Thursday, October 02, 2008

fractal

I had a dream last night that I was back in high school, except that technology to exploit fractals and multi-dimensional space was commonplace. So, location was influenced by the motion used to access that space and things could be vastly larger on the inside than on the outside. So, my entire high school was in a small area of a small office building. I got in the elevator with a girl from one of my classes and we both laughed when the elevator had flip over twice to get the correct orientation to access the high school.

We were early and went to the cafeteria - which looked the size of a closet on the outside but was big enough to seat 300 on the inside. I got a small box of cereal that replenished itself from a storage area, some juice, and a cup of hot water. Rotating my wrist a certain way allowed me to pluck a tea bag from a personal storage area and we sat down. We were joined another classmate who pulled on the fractal edge of the table to stretch it out and make room. He was complaining about how he couldn't get things papers out of his notebook. I asked if it was broken or if he had forgotten the hand gestures needed access the various spaces inside.

He angrily replied he had forgotten the gestures for the correct areas and I suggested he just try all the common ones to get all the papers out, and then refile them. His vague refusal to do that then earned a shared glance from the girl and I - it was rumored at the school that he was selling drugs and that the paperwork he couldn't find was related to the sales. We then went to class.

After school, the girl offered me a ride home. On the way, we stopped to rescue a guy who had fallen in a fractal hole "filled" with water. He had managed to find an infinite supply of air so he wouldn't drown, but still needed help getting out. I invited the girl in for a snack and she was amazed at how nice the house was. The guy on the first floor in the living room was my father (though nothing like my real dad) was on some kind of holo-phone talking to someone for business and ignored us.

I mentioned that it was an older house, built not long after the fractal tech had been developed and that the builders had shown off by only making one door on the second floor. Depending on how you turned the knob, you would access different room. I explained to her that later homes had multiple doors to access the rooms since in that house, you couldn't ever leave the door open and it tended to isolate. I then told her that my parents kept forgetting how old I was and kept assuming that I had already moved out and was in college - to the point where they kept moving all my stuff in my bedroom down to the basement storage area. We shared a small laugh - but she could tell it really bothered me.

It was time for her to go so her own parents wouldn't worry and I settled in to do some homework. I woke up when I heard her car start up to leave.

Very weird, very detailed, and very consistent within it's own parameters. I was a little disappointed to wake up.

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