The Experiment of Dreams Read Online Free PDF

relationship between Ben and Dr. Stuart Wright took off, even blossoming near friendship levels.
    Their relationship further increased after Ben’s foster parents died in a freak car accident coming home from a Halloween party. Their car skidded off the highway and hit a telephone pole. His foster mother died instantly, while his foster father survived halfway to the hospital.
    The accident might have happened because the roads were icy that night. It might have happened because they were drinking at the Halloween party, or because they were driving over the speed limit. Whatever the case, the accident did happen, and his foster parents did die within an hour of each other.
    Ben’s estranged grandmother agreed to take him in while he was still a minor under the stipulation that Ben abide by her strict living conditions. Unbeknownst to Ben at the time, she had only agreed to take him in so she could declare him as a dependent and receive a tax break. His grandmother, a woman he barely knew, had no business supporting a teenager—or anyone for that matter. She could have taken Ben in when he was eight years old, when his birth parents died in a boating accident while he was at Sunday school, but she didn’t. Ben’s foster parents told him that his birth mother was given up for adoption by his grandmother when she was just a baby. His birth mother and grandmother didn’t meet until later on in life. Ben never questioned his grandmother about his real mom and doubted she would tell him much if he did.
    Ben was young when his birth parents died, but he could remember the details of that day clearly. He had been in Sunday school, sitting on the ground playing with wooden blocks. Two uniformed police officers walked into the classroom with their caps in their hands. All the kids stopped playing to stare at the police officers. His teacher, Mrs. Hughes, stood with her palms over her mouth as the officers spoke to her in hushed voices. The crackling noises from the radios on their belts cut through the stillness of the classroom.
    The official report stated that his father had a freak heart attack while steering his boat when out for a leisurely afternoon cruise. He lost control, and the boat veered wildly before flipping over the surface of the water like a skipping stone. A gash on his mother’s head indicated she was most likely knocked unconscious before drowning.
    That was all there was to it.
    Ben’s grandmother only agreed to take him after his foster parents died since he was already a grown teenager and would be out of the house as soon as he turned eighteen. She never shared with Ben any benefit of the tax rebates she got from Uncle Sam, but rather made Ben pay rent while he was under her roof. He was an incursion in her life, an unwanted thorn in her side, and he knew it. Ben was a stranger, merely a lodger in her neat and weathered little home, and he did not want to be there.
    It was during this time, while Ben was living with his grandmother, that Dr. Wright gave him the best possible support he could offer: he gave Ben a job, a purpose in life. Ben no longer had to pay for office visits, but rather received pay to volunteer as a test subject.
    A year later, with money also coming in from waiting tables at The Pit Boss BBQ, he was able to move out from his aging grandmother’s house, leaving her alone to wallow upon her recliner in angry solitude, drinking glass after glass of cheap boxed wine. He moved to a small one-bedroom apartment that he rented for a couple of years. That time of his life was painful and confusing— blurry even, as if the essence of time did not pertain to those cloudy years. There was no one around to help him become a man, to see him through the difficult process of becoming an adult and dealing with the loss of his parents and foster parents. He moved farther upstate soon after to distance himself from the pain of his childhood and to begin a future as a man.
    The only happiness he