The Dream Hotel

Eisley Richardson, whose real name is Julie Renstrom, wakes in bed with her husband, Peter, on her first day of work after her staged retention. She reads the gossip columns and contemplates her failing sex life with her husband. She hurts her hip getting out of bed because she worked out too hard the day prior. Julie gets ready for the day, worrying about her relationship with her teenaged daughter, Ruby, and then goes down to breakfast, where her younger son, Max, ignores them all in favor of his tablet.

Outside of Julie’s workplace—Dreamsaver Inc.—there are protesters gathered in force since Dreamsaver’s security system was leaked, revealing that dream data from important people is kept private but ordinary dream data is sold. Julie tries to distract herself from the pain with breakfast in the cafeteria. She soon finds a new engineering hire, a beautiful young woman named Souza, crying in the bathroom; she assumes Souza has been hazed by Gaspard, one of the senior engineers, but learns instead that she works for another one, McClure. She tries to figure out what McClure could have done, but HR disciplines women who try to covertly leave notes in the bathroom for each other.