Lost In Translation

Somewhere in the middle of the Twenty-First century, the first omnitranslator was contructed — it began as a bulky machine, about the same size as a breadbox, with input and output jacks at both ends; the jacks were to be used between various pieces of equipment in order to put information in one form into another. Sound to light. Music to text. Pictures to scent. Any kind of data, transformed, translated, rewritten cross-platform, as it were.

Maybe three years after its public release, as science improved upon itself and created thin, sweet chrome and electric blue versions of everything that’d been birthed from the loins of progress and fed on the tit of technology, someone was developing a port for the human body. An invasive surgical procedure would insert the mechanism at the base of the skull, screwing through the bone so that the wires would slip into the brain stem itself.

The brain works with electrochemical responses that simulate current through live wires — information passes from cell to cell like energy moves from terminal to terminal.

You see where I’m going with it, don’t you?

Maybe two days after the public release of the stemport, a pair of geniuses hook themselves up to the omnitran with the stemports, and nearly give one another seizures from the sheer force of foreign thoughts assaulting one another’s brains.

One small brain for man, one giant brain for mankind.

Add a ton of curiosity, a middling amount of funding, and distill off the vapors of conscience. Too much of that and people start thinking of the ramifications of their actions.

Progress only cares about the consequences it’s looking for.

Now there’s the dream drive, with a built in omnitran switch. Snap it into your stemport and share the visions of the living, the dead, the tripping, the sane. You can use the omnitran to try and make it all a little more easy for your head to comprehend, or you can take it, full on, and just ride the wave. You can buy anyone’s dreams, or download yours and sell them on the street. Have an erotic one? Give it to the pimp on the corner. That one where you’re free and flying? Sell it to the wiped out kids down the block, or the burnt out CEO in the corner office upstairs.

Just make sure you trust your seller — the dreams stick with you, sometimes.

And not all dreams are good ones.