I stepped inside, momentarily distracted by the plushness of the short Abusan runner carpet my high-heels sank into – stunningly beautiful with purples, reds, and greens, polished hardwood all around, then caught myself and shut the door behind me.

The real estate agent was nowhere in sight… and the house did NOT look unoccupied.  What home-seller would have left behind this carpet? Or that dark wood marble topped hall table with its crystal vase of roses, fragrance permeating the air, or the gilt framed mirror above it or that painting above that stone arch there: a Spanish Galleon sailing into the secluded bay of some exotic jungle choked shore, colorful parrots at play in the trees….  I gave that a double take.  It was too much like the one I’d seen in a gallery somewhere; the once told a friend would look great in my dream house foyer someday if ever I could afford either one.

“Mr… uh… Real Estate Agent?” I called out, completely at loss for what his name was and thoroughly embarrassed by the fact.  “Hello…?”

But no answer came.

Momentarily, I froze there, uncertain what to do.  Then figured, oh what the hell; I’m here so I may as well make the most of it. 

I opened the louvered folding doors of the wide hall closets and looked inside, relieved to find them empty. 

The Japanese style sliding door across the foyer from the closets was less of a relief with its matching cherry wood desks, each topped by a computer across the room from each other, and bookshelves full of books.  They were just as I’d drawn, as too the stone fireplace and red velvet cushioned conversation pit around it. Hesitantly, I stepped to the center of the room, gawking, and then chose one of the two sliding doors on either side of the fireplace that led to the next room and gawked again at the beautiful garden room beyond, full of jungle plant and an ornamental wall fountain splashing merrily away on the back side of the fireplace. 

I turned to look up and there, as expected now, were the twin balconies overlooking this room from what I knew were the master bedroom up there.

Going back out to the foyer, I called my hellos again, still not getting an answer and still unable to recall the man’s name. 

I gave the hall table a hopeful glance.  Your typical real estate agent would have left a card there but, nope, not this one.  Not any of them as a matter of fact.  How odd.

Walking purposefully past the stone arch, its blue-lit cave-like maw, I wandered nervously through the house.

Even the furniture was exactly as I’d drawn it, impossible but undeniable.  Everything was luminous in its perfected beauty.  There was a roomy kitchen with green marble counters, dark wood cabinets, bay window, and brass cookery hanging above the island, sunny dining room with sliding door to the patio, a living room that was mostly dance floor, sliding doors to the walled oriental garden.  Everything was exactly as I’d dreamed it up… Upstairs too as I discovered upon returning to the foyer to ascend the spiral staircase I knew I’d find in the short hallway adjoining it.

No real estate agent anywhere, though, dang him anyway.  Wasn’t he supposed to be giving me the grand tour?  I felt so abandoned here!  And the place, while it didn’t look exactly lived in, everything far too tidy and perfect for that, it definitely looked very prepared for living in.  Even the beds were made up and beautifully at that, with every fine frippery and whimsical accoutrement imaginable.

The coastlines are not the same as our grandchildren knew.  The seas are higher everywhere and ruins beneath the clear waters off the coast are a common sight, dikes ruined via turbulent storms and violent geological activity. 

New diseases have also put a major dent in populations but climate changes have nonetheless left the world staggering as old world crops are lost and new ones must be established.  There is a whole corps of scientists devoted to developing new super foods for the now thinly-fed populations.

There is no money but two forms of purchasing still take place: a kind of credit card that applies buying power to work efforts, and simple barter.  Some people don't use the credit card at all, either not trusting it or having trouble accruing work credits.  These live solely by barter, most of them in kibbutz type farming communities, trading food for medicine or technology.

There is technically a one-world government - something carefully orchestrated over the past 50 years.  People are used to depending on it for things we might have depended on ourselves for in simpler times.  It controls many aspects of our lives, but not everything, and some of that control is benign and fairly practical:

Births are controlled.  Ever girl is birth control patched at the onset of puberty and will remain patched for most of her life until menopause.  This is because of population reaching crisis levels in the decades prior.  Individuals or couples can apply for a license to bear a child, however.  They have undergo a physical and DNA exam to verify that both they and their offspring will be healthy.  They have show proof of income adequate to support a child.  They can not have a criminal record or a history of violence or psychiatric illness.  They have to take parenthood training.  But if you pass these requirements, there are no others for having a child.  You could be a single parent, a heterosexual couple, or a homosexual couple.  You could be any race or gender or age or religion.

There are no rules about religion except that it not be practiced in mixed company and there are considerable cautions against inflammatory action.  Sermons are monitored for violent hate mongering against other groups.  There is, of course, still high security at airports and train stations (thank you 9-11), and instant execution for anyone caught in a homicidally violent act so no prison time is wasted on them.  This last is done via chips planted at the brain stems at puberty.  It's programmed to detect and react to biochemical triggers of violence that would lead to homicide.  But people determined by their serotonin levels to be at risk for these sorts of outbursts are patched for it to reduce the likelihood.  Unfortunately, this doesn't catch everyone.  There's still a lot we don't know about what causes otherwise people to turn violent.

There is a now very noticeable population of transsexuals: about 20% of the population and living in the open now that the social environment will accept them.  They appear to be an evolutionary step up: smarter, healthier, and more attractive than the average population.  They can reproduce without a partner, so they too are patched at puberty.  An interesting side effect they have on fashion is that a lot of other people chose to emulate their cross gender styles to such an extent that dress is no longer gender specific.  Gender specific dress is, in fact, considered gauche.

Nudity has also become publicly acceptable in most places.  There are no rules for or against.

The technology is what interests me the most.  There's something called psychotechnology now, wherein brain energies are used to power and control certain types of equipment.  Dreams can be made movies of now.  Time travel is also part of this new technology, but deemed risky and tightly controlled.

Okay, that's it.  That's all I can see.  What can you see happening?

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

I've been carefully designing my dream house, taking into account every practical concern except the money that would make it possible (which is probably IMpossible) - location, laundry chute, solar panel, dumb waiter, a drip dry closet for the laundry room, efficient spaces, fung shui, storage, activity allotments, ect. - as well as those simply pleasant - the grotto, walled garden, garden room, aquariums, hot tub, jacuzzi, steam room, pool, fire pit, hammock, carefully planned views from windows, dance space, ect.  I'm having a good deal of fun doing it and hope to build a model of it with Jeb after I've finished this stage.  I'm treating it as though it isn't an impossible dream....

I was thinking ornamental screening like this...

...with stalactic-stalagmite pillars at its corners in the back of the grotto area beside the little cavelett housing the washer and dryer to create the drip-dry closet.  A fan overhead of course.

Bonnie looked at the complexity of the design and, wrongly assuming it was for a large house, said, "I don't think I could ever live in a house that big.  It would be overwhelming.

If she'd read any of the dimensions, she'd know that the house is not actually so huge as it is complex.  No room is any larger than it has to be for the purposes to which it will be assigned and all are set up in such a way to place the minimum footprint on the earth and on each other, though it will look much smaller on the outside than it actually is on the inside - an illusion I plan to orchestrate with considerable finesse. 

In point of fact, the house is actually not much larger than the modest split-level home I live in now.  Looks can be deceiving.  Good things CAN come in small packages.

Jeb likes the twin slides shooting to the grotto in opposite curves: a dry one to the little gym; a wet one, through a waterfall, to the pool.

But why to all of the above...?  We can and do travel to fun and beautiful places (though we can't always afford to take everyone we'd like to with us) and though our home isn't perfectly 5-S'd, it does all it needs to do for us.  We do not need the level of home pleasure and perfection I have been so busily designing on my screen of light.  It would be nice all the same - just not for us alone. 

We're grandparents now, on the crux of growing old.  The nest is on it's way to getting empty, so no need for nesting behavior now.  But what do I think of most when I entertain the idea of my dream house?  I think how fun it would be to fill it with friends and family... and I keep finagling the spare bedrooms in there and everything I know the kids would enjoy.

Yes Amy, I did put aside space for a piano and a sewing machine... not big, but sufficient.

Yes Mom, there are gardens and birds aplenty.

Yes Jeb, the kitchen is roomy, there is a Captain's Walk for stargazing on, and the gym includes a Wii after the WEEEEEEE of shooting down the slide to it.

Yes Andy, there is a pool table.

Yes Jeb, Mom, and Andy, there will be a nice wood shop.

Yes everyone, there are plenty of shelves for books and, oh yes, much have big screen TV.  Never had that before.  I think it would be fun to watch movies on together.

Yes Vanessa and Levi, there will be swings and slides and manner of places to play.

No Bonnie, it's not nearly so huge as you think.  Calm down.

Fred... You never really say what you want.  Hot tub?  Speak up, I can't hear you.

Come stay and play?

If they won't, then I guess we'll just have to make it a Bed and Breakfast.

I walled that one small Japanese Garden because I'd love some starry warm nights to sleep out there in the round net-curtained bed hanging from a tree and a friend here has pointed out the danger of axe murderers marauding in the night.  I think he's been watching too many horror flicks but.... better safe than sorry I guess.  I'd hate to have to be jumping at every little noise.  I'll keep a big puppy dog by me and feel even safer.

Meanwhile, I guess there's another reason I'm so intent on this dream and, ironically (if that's the right word), it's for the same reason religion lost all of its shine for me: Iran.  In Iran, everything I enjoyed was forbidden in public.  In private, there was MUCH less forbidden.  Think of the fabled harem of lore: once you enter, you are never allowed to exit, but all manner of luxury and pleasure will be sumptuously provided within - the quintessential gilded cage.  I do not like to be trapped in a cage.  But if ever I were trapped in my home like that again, I'd need a little gilding so as not to go completely out of my mind.  In Iran, in a completely ungilded dreary cage, I dreamt about that all the time... plotted and planned for how I could gild it in lieu of actual freedom.  The vestiges still remain.

Another little side thought...  I have read a great many books on the subject of accidental and learned OBE and was particulary interested in those where the traveler visits the "heavens" people have designed for themselves (and the hells for those who fear it) between lives... how they build and see what they want and often do not see what others have likewise done. 

Various religious groups sometimes maintained their religious communities after death, seemed unaware that they'd even died, maintained around them the same scenes they'd always lived with, deleting only those they specifically disliked, and were completely oblivious to all around them and the fact that any but a member of their religion could even be there.  Those always made me giggle.  Manacles of spirit are so much realer than those of the physical, but they are self-imposed at it is possible to shuck them at a decision point.  But some souls like them, thank you very much.

But individuals - often nonreligious and perfectly aware of their ephemeral state - built their dream homes too.  They were oblivious to others around them doing the same too except as they had a spiritual connection of some sort with each other.  You know how you link to others you are in simpatico with?  Well there, it seemed, you couldn't even see or interact with anyone else unless you had that connection or were really looking hard. 

In my house, I'd like the opportunity to fully connect on many levels.  Not sure what I mean by that... but I think, somehow, this is something happens most potently, albeit willynilly on many occasions, at the physical level of experience.

What would you like in a dream house?  And why would you want it?

Just muddling grotto ideas for my dream house to play with.  Jeb wants the slide and ramp to go through an over-arching acquarium in-set in the immitation stonework of the cavern - something like this one...

after which the ramp would turn from its parrallel with the slide and become stairs as the slide must be MUCH longer and steps would mean quicker ascent to the top of the slide again. 

Love this idea!  I actually even know of a custom aquarium designer who could build this if we ever decided to really do this. 

I also thought it would be cool to utilize the articificial stalactite-stalagmite towers... one to be a two-sided fire place by the bottom pool and some to be embedded with aquariums like this one:

Though one, just for fun, aught to have an immitation human sleeper in it as a bubblator to freak the kids out... especially when its glowing eyes slowly open to regard its watchers in completely calculated disdain.  *GRIN*  Cue the hysterical screams.  Best invite the teenage girls.  They're good for that... but much funner if a guy can be made to scream himself silly.

There must also be a waterfall like this one...

flowing over it at some point and, of course, the slide must be flowing with water to make it speedier and more underground riverish.

And must have a phone booth down there, right?

Anyway, enough of my silliness for one day.  I have SOOOOO much work to do here today and not nearly enough time to dream it away.

Just some I found on the news page and want to watch when I get home tonight as I can't see videos at work:

Illness makes teen appear middle-aged, The truth is out there?, ‘El Nino’ affects the Pacific's gray whales, Ice strands ferry in the Baltic

Don't mind me.  It's just that 9 times out of 10 when I see such things on the news page, they've already cycled out of sight by the time I get home.  Drives me crazy.