Ratings

The dreams began in the early morning on January twenty-second. Hours later, when Leon Hammerman heard the alarm go off, he still did not feel out of the ordinary. Like every other winter morning, he pulled his covers closer, trying to combat the apartment's chill, and lingered a few minutes before mustering the courage to face another bland day. He went about his daily ritual: stirring boiling water into the instant Suisse Mocha (trying to evoke Swiss chalets and frosted love), micro-waving frozen eggs and sausage, putting on the brown wool suit (worn at his father's funeral, and now for playing piano at Macy's), and grabbing his scratched valise filled with neatly organized sheet-music.

In the car on the way to work, Leon began to remember an epic movie he had just seen. It was one of those historical Civil War pictures about courage, duty, love, and tragedy, with detailed costumes and a swelling score. Leon relished his memories of the film, his mind filled with especially vivid battle scenes and the face of a beautiful heroine. He could recall every scene, every shot. Leon remembered just how the heroine's face was lit at the climax, and the exquisite crane shot at the end as the camera pulled back, revealing the cannons' smoke over a blue-gray sky, and the horizon of a blighted battle-field.

It was only when Leon was stuck in traffic at the off-ramp, and he distinctly recalled the acrid smell of gun powder in the final scene, that he began to realize he had not seen a movie at all. He had the odd sensation that he had dreamt it. Even as his conviction increased, he was troubled by the vividness of the dream, its cinematic quality, and his total recall of the smallest detail. Sure, there had been other vivid dreams, but never like this. Not where the dream faded to black, and credits rolled at the end.

That day at work, Leon chose some easy-listening Mozart arrangements to play. His mind wandered, returning to the dream, and he played some wrong notes. No one noticed. After a while, Mrs. Sibley came by.

"Hello Leon," she said. She smiled at him with her big white false teeth, and tapped gently on the piano top with her two-carat ring in time to Symphony number forty.

"Happy thirtieth Birthday Mrs. Sibley," Leon said, winking.

He liked Mrs. Sibley, as genuinely as a department store piano player could. Even if he didn't exactly like the job, Leon took pleasure in cheering up the people who had nothing else to do but shop there every day. He was an easy-going guy, friendly with everybody. Besides, Ms. Sibley reminded him of his mother.

She laughed modestly as rich old ladies do, showing more of her false teeth, and asked Leon how he was doing.

"Very well Mrs. Sibley. Can I tell you about the dream I had last night? It had a title, 'The Rifleboy Dies Hotly'. I know that sounds like a strange title. In fact, it's strange that a dream would even have a title!"

Mrs. Sibley agreed it was strange. She wanted to hear about it. Leon stopped playing and told her about the dream. He described the Rifleboy's life before the war. He was the youngest son of a wealthy Chicago physician. The Rifleboy was studying to be a doctor like his father, but when the war broke out he joined the army because he was against slavery of the Indians. In fact, when he got to Virginia he was already a trapper and in love with a beautiful Irish girl named Rebecca.

As Leon told Mrs. Sibley his dream, he began to suspect it didn't make much sense. But everything was so vivid. The scenes were so beautiful; the colors so vibrant; the smells so evocative. Mrs. Sibley was spell-bound. In a little while some of Mrs. Sibley's friends joined and listened. When Mr. Thompson the store manager saw the crowd of old ladies he joined to listen, too.

At the end of ninety minutes, Mrs. Sibley and some of her friends were in tears, weeping for Rebecca who had lost her dear Rifleboy under the bridge.

"The war took them all," Leon repeated several times, and Mr. Thompson was filled with sad patriotic memories, as he heard the drum-roll of the Union army, and he saw the exquisite crane shot as the camera revealed the scarred, frozen battlefield at the end.

When it was over, everyone remarked how exciting and touching "The Rifleboy Dies Hotly" had been. They talked about the wonderful cinematography, the handsome actor, the costumes, the authentic odors, and the emotional score.

Every night that week, Leon had another of the dreams. Each day, the crowd around the piano would grow. The old ladies brought their daughters who brought their children who brought their friends.

On Friday, Leon dreamt a sci-fi dream called "Scream Seed" about feather-light plants from another planet that float down through the atmosphere and invade the planet. When the plants germinate, they explode with tentacles that scream and incorporate themselves into people's bodies. The hero is a sheriff who invents a special gun that can kill the plants. At the end he turns out to be a corn stalk, a native American plant ironically more human than the people in the town. During this dream, Mrs. Sibley's son-in-law, who happened to be a television producer, was in the audience.

"You've got an amazing talent! Anything you pitch, people can see, and hear, and even smell. Imagine that! Smelling a pitch. We've got to talk," said Mr. Simptner, the television producer. He smiled at Leon with his enormous polished teeth, and shook his hand.

Mr. Simptner invited Leon to his office at the network, and offered him a spot on national television. In no time, the show was an enormous success. Every family in America (if not the world) would tune in to experience Leon's dreams. The network built a studio with an enormous bed, and the show would open with Leon in pajamas, stretching and yawning before relating his latest dream. Each night it was something different. One night it was a sci-fi Western about a guy named Terrance who could tell the future, but only so long as his horse felt free. Another night it was an inspirational comedy about a talking whale who teaches high school biology, ecology, and ultimately human love from an enormous bubbling fish-tank.

At first the network tried to get their top comedy and drama writers to create dreams for Leon. They would write scripts, and he would read them all day. The network also hired a sleep psychologist from Yale, who had consulted for the Scientologists and Tony Robbins, to try to teach Leon lucid dreaming. Leon tried, and pieces of the scripts did get incorporated into his dreams, but never in the way the writers intended.

When the writers tried to get Leon to dream a hospital drama, he dreamt about doctors on a cruise ship who manage to reach Atlantis by performing surgery on the ocean. When they tried to get him to dream a comedy about a bunch of young twenty-somethings in San Francisco, Leon dreamt a heart-wrenching story about a tight-knit group of four celebrity chefs in the city who one-by-one contract AIDS.

Yet, people loved Leon's dreams. They sent him fan mail. Ratings went through the roof. In time, Leon didn't even need to describe the dreams. He just slept and dreamt. So, the network let Leon dream what he wanted. His contract simply stipulated that he sleep at least sixteen hours per day, and produce five dreams per week. Leon was quite content with this arrangement, happy to leave his job playing piano in Macy's twice a week, and Florscheim Shoes once a week.

This isn't to say that the network didn't have a few headaches over the show. There was the issue of legal clearances, for instance.

One night Leon dreamt an epic, a panoramic, sweeping dream tracing the larger-than-life story of the rise of Dale Bass. Dale was born to a dirt-poor Kentucky family in eighteen seventy-three, but manages to become one of the richest men in America, pulling himself up by his boot straps while preaching charity and tolerance. The secret to Dale's success turns out to be two of the Rice Krispy elves, Snap and Crackle.

One morning when Dale is five years old, freezing and practically starving, he meets Snap and Crackle, who pour milk and cereal for him. So begins a life-long relationship, where the elves feed and mentor Dale, teaching him about courage, honor, and perseverance. The dream has a beautiful recurring scene, showing the elves preparing breakfast for Dale each morning, as he grows up, getting taller, more handsome, successful and assured.

These breakfasts go on for five decades, until the touching final scene where Crackle is trying to pour the milk for Dale but can barely lift the pitcher. Dale becomes impatient and Crackle slips and falls into the bowl. Snap tearfully tells Dale that Crackle has been hiding the fact that he has arthritis and can no longer pour the milk. In brilliant cinematic fashion, the next shot simply shows a dark hand poking out of a polka-dot sleeve pouring the milk. Then, the dream cuts to a shot of the well-dressed Dale strolling down the street arm-in-arm with Aunt Jemimah, holding the hand of a little mulatto girl. Without a single word, in these two shots, the audience understands that Dale has found a true love, sired a daughter, accepted the aging of his childhood friends, and is a truly courageous, progressive, racially tolerant man. This dream had everyone in tears.

As it turns out, the network had little problem getting the Kelloggs company to sponsor this dream and many others, since the next day every super-market in the country sold out of Rice Krispies.

There was, of course, also the matter of Leon's penis. For an entire week, Leon had terribly phallic dreams. One night, for instance, he dreamt of a giant penis stretching from California to Alaska. It snakes along the coast, and at first causes great alarm. Eventually, though, scientists discover it is highly intelligent, the last of a great race of phalluses, and learn to communicate with it. In act three of the dream, the penis helps the nations of the world, cleaning up a nearly ecologically disastrous oil-spill by sucking up the oil and cleaning all the fish and birds. Tragically, the great phallus dies of oil poisoning.

Despite the network's trepidation, the phallic dreams garnered some of the highest ratings, and critical acclaim. In fact, the network had much to be happy about. People had largely stopped watching the other networks, or even going to movies. By now, people had accepted that Leon was an expert dreamer, and they were more than happy to let him take over all their dreaming for them.

Leon's show had certain affects on people. For instance, by the November elections, dream logic had become so accepted, that Mr. John duPont was elected President on a platform of promises to form a truce with the pirates, and declare Leon Ruler of the Universe.

This state of affairs continued until December seventeenth, when Leon Hammerman stopped dreaming, and the network took him off the air.