RG’s Alternative Future #1

 

These three posts harken back a bit to an older post I wrote.

By the time Random Granddaughter reached her early thirties, she and the other members of her pod had phone transceivers implanted in their brains. It wasn’t exactly telepathy, but it was a step on the way. Her mommies and other members of the older generation regarded this innovation with fear and disgust and insisted on using “telephones” and “cell phones,” making them an object of mirth and derision to the younger generation.

As RG had ceived the other pod members to tell them she was close by, they were watching for the arrival of her hovercraft. As usual, Mia, with her sharp eyes, spotted it first. Mia, Yoshi, and Chad all leaped aboard the craft and reclined on the bucket seats, buckling themselves in as RG peeled away toward the coast and then headed over the water toward her property on the island, inherited from her grandparents.

The four pod members exchanged their latest dreamsicles. They were four of the leading creators of the popular mass media of their day. Each pod member handed the others three dreamsicles: previews of their upcoming releases. Placed on a wrist before going to sleep, the dreamsicle would dissolve into the bloodstream, creating vivid dreams lasting through the night.

Each member specialized in characteristic dreams. Chad’s Dreamstage name was Touch&Pound. His dreams consisted of a variety of feelings of being touched, ranging from the most feathery caresses to the most savage pummeling. After sleeping with one of Chad’s dreamsicles, the dreamer woke aching and sore.

Yoshi’s Dreamstage name was Deeper Than Terror. He specialized in nightmares. During the night the dreamer’s experiences ranged from anxiety and unease to stark screaming fear. Usually a dreamer awoke drenched in sweat amidst tangled, soaking sheets after taking one of DTT’s dreamsicles.

Mia, possessor of an incredible IQ, was known as Differentiate/Integrate to her fans. Her dreamsicles took her fans through vivid excursions of pure mathematics from differential calculus through symbolic logic. As they awakened, her fans often said, “It all made sense to me during the dream, but now I can’t remember a thing.”

RG was known by the dreamstage name, FallingFree. When she was a toddler, her grandfather had noticed how much she loved being held upside down as well as spinning around on a merry-go-round and joked that she had evolved to be an astronaut and live in space. RG, had in fact, as an adult, traveled to a space station and experienced weightlessness.

Her dreams evoked flying and falling. After throwing up in their sleep, RG’s fans learned not to eat very much before they went to sleep with one of her vivid dreamsicles.

RG had inherited her grandparents’ five acres on an island. Picking and eating berries in her grandparents’ garden had been a primal experience for her. Although RG and her companions were too much citizens of the world to settle permanently in one location, they regarded RG’s island land as their summer home. In her education, RG had pursued not only art—dreamsicle composition (her Mommy had been a violinist), but also was a scientist—expert in expert in genetic engineering (Mama had been a biologist and statistician).

Her grandparents would have been impressed to see how she had expanded their garden, focusing primarily on berries, but as devout organic gardeners, they would have been horrified to see how RG had used her genetic engineering skills to create new varieties of berries, many of which were psychotropic and produced strange and bizarre dreams. RG had become rich twice over after she created her famous Random Berries, which not only emerged in a variety of spectacular colors (reminiscent of the water colors she had played with as a child), and flavors, but also produced a variety of bizarre and unpredictable visions after one consumed them.