There's a fine line between genius and crazy ... I tend to wobble back and forth on both sides of the line.

Had a dream last night. Dreams don't stay long once we wake up but this one did.

It brought to mind questions of the universe - what do we not know?

Not unanswerable what-do-we-not-know questions like the nature of God or life on other planets - or what is life? We may not know the answers but we know to ask the questions. I'm thinking of questions on a higher plane beyond questions of things we have no answer for, but questions we don't even know to ask questions of.

For myself, I'm educated and experienced in among the hardest of "hard" sciences. A field where we supposedly know many answers and for those we don't, we know what answers to seek. We know what there is to know or know where to look. The science has spoken!

Hmmph!

Here's one: what happens to our knowledge if the speed of light is not constant? Did you know the unit of length "meter" is not defined except as a function of the speed of light? As the speed of light is refined, the meter changes length, not the speed of light. (Not a fan of the metric system myself, but that's a different discussion). Modern theory - Einstein - suggests time is relative. What if it's not? I don't claim to have an answer; I simply ask the question.

The speed of light is an exact and constant value of 299,792,458 m/s

"Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of ⁠1/299792458⁠ of a second, where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium".

The best of measurements suggests this is correct. At one time, the best of measurements suggested the sun rotates about the earth.

But to simply ask the question labels one a fool at best; a heretic of the little-c church at worst. I may be both.

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Not an original thought but are dreams a tenuous connection to parallel or alternative universes? To heaven or hell? To alternates of "me"? (and you?)

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I was not a teenager but not anywhere near the age I am now - call it mid/late 20s perhaps?

I was with close friends. Upon reflection when awake, I do not know who these friends are/were but in the dream we were close companions. Among them was a woman - my companion of life. Not a wife, not my wife, not a sex dream - just an "it is" companion. To explain it does the reality of the dream injustice - words are not adequate. There were no such questions in the dream.

We were all "somewhere": a library, then a store with no in-between - dreams are fluid and only make sense while one is dreaming.

We had to leave this store. The door from the store to the street was a telephone booth door. Strange, eh? But it wasn't at the time.
So we passed through the telephone booth door to the street - and ended up on a … call it a bus but it wasn't a bus. And we were the only "passengers".

We passed through mountain country, came to a stop - I guess a bus stop. My friends left the bus for some reason - to get something at the stop? while I stayed on board. No idea why.

While waiting for them to return a group of 5 or 6 fellows came and took all the seats near me. Friendly fellows. One guy wearing a straw hat asked me if I knew where he could get a straw hat for $1.97. Strange thing to recall, eh?

But I didn't want to be with this group, I didn't know any of them - even in the dream, and I wished they were elsewhere - my friends were coming back.

Until the "bus" took off.

And I recall seeing my friends on the parking lot receding into oblivion while they watched the bus with me on it pull away. And my companion was among them, standing there with ... me?

I woke up.

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A parallel universe? I >knew< these people, I knew this woman; they were close to me, I was close to them. But I don't recall any names; nothing to suggest I ever knew any of them in this life - I didn't recognize any of the after-images of their faces as I laid there coming back to this world.

A connection to a different me in a different universe?
Does the me of that other universe dream of the me in this universe?

Stray neurons flashing in my brain with no meaning, no substance?

There is so much we don't even begin to suspect we don't know ...

Anyway, I'm back in this world, awakening, the dream fades as I drink my coffee while clicking keys on a keyboard, generating digital bits to all you that only exist in my world as semi-random pixels on a video screen.

Or perhaps I only exist as pixels on your video screens ...

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