Dream Machine

The Dream Machine is the eponymous character of the game The Dream Machine and main antagonist. As the name would suggest, it is a machine created to allow a human access to another person's dreams, and is able to enter dreams as its own person.

Creation
The Machine was created by the great-grandfather of Felix Morton, Eldon Morton, who suggested that all minds are connected in a collective unconscious, and that sleeping people's mind travel there to dream. He then created the first form of the Dream Machine, which his family would then build on, adding new mechanical and organic components.

During the Game
The Machine first appears in Chapter 2, but only acts as its own character towards the end of Chapter 3. In Chapter 2, it speaks only to Mr. Morton, while Victor can only overhear one side of the argument between them. It then forces Mr. Morton unconscious and attacks him inside his own part of the Dreamscape in the form of a giant black tentacle, described by Mr Morton as the 'roots' of the Machine. The Machine's roots exist in the dreams of each resident of The Estate, barring Victor himself; as he only spent a single night in the estate, Mr. Morton was not able to access both his and Alicia Neff's dreams and the Machine is unable to by itself.

At the end of Chapter 2, the Machine forces Alicia asleep in the same way as Mr. Morton and possesses her dreaming form as Captain of the SS Albatross. While the Machine claims it has no desire to hurt real, Mr. Morton being an accident, it has no qualms killing the people created inside dreams, and systematically kills members of the ship's crew for its tentacle to devour. When Victor poisons it, the Machine retreats completely from the dream, leaving Alicia asleep. Similar events happen in Chapter 4; the Machine's tentacle takes the form of Edie Jones' mother-in-law, draining her emotionally until she destroys its image in the dream.

In Chapter 5, the Machine begins to show more of a personality, talking openly with Victor and even making plans to halt his quest. It demonstrates having true ideas and desires; it tries to make a bargain with Victor to be left alone (though will not fulfill its own side of the deal, even if Victor accepts) and plans to travel the dreamscape in a new body free from the tentacles, constructed from the organs of dream characters gathered by an organ thief. When Victor bypasses the maze created to slow him down, the Machine evens shows signs of despair, lamenting how easily its plan was foiled.

At the end of the game, in Chapter 6, the Machine's deceptions finally work, and it tricks Victor into falling outside of the Dreamscape while it searches for a way to pass the birth barrier and enter the very core of the Dreamscape; the pre-natal realm. With Victor's accidental help it does so, and possesses the mind of Victor's unborn child. When Victor threatens to kill his own child to prevent them living under the Machine's control, it makes him another deal, which Victor accepts. It then lives with Victor inside his own mind; both are aware and lucid, but Victor can never awake.