Scene Construction, Navigating by Eye

        I had two memorable dreams last night. In the first I found myself back at my old work site. The kids were putting on the 15^th “Visions and Voices” and construction was underway on five different shows at once. I decided to make a tour of the sets, just for old times’ sake.

        Unfortunately, some of the scenery wasn’t being put together with performer safety in mind, so I asked to talk to the construction leads and the designers, as the drama teacher wasn’t available. While I was waiting for them a little 2 or three year old with curly red hair jumped up on my lap out of nowhere. We chatted for a little while and she decided that I had to meet her mother. “To find out if you can be my new daddy.”

        This made me chuckle, I tried to explain that it really didn’t work that way, and I might be better suited to be her “grandpa” may be. Her mother turned out to be the prettiest red-haired freckle faced woman I’ve ever seen. The three of us finished touring the set construction with the construction leads, as she was the sort of parent volunteer, as her kid was in one of the plays. She was, in fact, single, and since she knew me all ready, she told her daughter not to rush things, we would think about it.

        I sort of brushed that off and got to the business of making sure the huge upstage wall that was being constructed was properly braced so it wouldn’t fall and crush anyone. I met with the designer and suggested that they might try a lower wall with the door in it, with a batten drop for the upper portion. I grabbed a sheet of paper to illustrate how that would work. The two year old grabbed an oil pastel and helped color it in.

        “You’re really good with her,” the mom observed, “but I should have known you would be.”

        This morning, I dreamed I was laying in my bunk, looking out through the upper dome as we accelerated on our journey into the vast deep of space. I began to try to identify some of the stars through the tens of thousands that were visible. I called up a program to chart the current position of our probes, and to collate some of what they were seeing. We were looking for planets which, if they couldn’t directly support life, they could be mined for materials and energy so that we could continue our search. We had recently made some progress in material composites that would allow us to build another ark, but with nearly one third less mass.

        I watched the computer overly the current position of the probes and the solid line for their previous path and a sort of translucent cone for their future possible courses. Even as I was doing my work, I couldn’t help but think that our first orbital insertion would be overseen by our children, and that the new ark we built, the prototype, anyway, would likely be a retirement colony.

Ad astra per technica,

FF