Nov 15, 2015

Space Dreams

The High Frontier - illustrated by Don Davis
When sleeping, I sometimes return to an odd dream about a strange place: a kind of museum with canals and boats. The most intriguing thing about those dreams has always been the crazy way that entry and exit to and from the "museum" was made possible. I never understood the entry protocol, so my dream interpretations always involved analogies such as being sucked in through a kind of person-consuming vagina.

Recent discussions with Gohrlay have caused me to devise a new interpretation of those dreams: I now believe that they represent memories from the future. Specifically, from the future of the Ekcolir Reality, from the time when there is a vast array of space habitats in Earth orbit.

cover art by Brian Boyle
When I was in my own personal golden age of science fiction, missions to the moon had recently ended and I was ready for the next step into space. Donald E. Davis did illustrations for NASA and I was intrigued by his depictions of space habitats, particularly those that were inspired by the ideas of Gerard K. O'Neill.

cover art by Bruce Pennington
During those years, I read various science fiction stories about space elevators and large space habitats.

One of the people who attended the First Conference on Space Colonization in 1974 was Eric Drexler, who went on to write Engines of Creation. The term "nanotechnology" was first used in 1974.

In the Exode Trilogy, Earth has long been visited by space aliens who have advanced technology. In the Ekcolir Reality, Interventionists provide Earthlings of the 20th century with advanced nanotechnology that is based upon hierions. One of the uses that Earthlings made of that alien technology was the construction of orbital space habitats.

I've always been very sensitive to motion sickness. What if there were a kind of space sickness that my analogue in the Ekcolir Reality (Irhit) has previously experienced? My hypothesis is that I have been allowed access to some of Irhit's memories, so my dreams of a mysterious "museum" might actually be memories from Deep Time. My fragmentary memories of the "museum" are often distorted and prematurely terminated, possibly by the effects of some odd type of space sickness.

The Human Library
The Second Deluge
Last year I was made aware of the existence of a Human Library in the Galactic Core. I did not allow myself to imagine the implications of making a Human Library accessible to residents of Earth. Is the "orbital museum" of my dream a king of access point for a Library of Humanity?

If such a "human library" or "museum of man" exists (possibly in the Hierion Domain) then it seems likely that in some sense "I" am "on display" in that library. I suspect that a "copy" of Irhit's mind is stored there, possibly along with every other Earthling that ever existed in Deep Time.

Next: Ever Since Ekcolir.

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