AKA "Dreamtime"
Alchera is the codename for WATI's latest project. At the beginning of Dreamfall, the only details released have been the name 'Alchera' and the simple tagline "Your wildest dreams WILL come true." Given WATI's product history, excitement over Alchera is running high. Adverts for Project Alchera can be seen on screens throughout Dreamfall, especially in the square in Casablanca, along with a green logo.
However, Damien Cavanaugh reveals to Zoë Castillo the truth behind Alchera. It uses an organic computer node called a Dreamer Console that hooks the user to DreamNet and essentially allows them to experience a lucid dream (an experience where the dreamer is in complete control of their dream) any time they want to. Cavanaugh says that this will be a revolution in entertainment - "who'd want to see a movie when you can dream it?" - but Alchera has a dark side. It will allow WATI to not only read the dreams people are having, but affect them and even implant thoughts, effectively brainwashing the user. DreamNet is currently regulated and controlled by a gigantic organic computer named Eingana, hidden in an underground laboratory beneath WATI City.
The location of the 'Dream Chamber' under the Azadi Tower, the fact that April Ryan's touching of the Vortex causes a change in Eingana, and the insistence of The Six and the Prophet that they meet their inaugural deadline (presumably to coincide with the Dreamer's release) seem to reveal that Alchera is a link between the Azadi and WATI.
When the Dreamer is released, Project Alchera is known by the product name Dreamtime. Given the power of dreams to pass through the Divide, WATI may have gotten in over their heads at this point.
Alchera is the Arrentje (a Central Australian Desert Aboriginal language) word for 'Dreaming', popularly mis-translated ‘Dreamtime’ (for the Arrentje people, whose awareness of things is acutely spatial, time has little meaning). The Aboriginal Dreaming is the ongoing process by which the cosmos (which has always existed in some form) is shaped by figures both mythological and mundane. It is often used to refer generally to the distant past, which can sometimes be as recent as two or three generations ago! ('What was before your father's father's father?' 'Dreaming.') The concept of the Dreaming seems to have been translated into the place known as the Storytime/Dreaming in Dreamfall.
Trivia[]
- For his blog post on the 14th of January, 2004, Ragnar mysteriously mentioned a similar device being developed in the real world. It clearly post-dates his conception of the Dreamer, however.
- In the twitch.tv livestream (5:05:01), Ragnar said "Project Alchera, that's gonna be a REALLY important part of Dreamfall Chapters"