AI art by Smiley7pixel, Deviantart.com; series H, 1637

THAT EVENING

I watch part of a BBC production of Jane Austen's Emma. Gwyneth Paltrow looks great and acts the part convincingly, but... this production has her written even broader and bossier than in the book (and she's bossy enough there). So thoughtless that I wouldn't want her as my friend. Or girlfriend. No matter how Paltrow-cute.

I give up on this adolescent Emma, and go study AI art on Deviantart.com.

I'm still a Luddite. I dislike most of what I see. Same old horde of giant boobs and washboard abs! AI has learned from the humans, all right. Slicker shading and lighting, but all the same distortions--esthetic and moral.

But a minority of Smiley7pixel's pieces are more realistically surreal. Furry people plausibly like those in my dreams. I doubt I'll adopt that AI style--all that smooth photographic shading is too labor-intensive to do by hand--unless I spend weeks on each image, and I'm a prolific dreamer.

But could I learn some tricks of muscle, pose, light and shadow here?

Sleep on it. See what my dreams think.

THAT NIGHT...

A middle-aged woman holds a lecture in my room, using the south side as a stage. Her subject is Emma, that well-meaning but unthinking teen. Wait... who's playing her? Two actors crossfade in and out! One appears to be Gwyneth Paltrow; the other has a near-identical build but a different face--still beautiful, still plausibly Emma... but definitely not Gwyneth. Soft, slow fades between them. Gwyneth, non-Gwyneth, Gwyneth. Weird!

The alternations interrupt them so frequently I can't really tell if either one can act. (If the script ever lets them.)

Then the lecturer freezes Alternating Emma to illustrate a point. The oscillation stuck on Non-Gwyneth--by choice or chance? Motionless as a still photo, but three-dimensional, solid as a wax figure. I try looking with a sculptor's eye. Solid stance, fantastic body--but where Gwyneth Emma had a long lacy gauzy Regency gown, this Emma wears a very short silk nightie. VERY short. Showing her pussy. I... stop thinking like a sculptor.

Her cunt looks strange. Is that a cock? No, fingers--she reached a hand behind her back, then between her legs to grope her own pussy. Fingers slip in. She looks turned on... while the lecturer drones on about acting styles!

My pulse is pounding. I'm really turned on. But is sex between us even possible? Is she solid or a mere projection?

Then I ask "Is this a dream?" and reluctantly realize it must be--it's 2026, and we still lack the holographic tech to do a solid 3-D projection, let alone crossfades and freezes between apparently living bodies. I must be dreaming!

I'm lucid. So... why am I disappointed? I could have lucid dream sex, or anything else I want... Isn't lucidity the state where you can have it all?

No. Not all. By definition, dream sex is a one-night stand. Apparently, I want more. I want love. And an immature Emma--no matter who plays the part--can't offer me that.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Alternate versions, Gwyneth Paltrow: My friend Alder recently played an old disk of Emma starring Paltrow. Tonight, channel surfing, she stumbled on what she thought was a fresh new BBC version of Emma. Nope, therrrrre's Paltrow, being shallow.
• Current media can't do it: I asked Alder to freeze the credits, to show the other actors' names--but this was broadcast TV, not streamed or on disk--so it was no more pausable than live news.
• Lucidity doesn't solve everything: a truth neglected by lucid-dream books and sites. A lucid dream's still a one-shot event! You can have ongoing relationships in dreams, as longterm as in waking life--by befriending recurrent figures over multiple dreams. But that doesn't take lucidity, it takes shamanism: treating dream figures with the respect due real beings; admitting they may be themselves, not just parts of you. The assumption it's all you is an unproven hypothesis, and a smug one. Don't be an Emma! What's harder to attain than lucidity? Humility.
• ACTION: Waking or dreaming, face that I want more than casual sex. And don't fall for a cute shallow Emma! Even if she's as hot as Paltrow, shallow won't last.

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