Hermeneutic World's Fair Avatars

I am at a conference.

I'm in a large meeting room space. People mill about, waiting for the session to start. A series of PowerPoint slides are shown on two large screens at the front of the room.

According to one slide, this a conference on Race and Class Issues in the Hermeneutics of Genomic Virtual Spaces.

It is being organized by my employer. My boss is supposed to give the first presentation, but she isn't there.

She has given me a copy of her PowerPoint slides so that I can give the presentation. But I am also aware that she has given the slides to six other people and told each of them to give the presentation as well.

I stand at the back of the room, rather uninterested and uninvolved in the whole thing.

An administrator from the university stands up and brings the crowd to order. As people take their seats, she begins to speak, going through my boss's presentation.

The crowd becomes restless, shifting in their chairs, coughing and looking over the program.

A couple of people in the crowd float away.

Then a few more. And a few more.

Soon, only five or six people are left in the room; the rest have floated away through the ceiling and disappeared.

I notice that the people in the room are strange - some are real people, while others are Second Life avatars.

The administrator stops the presentation, a little unnerved, and announces that the conference is canceled.

I walk out of the conference room. It appears that I am in some kind of high-tech hotel. There are little Internet kiosks scattered here and there and a few people - both real and Second Life avatars - wandering around or chatting with each other. Some have devices resembling iPhones or laptops; others have devices that look like something out of the 1960s version of 'Star Trek'.

Both the "real" people and the avatars have little "bubbles" that appear over their heads as they chat, indicating what they were saying, sort of like instant messaging.

There are walls made out of glass or some other material, from floor to ceiling, that allow me to see outside. The hotel is part of some type of large complex with futuristic buildings. Outside one wall, I can see something that looks like the Biosphere; going down the hall further, I can see buildings that resemble the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 New York Word's Fair. Beyond that is a structure that looks like the Eiffel Tower.

I continue walking and come to a large door with a space on it to place my hand - I put my palm on the device on the door and it beeps and blurps, opening automatically with other assorted technology noises.

I walk into a large, multi-story hotel suite as the door closes behind me. The place looks run down and dilapidated, much like it hadn't been remodeled since the 1980's. There are people there, but they don't seem to pay any attention to me. They look like tourists and have eighties hairstyles and clothing.

I walk up a flight of steps to the second floor of the hotel suite. I go around a corner and suddenly find myself in a small, dimly lit room.

"This way," a man says.

The man is dressed in a kind of uniform. There are other men around me.

We are all dressed in older-style suits and ties. We wear fedoras with a small card in the headband of the hat that reads "PRESS".

The man in the uniform is conducting a tour.

He directs our attention to a window on the wall. But it isn't a window - it's a one-way mirror that allows us to look into a large auditorium filled with people.

There are dozens and dozens of people in the auditorium - men, women and children of all ages. Each is dressed in 1930's clothing. They sit in the audience, listening to a man on stage addressing them. He is dressed in modern clothing.

The tour guide explains that these people all went to sleep in a kind of suspended animation at the end of the 1939 New York World's Fair. They are being updated on what had happened in the world since they had been asleep.

The guide notes that this group of people first went into suspended animation at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in the 1890's and they wake up during each world's fair.

For some reason not understood by scientists, they slept through the New York 64 World's Fair, Expo 66 and the Knoxville World's Fair.

The speaker in the auditorium shows them objects and technology of 2007, explaining how the things worked.

The audience seems interested, but not very animated.

The speaker tells them about advances in television - that there are now over 500 channels available and that there are big tv's that look like movie screens that hang on the wall of the average American home.

The crowd seems surprised. They talk to each other excitedly and enthusiastically applaud.

And then I woke up.

Airport Gameboy Plane Crash Birth Drama

I’m in a movie theater, sitting alone, watching a film.

In the film, there is an airplane, full of people.

Richard Dryfuss, Ellen Burnstein and their small child sit in the airplane. They're arguing about the trip they're making; the small boy ignores them, playing with a Gameboy.

Cut to the plane exterior. There's some kind of short or spark or something. The airplane's engine catches fire.

Richard notices it out the window.

"Look!" he says.

They stop arguing.

The fire gets worse and the engine stalls. The airplane starts going out of control.

The oxygen masks come down, the passengers prepare for a crash.

The plane starts going in a free-fall, straight for the ocean.

Cut to the interior of an airport.

Richard, Ellen and the kid are sitting in chairs at what looks like a concourse.

The boy is still playing with the Gameboy -- Richard and Ellen are just waking up.

They both talk about the dream they just had about their airplane crashing.

Richard and Ellen continue to argue with each other about the trip for a few moments.

Then, Richard notices that something's weird in the airport.

There's strange Muzak playing in the concourse, but no announcements. No airplanes are taking off or landing, everyone is eerily quiet.

Richard talks to one of the staff, asking them why things are so strange.

The staff are calm, cool, and friendly, but almost completely emotionless. They are evasive and do not answer his questions.

Richard and Ellen make their way around the airport, trying to ask different staff members what is going on.

They tell the boy to sit down and wait for them to come back.

They argue ­ Richard thinks something is wrong, but Ellen doesn’t.

They get no answers from the airport staff.

Richard and Ellen go back to their chairs and notice the boy is gone. They look around for him, but he is nowhere to be found. They ask passersby if they’ve seen him. No one has.

They turn around and there he is again, just popping up out of nowhere, still playing with the Gameboy.

They’re relieved and tell him to sit down.

Twice more, they argue, talk to staff and loose the boy. The third time, he doesn’t reappear.

They go to a security guard for help.

"Come with me, please," guard says.

They're led to a back room that looks like a surgery theater in a hospital. A doctor and nurse are there.

"Get on the table, please," the doctor says.

Ellen argues, but the doctor is firm and calm. She gets on the table.

"I'm afraid you'll have to go through the whole thing again," the doctor says.

Stirrups pop up on the table and Ellen is strapped into place; another nurse appears from a nearby room to calm down Richard.

Ellen's stomach begins to grow huge.

She gives birth to her son all over again.

He emerges from her vagina, fully clothed, Gameboy in hand, the same size and age he was before.

Richard and Ellen are again on the concourse, sitting in their chairs. They look at the child, then at each other. They wonder aloud if what just happened really happened.

Richard finally seems to understand.

“We’re not in an airport,” he says. “This is purgatory.”

Then I woke up.

Pregnant Elongated Jodorowsky Bio-Pic

I am in the living room of a simply furnished, small suburban house.

There is someone in the room that I know. But they are not there in a physical form. I only hear their voice.

They invite me to look over their DVD collection.

I walk over to a corner of the room and there are shelves of DVD's sitting next to a large screen HDTV.

A highlight of the collection is a complete set consisting of what looked like fifty or sixty discs containing the complete Looney Tunes cartoons. I am amazed that someone actually released them and fondly recalled some of my favorites.

The person in the room asks if I knew that CBS was broadcasting a bio-pic TV movie about the life of director Alejandro Jodowrowsky.

I am surprised.

“Would you like to see it? It’s playing now,” the voice says.

“Yes, of course.”

The HDTV comes on. The movie is already in progress.

There is some kind of scene going on where Jodorowsky (played by his son, who is the lead in his film, Sante Sangre) is talking to another man. They are both dressed in 19th century clothing, sitting at a table in a saloon.

The scene shifts to Jodorowsky and his wife in their 19th century home.

They are having an argument -- Jodorowsky has been having an affair with another woman and his wife is upset.

The other woman comes into the room. It is the man Jodorowsky was sitting at the bar with in the previous scene.

The man, who has a beard, is dressed in 19th century women's clothes. His lips are painted red and he has eye shadow on.

The man is also very pregnant.

Jodorowsky and his wife keep arguing.

The “other woman” tries to get their attention. He/she falls to the floor and goes into labor, screaming hysterically and thrashing about. Jodorowsky leaves the room.

Jodorowsky, dressed in a dark suit and top hat, walks on a wooden sidewalk in a 19th century Western town. There is dirt in the street; horses and wagons pass by.

Everything in the frame is distorted, like a Salvador Dali painting come to life.

As Jodorowsky walks, his figure is stretched and elongated; some other people on the street appear normal, while others have enormous heads, feet, or hands. Some look like a beach ball and just roll along.

A horse, standing on its two hind legs, leans against a post, watching people go by with a toothpick in his mouth.

Wagons pass on the street with strange elongated or half-broken wheels that don't seem to affect their operation.

Jodorowsky passes a dead tree planted in the middle of the street. It begins sprouting leaves as he passes by.

A sign in front of a bank has an old style clock. It is melting.

As Jodorowsky walks along on the sidewalk, there are people on the other side of the street dressed in winter clothes, trying to walk in a snowstorm, while his side of the street is sunny.

A man throws a cigarette into some kind of sewage drain on the edge of the street. There's a giant explosion -- nobody flinches or even notices.

I sit there amazed by all of this, thinking that no one had before thought of using digital effects in this way. It’s a true surrealist film, brought to life in vivid high definition.

Suddenly, the picture fritzes out on the tv. It goes black.

There is a small bang and the tube cracks. Some smoke pours from the front of the tv. I hear a hissing sound.

I feel very disappointed.

"It appears that it exceeded the expected surrealist quotient of the current equipment,” the voice in the room says.

Then I woke up.