four glass walls and an exposed roof. Leading up to the glass walls were concrete steps interspaced across an indoor stream­– not too bad of a new home, I must say.

The funny part of starting a new job is that no one tells you what to do once you get there on your first day. This creates a pretty awkward first conversation. I walked up to the front desk and stammered something along the lines of, “hello… umm… I work here,” that ended in more of a question than an affirmative statement. The receptionist was a woman in her late twenties. She had dark skin and dark hair that was done up in a way that seemed to balance six inches above her head.

“Hello, I’m Aniyah. I’m guessing you are one of our summer interns?”

Digression: I’ve always been good with names. In fact, good to a fault. When I was a kid, I worked as a caddy at the local country club. When I first started out, I was embarrassingly horrible with remembering the members’ names. There was nothing worse than getting to the third hole and mixing up the person who is paying you with another one in the group. That’s when I first developed my system. Whenever I meet someone, I always repeat their name with a compliment that will remind me of them in the future. Afterall, I like to think we only get one time to introduce ourselves. Well, I guess that is where the fault comes. My biggest pet peeve in the world has now become people forgetting my name; especially when I make it my priority to never forget anyone else’s. I’ve often wondered whether it was their forgetfulness or my forgetableness.

“Hi, Aniyah. I’m Joel. I love your hair. What do you do here?”

“Technically my role is the receptionist, but I like to look at myself as the glue that holds Atlas Laboratories together. Here, follow me. I’ll show you to the briefing room. First time in California?”

“I like that– the glue part. And second time, actually. My dad and I did a week here one summer when I was maybe five years old,” I replied.

“Well, welcome back. You’re going to have another great summer here, I promise,” said Aniyah as she walked me towards the glass forest and down a hallway. “At this plant we have over three thousand employees working in five different departments. We have chemists, physicists, designers, architects, and people like me that make this whole place run like a living organ. Today you will be assigned to your department and your project manager. Here we are, Joel. Stop by at my desk anytime you want.”

With that, I entered a room with no windows and concrete walls. A table was laid out with breakfast pastries and coffee and roughly forty others my age in suits standing around high table tops talking. The room was split about sixty-forty in the guy to girl ratio; all engineers most likely. I’m never comfortable in these situations where people are clearly already in a conversation; but at some point, it is better to interrupt than to be in a corner alone eating a muffin. I really am the 21st century Machiavelli.

“Ahem,” I started, “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I’m Joel. I’m assuming you are all other interns?”

The six foot three, chiseled figure of a young man across the table reached his hand out.

“I’m Tyler. USC. Bio Med.”

While the rest of the table was introducing themselves, the room went silent as the door opened and in walked the CEO himself, Paul Salazar. All of a sudden, that pit in my stomach opened and out escaped all of my nerves and anxiety. I wish I had grabbed more food this morning.

Salazar went directly over to an older gentleman and shook his hand. The rest of the conversations slowly picked back up, but everyone kept at least one eye on the man who had just entered. With such a huge company, I never imagined I would be breathing the same air as the man behind it all. I scanned the room and saw the rest of their interns fidgeting with their suits or straightening their ties. Everyone has their own release of nerves; mine is the seven by seven by seven method. Feeling equally excited and nervous as the rest of the room, I breathed in through my nose slowly for seven seconds, held it in for seven seconds, and released it from my mouth for seven seconds. A couple of these and I was at least breathing at a normal pace again. Not often do we get to see our childhood idols in person, much less hear them speak.

A few minutes went by before Salazar made his way to the podium at the front of the room. Everyone’s eyes followed along with the natural inclination to begin filling the seats in the room. Salazar wore dark blue jeans, a long sleeve black tee shirt, and Nike gym shoes. He looked to be in his late thirties, but I knew he had turned forty-seven this year.

“Hello friends,” Paul Salazar started. “I first want to welcome you to The Cube. Yes, our headquarters is frequently referred to as The Cube as it is a perfectly geometric cube with all six sides being exactly the same height and width. For those that are not aware of who I am, my name is Paul Salazar. I am an engineer that works here at Atlas Laboratories.

“Oh, you find that funny? Well, you’ll be happy to know that not a day goes by where I don’t put on my own lab goggles. But, yes, my main role at Atlas Labs is the President and Chief Executive Officer. I founded this company roughly fifteen years ago on one principle: I wanted to do. Before I started Atlas, I worked as a systems engineer at one of the biggest automotive companies in the United States. I absolutely hated it. No, I won’t tell you which one it was as they are now one of my biggest clients. Crazy how life works sometimes.

“At this previous company, ironically enough, I worked in their safety department. I spent my days optimizing the safety of a car. Unfortunately, the world we live in is focused on protecting what is ours; for feeling safe even when we hurl ourselves down a highway at eighty miles an hour. For me, safety is a terribly primitive emotion. I didn’t want to redesign brakes to be able to stop on a dime. I wanted to create cars that make ninety degree turns going ninety miles an hour while the driver calmly sips his coffee. Admittedly, I’m still at war with centripetal force, but my first lesson for you today is that nothing in this world is possible unless you try. And that is what we do at Atlas Labs: we try. Our company is structured under two separate governing bodies. We have our commercial side where we sell products and services to our customers and clients. This makes up nearly ninety percent of our revenue. On the other side we have our research and innovation department. This accounts for nearly ninety percent of our costs. This is where we challenge everything we know about the world we have come to know. And most importantly, this is where you all will be working this summer.

“Each of you are here for a reason, and that reason is that you have proved to be some of the highest technical minds of your generation. Smile– you’ve earned it. Now, in your ten week internship this summer, I hope to destroy anything you thought you ever knew. You are going to be introduced to projects that would awaken your physics teachers from the graves that are their class rooms. You are going to have to reconstruct your brains first to think and then to do. You will be pushed, but your success at our laboratory is only indicative of how hard you will push yourself.”

I was at the edge of my seat. For the first time in my life, someone else was able to not only feel what I had felt, but even had the ability to put it into words. When I first set out to be an engineer, I thought my college experience would be endless creativity. I heard that problem solving and being an engineer were synonymous. In reality, it was exactly what Salazar had said: everything was about optimizing what real engineers created in the past. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to be an actual engineer in the early 20th century.

“Now for your first intern challenge,” Salazar continued. “Yes, there will be challenges along the way. The winner of these challenges will be awarded a very special prize: a one on one lunch with yours truly. Now, can anyone tell me what the inscription on the plaque next to the flag on our front lawn said?”

The room was silent. I couldn’t believe that there weren’t forty other hands in the air. When I realized that I was the only one with my hand raised, I felt my face turn bright red as the entire room turned to face me sitting in the back row.

“It… it read ‘Welcome to the cube, your mind is free, welcome home.’”

“What is your name, young man?”

“It’s Joel. Joel Caldwell, sir.”

“Well, Joel Caldwell. Are we dining in or getting take out?” I blushed.

Salazar continued, “Now, how many of you walked past the flag pole today?”

At this the entire room was filled with raised hands.

“But it appears that our friend Joel was the only one to see? And here is your second lesson of the day. Too many people see without seeing. You all saw the same thing this morning when you walked up to our headquarters, but only one of you truly saw. Be observant. See what others do not so that you can do what others cannot. You would be surprised by how different our world would be if everyone took the time to see what was right in front of them. Remember this. It will serve you well in the upcoming challenges.”

The nerves were back. I don’t typically like unwarranted attention. On top of this, I couldn’t believe what had just happened in the past five minutes. In fact, I don’t even remember what happened after I spoke up; it was all just a blur. I certainly didn’t feel as though I had done anything special. Be observant? That was the lesson? I guess that’s one thing that comes naturally to me. Whenever I walk, I like to pretend where I am is the first time I was ever there. In this case, that just happened to be true.

After Salazar’s speech, the HR manager in charge of our internship program started to list off our department names. From the back, all I could hear was “Caldwell. Dreamatorium.” I stood up and spotted an older man in the back of the room holding up a card with my name on it. He introduced himself as Carl and told me to follow him. Carl was immediately approachable– one of those people you naturally feel safe around. This helped a lot on my first day of a new job.

“Carl, I have to ask. What is a dreamatorium?”

“Have you ever heard of a video camera?”

“Yes, of course,” I laughed. “This is 2022 not 1922.”

“Just checking,” Carl smiled. “Well, The Dreamatorium, is the next video camera. Except better. You’ll see. Follow me.”

We walked down a couple hallways and up a flight of stairs before we stood in front of two massive stainless steel doors. Inside, we stood on a platform that wrapped around the entire room. Looking down at the floor plan below us, I could see four individual rooms with no ceilings. Walkways extended from our platform that allowed us to walk right above the rooms and to be able to look straight down into them. Scattered around the ground were four respective desks and equipment, clearly each associated with each respective room.

“What’s a dreamatorium you ask?” started Carl. “Every day in the lab, we administered a sleep serum to volunteers, called ‘dreamers’. You’d think we of all places could come with a more creative name. As you can see, there are four different rooms, one for each dreamer. Your job is to screen the dreamers and usher them into their rooms to get them situated we administer the sleep serum.”

“What does the serum do?” I asked.

“The serum does nothing and everything,” Carl said smiling. “To the body, the serum has almost no effect once the dreamer is asleep. For us, the serum is everything: it’s what lets us see the dream as well.”

“You’re kidding,” I said as I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re telling me you can watch people’s dreams like a show on TV? That has to be impossible.”

But even I doubted my own words. This was why I dreamed about Atlas Labs.

“No, Joel, we stopped watching their dreams on screen two years ago. Follow me.”

With my heart rate slightly increased, I followed Carl onto one of the walkways that looked over the second dream room. Before we could get to the center of the room, Carl and I were completely enveloped in a bright light. Carl had a look on his face that seemed to say “perfect timing.”

As I looked closer to the light that surrounded me, I saw that I was in the center of a moving hologram. The scene I was looking at seemed to be set sometime in the dark ages with a massive castle the size of the two stories of the laboratory. I reached for the handlebar behind me. I was dizzy. Almost in shock in what was in front of me.

The apparition lasted maybe fifteen seconds before the room was again lit with the fluorescent strips above us. Carl seemed satisfied on this demonstration.

“The purpose of the dreamatorium,” he started, “was to create physical manifestations of what goes on inside the brain while we are dreaming. Once the dreamer falls asleep, we attach sensory probes on the frontal cortex along with a heart monitor. You’d be surprised how fast our minds can force our hearts to beat. Once a dream begins, the room turns into a scaled down model captures everything the patient sees.

“The problem as you can see, is that dreams typically last only 15 seconds of absolute nonlinearity. The model is constantly changing from one scene to another, making it nearly impossible for anyone to make sense of what was happening. Your job this summer, is to help The Dreamatorium eventually commercialize physical memories, making dreams the biggest thing since the camera.”

I honestly did not know what to say. Salazar was right… no amount of school could prepare me for what I imagined to be possible. In a haze, I followed Carl down the metal staircase to the first floor. He started introducing me to some of the engineers on the floor but I seemed to have forgotten my whole “repeat their name” trick. All I heard were inaudible voices while I shook probably ten different hands. The only thing that snapped me out of my trance was the huge stainless steel doors bursting open on the second floor. It was Paul Salazar.

“Joel. Let’s grab lunch.”