What is this about?

Esme Veil is well known in shared dreaming circles for her series of blog posts investigating the history of Ethel and the pioneering oneironauts who made it into an online phenomenon before its sudden disappearance earlier this year. Her account was incredible, in both senses of the word--an amazing story, and yet very hard to believe. Especially for those of us outside of the shared dreaming community, but also for many of those within the community.

I'm an outsider to this strange world of oneiric experimentation, but I have learned some things about Esme that I feel obligated to share. Her blog was on the surface a professional endeavour, presenting information gathered from public and private digital materials along with several sources close to the action. Behind the scenes, her behavior was unethical, bordering on illegal, and many of the sources she cited were invented.

However, if you believe what she believes (and I'm not entirely sure I do), she did tell the full truth of events from her own perspective. I don't believe any of my documents refute her account--if anything, they reinforce it. Nonetheless, I feel responsible, given the materials that have fallen into my care, for revealing the truth about Esme and the disturbing steps she took to acquire the information she did.

Why are you involved?

I'm not a writer, and I didn't know anything about the online dreaming community until after I started on this strange journey. I just happen to own an apartment that I was renting out to a man named Noel. We became friendly, both being fairly technical--he a network consultant, and me a software engineer. He was an intriguing character, but odd; we'd have the occasional night out together, chatting late into the night, but at times he would disappear for extended periods, seemingly never leaving his apartment.

The last time, he had disappeared for several weeks, the longest yet, when Esme arrived. She was, she claimed, Noel's sister, and was concerned for his safety after not having heard from him for a while. I let her into his apartment, and apparently disturbed by what she found, she requested that I let her stay while she looked for him, and promised to pay the rent. She seemed a bit odd, but then so had Noel--and she knew a lot about him, for reasons that will become clear. She paid the rent, and I let her stay.

Three months later, Esme was dead. She, like her "brother", had periodically disappeared into reclusion, and like him, had disappeared long enough to worry me. I sent her a concerned message, and she replied that she wouldn't be needing the apartment anymore, that she would be gone by the weekend. I entered to find the apartment in a state of utter chaos, and her body hanging, dead, in the middle of it all.