I was hanging out in some dusty library with two guys I didn’t know, though one resembled Bruce Sterling. They had nooks between the teetering card catalogs where they stored their collection of retro computers, which they proudly showed off to me. One computer keyboard had keys like a manual typewriter, reminding me of “Brazil” and “Max Headroom.” Another keyboard was massive, like that of a pipe organ. It was so large because certain keys were repeated. I tried out this keyboard and liked it very much. I found that commonly used combinations of letters had been grouped together, thus the repetition.

One of the guys was working away at a huge VAX terminal. I noticed changing images of the room around me appearing on a smaller monitor attached to back of the VAX. The guy explained that if he clacked the keys too loudly, the surveillance system would focus in on the source of the disturbance. Indeed, the screen flashed close-ups of his typing fingers, then his shifting eyes.

Later he brought in these massive hard drives the size of Samsonite suitcases. As he hooked them up to a computer via the parallel port I asked their capacity. 20 Gigabytes!

The Bruce Sterling look-alike demonstrated an ancient black laptop which looked like a combination of a portable DAT recorder deck and old-fashioned calculator (the kind with the spools of paper). It had such a fantastic name, but I cannot remember it exactly. It was embossed in the plastic, a cool red logo. Gralaxxon or something like that.

Then he showed me what at first appeared to be a Macintosh G5, only constructed of cheap plastic. It took a few tries to get the thing to boot up. I wasn’t impressed until he petted the front of the computer and a kind of cowl slide down, revealing the letters “C9”. Then four legs extended from the chassis and the computer began jumping about like a dog. It slowly *became* a dog. I watched it with delight, telling the man that if he ever wanted to get rid of it, I would be more than happy to take it off his hands. By the end of the dream the computer was a frisky white Shi Tzu, rolling about at his feet.