A philosophical lucid dream story inspired by my real experience.
At first, I didn't know it was a dream. Everything felt precise, orderly. As real as reality but hollow.
We were lying on a massive bed. I was in the center. Ömer to my right. A stranger to my left. We weren't scattered. We were side by side. Dozens, maybe hundreds of others, lined up horizontally, motionless. All staring at the ceiling. The room was bright, but no visible source of light. The ceiling was high. Someone had clearly designed this.
For a while, I stayed like the others silent, compliant. But then… something stirred inside me. A tension. A feeling, like I was being watched.
Not by one person. By all.
I sat up.
Nothing changed at first.
Then I whispered it almost afraid to hear myself say it:
"This is a dream."
In an instant, every head turned.
Synchronized.
Hundreds of eyes. Cold, unreadable, empty. But focused. They weren't shocked. They were aware of me. Of my realization.
I didn't panic. But I had to act.
I said the first thing that came to my mind something false, something distracting:
"Because you were looking at me."
It wasn't an answer. It was a shield. A decoy.
A false reason to redirect their awareness.
It worked.
The eyes slowly turned back to the ceiling. The tension faded. But I was no longer one of them.
I had seen through it. And more importantly, I had hidden the fact that I had.
I turned my head to the right. Ömer was awake. His eyes met mine. He had heard it. Felt it. Understood it.
We were not just in the same room. We were in the same dream.
A shared space of awareness. A breach in the programmed illusion.
We stood up together. The bed dissolved. The space bent.
And suddenly my room. Quiet. Bright. Real.
The computer screen was glowing. Code scattered across it. Nonsense.
I turned to him and said:
"Look, Ömer. I solved this through lucid dreaming. None of this is real. I've shown you the truth. They're waiting for you."
The screen cleared.
Only one sentence remained:
"The truth awaits you."
And deep inside, for the first time in a dream, I said to myself:
"I am awake now. And I am not alone."