Party at Portland State

I was on a late-night canning run through Portland State University, or at least that's the only reason I can think of for being there, even though I wasn't carrying anything to put bottles and cans into. It was one of those warm summer nights — I was only wearing a t-shirt — and either the moon had set or it was overcast because it was dark.

I was being spooky, keeping to walkways obscured by shadows, lamps few and far in between, because I was avoiding the campus public safety who had excluded me from the university property some time ago for trespassing on university property; I was canning then, too. As I approached a set of stairs leading up from Stott Field to the old core campus housing buildings and Milar Library, I heard someone approaching to descend them. I immediately ducked into an open utility shed of some sort that I noticed on my way there in the hopes of going unnoticed and hopefully not getting locked in. To my relief it was an obviously homeless person shambling downstairs in a hulking, grunting spectacle of public intoxication, so as soon as he staggered into a belly flop and passed out next to the shed I leaped out to ascend the stairs he came from. What in hell was he doing here?

When I made to the top I beheld an expanse of flotsam from what appeared to be left over from an enormous outdoor frat party: benches and tables sat strewn haphazardly all the way to the Stott Center, covered — as was the lawn between them — in paper plates dripping globules and chunks of half-eaten food and cans of soda (and the occasional beer), and everywhere there were people, most of them already passed out while some were stumbling around or murmuring incomprehensibly like ghouls, visibly drunk; even the odd couple here and there shamelessly fucking. What the hell's going on? I decided for some reason to head toward the pay phone ahead of me, lean against the wall and smoke a cigarette to gather in more of the scene and maybe chat with one of the more lucid among the still-ambulatory revelers to find out what the occasion was, when tow public safety officers arrived. They started writing tickets to the obvious homeless people among the students, so I turned around pretending to fumble for change and make a phone call. One of them, a guy who should have recognized me, asked to see my ID; I turned around quickly, feigning glassy-eyed inebriation, and shrugged, muttering "Sorry, I usually leave mine at home" and resumed my charade, whereupon he decided to leave me alone.

After polishing off pretense with an obligatory invective ("Damn it!"), so that it be known to all my ire at having forgotten to carry change on me, I turn around and walk away just in time for the public safety officer I encountered to be joined by his partner and the two of them to head back my way. God damn it! I grit my teeth and force myself to remain insouciant and head toward a parking lot nearby that's off campus property and observe with relieve out the corner of my eye that they're still hassling the bums behind me. When I encounter a sandy stretch I glance down and notice with dismay that somehow the loafer on my left foot had somehow been replaced with an old white tennis shoe, so I backtrack in search of my missing shoe, only to be laughed at by some Vikings football players. Huh? Scowling at being the brunt of a bizarre joke I look down again and now I'm standing in my socks! "Fuck, I have to go to work in a few hours!" at a temp agency I just signed on with, and already it's growing light with dawn! I start despairing of being able to do that, or even walk around town — to get home, at least — when I remember I have a pair of boots at home.

At this point I remember with alarm that I was supposed to be dodging Campus Spam, so I glance furtively back in the direction I came from, to see the two public safety officers had just turned to head toward Stott Field. Grinning with relief, as if I’d somehow outsmarted them, I spun back around to head home when a small group of students accost me gregariously and pass a nefarious bit of surgical tubing toward me, urging me to help them finish their last keg. After a moment’s hesitation I smile and say “What the hell” and take the proffered Barleycorn in hand, introducing myself to my new "friends". So much for work.

Tendrils of the Overmind

It was sometime in the future, perhaps seventy-five to a hundred years. The world was writhing in the ruins of environmental devastation and global warming, human overpopulation and reckless squandering of resources bled the world dry of even arable land and potable water, famines and plagues and warfare have cat like a scythe through the population leaving scars of toxic wastelands, and the life of all inhabitants remaining — human included — teetered precariously on the edge of the precipice of extinction.

In desperation the remaining powers pooled their resources, ingenuity, and knowledge to send drones to the asteroid belt to farm them of resources, organic and inorganic, to begin the slow process of salvaging what remained of the earth and in preparation for extraplanetary colonization. One drone returned with curious data that turned out to be of an artifact of some kind, which a manned space mission discovered after a short time to be a node of an extraterrestrial intelligence, possibly a combination sentinel and communication link. The node quickly engaged in a dialog with the human race, providing it with valuable technology to assist the human race in recovering their lost world.

It turned out to be a great boon, for the node taught humans how to convert mined inorganic compounds into synthetic food and even how to eliminate many diseases and to efficiently clean up nuclear and chemical waste ... even how to create treatments to extend human life and improve cellular repair and regeneration, also providing humans with much-needed blueprints for orbital fusion reactors to restore power to a world once again hungry for energy. Through the knowledge gained from the node people were living longer, healthier lives, wars diminished to terrorist acts by those mistrustful of the governments cooperating with the alien intelligence, and the environment was rapidly being cleaned up and restored, even lost species returned to life.

One group of scientists, under a fierce and charismatic quantum physicist, and supported by an enormous Pangaian (formerly the UN) budget decided to take it one step further and began working with the node to create a gateway between the solar system and one of the node's core home systems, which as it turned out was a few hundred light years near the galactic core; the idea being to transfer physical objects like ships and people or machines back and forth to initiate trade and accelerate knowledge and technology growth. Unfortunately, the scientists were working on their own agenda, or one they shared with the node's, for they ignited Jupiter into a small sun and set up a small rogue nation orbiting around it on the Jovian moons. (Sorry, Arthur C. Clarke! I know I ripped you off.)

After a failed military intervention by a coalition of terrestrial governments the earth reluctantly accepted the position of the rogue nation, realizing that they also controlled much of the asteroid belt and were despite hostilities willing to continue aid in reconstruction if recognized and left in peace. Meanwhile, their ranks swelled because of long-lived humans who were ostracized or harassed by shorter-lived humans who distrusted the bioengineering procedures imparted to them by the alien; it seems that certain aberrations in personality manifested themselves as a person underwent repeated treatments, which aroused suspicion around the world regarding the alien's motives.

Using the new sun as a power source and bolstered by an influx of brilliant and eager immigrants and armies of artificial intelligences and their drones born out of the asteroid belt, a massive gateway the size of the Jovian moon Titan was being constructed to serve as a conduit of exchange between the solar system and what was increasingly being suspected of being some sort of alien empire of a single mind, and omni-mind of sorts that absorbed all mind and matter and energy it encountered to expand a sphere of order throughout the galaxy. (Derisively called Omnius of Camazotz, the latter a reference to Madeline l'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.) Such was the belief of the increasing numbers of privateers and terrorists on earth and lunar and martian colonies.

While technically at peace with earth the Jovian nation became under siege by constant infiltrations, acts of piracy, suicide attacks, and sabotage. In the end, just as the gate was about to begin its first major trial run, a major war broke out at the very control satellite of the gateway itself while all across the middle solar system violence erupted. In the dream the lead scientist and her core research team were holding out against Martian war mecha and hordes of suicide troopers, who were closing in rapidly just as she began the procedure to power on the gateway...