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I took a walk this morning and sat for a while under a tree and dozed off. When I woke up the sun was further along in the sky and the tree seemed smaller and I wasn’t alone. There was a girl with ribbons in her hair and a small, bespectacled old man who looked like a gnome sitting close to me.
“What time is it?” I asked them.
“1973,” the gnome replied, and by the looks of their clothes that seemed about right.
“I forgot you were here,” the girl said to me as I sat up.
“Imagine being able to speak with someone who wasn’t here, to hear their voice and see their face as clearly as you see mine right now,” said the gnome, who had deep wrinkles around his eyes. “Imagine being able to see what they’re seeing, hear what they’re hearing, even if they were an ocean away. Presence wouldn’t require physical proximity.”
“Crazy,” said the girl, shaking her head.
“And imagine if the physical wasn’t a requirement for communication at all,” the gnome went on, “if instead of bodies in space, we were simply thoughts everywhere at once. If a person wanted it, their thoughts could be accessible to any person anywhere. They could share anything.”
“Like their dreams,” said the girl, her eyes wide.
“Or stories,” I said.
“Or jokes,” said the gnome, “or what they had for breakfast. And with all of these thoughts swirling about, people could get to know each other thought-to-thought instead of face-to-face. They could become friends without ever meeting,” said the gnome, but I noticed his lips weren’t actually moving.
The girl reached out and put her finger over my heart and said, “That would be something,” and I woke up.
