Phase Q/Future Engineering

In the makeshift lab, the pieces start to come together.

First, it’s just classical dreaming. Then, the breakthrough: directional dreaming. Afterwards, lots and lots and lots of work to make the whole thing come together.

The engineers celebrate each milestone, consuming inordinate amounts of dopamerge.

When the dreamtech is finally ready, a metanodeset gathers to observe and analyze the results.

“We present to you, today, a new technology,” announces Flumak proudly.

“This will change the game, concerning ongoing defensive activities, as well as our future lives,” chimes in Xurola.

Flumak thinks and a digital curtain rises.

Behind the curtain, a group of people sit.

Focusing intently, they seem oblivious to their surroundings in the room. Yet, they also seem to be intensely aware of each other.

The group thinks, and a soothing vibration sounds throughout the room.

One after another, even in the bright light that sharply reveals their features, the group of people on stage seem to levitate and float ghostlike in the air.

In their altered state of embodiment, these Fyuchees dream up a broad selection of formidable visions. Animals, weaponry, maps, secret messages. The ideas float up and solidify into existence.

The attendees watch, stunned. The dreamtech seems able to do instantaneously what used to require much time and great effort. And the results seem highly usable. A dreamer imagines a flame, and burns down a wall of the building. Then, as if in a game, the dreamer instantly creates a fully functional replacement wall.

“What are the limits? What can you do with this?” asks an attendee.

“We haven’t yet fully defined the limits. We believe that we can construct an entry point into a separate ontographic branch. It would technically be nondimensional. We have yet to work out fully what properties it would have, and in order to establish that we may require some new evidence.”

“How does the machine work?” asks another attendee.

“We reengineered a natural ability that street dreamers have been using intuitively. It appears that we evolved with this functionality built into our biology, yet have let it sit unused for so long that it became dormant, almost like a vestigial organ. We implemented it in titanio.”

“It’s a good thing the street dreamers have their hobby,” says an older attendee, and the room laughs good-naturedly.

Xurola opens a chart showing the upcoming fifty years. “We’re going to win against the Triads.”

Several of the original dreamers taken from the street, in attendance as guests of honor, watch the ongoing proceedings with bafflement and trepidation.

The new dreamers on stage, after putting on a fireworks showcase, quietly clean up their mental imaginings from the room. In place of all the seemingly miraculous events, they leave behind a subtle white table covered in plentiful foods and drinks, for the guests to enjoy.

“And through our creativity we will see another way,” the Fyuchees chant in unison.

• Electrify.
• Flow.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.