Saturday, January 16, 2021

Dream Log: Blockchain Magic Carpets

 I dreamed I was a partner in a startup company which had invented a way to beam people, like in "Star Trek," using blockchain. 

 

Some paper-based product imprinted with blockchain had been stolen from our company, and I was tasked with aiding law-enforcement with recovering this product. It had become known that these pieces of cardboard-like material could be used as so-called "magic carpets." Strictly speaking, they did not fly, they glided, and some people like to stand on them and surf through they air, controlling them with their body movement much as one controls a surfboard or skateboard. 

I traced the "carpets" to a junior-high school which was combined with a municipal building which was six stories high. I convinced the school principal to let me use the school's PA system. I said on the PA that no one was angry at the students, that no-one had any intention of pressing charges. We were just concerned that "surfing" on the "carpets" was unsafe, and we didn't want anyone to get hurt. 

 After I got off of the PA it occurred to me that my message might have sounded pretty lame to the sort of junior-high school student who would steal a "magic carpet." 

The school-municipal building was next to a multi-lane downtown street. Across the street was a freight railroad. I saw someone take off from the roof of the building and "surf" across the busy street and across the railroad. I had convinced the police to send only plainclothes personnel, with no marked police cars, badges, guns or handcuffs showing, to stay in tune with the We're-not-angry- we-just-want- to-make-sure- nobody-gets-hurt message. Some of the plainclothes cops started off across the street. Others headed up the stairs toward the roof. I went with the latter group, because I knew that the quickest way to get across the street, and then over the high chain-link fence between the street and the railway, and then across the tracks... was going to be to "surf."

And sure enough, the last of a group of several kids took off from the roof just as we arrived, leaving a pile of "magic carpets" behind, and I, very unenthusiastically with my fear of heights, grabbed one of them and jumped off of the roof.

The kids were standing up on their carpets. I was lying face-down on mine and holding on white-knuckled to the edge. A big gust of wind came along, one of the kids was sent flying off of his carpet, but he managed to come back down onto it. My carpet went upside-down, then I was plummeting close to straight down, head first. But somehow I managed to pull the edge of the carpet up, get some air under the carpet and level out. Now I was flying low and level and much too fast. Before I could even try to steer the carpet I was across the street and across the railway, and I crashed through a second-story window into what looked from the outside like an abandoned warehouse. 

On the inside, it turned out to be an active but decrepit warehouse. I painfully disentangled myself from the contents of some cardboard crates into which I had plowed, contents which I couldn't identify. Luckily for me, they seemed to have been closer to the T-shirts-and-pillows end of the spectrum than the knives-and-hammers end. I stood there bruised and out of breath and feeling particularly under-qualified for this mission. I watched rats scatter away from my landing, and thought to myself that it might be a better use of my time to try to talk the cops into launching an investigation into the state of this warehouse. Then I reminded myself that I was a partner in a company which wanted to offer a safer alternative to flying, and that made me laugh. Then I woke up.

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