Kuru (Part 1)

There was this rare disease called kuru, formerly prevalent in a tribe in Papua New Guinea. It was also called the laughing disease because of insane bouts of laughter triggered by it; thankfully, it is now almost extinct, as it was caused primarily by eating other people's brains and thus being infected by evil prions.

I thought of it this morning, coming out of an exceptionally detailed dream-state in which the Archivalist and the Argonaut and I were wandering around in the rain, through a seedy complex of old shophouses and ramshackle tuition centres. In the middle of the maze, we bumped into former students who told us with a tinge of regret that this was what remained of the grand endeavour. Quite a shock to me, and part of a plot that could have been part of a great SF novel.

It also involved gyroscopes, a sports complex commandeered by students dressed in white (the boys) and white with green skirts (the girls), sharks and a hunting boat, two young men named Philip (and one named Ronald) who were involved in three-dimensional puzzles and four-dimensional computing, the quality control of chipboard walls, bad paint jobs, the difficulty of SUV parking in underground labyrinths, and for some strange reason, a cheap pair of blue and white slippers that kept turning up everywhere.

At the end of the dream, as I emerged from the narcosis, I heard a voice saying, "It's not the journey, but the departure, that matters. Go out into the world." It was a very odd dream.