"Well, now," he chuckled. "I can understand why you were sorry to wake up. Leave it to you to produce the summa cum laude dream of all time!"

I shook my head slowly. "But I don't think that I, Jon Lake, could produce a dream like that. Really, Karl. I mean, the new words, the detail... I can't even imagine that kind of stuff, much less dream it."

"Okay, Jon. Maybe it was the Jon Lake of 2150 who produced the classical wish fulfillment dream for the crippled Jon Lake of 1976. After all, that's what your dream girl, Lea, said, wasn't it?

"And by the way, did you think of asking your dream computer how they were able to develop a utopia like 2150 in just a hundred and seventy-some years? Like how was it possible to go from a world of competition, conflict, distrust, hatred, overpopulation, pollution, ignorance, and monumental selfishness to a world of cooperation, love, and wisdom? Did you think to ask that question, Jon? Sure would be nice to know the secret." Karl laughed. "Maybe we could change the topic of our dissertation, put you to sleep for a week or two, and get your C.I. to write it for us!"

"Seriously, Karl, I did ask about some of those things. C.I. said that our society, which she called the micro society, perished sometime around the year 2000, along with most other micro societies of the Earth, due to their inability to cooperate with one another."

"So, it ended," Karl paraphrased, "not with a whimper, but a bang."

"No, C.I. spoke of factors which worked over a long period of time to bring about the destruction of micro society. It wasn't sudden."

I hesitated with a new thought. "Hell, we're right in the middle of it! C.I. said the Macro society of 2150 had its beginnings back in the 1970s. That's right now, Karl!"