On stage, Sinuhe Kaori stood with a welcoming smile plastered on his prim and proper youthful face. Excellent semblance!
The lighting had dimmed significantly over the seats. His eyes scanned across the rows and rows of people all staring holes into him; like eagles waiting to catch their prey.
Even though he yearned for attention, when he got it, he would turn anxious. He felt his skin burn.
Sinuhe Kaori, a name that has been circulating in academic circles, was that of a Philosophy PhD student who was researching the metaphysical aspects of 'identity' and 'self' like regular philosophy students do.
There, he found a secret method to unlock the consciousness of the human mind and use it to time travel or astral travel through time.
But this method was too philosophical, bordering on spiritual, that it would be totally rejected by scientists and philosophers who sit with present-day common logic. Therefore, he knew he needed something substantial to prove his discovery.
That is how he ended up in the neurology department, developing a device that could put people's brains into the REM state and interpret the brain signals to decipher their experience in the altered state of consciousness. Think of it as a function of 'dream to text' or 'thought to text' but when in a dream.
What Sinuhe proposed was that anyone could use the power of their minds to enter this REM state during sleep and could actively interact with time to retrieve information from the dreamlike scenarios. Shortly put, predict the future. Mighty Godly!
However, it was due to this wild and outrageous obsession that his name was rolling down everyone's tongues. Recently, he gained a new nickname — 'A fattened poultry dreaming of becoming the Mythical Phoenix.'
In simple terms, he was treated like an airhead nepo-baby whose foundational instinct was to build castles in the air. To them, he seemed like a privileged student who holed up for more than a year in the Neurology Department, studying brains and sleep patterns instead of sticking to good old philosophy.
What more, he even got the darling of the Neurology Department, Bai Jongli, involved in this seminar. Girls were not happy that Sinuhe was taking up all his time, leaving none for them.
It must be evident that Sinuhe Kaori's work was highly critiqued, but it was also human nature to itch for what was beyond the ordinary. What if he is right?!
So students from other departments also signed up to attend the seminar and view his performance. If nothing of substance happened, at least they would have a good laugh.
And that is why today Sinuhe Kaori was determined to demonstrate it on stage. To prove it to everyone what he had discovered.
Today, their jaws would dig the earth! Today, Sinuhe Kaori would prove that he has not been goofing around and that his theory of human consciousness being a superpower is indeed real.
With a breath of confidence, Sinuhe stepped into the spotlight and greeted, "Good morning, I am Sinuhe Kaori and thank you so much for attending my seminar today."
Dressed in a tailored, ink-black suit with minimal ornamentation, Sinuhe carried himself with a composed intensity. Behind him, the screen shifted between brainwave harmonics, symbolic imagery, and a visual representation of a dreaming mind drifting through abstract dimensions of time.
He began, "When we speak of time travel," voice calm and resonant, "we're usually talking about machines, wormholes, or paradoxes. But what if the most ancient form of time travel already exists? Not in circuits or equations — but in our states of consciousness?"
He changed the slide, now showing — overlapping EEG patterns from REM sleep, subtly overlaid with predicted timestamps from subjective dream reports.
"REM sleep is not just random neurological noise. Our findings suggest it opens doorways to a structured field — a sub-dimensional space within the fabric of reality. I call this space, 'The Plexus'. It is here that the mind, briefly unanchored from its bodily senses, may intersect with time differently. The implications are philosophical, yes — but increasingly, they're testable."
He paced slowly as he spoke, every gesture thoughtful while keenly gauging the crowd's reaction.
The audience gasped. Sinuhe smirked. He was very pleased with how things were unfolding exactly as he had planned.
"Through our collaboration with the Neurology Department, we've identified repeatable neural signatures associated with dream-based precognition. We're now asking: can semantic data — actual information — be extracted from these states? And if so... what would it mean for the world?"
The lights dimmed slightly as an assistant wheeled out a sleek, pod-like device — the REM-Temporal Interface Prototype, nicknamed "The Cradle" by Sinuhe's team. Sleek, minimal, and almost too serene in design, its soft purple glow reflected across the polished floor of Lydberg Auditorium.
"Today…" he paused, cockily raising his hand and pointing towards the device on stage, "…we attempt the first live retrieval of dream-state data — not just from memory, but potentially from a moment in time... that hasn't happened yet."
He loved making a scene. It felt like in his possession was the world's most coveted treasure — his invention.
The audience leaned in. The hall went still, heavy with thought. No one was ready for what was going to hit them. And for just a moment, it felt like time itself was watching.
"We've prepared three small demonstrations," Sinuhe continued, his voice calm but edged with gravity. "Each will explore the idea that consciousness, when inside THE PLEXUS, may temporarily untether from linear causality…viewing time as holographic events — that which have already occurred, that which is occurring now, and the ones that can happen in the future."
He then gave a detailed explanation of how the Cradle works, what the PLEXUS felt like, very importantly - how to navigate while inside it, and answered any and all queries the guests might have had, to the best of his abilities.
"Would anyone like to try it? Do we have a volunteer?" Sinuhe waited with anticipation.
A murmur rolled through Lydberg Auditorium. Who in their right mind would let someone scan their brains with who knows what device!
The audience went silent again as a student volunteer, a young girl from the Physics department, bravely stepped onto the stage, sat in the seat within the pod placed right in the middle of the stage, and reclined comfortably. Sinuhe gladly placed the headgear, which looked like a mesh cap with blinking LED lights and wires coming out of targeted points, over her scalp.
"Are you comfortable, Jenna? Shall we start?"
"Yup! Strap me up."
Sinuhe, delighted with his volunteer's enthusiasm, plugged The Cradle into the display screen. The auditorium display synced smoothly with the interface.
The pod had a function that exposed the subject to specific frequencies of sound. It took her about 15 minutes to fall asleep and enter the REM stage. The Cradle then aligned the subject's consciousness to access the PLEXUS— a dimension of time. Everyone's eyes were glued to the volunteer, scared they would miss something spectacular.
On screen a message flashed: [Subject accessed PLEXUS successfully.]
Sinuhe walked up to her and said in a calm voice, "Jenna, your thoughts will be deciphered by the Cradle and will appear on screen as text. If you understand, give me a sign."
Sinuhe waited for her to respond, subconsciously biting his lower lip; too tensed to breathe.
Why is she talking so long?
I knew I should have done it instead of asking volunteers.
What if those dark figures from this morning were a bad omen?
Just as his mind was circling deeper into negative thought, a word cloud was translated by the device and presented on the Cradle's screen :
[… Sign… sun… gorilla…rainbow… smile…]
Sinuhe grinned at the screen. Seeing him the crowd let out a sigh almost in unison. No, things were going fine.
"Jenna, can you tell the audience what you can see? Just think about a word or a phrase that can help us know"
[… another here… stage… empty]
"Great. Great work Jenna. You are doing wonderfully."
He swiftly clarified for everyone in the crowd that Jenna was in the PLEXUS that looked like that very stage, but it was empty; like a mirror reality.
Sinuhe turned to the audience, "We can begin the first test: random number generation."
He gestured to a sealed quantum RNG device at the corner of the stage. An Oakford mathematics professor, invited as a skeptic, activated it. The device began generating a 12-digit alphanumeric string every 30 seconds, unreadable and unpredictable until it appeared live.
The display flashed: ["Generating next key in 30 seconds..."]
Sinuhe glanced at the screen, then at the Cradle.
He spoke to Jenna again giving her clear instructions, "Jenna, I want you to focus on any shapes, words or numbers that might appear before you. Try to focus on them in the correct order and think of them repeatedly."
Now engaging the crowd, he explained, "Using the subject's dream imagery and symbolic output translation, we will predict the next key before it's generated. It should appear as a stream-of-consciousness word cloud. The AI will parse it. Similar to the lovely sign she sent us a while ago."
The word cloud appeared a few seconds later:
["Silver… J… ocean… 2… veil… V… 6… world… 0… seed…"]
The RNG beeped.
Generated code: J2V60UVERSND
Gasps rippled through the crowd. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough to feel wrong in the most right way.
"Second test," Sinuhe continued, not skipping a beat. "I will now ask our volunteer to scan for a person of interest."
"Jenna, do you have anyone in mind. Think of their name for me."
The Cradle screen beamed with name instead of the usual word cloud:
["Hayashi Nico"]
The crowd waited avidly for Hayashi Nico to please stand up.
Sinuhe took the lead, "Is Hayashi Nico here with us? Can you please come up to the stage?"
He didn't. In fact nobody came up. There was no one with that name in the whole campus. So why did Jenna chose this person?
Sinuhe's eyebrows bunched a little. He was confused as to who Jenna had mentioned. Maybe the device had decided to ditch him just like his trusted alarm had that morning. He could not let this cause him failure.
He was about to make up some excuse when a woman from the professors row interjected, "That's my son's name."
Sinuhe's eyes sparkled. He was worried for nothing. He darted over to the audience and eagerly held his hand out, "Madam, may I?"
The woman nods, clearly skeptical.
"Madam, could you please tell everyone your name?"
"Dr Aoi. Hayashi Aoi. I am a Professor of Ancient Philosophy from Norden University. I was invited as a guest by the HOD of Philosophy of Oakford University."
"Thank you Dr Aoi." Sinuhe welcomed her onto stage.
He turned to the audience and with a gesture of his hands directed everyone's attention to the Cradle's display.
"Let's see what Jenna has predicted for us."
Dr Aoi tried to swallow her concern and but couldn't resist anymore. She inquired, "Is he okay?"
A mother's love for her son is immeasurable. She was petrified to see her son's name on the screen and rightfully so. The machine could predict anything. Good and the ugly.
With everyone holding their breaths, the display showed a new word cloud, slower this time. More coherent:
["Salt… red light… jungle… scooter… storm… monkey… Bangkok… Nico laughing… phone… loud music…"]
Sinuhe looked at Dr Aoi. "Is he in Thailand right now?"
She froze with bewilderment. Then nodded slowly. "Backpacking. Southeast Asia. But I didn't say where."
He gestured. "Could you call him?"
She did, on speaker.
Ring…Ring…Ring…
Nico answered, half-shouting over the sound of engines and music.
"Hey Mom! Can I call you back? I'm riding a scooter through a crowded street market here in Bangkok and it just started raining! I almost hit a—wait, oh my god! What the hell—"
Dr Aoi's face turned black with worry. "Nico! Are you okay? Nico!"
"…."
Then suddenly the sound of Nico's laughter from the other side of the phone broke the silence on stage, " …. Hahahaha…. Mom, call you later. A monkey fell onto my new friend's lap. Bye."
"Oh! This boy!" Dr Aoi signed, her expression had a mixture of both relief and a hint of motherly fury, "That nearly gave me a heart attack!"
Sinuhe went over to comfort her. "Sounds like your son is having fun."
He made sure to apologize to the professor for overstepping any boundaries and guided her back to her seat.
Silence fell again. Stunned. Some audience members look half-amused, half-terrified. Others shifted in their seats like something unseen had just touched the edge of the room.
First, the subject was able to predict a sequence from a quantum random number generator that is a true random number and is used for high-security purposes because it does not rely on computer algorithms; hence, it is supposed to be unpredictable. Second, she predicted an event from across the globe in real time about a person who wasn't even present.
It seemed like the subject was only able to predict near or immediate future events. Whatever the extent, the results were scary because now it was proven that nothing could remain a secret once this technology improves.
Sinuhe looked... deeply pleased. He even heard whispers that they had wrongly judged him as a quack. Instead, he turned out to be someone who might have changed the world!
At that moment, everybody in that auditorium had witnessed Sinuhe Kaori make history. In his heart he knew, that from that very instant he was a different man.
This must be what being a God feels like!