Distributed Computing Pet

       I dreamed I worked in a large open mall area, selling some sort of tiny device which allowed you to participate in a live game of some sort that included everyone else who carried one of the devices. In the dream, the devices were a combination of self-winding and photo-electric powered. They had a little sensor to detect and communicate with the other game devices, and they had a few simple controls. Other than that they had a 3d LCD matrix and as you moved them around your view of the game "world" would change based on the units around you and what their owners were doing. There was also a small speaker so the object could "talk" or sing.
       The Dream City Mall was the most visually stimulating part of the dream, though. The mall was a couple of stories tall around the kiosks where I was located. I could see hundreds of people moving around the mall, and of those, I could see dozens carrying the little game devices. I had a display that showed a view of the mall from above with all of the devices located and the currently active links they employed. All of the actual human to human communication was shown in blue links and the device communication in yellow. There were pockets of green and gold as well as maroon and brown in the malls decorations. The same colors were mirrored in the game world. Although I can't now say how it happens, in the game world when a certain number of units and their activities synchronize, the units begin to chant or sing in unison, it is a happy sound, pleasing.
       During the dream a group of kids and onlookers begin to chat about their "pets" and suddenly the units begin to sing. Soon others are talking about them. Soon after, I have a rush on the booth and sell out of the units in just a few minutes. I also sell cases and carriers, like cellphone add-ons. I sell out of all but the ugliest of those as well. Very popular are the "Piggyback" or "Papoose" models, they allow the game to be carried in the same carrier as the person's cell phone. The proximity to the cell phone also boosts the antenna size of the game unit and it can make more connections while the cell phone is near-by.
       An owner of one of the trendy boutiques comes to me and asks if we sell the large display unit that I have over the booth. I say that we do, but there is a list of distributed computation projects that you have to choose from when you buy one. (That is one of the real uses of the game devices, it seems, to participate in distributed computing tasks when not actively plowing through one of the game worlds.) I mention that you can also choose to subscribe to a computational task yourself. I didn't expect that a trendy boutique would actually have such a task, but I was running one for the mall security as a means of paying for my space in the mall. I know that my other distributors have similar processes running, and that some cities have even begun to subscribe to modules that calculate traffic and allow for the city staff to analyse data on signal timing and other traffic control measures. We offered free family packages with a parental control and monitoring application that was turning out to be a good safety feature. We'd already prevented a couple of abductions and the game results in many run-aways returning home, because many kids who run away won't run out on their pets.
       As I woke from this dream I realized this was a very early version of the familiar from my short story of the same name.