{"id":527,"date":"2008-01-22T17:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=527"},"modified":"2009-01-15T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T16:31:15","slug":"fuse-fuse-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=527","title":{"rendered":"Fuse Fuse Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yee-hah! The drugs are gone and I got my monsters back! Ok, last               night&apos;s monster was nothing special, but at least I&apos;m no longer               dreaming of repairing Xerox machines for Hilary Clinton. And the               monster is probably the least interesting aspect of last night&apos;s               major dream.<\/p>\n<p>But it was still a monster, and that counts for something. I dreamed               that Carol and I were vacationing somewhere in England. In a small               hillside village we were browsing in shops and in a sort of street               market, and that&apos;s where we first saw the monster: It was a big,               totally hairy 9-foot tall Sasquatch-ish thingie. It wasn&apos;t doing               anything special; in fact, it was browsing the market stalls and               stepping into shops just like we were. (In the morning it occurred               to me that the poor thing was probably vacationing from western               Oregon, where so many tinfoil-hat types are searching for it that               it must lead a pretty stressful life.) We later saw it again while               touring some old castle.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I have a protocol for dealing with dream monsters that has               worked well for me these past 55 years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&apos;t get too close;<\/li>\n<li>Don&apos;t make eye contact;<\/li>\n<li>Don&apos;t engage them in conversation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(I use this same protocol in the real world for beggars, religious               fanatics, and women leaning against buildings.) Every time I saw               the monster, I quietly started herding Carol in the opposite direction,               and once again, it worked.<\/p>\n<p>But toward the end of the dream, I saw something remarkable: A               video game vaguely similar to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dance_dance_revolution\">Dance               Dance Revolution<\/a>. It consisted of a typical game console, plus               a low square platform with nine cells that you step on. When the               game begins, the platform lights up in dull red, and the nine cells               display callouts for common nuclei. The object of the game is to               put one foot on each of two nuclei that can fuse. For example, if               one cell says 7Li and the another 1H (Physics types will know what               I&apos;m talking about) you step on both and the game console totes up               the energy you&apos;ve generated, with a display on the console in MeV.               Each time you successfully fuse two nuclei, the pressure value goes               up and the platform&apos;s backlight slides up the spectrum a little               from red toward violet. As the pressure goes up, more exotic fusion               reactions become possible, and if you know your nuclear physics               you can rack up quite a score. The machine we saw was in a pub,               and a young business-suited British gentleman was playing with a               pint in his hand.<\/p>\n<p>Damn, I remember thinking, he must know his <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CNO_cycle\">carbon-nitrogen               cycle<\/a> <i>cold<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I have no idea whether this makes sense as a game, since               I don&apos;t play games other than some Snood and an occasional round               of Mah Jongg. But it was the coolest thing I&apos;ve seen in a dream               in quite some time, certainly since before I had my gums worked               on a week ago Monday. Nor am I sure there are enough possible fusion               reactions to make such a game interesting, though in the heart of               a supernova (once you goose the platform into the purple zone) who               knows what&apos;s possible and what isn&apos;t?<\/p>\n<p>Some part of me is obviously ready to write some SF again. I gotta               get busy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yee-hah! The drugs are gone and I got my monsters back! Ok, last night&apos;s monster was nothing special, but at least I&apos;m no longer dreaming of repairing Xerox machines for Hilary Clinton. And the monster is probably the least interesting aspect of last night&apos;s major dream. But it was still a monster, and that counts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[43,46],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","tag-humor","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}