I had a very odd dream.
I was standing at a large window on a very high floor of an enormous building. I don’t know what floor I was on but it was very high - maybe 150 or more floors up ... and I was nowhere near the top of the building!
The building was not in a city. Instead, it seemed to me that the building itself was a city.
From my vantage point I could see the panorama of the surrounding countryside, a bucolic patchwork of virgin forest and verdant farmland. Scattered here and there as far as the eye could see were other tremendously large, tall buildings, each presumably a city unto itself similar to the one I was in. These gargantuan structures were spaced about 20 - 25 miles apart.
The interior of the building in which I found myself was honeycombed with enormous, brightly lit atria. Elevators and sleek monorails zipped up and down and back and forth carrying people to their destinations within the building.
Poverty had been eliminated. The average denizen of this bizarre world carried a device, about the size of our current cell phones, that could magically conjure up anything the person desired. Meals, clothing, accessories and other devices I didn’t recognize seemed to materialize out of thin air within just a few seconds of being requested.
I was speechless. Their technology was, to me, indistinguishable from magic.
The wealthy were very different. They seemed more god-like than human. Tall, gaunt and eerily silent, they were capable of conjuring up whatever they needed or desired without employing those small devices the others relied upon. Unlike the rank and file who lived contentedly in their shadow, the elite were engaged in a constant life and death struggle for supremacy. I could not comprehend what was at stake.
The voice of an incorporeal guide was showing me around, explaining to me the strange things I was witnessing. In response to my as yet unarticulated question, the voice explained that modern science had found the “prime mover” that in ancient times had been referred to as “God.” The prime mover had been hiding in plain sight all along and was a fundamental feature of the natural order no more personal, loving or sentient than the second law of thermodynamics.
The voice said that the prime mover was a mere slug among the butterflies it had unwittingly created.
Then I woke up.
I should know better than to eat guacamole shortly before going to bed!
