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dream
Hanging out with friends in the basement. I levitate, hopping between a set of posts to the beat of the music. Hunger overcomes us. We head to Safeway for some grinds. Safeway is fucking huge, the size of a football stadium. Cruising through Safeway, I build a rice/squid plate, but pass on the $6 mushroom gravy. God it looked good.
I'm at the checkout counter, and when I go to pay, I'm asked what POD I'm a member of. POD? "No POD, no service" is the reply. I head over to another cashier, same story. The cashier tells me that POD is some kind of training company that deals with public service work. Unless you're active in public service, you don't get your food anymore. Nice.
It also turns out that you can work at Safeway in exchange for POD membership. One friend goes this route and turns into a working drone. On his shirtfront is a button that reads "I make between $7 and $94.55 an hour!" I question him about this, and he answers in umm's and err's interspersed with assorted corporate-speak, his eyes cloudy and unfocused. I move over to the microwaves and get my food cooking. I'm not losing my squid plate over some public service crap. Three minutes later, steaming cephalopod.
I head outside to catch up with the friends, and we spend a bit of time enjoying our food, cracking jokes. We turn around to notice that the entire Safeway is gone. In its place is a lake of purple goo, filled with brain-gray coral. Tongue-like appendages lick out from the coral, as if to taste us. The lake begins to shimmer in blue and green patterns, its colors indicating an emerging intelligence. The patterns intensify, and the lake begins to speak its matrix-esque plan to rescue all of humanity from itself. This time, with our permission.
It began by providing shelter for everyone. Then a sense of fun. As more and more people filed in to join the ranks of the protecting purple pond, the dissident movement began to take shape. The dissidents (myself included, naturally) marched around the purple pond, chanting "hell! no! we won't go!" as the pond's once-spacious offerings became more and more cramped.
There was a barrier to the outside world that surrounded the pond. We marching between it and the pond. To save on space, humanity became digitized, its consciousness spread throughout the pond. Individuality was replaced by efficiently-sorted digitized strands of consciousness, pulsating throughout the pond. As we marched, the available space began to dwindle, until we had no more room to move, and were resigned to stand where we stood.
Just as we became fully-corralled, an outward force pushed in on the barrier. It seems that some the primordial goo that led to the formation of the pond had leaked out, and had spawned a new intelligence, hell-bent on assimilating everything in its path. Apparently, we had been the last holdout of flesh, and for that matter, /matter/, in the entirety of the universe. As the two intelligences locked into battle, the density of humanity and digital became denser and denser, until infinite force was being applied from all directions. Each bit of digital consciousness was a string moving at incredible speed, hurtling towards the very center of the pond. All at once, Kurzweil's singularity was born.
For a moment, all thought was shared amongst all that existed. It was a calm place, a beloved place, a timeless place. Everything made sense, and there was nothing unknown. Non-existence felt luke warm, like a bath.
Then, all at once, the singularity collapsed, exploding outwards into an emerging universe. Blobs of gelatinous material coalesced into the first quarks, then protons and onto helium atoms. Things sped ahead for awhile, until the first ideas were spawned. These were more complicated than the atoms that came before them, but ultimately had just as much influence on the shape of things to come.
I found myself in a gigantic library of books and ideas, half-digital and half-corporeal. The more influential items appearing more prominently than the rest. Around me were my friends and people I had known, and surrounding us were the books and ideas that had given shape to our personal worlds. Our pile of books was a local maxima, with other maxima clustered throughout the near-infinite span of the library. We traveled through the library, amassing a stack of incredible books to read in the future.
I felt myself drawn into a peculiar room of the library. The Religion Room. My experience here was different than the rooms -- I felt a strong emotional connection, and I decided to find the exact center of the room and discover what book was there. The book had trouble materializing out of the ether. The ether's digital tendrils gripped at my fingers as I gripped at the ether, and what I finally pulled out was a fist-sized sphere, covered in a pattern reminiscent of an alligator's skin. This was it -- the symbol of my religion. I squeezed it slightly, and it pulsated, deforming into multiple smaller spheres, each representing a Greek element.
It was then that I became caught up in a wave of lucidity. I saw my hands materialize as pure-red entities, slowly resolving into their familiar shapes. I saw Jennifer through the digital void. She was playing the piano. I materialized a set of drums and started banging along. The more I got into my rhythm, the more she faded away into an essence of color amongst the digital static. I felt a feeling of peace sweep over me, out into all that existed in this new universe. Then I felt love. I meditated in this timeless state, wondering if it was a dream, wondering of anyone else would know about it, whether I would ever wake up.
Alarm clock.
6am.
Snooze button.
I'm at the checkout counter, and when I go to pay, I'm asked what POD I'm a member of. POD? "No POD, no service" is the reply. I head over to another cashier, same story. The cashier tells me that POD is some kind of training company that deals with public service work. Unless you're active in public service, you don't get your food anymore. Nice.
It also turns out that you can work at Safeway in exchange for POD membership. One friend goes this route and turns into a working drone. On his shirtfront is a button that reads "I make between $7 and $94.55 an hour!" I question him about this, and he answers in umm's and err's interspersed with assorted corporate-speak, his eyes cloudy and unfocused. I move over to the microwaves and get my food cooking. I'm not losing my squid plate over some public service crap. Three minutes later, steaming cephalopod.
I head outside to catch up with the friends, and we spend a bit of time enjoying our food, cracking jokes. We turn around to notice that the entire Safeway is gone. In its place is a lake of purple goo, filled with brain-gray coral. Tongue-like appendages lick out from the coral, as if to taste us. The lake begins to shimmer in blue and green patterns, its colors indicating an emerging intelligence. The patterns intensify, and the lake begins to speak its matrix-esque plan to rescue all of humanity from itself. This time, with our permission.
It began by providing shelter for everyone. Then a sense of fun. As more and more people filed in to join the ranks of the protecting purple pond, the dissident movement began to take shape. The dissidents (myself included, naturally) marched around the purple pond, chanting "hell! no! we won't go!" as the pond's once-spacious offerings became more and more cramped.
There was a barrier to the outside world that surrounded the pond. We marching between it and the pond. To save on space, humanity became digitized, its consciousness spread throughout the pond. Individuality was replaced by efficiently-sorted digitized strands of consciousness, pulsating throughout the pond. As we marched, the available space began to dwindle, until we had no more room to move, and were resigned to stand where we stood.
Just as we became fully-corralled, an outward force pushed in on the barrier. It seems that some the primordial goo that led to the formation of the pond had leaked out, and had spawned a new intelligence, hell-bent on assimilating everything in its path. Apparently, we had been the last holdout of flesh, and for that matter, /matter/, in the entirety of the universe. As the two intelligences locked into battle, the density of humanity and digital became denser and denser, until infinite force was being applied from all directions. Each bit of digital consciousness was a string moving at incredible speed, hurtling towards the very center of the pond. All at once, Kurzweil's singularity was born.
For a moment, all thought was shared amongst all that existed. It was a calm place, a beloved place, a timeless place. Everything made sense, and there was nothing unknown. Non-existence felt luke warm, like a bath.
Then, all at once, the singularity collapsed, exploding outwards into an emerging universe. Blobs of gelatinous material coalesced into the first quarks, then protons and onto helium atoms. Things sped ahead for awhile, until the first ideas were spawned. These were more complicated than the atoms that came before them, but ultimately had just as much influence on the shape of things to come.
I found myself in a gigantic library of books and ideas, half-digital and half-corporeal. The more influential items appearing more prominently than the rest. Around me were my friends and people I had known, and surrounding us were the books and ideas that had given shape to our personal worlds. Our pile of books was a local maxima, with other maxima clustered throughout the near-infinite span of the library. We traveled through the library, amassing a stack of incredible books to read in the future.
I felt myself drawn into a peculiar room of the library. The Religion Room. My experience here was different than the rooms -- I felt a strong emotional connection, and I decided to find the exact center of the room and discover what book was there. The book had trouble materializing out of the ether. The ether's digital tendrils gripped at my fingers as I gripped at the ether, and what I finally pulled out was a fist-sized sphere, covered in a pattern reminiscent of an alligator's skin. This was it -- the symbol of my religion. I squeezed it slightly, and it pulsated, deforming into multiple smaller spheres, each representing a Greek element.
It was then that I became caught up in a wave of lucidity. I saw my hands materialize as pure-red entities, slowly resolving into their familiar shapes. I saw Jennifer through the digital void. She was playing the piano. I materialized a set of drums and started banging along. The more I got into my rhythm, the more she faded away into an essence of color amongst the digital static. I felt a feeling of peace sweep over me, out into all that existed in this new universe. Then I felt love. I meditated in this timeless state, wondering if it was a dream, wondering of anyone else would know about it, whether I would ever wake up.
Alarm clock.
6am.
Snooze button.
