The Art of Dreaming

Chapter 11

My skateboard, I could feel the love surging through the air. Maybe it was just kinetic energy and potential energy but either way it felt right. I hopped over a curb and skated passed a giant statue of a golden microphone. I jumped off and pressed a button on its foundation. A miniature garage opened by my shin and I slid my skateboard inside of it. I saw Troin sitting on a bench with her baby in a car seat. I walked over and started to softly tap the baby's nose and cheeks, and softly pulled on the ear lobes. All the while making sounds according to which part of the face I tapped or pulled. I always called Troin's baby my little drumpad.

"What're you doing around here?" I asked her.

"Void loop() {." she responded.

It was her business I guess, so I just nodded and walked towards the gate. There were five boxes in front of the gate and a emu that lived in them. Every night the emu would move into an adjacent box and stay there for the day. On the wall of the gate was a sign with a date and the box the emu was in on that day. It was 4 days and and it was in box 2. I walked up to box three and tapped on it. The emu popped its head out of a hole with the keys in its beak. I petted its head and took the keys walking to the gates. You always had to solve this puzzle to get into this complex. I remember seeing people be stuck outside for days repeatedly choosing the wrong boxes. 

I entered the gates and placed the keys on the key ring. The computer cemetery looked the same as it always did. Circuit boards, lines of code, fans, different colored lights. It was where technology went to die. This place rejected progress. There were so many cool things here though. I made it to a circle in the path and stepped into a pavilion. Wires were sloppily laying around but it was okay. I choose a book and a badge and turned the virtual reality machine on. Bright lights shone from the LEDs in the floor and when I could see again the menu character was looking at me.

"Dea ascin loos tri woo ha?" he asked.

"Yac yac wool qin." I answered.

He dropped a small drill that quadrupled in size as soon as it hit the floor. The drill made a hole into the next level and I followed it in. I opened my book and blasted falling bags of chips with wind to guide them onto the shelves. When anybody questioned what I was doing I flashed them my badge and continue scoring these points. I had successfully shelved 100 bags of chips by now. Thousands more were falling from the sky and I felt a chill, I made it to the next level. The bags of chips were replaced with individually wrapped ice cream cones. I pulled goggles down over my eyes and flipped the page in my book for cooler air. I was dropping ice cream cones in freezers with a practiced precision. My goggles started to fog up by the time I heard the bell. 

"Op bou!"

I made the new high score, with a smile I closed my book. The fog on my goggles was almost impossible to see through now. That was except for three lights that shone. A red, blue and green light. I gently removed the goggles from my head and placed them on the table next to me. The counter had reached zero, the program was designed to stop if counter < 1. Overall it was a great test, the world of dreams was now accessible through virtual reality. My partner in this endeavor walked in with a handheld synthesizer, pressing down a button on it. It made a strange and eerie sound that she loved to play with. I waited for her to remove the hardware strapped to the pulse points at different places on my arms.

"We had a very blurry picture of your experience from the monitors, how was it for you?" Troian asked.

"This is going to change what people think entertainment is, Troian." I told her, "We need to re-solder the 16-pin male header to the VCT and add a test switch for dream-con processing. The serial import is still brash."

"What about a microcontroller for the audience not wearing the headset?"

"I honestly don't think the world is ready for that yet." I told her, "The picture element will stay dependent on the user for now. We should increase the number of speakers to three for the stock unit; not being able to express these sounds would be a drawback."

I took a breath and leaned back in the chair, it was exhilarating but it was tiring as well. Troian finally completely unhooked me and we walked over to the process and debugging monitor so she could show me some interesting statistics.