I had a dream I was unsuccessfully teleporting into the mind of an artificial being that was supposed to be harvesting oxytocin vapors from a rather loud neighborhood party at Champion Hills Apartments in Beaumont, Texas, but was unsuccessful because of paint vapors wafting from a renovation project next door and, upon its final egress from its mothership back to the “Alex Thompson” unit, accidentally teleported into a nearby talking Optimus Prime figurine with whom whose young, abused, needful human was experiencing unhealthy bonding and projection issues and causing the entity within the articulated doll to speak the words the child was feeling. The artificial being, locked within the simple electronic system, was helpless (as a child) as it heard its own speaker say, “Young hero, we must burn the castle.” The child was crouched behind the patio full of partygoers with a can of gasoline and a lighter. “Alex Thompson” lay slumped on a couch. The entity calls out to “Alex” in the form of an electronic warble. “Alex” is alerted and homes in on the signal, crashes through the fence and seizes the figurine from the child, swallows it and says, feet sticking out of his mouth, “Ice Ardy”. The entity abandons the biomes of the human biochemical system and returns to his ship
The body of “Alex Thompson” dies in the fire. It’s thought that the mechanical nodule within Alex’s throat was part of the melted doll extracted by a Beaumont, TX coroner during autopsy. Mass human production/disbursement of oxytocin on Earth is abandoned, and our world is doomed to another millennium of warfare and compensatory lame neighborhood parties. Or so it seems.
When I woke up, the dregs of the dream slipping down into the craw of my subconscious mind, I saw Alex’s supervisor repeated try to enter the teleportation pad via secure partition and fail, repeatedly. His biomes unable to acclimatize to the entangled mess of quarking soup passing through the X-ray field surrounding the unfolding dimension within the toroidal fusion generator. In short, his hand was rejected. He lay slumped on the floor, waiting for Alex to return, defeated. Someone was going to be fired, but it wouldn’t be him.
Alex had never tasted human commiseration, had never actually felt “love”. But the toy had been covered in oxytocin residue, and before it melted and fused to his throat-born transponder, he actually felt love, a strange immortal connection. He sat in his cell until he was summoned before council, brooding over this. Council decided he had acted inappropriately by remaining at the party too long, and advised him to also avoid being the first one to arrive at lame parties and telling people he wanted to “get down immediately with as many people as possible.”
His supervisor was transferred. Earth, as a project, was being passed by, again, because of increased efficiency guidelines. Alex Thompson was going to return to Earth as a holograph in three thousand years. He would return, this time, as a popular figurine, loved (and held closely to warm organic tissues) by children the world over.
But until then, war, mayhem, with the occasional lame neighborhood party. He would have to wait. Alex was not happy with the council’s decision. I woke up with Alex creeping into the teleportation unit late one night. I was really worried he was making a reckless and deadly choice. I woke up worried about my hero. Who was saving who?
I have a really hard time remembering my dreams, but when I do, I’m kind of bewildered at what I find in there.
Fifty State Banana 