<h2>Vale Four &#8211; Refrain</h2> <p><em>&#8220;Is this bait?&#8221;</em></p> <p><strong>Refrain</strong> is the premiere episode of Vale Four, the fourth arc of the Deep Dream State desire horror series.  Desire horror is deeply immersive storytelling; the audience&#8217;s impulses drive the narrative.</p> <p>Vale Four follows a covert operation to expose a corporate research facility before their IPO.  The facility picks up where Sitri left off.</p> <p>Each Cycle tracks a different advertising technology.  They&#8217;re all real, although heavily fictionalized.   The first Cycle is about audio hooks &#8211; those engineered songs you can&#8217;t get out of your head.  (Noted examples include &#8220;Never Gonna Give You Up,&#8221; &#8220;Call Me Maybe,&#8221; and the Menard&#8217;s jingle.)</p> <p>It is also about who built those systems, why, and what they were always actually for.  Vale Four lands at a moment when algorithmic manipulation and attention engineering are subjects of  public alarm (or they should be.)  We take them seriously as horror and philosophy.</p> <p>Refrain introduces the facility, the focus group, the founders, and the fracture lines that&#8217;ll run through the entire arc.  It&#8217;s also an argument that the most unsettling thing a story can do is make you enjoy exactly what it is warning you about.</p> <hr /> <h2>Cast &amp; Crew</h2> <p><strong>Written &amp; Produced by:</strong> <a href="https://neuralnetsandprettypatterns.github.io/deepdreamstate/cast/neural-nets-and-pretty-patterns.html">Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns</a><br /> <strong>Directed by:</strong> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17755189/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns</a><br /> <strong>Co-Directed by:</strong> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17754818/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bliss Blank</a></p> <h3><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Recurring Cast<br /> </strong></span></h3> <p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17755189/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Z – Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17754818/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">June Lowell – Bliss Blank</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17839622/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tessa Finn – Ring of Kees</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17796355/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Meg Aerin – Bun Li</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17760876/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Naia Anderson – Dizzy Dollie</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17822435/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elle Lawson – Echo Doll</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17864395/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Iris Vale – Swirls and Twirls</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17778008/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cael Yupp – Jericho Caine</a><br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17765752/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hespa Apate – Syndi Rella</a><br /> Astoria – Dakota Dream<br /> Hilton – Tickled Panda</p> <h3><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Guest Stars</strong></span></h3> <p>Vera – Fallen<br /> Celeste – Panda Moanium</p> <hr /> <h2>Episode Summary</h2> <p data-start="0" data-end="487">Naia Anderson hits record and starts testifying for her future.  Her future may well be ours.</p> <p>Once the architect of a controversial neurological research program, Naia watched her work migrate from the academic shadows of Sitri into a sleek corporate project called Vale Four.  Officially, Vale Four studies advertising.  The sinister agenda might be below the surface &#8211; or it might be the surface itself.</p> <p data-start="489" data-end="1151" data-is-last-node="" data-is-only-node="">On a remote island facility, paid participants believe they&#8217;re helping researchers study earworms and musical hooks.  The experiment seems harmless at first, but the hooks don&#8217;t stop when the lights go out.  They invade sleep, rewrite habits, and slowly erode the line between suggestion and control.  When one subject suddenly wakes up from the conditioning, she discovers just how much of her identity has been quietly rewritten.  Meanwhile, far from the lab, Naia watches the system she built evolve beyond its creators and begins planting the seeds for another kind of garden.</p> <hr /> <h2>Listen &amp; Explore</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5VVhwaymeOKbV9RG7Gre98" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Listen on Spotify</a></li> <li><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-dream-state/id1822405042" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Listen on Apple Podcasts</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.patreon.com/minderaser" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Support the creator on Patreon</a></li> <li><a href="https://neuralnets.carrd.co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Creator bio &amp; portfolio</a></li> <li><a href="https://deepdreamstate.blubrry.net/episodes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">All episodes archive</a></li> <li><a href="https://deepdreamstate.blubrry.net/cast-and-crew/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Full cast &amp; crew list</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt38590860/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">View this series on IMDb</a></li> <li><a href="https://musicbrainz.org/artist/134bc2e9-16e4-4b1e-b779-b9024f002882">MusicBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns</a></li> <li><a href="https://bookbrainz.org/author/59c9b4e8-2b6f-4230-b631-df2b01553b42">BookBrainz for Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns</a>, including <a href="https://bookbrainz.org/edition/7129df87-bacd-4a1b-9671-5b478895ee88">show script books</a></li> </ul> <hr /> <h2>Human Made Art</h2> <p>The poster image for this arc is from <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/vic_b-6314823/">Sunrise Forever</a>, under the Pixabay license. Layer art overlays are used to vary each <a href="https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf">iteration of the image</a>.  <a href="https://pixabay.com/illustrations/resurrection-dream-space-7036772/">You can find the original here.</a></p> <hr /> <h2>Consent Declaration</h2> <p>Deep Dream State is a desire horror audio drama written and produced by Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns.  The series uses desire horror to explore psychological fiction at the boundaries of control, identity, and complicity.  The manipulative elements depicted are fictional and intentional.  This is a story about what happens when consent is algorithmically removed, not a celebration of that process.  Vale Four explores audio conditioning and behavioral manipulation as horror.  The hooks in this episode are fictional. The science behind them is not. All performances are works of fiction and take place within a consensual creative context.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="https://deepdreamstate.blubrry.net/arc-4-vale-four-episode-1-refrain/">Source</a></p>