Feel-U-Feel-Me By Stewart Dickson and Rebecka Dickson Copyright 1999 Treatment JULIA is a gorgeous, dark, hedonistic Northern Californian -- she regularly goes to Yoga classes at a clothing-optional resort -- and she dreams of herself as a priestess, drawing cosmic energy into herself from the Earth and planets through the people with whom she lives. LARRY is a blind man, working as a high-energy physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Enrico Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside of Batavia, Illinois in the far west Chicago suburbs. FermiLab is like a cosmological observatory, seeking the origins of the universe within the smallest particles of matter. LARRY demonstrated a brilliant understanding of mathematics and the abstract side of physics as a student, but now out in the real world, he is finding it difficult working side-by-side with sighted scientists -- particularly since recent breakthroughs in the field are being made using computer-generated VISUAL simulations. LARRY can use the computer network through audio access devices, but he finds himself up against a wall in terms of really understanding what his colleagues are doing. The Internet is the Noosphere -- the global information layer -- the totality of human knowledge. The Internet was born in the world of scientific visualization -- visualization in networked scientific computing -- the concretization of abstract thought at the frontier of human knowledge. Reducing high abstraction to images makes the abstraction universally understood. The experience of viewing images from the frontier of knowledge is an epiphany of understanding -- a "eureka" moment -- a moment of enlightenment. JULIA's boyfriend, BEN is an Internet guru -- he was a network administrator for academia at the time when the Internet and World-Wide Web were invented. Then he made the jump to industry, developing the tools of electronic commerce. Now, instead of bringing the world together into a true global village, he finds that the new medium has only widened the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots", creating a new wave of social turmoil world-wide -- for which he feels partly responsible. The world leaders, after the success of the International Space Station, have begun work on the first permanent, extraterrestrial colony -- on Mars, as a way of improving the economy and morale in general. LARRY's girlfriend, THEODORA ("THEO") is a respected businesswoman and owner of a trendy art club in Chicago's Su-Hu gallery district -- and she has a randy side, which LARRY only partially knows, for she likes to play with expensive, new video technology when they make love. GYA MON is a Yogi, of a '90's variety, who has capitalized on his charisma. He owns a network of retreats, including the one at which JULIA studies. GYA MON sees the Internet as something he needs with which to further his empire. GYA MON practices Tantric Yoga and contracts BEN to set up a subscription Tantric Yoga correspondence course over the Internet. BEN is ambivalent toward GYA MON's request -- on the one hand, he appreciates the intellectual logic and history of Tantric teachings, on the other hand, he resents the way GYA MON exploits it. If JULIA is a right-brained sensualist grasping for an intellectual understanding of the universe, then FIORELLA TERENZI is a PhD astrophysicist, grasping for a sensual experience of what she understands intellectually. She is searching with her computer-controlled telescopes for the geometrical origin of the universe, at which she expects her cosmically-generated electronic music will reach an ultimate perfection. FIORELLA's brief visit to FermiLab, to present a lecture and concert -- and to consult with fellow physicists -- brings her accidentally in contact with LARRY when she bumps into him in the hallway. LARRY is so blown away by this encounter that he stumbles into STEPHEN's office by mistake. STEPHEN ("STEVE") is a mechanical engineer at FermiLab, involved both in manufacturing machines for physics experiments as well as remotely manufacturing buildings and facilities for the Mars Colony. A 3-D computer printer (e.g., a Stereolithography Apparatus) concretizes abstraction -- it transforms abstract thought into something physical. These are the kinds of machines STEPHEN uses in his work. When LARRY meets STEPHEN, they discover that physical 3-D computer output could help LARRY understand the computer visualization which is going on all around him. What happens when a radically new and highly abstract concept or scientific discovery is transformed into physical materials -- exotic, high-tech materials? Could the object itself possess unexpected, transcendental properties? THEO's art club is a social dynamic of performance and audience energy feedback. The club is filled with projection screens and cameras, exchanging live video feeds with sites of all kinds all around the world. The Internet is interactive communication in which it is possible that the performance of one person can be received by a million other people simultaneously -- AND the performer can also simultaneously receive the response of those million people. E-mail over the Internet is also the intimacy of letter-writing transacted in real-time -- the acceleration leads to things like Cyber Romance and CyberSex. BEN has pushed the bandwidth of e-mail and chat with his image-enhanced "I-Talk" conversation-in-pictures form of Internet communication. THEO gets into a private version of electronically-enhanced eroticism with LARRY after the art club opening. STEVE and LARRY's collaboration lead STEVE to build for LARRY a dynamic Braille computer interface -- which then develops into a device which can morph in 3-D in-the-round. The computer-tactile interface device is composed of tiny processor/memory/motor/sensor devices which STEVE micro-manufactures automatically. The cells have tactile, optical, electrical -- and as it turns out, quantum sensitivity. Together, the mass of "cells" function internally as a neural network computational system. STEVE speculates that the system could communicate the instantaneous electrical state of a human body in contact with it -- as a high-resolution EKG or EEG for medicine. In fact, unknown to the two of them, the devices have quantum sensitivity as well -- thus, according to Roger Penrose' Quantum Computational Graviton model of human consciousness, STEVE's braille/deep-touch device can carry into itself the holographic quantum state of the human nervous system in contact with it. THEO persuades LARRY to present the deep-touch device at an electronic arts conference in San Francisco. GYA MON observes LARRY demonstrating the device there in a remote link-up with THEO. GYA MON later contacts STEVE and makes a deal for an exclusive production run of the computer-touch devices to enhance his on-line Tantra courseware. After LARRY returns from San Francisco, he and THEO speak of how they sensed something out-of-the-ordinary in the tele-tactile experience. GYA MON is so seduced by Cyber-Sex via tele-touch that he begins a quest for new women to "initiate" through it. He tele-rapes JULIA this way. Meanwhile, the news of the new technology has spread across the Internet. People who have tried GYA MON's subscription service, and quit begin to take the tactile communications devices out of GYA MON's control. College students are hacking their own software drivers for it and are connecting with each other independently. Sex is one of the most basic of human experiences. The Hindu Tantric Yoga is a refinement of the sexual energy transfer process. The practice of networked Tantric CyberSex creates a psychic coherence in the basic commonality of experience, amplified by the regenerative power of the Internet. The Underground Tantric Cyber-Orgy spontaneously develops its own style, which surpasses what GYA MON has set up. In fact, GYA MON, himself is unable to experience what the bootleggers are experiencing. CyberSex involving a huge number of participants wired together using systems of neural-network-like smart materials results in a tremendous regenerative feedback loop of psychic energy. THEO sets up a large tele-tactile, or FEEL-U-FEEL-ME device in the private back-room of her club, where she persuades LARRY to try it with her. At the climax of their Cyber-Tantra session, LARRY experiences a cathartic enlightenment -- his visual cortex becomes wired-in with those of all the other on-line participants. "Pools" of their vision are superimposed upon LARRY's brain. LARRY says, "I feel as though the eyes and minds of the entire world are inside me." The melding of CyberSex with the true spirit of the Internet is the ultimate melding of body, intellect and spirit -- the synergy is greater than the sum of the parts. The power of Feel-U-Feel-Me has a transformative effect on the individual participants as well as the world as a whole. This is mental telepathy in which the real-time totality of human knowledge is supported by the world's computing network. The result: people do business with each other at an ever more efficient rate -- to the benefit of all. The world's economy improves, not by any effort of the government, but by the enlightenment of the "wired" generation. People have begun traveling to the Mars Colony to get it running. Of course, only the most essential people are sent in the beginning -- and as it turns out, only the most intelligent and successful. Virtually all of these people have been transformed by their FEEL-U-FEEL-ME experiences. LARRY's enlightenment is an incredible boost to his career. LARRY is selected for the trip to Mars. Debate begins over the need for the Mars Colony. The government leaders want to shut it down, because in the new world order, they stand to benefit much more from the renewed prosperity on earth, which is still under their control. Meanwhile, JULIA and BEN seek revenge against GYA MON for raping JULIA -- they have no legal recourse, as this event was totally unprecedented. BEN fashions a virtual automatic agent, after the persona of the vengeful and dangerous Hindu goddess, KALI, which he directs at GYA MON's tele-tactile device, emasculating and castrating him. STEVE and LARRY make it onto the last shuttle out from Earth, before the government starts bringing everyone back and shutting the whole thing down. When they arrive, they are met by a beautiful ORIENTATION GUIDE, who glows with internal energy. She and STEVE are hustling LARRY away from the shuttle. As the ORIENTATION GUIDE grasps LARRY's hand, he experiences the same psychic connection with her and the rest of the Mars Colonists, that he experienced in FEEL-U-FEEL-ME. In the midst of LARRY's confusion, the shuttle explodes in a massive fireball. STEVE and the ORIENTATOR explain that they blew up the shuttle in order to preserve the higher level of evolution the colonists have achieved. FEEL-U-FEEL-ME was only the first step. They have since learned how to sustain the connection without the electronics. Can cultural evolution drive physical evolution? Films like "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979) and "Powder"(1995) depict humans evolving to a higher form -- but that higher form is never shown. "Feel-U-Feel-Me" attempts to show this evolved form. It is a paradise of intellectual and sensual bliss.