May 4th 

Didn’t get much sleep last night. Read until almost 2 A.M. and then kept myself up thinking.

Freud posits a fairly standard interpretation of dreams as the unrealized thoughts, actions, and wishes of the daytime. “The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life,” he says. Dreams cannot form out of anything not already known to the brain, as distorted as that content may appear through the psychological eye. Any dream must be connected, somehow, to the previous day. What gave me a moment’s pause was his application of the same wish-fulfillment theory to nightmares. Still working to find a way to paraphrase his words. It was an odd night; kept thinking about my initial question, about the dreams of someone experiencing brain death.

It was louder than I typically appreciate today. Most of the biologists have moved closer to the portal, but there are some smaller dissection pens closer to my office. The periodic squealing is distracting. How many times do you need to cut something open before you can stop? High schools might still dissect frogs, but scientists need to move on eventually. Tried to block out the noises with some tape I had lying around and was thankfully successful.

A few of my colleagues are worried about escaped specimens, especially with the tale of the Land Squid Who Woke Up From Anesthesia circling around Sector F. It’s absurd paranoia, and as far as I can tell, they didn’t bring any of those things up here. They seem to forget that the last one died trying to eat its own liver. 

Funny. They’re thinking about what it might do to them, and I’m thinking about what it was thinking when it died. 

Final thought for today: I wonder if Land Squids have dreams? That’s one question I don’t think Freud could ever hope to answer.

Signed,
Dale R.