Cyborgo De Bergerac

Warning: This is a dream, and as such, probably not interesting to anyone but me. Additionally, it was written up at 3am, so it's not well crafted. You have been warned.

I was a graduate student, loosely involved in a video game lab. I was not a primary researcher, or secondary, or even tertiary, but sort of hung out on the edge, interested but not obsessed. I was a graduate student with time (and a hunger) for the "rest of life" -- not as ambitious, maybe as I was expected to be, but not a complete moron.

I was interested, among other things, in a ritual that, outside of the dream, I don't fully understand, although in the dream I found it compelling, as it developed it detail. It included a narrow brick ditch, or slot, filled with water and running into an under a building. It was completely filled, but you could surface at any time. The point of the ritual, or a part of it, was that you weren't supposed to surface. Another point was that you 'knew' when to dive in.

A loose acquaintance in the dream, someone I don't really know in real life, but maybe based in character on the owner of 'The Portal' (ironic?), has an old bar with a back room, where people play poker. or gamble. You need to get past the bouncer (be "approved") to get in, and once I do, I find it a bit boring to play poker, but there are other things happening that are interesting enough to keep me coming back. The owner starts to build or develop, since it's already there, a slot that runs under his back room. He digs it out, pumps it full of clean water, installs lights at the corner where it runs under/into the building, and, and etc.

And I've swum in it, explored the walls and floor of it during this development, and found it compelling, again, for reasons that I don't understand (or remember) outside the dream. A Latino man arrives one day, very much interested (obsessed) with the slot. He changes into full regalia: wet suit, shirt off, maybe he even greases up, then sits at the edge/beginning and waits and watches, deep in concentration, largely oblivious to the rest of us. And then he dives in, turns the corner expertly, disappears under the building, and swims through the ditch, and comes out the other side.

He comes back the next day, or week, and becomes a "regular" there, until he one day brings his son and daughter.

Later, at the slot, after a successful dive by the Latino guy's daughter, I'm supposed to drive off to another conference but my car gets stolen. Nobody saw it go, including the guy in the room next door (who looks and acts like Dennis from CBE). The police arrive, plain-clothes. They question me. They leave. Time passes. Strange things happen. I see the detective at a party. He smiles, avoids my questions, and leaves.

Meanwhile in my life some conference is happening at some sort of place like an observatory, and Katie is there, and some "experiment" is going on that I know nothing tangible about, except that it runs all night, and I keep waking up and sneaking past the room that she's sleeping in (more artist's quarters or scientist's lab -- not a hotel room) in the middle of the night to turn down the heat.

And the next day the rest of the video game crew arrives and I sort of move to the side and don't remember this part of the dream. Suffice to say that it occurs to me that my identity had been stolen, and the police officer and the slot-diver had something to do with it, and I thought "shit. I've heard about this. Now I have to watch my credit, cancel my cards, etc. etc. what a hassle! And my car's stolen!" Major hassle.

At this point, I see the detective again and follow him, like Alice, into the rabbit hole. He's gone of course, and I'm alone, when I hear a voice behind me:

Isn't something cataclysmic supposed to happen when you meet your opposite?

It's a male voice, and I understand that it's the voice of my identity thief. I turn to look, but don't see anyone. I reply:

But I'm not your opposite, I'm your alter-ego. Stealing my information doesn't make you my opposite, it makes you me.

And this dialog continues, and I realize that it's not a person who stole my identity, it's a computer. And he says he need s now to get rid of the "Real me", and I argue that he needs me as his body because once my body dies, my identity dies. He wants to make a name for himself and doesn't want me screwing it up with my "lack of knowledge" in physics or computer science -- after all, what do I know in those fields? I counter that since he's pretty smart at these fields he should teach me ("shouldn't be difficult for someone as smart as you" -- classic type of line from an AI movie, no? these 'smart' machines always seem to have the same 7 deadly sins that we have: pride, gluttony, etc.),

Of course he also doesn't want the "baggage" of me -- sleeping, eating, farting, getting involved in sticky emotional relationships and embarrassing sexual social situations. And I counter that this is what he signed up for when he stole a human identity. Maybe he won't need it some day, but for now he should at least get a better experience of what it's like to be human through me. And hey, since I'm studying learning, identity and simulation, the collaboration would be interesting for me too.

So I suggest a partnership he can use my identity and body, with my full blessing and cooperation if he helps me learn cool stuff. And I'd present his knowledge and ideas (since it'd be in my name or identity anyway), and do my best to not make him/me look bad.

It's a classic "dummy" movie, Cyborgo De Bergerac, but if I write it up well, it could make a pretty cool dissertation for me as it ties together issues of identity, learning, embodiment, etc.