The World Dream Bank: Scattered Trove

Scattered Trove

Dreamed 2008/5/15 by Wayan

All over my house, I find scattered little red cards addressed to me.

They look small, simple--no images, no jokes, no jingles. Not postcards, then, and not birthday cards.

No. Not just the house. The yard too.

And down the block. In tree-forks, under hedges, on cars. Even on benches in the park. Which park? Every one I look in! All over TOWN!

And every one unfolds to reveal a check made out to me, for $512.

I've already found dozens, and now strangers start coming by, each dropping off my "lost check". Over and over!

In the end, it turns out there's also at least one in every single bank branch in San Francisco. Hundreds total. Quite likely... 512.

A huge inheritance. It's just very scattered and will come in gradually.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

Fragmented treasure: As a kid I read a series of 1940s pulp mystery books by Howard Pease, about the crew of a tramp freighter out of San Francisco--Captain Jarvis and his mate Rod. One book had a stingy old man who died without saying where his money was. Turned out he had a modest bank account--in every single bank in town! Unknown to everyone, he'd saved $250,000 (in 1940s dollars--millions now.)
That number, 512:
1. 512 squared = $262,144. Very close to the $250,000 in that kids' mystery. Though 500 squared's exactly $250,000. Why 512 instead? Well...
2. 512's a perfect round number in binary--1,000,000,000. So... is the treasure digital?
  1. I've been reading "She's Such a Geek!" Many of the girl geeks profiled turn computer interests into lucrative careers. Interestingly, one of them became a painter; quite a few cross over between music/art/books (especially f&sf) and sci/tech. And why not? All those fields take brains.
  2. I've been going through my journals on disk for the last few years, seeking interesting dreams. I think this dream's endorsing the project.
Small treasures add up: For the World Dream Bank, I've overvalued epic dreams and devalued shorties. But more readers can identify with short dreams--it's what most dreamers have, after all! Epic dreamers like me are a minority.
ACTION: Write up a treasury of short dreams for the World Dream Bank.
Over the next year, I did. The Dreamverse Project.