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They had gone past the mountains now, beyond the rain and hills. They had passed the last tree a while back, and it seemed that there was nothing now but a featureless plain. Jenny was wondering whether they would walk this way forever, but Josh led them onward, seeming confident in their direction.

At last they could see a vast lake spread out before them. It grew gradually larger, until it was perhaps thirty yards away. “I guess this is the end of the line,” Sid said. “Too bad kid, you really tried.”

“No,” Josh said, “We need to keep going.”

“But it’s a lake!” Jenny said, “we can’t very well walk on water.”

“Come on,” Josh insisted, and he continued to walk forward.

With nothing else to do, the others followed. Jenny wondered whether they would all find that they could breathe underwater. Odder things had happened since this journey had started.

Strangely, the lake did not appear to get any closer. No matter how much they walked forward, the water line remained just about thirty yards away. But now something else was happening — a shimmering in the air before them.

“Of course,” said Mr. Symarian, “I should have guessed, a shielding spell! Such spells can be broken only by proximity.”

With every step now, the shape before them was growing clearer, and larger. Suddenly it was standing before them, as clear as day.

“What is this place?” Charlie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jenny replied, “but it looks exactly like my house.”

Practically the definition of “popular culture” is that it is chronologically site-specific. The songs, movies, TV shows, comic books that wash over us in an endless stream of entertaining ephemera are not meant to last, but only to please in the moment. They are not meant as messages to posterity. They are meant only to be entertaining and hopefully to make somebody a buck.

But wasn’t that what Will Shakespeare was up to? Wasn’t W.A. Mozart just trying to fill the seats at the opera house and hopefully to get in good with Emperor Joseph II? Wasn’t Rembrandt mainly trying to make commissions for his paintings, Aristophanes just going for a laugh, and Dickens selling his stories by the word?

We can’t know what will last beyond our own time. People remember Marlene Dietrich, but not Lily Langtry, Marilyn Monroe but not Mamie van Doren. The golden star of immortality falls where it will, and we cannot predict the path of its long arc through future history.

But we can say, with the authority of knowing it has happened countless times before, that some TV show, some movie we saw last weekend, some pop song playing in the top 40, will indeed last — perhaps for hundreds of years, and perhaps even longer.

Out of the random spewings of any generation trying only to entertain itself, there will indeed be random nuggets of greatness that last through the ages, and the very next popular song you hear on the radio may very well continue to echo through eternity.

In spite of the howling winds all around them, Jenny felt oddly safe. She was enfolded in the golden warmth of Charlie’s protective shield, she had her friends about her, and Josh clearly knew the way. With the rush of events, each stranger than the last, she realized that she hadn’t had time to think, to really let herself understand what was going on.

What did she really know about Grandma Amelia? The family history was vague — maybe deliberately vague. Her grandfather had loved her grandmother very much, and everyone had always thought it went both ways. But then one Sunday afternoon, when Jenny’s mother was still a girl, Grandma Amelia had just vanished. Apparently people had looked everywhere, but she was never found. The only thing they knew was that she had said, just before she’d disappeared, that she needed to go up into the attic. But if she really went up there that Sunday afternoon, she never came down.

Ever since that day, Jenny’s mother had refused to go up into the attic — ever — even after she’d inherited the family house. The mystery of Grandma Amelia’s disappearance was so central to Jenny’s family, so taken for granted all her life, that she’d hardly ever given it much thought.

Until now.

I attended a talk recently by a scientist who implants sensors into the brains of “locked in” patients — people who are so severely paralyzed that they have no way of communicating. The implanted sensors contain thousands of tiny wires. When the patient thinks about, say, moving her arm, the neurons in her brain will produce a flurry of electrical impulses.

Even though the arm cannot physically move, nonetheless these minute electrical signals can be sensed and analyzed on a computer. By looking at the difference between the signals produced by different thoughts, such as “move arm to the left” or “move arm to the right”, the computer can then drive a robotic arm, which essentially becomes a brain-controlled puppet.

Right now the results are crude. People can use these techniques to move robot arms slowly and imperfectly. And of course the whole endeavor requires having a computer chip implanted in one’s head — not something most people would feel comfortable with.

Yet this is also the beginning of something entirely new in human history. For these first 200,000 or so years that Homo Sapiens has been in existence, the only way for a human to communicate has been brain→nerves→muscles. Without the ability to move one’s muscles (whether to speak, or walk or write or move the eyes), a brain is just an isolated blob of tissue, cut off from the world.

But if we imagine a future in which direct neural control becomes cheap and universally available — perhaps a future in which neural sensor implants are given immediately after birth as a standard procedure — then we can envision a time when the brain will become free of the constraints of moving muscles. We will then be able to create any mapping we want from thought to physical reality. We will be able to interact with the world through pure thought, our brains able to directly move machines, operate computers, or transmit our conscious thoughts to the minds of our fellow humans.

What will life be like when any thought we have can be expressed directly, and enacted in the world around us?

They were half way across the meadow, with Josh leading them confidently toward the mountain pass, when the first dark clouds appeared in the sky. The wind began to pick up, and Jenny started to notice a distinct drop in the weather. “Mr. Symarian?” she said.

“Yes Jenny.”

“How can there be weather inside a tower?”

“An interesting question,” Mr. Symarian replied. “Yes, a very interesting question indeed. One might as well ponder how there can be mountains inside a tower. ”

“What you said just there, I don’t think that’s an answer,” Sid pointed out helpfully.

Mr. Symarian was about to make a reply when the first drops of rain began to fall. He looked up into the now distinctly darker sky with a worried expression. Before them a dark cloud hovered in the air. Below this cloud the air was dark and roiling. It was clear that the storm was rapidly heading toward them.

“I’m pretty sure I know the way,” Josh said, pointing ahead, “but I’m not sure I can get us there in a storm like that.”

“I think I can help,” Charlie said. “At least, I used to be able to do this. It might still work.” The others all turned to look at him as his face assumed a look of concentration. Soon his golden skin began to glow with a warm inner light. Gradually the light expanded, until it was a translucent golden globe about ten feet in diameter, centered upon Charlie.

Sid was the first to break the awed silence. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gettin’ out from under the rain.”

Soon they were all gathered into the glowing aethereal sphere that surrounded Charlie. When they were all assembled within, safe and warm despite the howling winds outside, Josh suddenly realized he knew exactly where to go.

“We have to go this way,” he said. Confidently he began to walk, and the others followed.

My second experiment with the solid printer was rather different. I’ve recently been creating little interactively animated characters. So rather than concentrate on creating more shapes and textures right away, I thought I would make a radical switch, and bring my little animated friends into the real world.

It just happened that I had — just this week — modeled my latest interactively animated guy, so I gave Travis Kirton the file to print him on the 3D printer. Here was the result, beautifully photographed by Travis:

Of course this is just the beginning. What I really want to do is animate this in the real world. To do that I will need to create an entire series of printed sculptures these little guys, each one in a different position, and spin them around while flashing a strobe light in sync, to make a 3D Zoetrope.

This was famously done a few years ago by Pixar, but sculptural Zoetropes date back for decades. One thing that intrigues me about all of this is the idea that you can print out the entire machine in a one shot — a single 3D print could contain all of the animated figures in their different poses, as well as the turntable that supports them.

That would be very cool.

He walked over to the table, and gazed down upon the miniature landscape — the tiny rolling mountains, miniature lakes and fields. Floating over all were the drifting white clouds, hovering in the air, perfectly formed in every detail. It all looked so serene, so untouched by time.

He held no illusions — time itself was his enemy. For time could so easily change everything, unless something were done. Slowly, delicately, he passed one hand over the table, speaking words in an ancient tongue as his fingers moved in an intricate pattern.

For a few moments nothing happened. Then the tiny clouds started to gather, to darken. The air beneath began to stir ominously. He gazed mournfully upon his handiwork for a long moment, until he could see the first tiny flashes of lightning.

Then he turned away.

Here at the ART Lab at the Banff Centre they have a 3D printer, and I feel like a kid in a candy shop. If you don’t know, a 3D printer is a device that converts a computer graphic model into a real object. It works by building the object up in thin layers, one at slice at a time.

I was eager to try this, so I made a little computer graphics shape, wrote a program to write out in the file format that the 3D printer expects, and tried it out. The shape itself was really simple. I just created a sphere and used some procedural noise to vary the surface, so it would look nice and bumpy:

My new collaborator at the ART lab, Travis Kirton, who is a whiz at using the 3D printer, loaded in my data file, and several hours later the following wonderful object emerged:

The real object is so much more interesting than the computer graphic model. It’s got texture, translucency, weight (although not much). Unlike the computer graphic version, it’s got size — the ball is about two and a half inches in diameter. And best of all, you can hold it in your hand.

After years of creating things that existed only in a computer, it felt miraculous to be able to hold one of my creations in my hand, here on this side of the screen. The thought I had was something like “well, this changes everything”.

This afternoon I brought the little bumpy ball to a meeting, and I noticed a funny thing. Everyone seemed fascinated by it. People would pick it up, roll it around in one hand, explore it with their fingers, or just enjoy the feel of holding it. When one person would put it down, another would pick it up and start to play with it.

I’m not really sure why this is so, but I’d love to find out.

Jenny couldn’t stop staring. “Is it really still you Charlie?” she asked. Before her, instead of a demon, was a handsome young man who seemed to be made of pure gold.

Charlie looked down at his hands. His fingers were long and delicate and golden, they way they had once been. He smiled. “This is the way I really am — the way I was. And this is how my people look. Or at least, the way we used to look, before the change.”

“Ah yes,” said Mr. Symarian. “now that we are within its walls, the tower is protecting our companion against the enchantment. I this this may be a sign that we are nearing our goal.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Jenny smiled at Charlie, suddenly feeling a little shy.

“Well, I think it’s a waste of time,” Josh said. “So now Charlie’s made of gold, get over it. Weren’t we supposed to be on a mssion here?”

Jenny looked at Josh with annoyance. “What’s your problem?”

Sid looked from Jenny to Josh, and ruffled his wings in amusement. “Call me crazy, but I got a feelin’ the kid’s jealous.”

Jenny realized that Josh was now blushing. She gave him a long hard look, and then she broke out in a grin. “Sid, I’ve got a feeling you’re right.” She leaned over and planted a kiss on Josh’s cheek. “And I think it’s sweet.”

For a moment Josh looked stunned. Then he smiled. “I guess, um, Charlie doesn’t look so bad in gold.”

When first arriving at a new place — one that is calm — it takes a day or two to shed the busyness and everyday traffic in your own head. I arrived in Banff the evening before yesterday, and only today, over a full day later, is my mind beginning to accept that time is now different. Here my day is my own, and I can spend as many hours as I want concentrating on my creative work, without any obligation but to self.

And yet a funny thing happened today. Rather than focus inward, I began to connect with others here, to absorb the fascinating work of the people I am first meeting. I found myself reaching out, finding shared passions and ideas, instinctively beginning new collaborations.

I might just be tapping into the energy of being away from my daily routine. Or maybe the sense of freedom that comes with a different landscape.

In any case, I hope it lasts. At least for a while.