PART 1: THE SWORD IN THE RUINS

An archeological site. The massive stone walls of the foundation still half-stand, forming a maze buried now in sediment. Where to dig? We have a new instrument to tell us--a short sword, standing stabbed into the earth, like Excalibur in the stone. But this sword's sunk in time, in dust-strata going back eons. It's a prototype; the hilt and wide guard are crude, forming a rough silver cross. The sword quivers, like a dowsers' hazel wand. It tilts to show where to dig! Picking up vibrations from underground? Nothing so simple--it's made of "tememtim", a high-tech alloy that's temperature-sensitive. It holds a latent shape remembered in the metal, and bends between its worked shape and the remembered one as the temperature varies during the day, and at different depths in the time-strata, the dust of warm times and cold.

The name stands for "temperature, memory, time." Or maybe "temperature-memorizing titanium," since that's the dominant component of the alloy; but that'd be "tememtit". Eliciting snickers.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Ruins buried in sediment = I've been exploring my abusive childhood in therapy. Buried by layers of later... sentiments.
• Latent/innate shape= what I was as a kid.
• Sword shape = what I was tempered into--battered into!
• So despite its steely emotional restraint my surface persona does know where to dig, retains more latent memory than I thought.

NEXT DAY

I have to drive through Silicon Valley, and the engine smells hot--even scorched. At last I have to stop and check the oil. Pull out the dipstick--and there I am, holding a temperature-sensitive metal rod like a miniature fencing foil!

It is indeed hot, and I watch the engine temperature uneasily as I drive home, as gently as I can...

While I wonder if the dream was subtly predictive.

PART 2, TWELVE DAYS LATER: THE SAURIAN PATH

I'm in the future. Our archeology class is exploring a site on the south slope of a hill above the sea. The Marin side of the Golden Gate? Looks like it, but the water's higher, and the great bridge is gone.

Below the hill, a little ridge with an ancient road and eroded tower-bases along its top, like old molars. Steep slope to the sea below. The humans gravitate here, to these towers. The natural place to dig.

Our one nonhuman classmate is a bipedal saurian/avian, like a shy vegetarian velociraptor, but with a long feathered tail and crest.

At last our human classmates give in and follow us and dig off the main road. Right under the surface, we find ruins much older than the human ones above! They built around these much more ancient foundations.

The human experts never dreamed that saurians lived here first.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• The Marin Headlands have buried gun batteries and lookouts from World War Two and missile silos from the Cold War. So the obvious meaning is... old defenses! But in the world of Star Trek, the Headlands are the site of Federation headquarters; their diplomatic assembly hall. So it may also mean NEGOTIATION. A more hopeful, less defensive future. I've been doing hypnotherapy, in which my various sides negotiate, and they do seem as diverse (& thorny) as Star Trek's aliens...
• Before humans = I grew up largely shunned, an outcast. Most of my human socialization has been in this last decade.
• My saurian classmate = Tememtim the sword, in a new form! Both are temperature-sensitive and both point where to dig. The saurian gravitates to the hidden path partly to shelter from cold wind. Reptilian cold blood, the cold metal of the sword... may symbolize my cold wariness, beaten into me by my human schoolmates! Coldblooded creatures are more sensitive to their environment--they have to be!
• And what did this cold but more sensitive part discover? The neglected path, a mere ditch by the obvious one, is where the real discoveries wait.

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