DREAM-For any successful tool using species, there is one clear target, one timespan, one distance. A sapient species will send a witness, or come itself, to the black hole at the galactic core.

That’s the real Draco Tavern. Representatives of every species that’s ready, will wait there for more to join them.

I dreamed I had arrived at the maximum black hole. I must have traveled as Poul Anderson predicted in THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE: as a download. I was readjusting to human shape after travel in some other form, with nothing much else around me that was familiar. I had my human mind and brain, rebuilt, and nanotech assistance. Soon or late that would build me more intelligence. For now my systems built life support, then transport and communication.

I got no further than that. I’ve never been good at remembering, nor manipulating, dreams.

Meanwhile-and the topic is still travel.

This date is September 16, 2001. I’m flying to New York on October 1st, if the airline industry can stop twitching long enough. I’ll see how they’re recovering and how New York is recovering. I’ll see a few friends. Then on to Albany for a convention.

Last year, for fear of gunfire, I backed out of a convention in Israel that would have celebrated New Year’s Day on Mount Armageddon. I may have started a cascade: the con folded. I don’t intend to do that again. If the airlines are willing and able, I’m going to Albacon.

Civilization includes air travel. Doesn’t it? I’ve been predicting-with no due date-that telepresence will replace travel. Air travel, already threatened longterm by diminished fuel reserves and various strangleholds on oil, will now face terrors other than acrophobia, lost luggage and screwed-up schedules.

I’m expected to know the future. I intend to go see it.

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