Into the Unknown

Out on Youtube March 20th. Link in Bio!! These two masterpieces where ALL over my mood board when I was making Waves. Black and Magical is the way I’d describe this film. Loving yourself when the world wants to hate you is the greatest power the world has ever seen. I have so many feelings about this film. Please look out for it this March! 3/20/2026, the first day of spring 💙

"You know Latin?" I asked her.

She glanced at the book and then looked at me with a grumpy face. "Yeah. Are you paying by cash or…"

I pulled my debit card out and handed it to her, but she flipped it in her fingers instead of slotting it into the card reader. After a few moments of distraction, she looked at me in the eyes. "Yeah, I can read Latin. My family was Roman."

As she slotted the card into the reader, I took a moment to understand what she meant, and then laughed. "Really now? Republic or Empire?"

A smile snaked across her face. "Republic."

I punched in the PIN on the card reader and a circular animation let us both know that the payment was being processed.

"Do you know Latin?" she asked me.

"Oh, no. I recognise it though. Greek's more my speed, you see."

"Greek," she mumbled.

The payment failed. She pulled the card out and slotted it back in and turned the machine to me.

"Sorry," I whispered, and turned back to see there was no one in the store. Not that I should have expected anyone else in the store at 2 am.

"Happens all the time," she said calmly.

I yawned and wiped a fugitive tear from my eye before entering the PIN with more care this time. Of course, the more I thought about the PIN, the less I was certain I remembered it. After entering three digits, I deleted the PIN again and tapped on the counter.

The cashier waited.

"Sorry, I just… you know how it happens, right? You think about something and then you second-guess yourself and you don't know if it's really what it is, or something else, and you've forgotten? Or maybe you're holding on to the memory from before it was changed?"

The cashier blinked. "Are you talking about the PIN?"

"Look, just distract me with something. Anything. I need to reset. What's your book about?"

"Well," she turned to the book, as if asking it for an answer. "Truth is, I'm studying Latin, so I'm reading this book to practice. I've already read it in English before this, but… now I don't really remember what's going on."

"Oh."

"Look, the language was very different back in the Republic days, okay?"

I laughed and bit my lip. "Then I guess I should admit I don't know a word of Greek."

She barely smiled, the tiredness getting the better of her, I imagined.

Another try on the card reader, and again, it failed with a notice that said that the PIN was incorrect.

"Wait, but it didn't say that the last time, right?" I asked.

She shrugged.

"So I got it right the first time, and wrong the second time. Fuck."

The language wasn't a flat object, nor was it buried too close to the surface. Its veins and tendrils snaked in every direction, forming a cage that contained nothing but tonnes and tonnes of sand.

To uncover it, our ancestors started digging. With their bare hands, they dug into the sand until they could uncover more and more of this language left to them as an inheritance. Wood, metal, shovel, pickaxe, love, camaraderie, curiosity, endeavour, all these words entered the virtual lexicon.

As they uncovered more and more of the language, our ancestors learnt about more and more things. Ideas that existed in a time before they arrived in the desert, tools and implements, and of course, violence and weapons. There was conflict, and collateral damage. Many words were smashed to pieces, lost forever in a jumble of shining syllables or crumbled into dust that became one with the sand.

The hole in the desert grew wide and deep. Our ancestors learnt about things that they had not, could not have conceived of. With the wealth of other words they had uncovered, they began working their way towards making those inconceivable words conceivable. They worked to make the hypothetical real.

Away from the hole where new words were mined, an entirely new occupation coalesced. The words uncovered from the hole were processed, their properties determined and re-arranged, so that our ancestors could do something unprecedented. They created new words.

These words could be purer, bigger, shinier. You could use them in ways heretofore unimagined.

A rift was formed between those who created and used these artificial words, and those who worshipped the words in the desert. After all, if the language was fully-formed, there was no need to create new words. The right words only have to be found. They would occur naturally.

Further problems emerged as artificial words were passed off as natural discoveries. One perpetrator of such fraud was unrepentant about his actions. "This word, when found, will be of the exact same composition as the artificial word. So what difference does it make if we use it now, before it has been uncovered?"

No one knew the true extent of the language. Did it stretch across the entirety of the desert, or perhaps comprise the entire sphere that formed the planet? These thoughts, which could not have been put to words once, were now on the lips of every citizen.

Say hello to the audience, Gustave! Oh! A man of few words - and all of those words transmitted by the keys of his piano! But that's alright, let him speak in his tinkling tongue. We know what there's to know about him already, don't we? He failed his audition at the orchestra, and now he's here playing for the two-bit crowd!

Oh, oh, oh wait, the spotlight's moving. Where will it settle? Oh, it's on Amelia this time! Violin, is it? She's not terribly interesting, we won't spend much time on her. If the word drab were in the dictionary, it was probably she who inspired it. Come on, spotlight, you can move now. No point wasting time around…

An act of luminous teleportation! Goodbye and good riddance, Amelia. Enjoy playing in the dark. We now head to the back for the drums! This one's Wilhelm, and he's a right proper master with those drumsticks, I'll have you know. Doesn't know what to do with them when around a set of drums, but by God, does he try!

But now the spotlight's on the move again! Where will it go this time? Why, it's moving off the stage entirely, and it settles on…

You! Of course! Who could've thought otherwise? You are the star of this show! Please, get your esteemed ass out of the seat and onto the stage, and let's have a good look at you. Hmm, nothing to mock, nothing to roast, certainly nothing to tease you about. Quite a specimen, no?

So then, what are you going to perform? A juggling act? But no, you do that plenty already. How about swallowing swords? Ooh, that touched a nerve. Perhaps you'll get into a box and get stabbed and then re-emerge alive? We can arrange for that, but would that really be so novel to you? Getting stabbed and surviving the ordeal?

Why, you're a walking bag of magic tricks, aren't you? No, no, don't be so modest. Please, tell us how you will entertain our audience. Shut up Wilhelm, I'm trying to concentrate! Right then, let's think. Singing? Dancing? A little bit of dramatic acting? Perhaps you can show us how great of a shot you are with a revolver? Woah woah, hold on, let's not point that there. Are you trying to get us shut down?

Here's an idea. Let's have you give a speech. A rousing, riveting, absolutely ravishing speech. About what, you ask? Why, that's your problem, isn't it? It's your speech!

Her next course of action was to drag herself through the no-gravity to the cockpit and do the routine process of starting the spacecraft thrusters. If they kick in, she could escape the subtle pull of the sun. It had been seven months, however, since the thrusters broke down.

Next, she'd pull the metal-backed notepad from where it was attached to a magnetic table and run through the troubleshooting system. She'd run through the steps two hundred times by now, but her training overrode any impulse to rely on her memory. The notepad was an extension of her body, and she had to treat it with as much care as her own brain.

It was only after confirming that the troubleshooting process had failed that she retreated to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She used the toilet, she exercised, and then she ate breakfast. Afterwards, she went to the airlock to pay respects to her late companion Mohini, who died on a space walk and drifted away into space one day.

Kavya had never been one for meditation back on Earth, but now she found herself spending hours with her eyes closed. She expected herself to fall asleep, but instead, she remained awake and alert, able to feel every sensation on her skin under the spacesuit. When she opened her eyes, the sun would glare at her, unblinking and browless, not conveying any particular emotion, but always, always drawing her closer to it.

She took a picture of the sun and compared it with the dozens of other pictures she'd taken earlier. Yes, there was little doubt that the rim had expanded.

This day, she was struggling to gulp down dinner when her tray went flying away from her. She realised the impact of the wall on her back, muttered a swear word, and spent a minute in a daze before realising that something had impacted the craft.

Kavya wasn't sure why she thought Mohini had returned. She immediately rushed to the cockpit, scanned the local radar, and flipped on the camera screens. There was no sign of any stranded astronaut. In fact, there was no sign of anyone or anything at all. Space remained as dark as it had always been.

She couldn't sleep that night, so she spent the night exercising and thinking hard on what could have happened. Was it a rock? A loose piece of space debris? And then, struck by her eureka moment, she left for the cockpit immediately and checked her drift pattern in space.

In the moment, I hated her words. However, I took them to heart the next day.

The raw material in question was a manuscript. Word after word, written by some moronic author who probably hung around universities and bohemian cafés, so enamoured by their own skill with words that they must consider themself an 'intellectual'.

The gem was what I'd make out of the manuscript by chafing away all the things that didn't belong. A book is a fine thing. It has to be extracted out of many black bars, strikethroughs, and notes in the margins.

Over the months I worked at the Refinement Department, Luisa helped me understand the nature of our work. In many ways, I thank her for empowering me.

"The author is inherently a self-centred individual," she once told me, "To conceive of words from their own mind and put it down on a manuscript. Who do they think they are? But it's in their nature, so we can only complain so much.

"On the surface level, the author's work sounds constructive - putting one word after another, after all. That's a fallacy. Making weapons and ammunition is also constructive work, after all, but would you really say it's good for humankind?"

Since then, the very shapes of the words before me came to resembles tanks, missiles, pistols, rifles, and swords. Every manuscript was a foreign military parade, threatening to form craters of our society.

In later discussions with Luisa, I impressed her with how well I'd taken to her philosophy.

"Mining words into a manuscript is self-centred and arbitrary," I said to her in the lunch canteen, "which is why you need a set of rules - tools, if you will - to chip away and refine the gem that is buried within the rock."

Luisa reached over the table and thumped my back. "I can hardly recognise you now. You were miserable when you joined."

We formed our in-jokes over the years, one of which was to chant 'create create create' in perfect unison whenever I felt a pang of guilt. We don't destroy, they do. We only create. Destruction is self-centred and wilful. Creation is objective, a work of art that ought to exist forever.

The only time I remember seeing Luisa look at me scandalised was when I joked that we should have our names on the manuscripts. After all, we're the ones who really create it.

Sailors Albert and Timothy, accompanied by First Mate Dylan, stood around the bed as if the captain were already a corpse. In the distance, thunder struck down on the roiling ocean, and the boat was lifted over a crest before descending down a wave. The bottle rolled all around the captain's cabin.

"Wasn't expecting this." Timothy raised his upper lip in a grimace, running a hand over the scar that ran from his temple to his cheek. "Reckon the captain's made our job easy on us."

Dylan picked up one of the unused pillows from the bed. "Bloodless, that's how I like it."

Albert picked at his lips as another flash of lightning illuminated the cabin for a brief second, casting the scene as if it were from a macabre play. "We'll need the body, yeah? To convince the crew we found him dead and didn't just throw him over the deck?"

"Wish we had a doctor with us," Dylan grumbled, "Who could tell us how to kill a man clean-like."

"A doctor up for a mutiny, and for ignoring the hippopotamic oath," Timothy smiled, the scar on his face twisting on his face.

"Quite," Dylan said, and approached the captain with the pillow. "Pull him onto his back. I'm going to lay it on him. If he struggles, press it down harder, with me."

He looked at both Albert and Timothy in their glinting eyes. "We only have one shot at this. Captain's dead at dawn, or we're shark fodder."

Albert took advantage of the darkness to gulp in silence. He stood by the headboard, leaning over the captain. Timothy stood nearby, ready to jump atop the captain if needed to restrain him.

Dylan's perspiration dripped onto the bedsheets. "Alright," he said.

Just then, a bright, white light enveloped the ship, transforming the inside of the cabin into a moment of day before fading in blue. The thunder that accompanied it left the crew's ears ringing. Dazed, all three struggled to keep their balance.

"What was that just now?" Albert said, before realising that he couldn't hear his own voice over the tinnitus.

"Too close," Timothy growled. "Maybe a sign of some sort to have it strike so near."

Dylan steadied himself with the aid of a table and approached the bed again, pillow still clutched in his hands.

Another bolt of lightning, this time further away, and the crew turned to look at the captain. His eyes, open, full of acidic rage, scanned the three would-be assassins. One look was enough to make all three take steps back.

With a swift movement, Timothy pulled out a dagger from his belt and leaped onto the bed, straddling the captain and raising his weapon.

The dagger struck the captain's chest, but without force, leaving a prick before it slid down to the bed. Timothy's brains were splattered across the cabin in that moment, and Albert lowered his pistol before helping push Timothy off the bed and dead onto the cabin floor.

"What in the blazes is going on here?" the captain roared, sitting up and pulling out a dagger of his own.

The hair rose on her skin as she went through the wooden boxes and realised that the one with the right seal was not there. She looked about her, as if accusing the townspeople of having snatched the box with the scroll. Several cries of 'messenger' and 'emissary' preceded her, and the guard guided her to the lord's court.

She bought time in the court, waiting for the lord to finish his existing appointments with the townsfolk. He routinely glanced at her, so certain of the message she would have brought to him. A matter of life and death, and not just for him.

Once she was presented before the lord, Aspiana struggled to look at the lord in the eye. He waited with uncommon patience, watching her and bringing together his ancient hands.

"Permit me to read the message within the scroll, your lordship," Aspiana said.

The lord sighed. "There is no need for that, we have men who can read."

An advisor stepped up at this cue and approached Aspiana, who nodded with faked enthusiasm. She pulled out one of the boxes from the satchel and presented it to the advisor with both hands.

With an indicative hand motion, the advisor asked Aspiana to open the box and unfurl the scroll. No doubt, Aspiana thought, he was afraid of toxins.

Aspiana did as she had been wordlessly instructed to do, pulled the scroll out, and immediately broke the seal so that it was disfigured.

"That was not necessary," the advisor growled, snatching the scroll from the messenger's hands. He examined the broken seal for several moments, and finally unfurled the scroll.

The advisor scanned the text and began reading it aloud. Aspiana listened to the advisor read out a brief message of peace. "There will be no hostilities," he read, "We send you this message immediately, to prevent any misunderstanding. Further communication will follow."

After rolling up the scroll, the advisor looked to the lord for advice.

"I shall take my leave," Aspiana muttered, bowed deeply to the lord and the advisor, and began to leave the court.

Behind her, she heard the lord discuss the scroll with his advisors. "We were so certain there would be an invasion," he said. "And yet, it seems they are committed to peace. I'm not certain what to make of it."

As she left, Aspiana thought back to where she'd acquired the right scroll. That was another court, with a king and another set of advisors, all of whom had agreed on a declaration of hostilities with the lord.

Perhaps it was his technique, he wondered. There was no way to know how to wield a sword he'd never seen in his life, and he wondered if the sword was even made for humans, or for some strange and ancient race that towered over humans.

He let go of the hilt and the sword fell neatly between his feet.

The sword was decorated with curves, and its blade ended with many sharp points, instead of the straight design that you would expect from a sword. As he massaged his left hand with his right, he thought on the graveyard where he'd found the sword. It had been laid to rest next to a human skeleton - probably some big lord or duke who had kept the sword as a trophy or inheritance.

Couldn't the old man have left a clue as to how to wield this weapon?

Eli picked up the sword again, holding it in both hands and then losing his balance after the sword's tip left the ground. This time, his frustration led to a few impulsive strikes at the dummy. He swung the sword, and it felt more like the sword was wielding him than the other way around.

Finally, he spun with the sword and rammed it into the dummy. The dummy's stick finally tilted to the right, and Eli heard a gentle cracking sound. He dropped the sword to the ground, in a small pool of mud.

Was this the right way to wield it? Swinging it around in circles and aiming to hit the target? That sounded absurd. Yes, it was the most absurd way to wield a sword that Eli had ever imagined.

He punched the dummy and punched it with his other hand, and so kept alternating his hands, but the dummy wouldn't budge. He tried to tip the dummy over, and failed. To the left, the mystery sword lay covered in mud, like the mythical sword in stone, except this one was entitled the owner to becoming the king of shit.

At this point, Eli started to feel like the dummy was mocking him. He felt like scalp was on fire and he started savagely tearing at the dummy. The desperation to see it torn down went hand-in-hand with the stinging, stabbing self-hatred of knowing he would never be a warrior. The sword was simply not his destiny.

When the dummy wouldn't fall with the punching and clawing, Eli started kicking at the stick. He kicked above, below, and on the crack. The stick wouldn't break.

Finally, he picked up the sword again, swung it in a complete circle, and struck the dummy's stick - a low hit, but a sure one. This time, he heard another crack at the sword's impact. Immediately, Eli kicked the crack, and the dummy came crashing down onto the mud.

This is not the only place the flame has been. It has been born and it has died so many times through millions of years, that its memory is a flickering blur.

There are times it cannot forget, such as when it first appeared in the world, staring at a pair of flint stones and a family of apes. How it shuddered and jittered, nervous, with no sense of purpose. The apes took good care of it, and they taught other apes to take good care of it too.

Every time it was extinguished, there was another place it was summoned and reborn. It presided over royal feasts, grand in the fireplace while so many other flames danced over wax sticks. The apes, who now called themselves humans, saw each other in the reflection of the flame. The light and shadow carved smiles on their faces, drew laughter from them, gave shape to the music and the dance.

It blazed atop towers, a great emperor of a flame, guiding ships that were so far away, that to them, it was nothing but a shining mote. It sat quietly in lanterns, contained and cosy, giving off light and witnessing a world through glass. It sailed in diyas over the river water, wondering about the prayer in the joined hands of the woman who set it off.

Other memories, it was not so fond of.

Collapsing beams, scorched walls, and the shocking, momentary lifespan of an explosion - frightened faces of all ages, of all genders, of all tribes.

It witnessed the consumption of the witch, and it ran through the wilderness in every direction, pushing itself against tree after tree, driving animals away and enveloping the unlucky ones. These were times it felt exhilarated, elated, free, and despite it all, desperate to die.

The flame turns its attention from these memories. There is meat on the fire. It licks the meat, enters it through the surface of the flesh, transforms it, reminds itself that the creature is dead, that the creature isn't screaming, that the creature cannot scream any more.

Mercifully, the wind nearly blows it out. This is enough for it to stop thinking about its violence. It instead watches the old man in the abandoned compound blow on the meat and tear it from the skewer.

There was a time people offered things to the flame. In many places, people still do. The flame watches these offerings thrown into it, and it wonders still. What can it do? What can't it do?

It searches for purpose still, but it's no longer nervous and it doesn't shiver any more.

---

They'd offered the luxury of an old, smelly mattress in one corner of the room, and a bucket in the opposite corner. None of that took my interest as much as the wall opposite the door.

Intricate scenes from over two thousand years ago were carved into the wall, depicting scenes of horseback warfare, camel trading, herds of elephants, markets with stalls full of unknown goods, ships fighting against the tides, and so much more.

My jaw fell slack. I touched the carvings, felt the grooves and valleys beneath my fingers, and almost immediately, tears formed at my eyes. Years of searching, and here I'd been brought to them almost serendipitously. Constructing a makeshift prison in ancient ruins had certainly been a choice - a choice I was quite happy with.

Barely able to take my eyes off of the wall, I returned to the closed door, angled my mouth toward the slit, and shouted my thanks at my captors. I did this several times, until a stern-looking man appeared in front of the slit and glared at me with dagger eyes.

"Thank you," I repeated, "These carvings, they are exactly what I was looking for. Could you let me see the rest of them in the other cells?"

The man frowned at me, clearly not understanding my speech or understanding only a little bit. He struck the door with a baton and barked at me to shut up and keep quiet.

I stood at a distance from the door, so that he could see me better, and I pointed at the wall. The tears on my face and my resplendent smile must have confused him even further. He stood confused for several moments before unlocking the door, entering, and locking the door from the inside.

Returning to the wall, I pointed out a scene of the gods blessing a field of crops. The sun shone behind the god, like a halo, and a group of farmers near the crop bowed and prayed to the god.

"This is astounding!" I said.

The man kept his distance from me, brandishing his baton, but he did stare at the wall as if he'd noticed it for the first time in his life. His gaze shifted to the top of the wall, to the left, to the right, and to the bottom. He said something I did not understand, and pointed towards the next cell. Then, he unlocked the door and went to the next cell. I could hear him open the door to that cell.

The gondolier hummed an old local ditty, and Kim was grateful he had his back to her. They seemed to float through a miasma, with the neon lights of the city above reflected in the water below. Light, light everywhere and not a corner to hide in. Kim was exposed, but she was also hidden. For now.

The phone slipped from her hands. She let it. A simple plop sound, and the phone wore the water like a cloak before sinking into the dark, sinking under the skin of pulsating lights.

Kim bent over the edge, only for the gondolier to reprimand her.

"It's not just your life if you drown," he growled, "You'll drag me down with you."

Funny words, Kim thought. Hours ago, her senior at the New Nartional Party had barked the same words to her while throwing a newspaper in her face. She'd once looked up to the party chief. Now, she couldn't take her eyes off the floor.

Kim stared at the city around her, the city that was once promised to her. The city that she could have sworn was hers already. All it takes is one nosy journalist with a petty salary and a passion for clawing at her betters, to ruin that.

She let her hand dip in the water and she watched the trail that flowed behind it.

"Have you decided on where you're going yet, miss?" the gondolier asked.

"No," Kim struggled to get the word out. "Just keep going somewhere. Anywhere. Just not any of the bigger canals."

The gondolier scratched at his beard. "Will do," he sang.

The lack of a phone in her hand was already making Kim anxious. That phone had contacts, information, data, conversations, and now they were all waterlogged and lost somewhere in the depths of the city's canals. She had effectively ceased to be the Kim she knew herself to be, the Kim the city thought she was.

"So what was it?" the gondolier asked, pausing for a few moments to leave open the possibility of an answer. "Lost someone? Breakup? Maybe you put all your money in stocks and now you have nothing to live for?"

Kim didn't answer, of course, though she wanted to bark at the man to shut up.

"You see, you aren't the only one who's boarded my gondola to get lost. One of them actually tipped the damn thing over trying to die. Right mess that was. And he didn't even die, that's the kicker. Made it to the stairs and decided he wanted to live. Who's the idiot left hanging though? Me."

Crouching behind a pillar with the briefcase in his hand, Basil wondered if he could reset this situation somehow. If he flung the briefcase one way and ran the other? No, he'd still get gunned down. There was no escaping this black helicopter, not unless his extraction chopper arrived.

Several buildings away from him, pink and purple searchlights danced in the sky and the noise of a concert drowned out the helicopter's blazing attack. He tried to focus on the words to keep himself calm. It took him a few seconds to concentrate, but it turned out that the lyrics were in Japanese. The singer's voice was shrill, the music was loud, and his head hurt.

The helicopter stopped firing, and that frightened Basil even more than if it had kept on shooting bullets at him. He decided to take the opportunity to run forward and hide behind another pillar. He searched the skeleton building's seventeenth floor, and found a flight of stairs going up.

Going up was a risk. It left him exposed, and if he reached the top floor too early, he'd be skewered by the helicopter's Gatling gun. On the other hand, he had to be close enough to the top floor that when the extraction chopper arrived, he could make a clean run for it.

The fatigue was starting to hit him. His leg bled, and he found it harder to exert himself to reach the pillar.

Just as he reached it, however, he found his shadow appear to the right. To the left, the helicopter's lights shone like a pair of devilish eyes. The chopper had flanked him.

The Gatling gun revved up. Basil stumbled.

He fell halfway covered by the pillar, but his legs were exposed, and he kept bracing for the burning shockwave sensation of his legs being riddled by bullets. Instead, he heard loud bursts behind him, giving him enough time to pull his legs up into a crouching position behind the pillar.

He turned right. The suitcase had been hit by the helicopter's bullets, tossed several metres away from where he'd dropped it.

Basil swore loudly, his voice drowned out by the Japanese idol singing in the area. A voice in his audio receiver spoke calmly and steadily, a little too calmly and steadily for Basil's tastes.

"Extraction chopper is on site and engaging. Make your way up to the extraction zone."

Almost as the message finished, Basil heard bullets on metal. The chopper harassing him changed its position and lifted itself higher in the air, circling around the building as it tried to avoid the hits from the chopper that was supposed to extract Basil.

There's a very slight dampness to the receiver, so when you place it on your forehead, it feels a lot like someone has put a damp piece of cloth on you, such as when you have a fever.

The transmitter, which connects via USB to any supported device like a smartphone or a laptop, resembles a thick pen, something that could be mistaken for a lipstick by those not in the know.

Once the program is loaded up and connected to the transmitter, you only need to hold down the button on the transmitter for 3 seconds. If the light turns green, the receiver connection has been established.

There's nothing to do after that. If your partner is asleep, as they should be, the data transmitted through the nanotech weave will penetrate the forehead and skull and directly conflict with brain cells. Some liken this procedure as a 'sustained assault on the brain', but it's really better to think of it as how water fills a jug full of rocks.

Soon enough, the sleeper will enter dream state, and the data you are streaming from the device will begin to influence their dreams. I say 'influence' very specifically, because so far, no one has been able to transfer data into dreams at a 1:1 fidelity. There's always some loss, some mutation, or some augmentation.

Depending on the person, you might even gain hints of what is going on in the sleeper's mind. If the data you are transmitting is about yourself, they might whisper your name, perhaps with a moan, perhaps even with a smile as they remember happy memories of being with you. Send them information about politics and war and they might end up frowning and crying. It's predictable to some extent.

There is no major threat if a sleeper wakes up during transmission. A minor headache, usually dull, might appear and then disappear in a matter of hours. Of course, if you have placed the receiver on them without their consent, they may wake up confused and angry, and so you should be careful to peel it off and hide it before they notice. Needless to say, transmitting influence data to the sleeper is not a task for those unwilling to pay attention to the sleeper.

As someone who's been in this situation, who has lost a relationship as a result, and even a residence, I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping a close eye on the sleeper and not getting too 'greedy', as the slang goes. A little bit of influence, say 20-40 minutes, goes a long way, as opposed to keeping it for long and risking the sleeper finding out.