A Dream of Fire, Friendship, and Forbidden Phrases

This afternoon's narcoleptic nap was a doozy - and a bunch of you were in it!

It was one of those brief doze-offs that the clock insists only lasted twenty minutes, but which went on for days of tense, anxious action in subjective time.

In this dream, there was a computer virus spreading through Steemit. This virus caused spontaneous human combustion of Steemit's users. It would capture the results by webcam, and post images of thrashing flames and finally a pile of ash left in a charred office chair or couch.

For some reason, I'd been sent images of these attacks. But the people who were trying to re-blog and spread the word about them were always the next to disappear. I realized that I needed to find a way to spread the message about these attacks without putting myself and others at risk.

Clearly it was something these people wrote that triggered the attack. But what was it? I spent hours combing through the victims' final posts, trying to work out what words they'd all used, which phrases triggered the incineration. I had to let everyone know! But I couldn't work out what the killer phrase was. I tried writing a post without using any of the tags and keywords the previous victims had used. (Yes, I now write for Steemit in my sleep.) I hovered over the "Post" button.

No. My warning was too vague, too shrill and cryptic. People wouldn't read or understand it, and even if they did, did I really have a big enough audience to matter? And what if I misunderstood the trigger phrase? If I screwed up and died in flames, it wouldn't help anybody.

Meanwhile the virus was spreading and victims were piling up. People didn't realize that many of their favorite writers had stopped posting, and by the time they did, it would be too late.

I had to find some other way to warn people.

I had to find their houses, knock on their doors and beg them to believe me.

But where to begin?

Dammit, I thought. If only @heymattsokol was still in New Hampshire I could reach him in a few hours, and then he could spread the message as he drove South, warning @cmp2020, @remlaps, @richq11 and @enternamehere on his way to find @everittdmickey, who could get in his big-rig and head west from there. Meanwhile I'd race North and find @lyndsaybowes and @hendrix22, and they could canvas Canada, warning @buckydurddle up in Newfoundland and @jamisa to the west.

I left the house, spinning the tires of my Prius as I tore down our narrow streets. This wasn't going to work, I thought. What about all my friends overseas? Who was going to warn @onetree in her shop in South Africa, and the painters @silviabeneforti and her husband @paolobeneforti in Italy, and @reinhard-schmid in Germany. Shit, I had to worry about @the-dagda in Scotland while I was at it. @atopy in was going to be hard to track down in Eastern Europe, and @cheah in Singapore was even more out of reach. But if we reached Cheah, maybe he could write this up as a sci-fi thriller and warn the community of the threat that way - maybe the virus wouldn't react to fiction.

So much talent and energy and so many unique, creative voices were at stake here. We had to get everyone together, and safe, and then we could worry about filling in @ned and tracking down the bastard who wrote this damn virus.

Suddenly I knew what to do. @steemed-open has been posting from Asheville, and everyone likes looking at her pictures. Maybe she and @sean-king could get the message out by placing a warning in their steamy jpegs somehow, since this wouldn't trigger the virus's phrase-recognition attack. With their dedicated followers, the truth was bound to spread. Then we could get into their private plane and start warning the rest. (According to dream-logic, all successful Steemians are bound to own private aircraft.) Actually, I thought, we needed to work out what hotel @sweetsssj was staying at and land there. With her Steem Power on our side, nothing could stop us.

I headed for I-95 and tore South.

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Needless to say, I woke up disoriented and rather more tired than when I went down. But I realized what a great community this has become, and how many interesting things I've learned from so many fascinating people. We're working hard to fulfill the early promise of the internet, based on open communication and meaningful conversation.

The strange thing is, I didn't know any of these people three months ago. Now they're a such part of my life that I look forward to and enjoy every day - and I even dream about them.

Yeah, I thought, this is a community worth fighting for.

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First two pictures via Pixabay. Second is my own.