Stem Intent

Author : Morrow Brady

When pigeons deviated in mid-air and windless leaves rustled, the hidden dreamers were about.

A detector notified me it had seen something, so I went to my balcony and tuned my visor to the corresponding wavelength.

Carpeted with warm dappled light, the Italian Piazza was filled with coffee drinkers, buzzing scooters and devoted artists.

An explosion of pigeons flew toward the red stone clock tower. Sharply and for no reason, they banked. I shifted my view to emptiness and saw them for the first time. A faint iridescent blue dot. Under magnification the dot became a ring of blue spheres orbiting a large glass orb. I blinked, flicked to naked eye, saw nothing and then returned. I had done it. I had finally found them.

The spheres fired tiny jets to stabilise the orb and through glass, I saw two naked beings seated cross-legged. In deep meditation, they were motionless except for an elongated object, bobbing rhythmically on top of their heads.

Seefers had evolved into a race so indoctrinated with rationality that they had forgotten how to dream. When they discovered the Stem and then Earth, their whole society changed forever. The Stem pilgrimage to Earth was a journey of meditative discovery. The Stem’s unique capacity to read real-time or historic intent and deliver it to a host’s mind like a real life experience gave Seefers their dreams back. Even if it was someone elses.

Earthlings were an open-minded race, fearlessly free to be carelessly ingenious. Earth was rich with theories, ideas and notions. From the design studios of great artists, to experimental think-tanks and war-rooms where success and failures were forged. It was a place where countless utopian dreams were found and lost and outlandish imaginations were born and died. Everywhere, hidden Seefers hovered, mesmerised in a waking dream.

I watched for hours until a blue glow from behind caught my eye. Removing the visor, I turned and threw myself against the railing at the sight. An orb being with an outstretched arm stood beside me, offering one of the elongated objects. Following its subtle trusting gesture, I lifted it, reeling slightly at its warm fleshy surface and felt it cling to my head.

I turned, subconsciously drawn to a commotion in the Piazza and saw the chaos of a thousand films playing on one screen. A blue hand gently closed my eyelids and clarity instantly appeared in sensuous dream state.

Sitting at the table in the Piazza, I watched as Elia’s delicate fingers sketched the idea for the first warp engine and then across months, watched as it matured into a robust design. I smelt the acrid fumes of the toxin that the short man slipped into Elia’s drink and watched him steal away with the the leather bound notebook as Elia lay slumped in his chair.

This was better than dreaming. It was tangible, it was real and it changed everything.

Humankind’s deepest secrets were out there ready to be rediscovered.