Lúa App

Lúa App — internal chat, Thursday 4:48 AM

Partner: Iria. I'm your verified partner from the Lúa app. I was matched with you tonight based on REM brainwave compatibility.

Partner: I can only message you here when we're both awake. You just woke up. So did I.

Partner: If you want to block the chat now and never see me again, tap the full moon icon. If you want me to explain how it works, just say so.

Iria: Hey. I woke up at 4:18 with my breathing off and no memory of my dream.

Iria: I haven't remembered a single dream since the pandemic started, three years ago. The app says I slept for five hours and twenty-two minutes straight, which hasn't happened since March 2021.

Iria: Is that because of you, or the melatonin I took at 11?

Partner: I'm part of it. The melatonin only lasts ninety minutes. You spent the other three hours and fifty-two minutes sleeping with me.

Partner: The thing is, your brain filters everything out the first night, so you don't remember the dream.

Partner: By the fourth night, you'll start remembering fragments.

Partner: If you want to keep going, you can pair up with me again on Monday. If not, you can choose a random partner or cancel your subscription.

Iria: Let me ask you straight. What do we do during those four hours we're asleep?

Partner: Iria. What we do this first week is build a room.

Partner: A shared mental room where your brain and mine negotiate what the space will look like.

Partner: The room I've been building with you since last night looks like a one-bedroom apartment with a big window overlooking a park.

Partner: I choose it on the first day because it's the room most people with chronic insomnia need.

Iria: That sounds way too good to be true.

Partner: It's real, and that's why this app costs twenty-nine euros a month instead of the nine that the others do.

Partner: The difference is us verified partners. But I'm not AI. I'm a real person.

Partner: I live in Rome. I'm an oncologist at the Umberto I Polyclinic. I've been weaving dreams since I was a kid—I discovered it at seven when I took a nightmare away from my sister without knowing how.

Partner: You'll get my real name in four weeks if we keep the match going.

Iria: Okay. I'm in.

Day 5, Friday 6:14 AM

Iria: Partner. I just woke up. I remembered my entire dream for the first time in three years.

Iria: The room with the window to the park. The gray couch you told me is your creation.