Modern Medeival Mayhem
I dreamed of the future, but it was terribly like the distant past as imagined by folks who know that things could be better. Something had happened to our energy distribution systems, and we'd switched back to fire and muscle as our primary energy sources. Electricity and Internal Combustion still existed, but power transmission and fuel refining had essentially stopped. If you weren't connected and independent before the systems failed, then you weren't getting anything.
People had moved into living situations where many families shared a single castle like dwelling, thus keeping the refrigeration costs optimized. It was odd, having electricity for things like the refrigerator, and high efficiency LED lighting, but then having to use fire and muscle for nearly everything else. Apparently the information superhighway was also shut down along with the real highway. Even plain old telephone service wasn't available, but sometimes you could get wireless voice to work, or radio transmissions.
Towards the end of the dream I was conversing with a gentleman only a slight bit younger than myself. He was despondent about the lack of internet, missing television, missing online games and communications. The pressure of having to think about the energy budget of every activity was gnawing at him.
We were seated around a fire in a fire pit, low and high tech at the same time. The heat was being collected and used to warm a passive recirculation device that pulled cold air in off the floor and then expelled warm air from the rim of the collector that also served to funnel the smoke out of the great room. I knew that there were similar tubes all along the chimney as it passed through the upper floors. We were using the fire as light and as the center of our evening activities. Without warning, the gentleman hiked up his dhoti and rolled himself into the fire.
Immediately there was the smell of burning flesh and an unholy screaming. Myself and a couple of others dragged him out of the fire and doused him. He was struggling to get back into the fire and finish himself off. We wrapped him in clean linens while others raced to hitch up the car to our llamas.
People had moved into living situations where many families shared a single castle like dwelling, thus keeping the refrigeration costs optimized. It was odd, having electricity for things like the refrigerator, and high efficiency LED lighting, but then having to use fire and muscle for nearly everything else. Apparently the information superhighway was also shut down along with the real highway. Even plain old telephone service wasn't available, but sometimes you could get wireless voice to work, or radio transmissions.
Towards the end of the dream I was conversing with a gentleman only a slight bit younger than myself. He was despondent about the lack of internet, missing television, missing online games and communications. The pressure of having to think about the energy budget of every activity was gnawing at him.
We were seated around a fire in a fire pit, low and high tech at the same time. The heat was being collected and used to warm a passive recirculation device that pulled cold air in off the floor and then expelled warm air from the rim of the collector that also served to funnel the smoke out of the great room. I knew that there were similar tubes all along the chimney as it passed through the upper floors. We were using the fire as light and as the center of our evening activities. Without warning, the gentleman hiked up his dhoti and rolled himself into the fire.
Immediately there was the smell of burning flesh and an unholy screaming. Myself and a couple of others dragged him out of the fire and doused him. He was struggling to get back into the fire and finish himself off. We wrapped him in clean linens while others raced to hitch up the car to our llamas.
posted by Fermius Firefly | 8:58 AM
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