by Shaun Lawton
It became suddenly evident when from this one tent where a variety of people, both citizens out browsing through artisan's wares and several bands of gypsy like individuals milling in and out among themselves, an eruption of bizarre wingless insects came crawling out in a controlled tide, spilling out onto the sidewalk and pouring forth into the street. Some folk indigenous to central and South America cried out a warning, lost among the uproar and the throng of people trying to outrun the surge of crawling insects - which resembled arthropods with spiny appendages, about two inches long or so - but the idea carried on the wind was "they sting" -- so I began running as fast as I could away from their surging tide, and thinking quickly I headed for higher ground, and crawled up some siding against a building, trying to get as high up off the street level as possible.
Under and behind me I could see the tide of scurrying insects rushing like a flash flood into the street, and spreading out. People were fleeing and screaming. I noticed they continued in an alarming amount of numbers - thousands upon thousands of them, just pouring out of that tent - then I noted that when they reached the walls of the buildings, they easily began scrambling up them towards me. Why hadn't I thought of that- ? Of course they can crawl up the damn walls ... I scrambled up even higher, trying to reach the roof, but there wasn't any way for me to climb any higher... I wasn't Spiderman. Thinking too rapidly to fully get a handle on the consequences, I spotted the top of a tree that had grown from the sidewalk, and just before the scurrying insects reached me on the wall I leapt -- right onto the tree, the leaves and branches striking my thrashing limbs as I hoped for purchase, and luckily didn't suffer too much damage as I landed on a sturdy branch and held on for dear life.
I only enjoyed a split-second of thinking I'd landed to safety, when I noticed the surging tide of insects flowing below the tree trunk along the sidewalk begin rapidly crawling up the tree towards me. . . My efforts at escaping them had been to no avail. But in the manner of dreams, the scene shifted to a later moment, a short distance away, indicating I had managed to escape the strangely controlled tide of stinging insects. I learned that the organization we were desperately attempting to avoid had access to nanotech that could control insects like this - nanotech that relied on AI and electromagnetic remote control methods to plan out insect plagues and attacks in this manner.
At one point in my series of disturbing dreams agents of this organization had caught up to us, and among them there were some men of differing heights, all clad in expensive business attire. While some stood six feet tall, another was seven and a half feet tall, while one in particular towered at nearly nine feet, a massive humanoid working for the organization. Somehow we escaped them, as the scene changed once again. Perhaps the best part of this dream was the part when I was confronted by a small group of individuals who looked roughshod and, of course, I couldn't tell if they were friend or foe.
It soon became apparent they were allies, since one of them handed me some sticks of incense, and a small potato. He instructed me in urgent tones, conveying a sense of vital importance for our continued safety, considering we were all being stalked by agents of the sinister organization that set off the "insect bomb" in the street market, earlier. He told me to burn the incense and head in the direction the smoke goes, until we had traversed enough distance to reach safety, if only temporarily. Then he insisted I dig a hole and "bury the potato." And that's how it went afterward. I detected the strident tones of a man who'd survived in the underground long enough to have gained some wisdom in certain techniques to help avoid the dangerous agents of this worldwide organization constantly hunting us all down. And that thing about burying the potato is when I made the irrevocable deduction, which I take seriously in my waking life of our actual present world as I did in the dream itself. This whole scenario I found myself in while dreaming had everything to do with our being immersed in the world of nanotech and the rapidly evolving development of AI. Welcome to just one droplet of infusoria within the technological singularity. You are swimming in it even as I type this, and absolutely while you are reading it, or listening to its message, perhaps even while you're enjoying yourself at a local street fair. There's no need to dream or wonder about it any longer, what would the so-called technological singularity be like, really? Just open your eyes and take a look around you. Like it or not, we're in the very midst of it.
