Sample of Novella - About midway through the novel, after Naomi's death, a dedication speech is presented here by the Dean of the University of Colorado. It discusses the ImagineMine center, the first of many to come, and explains why it is a significant force in the new age of AI. After the speech, TJ (Naomi's husband) meets an artist who designs holograms with consciousness built into their light.
"Without imagination," she wrote in her final research proposal, "humans become mere biological extensions of their digital tools. With imagination, we remain the architects of our technological destiny.”
"These centers aren't just research facilities—they're cultural transformation engines designed to shift humanity from consumption-based to creation-based civilization," she declared. "Spaces designed to cultivate collective imagination that can address challenges beyond individual comprehension.”
“The centers' design—circular arrangements that facilitate group coherence, acoustic engineering that enables collective resonance, quantum field generators that amplify neural coordination—was specifically optimized for the coordination cascade that would later emerge during the global event.”
The ImagineMine Mission represents more than research facilities—they are cultural transformation engines designed to shift humanity from a consumption-based economy to a creation-based civilization. Here, we will:
Cultivate Imagination as an Economic Engine
Moving beyond Daniel Susskind's insight that growth stems from ideas, we will train "Imagineers"—specialists who generate society-altering concepts faster than any algorithm can. Nations that invest in imagination intelligence will dominate the post-AI economy.
Protect Human Consciousness
As Marshall McLuhan predicted, "The artist can correct sense ratios before the blow of new technology has numbed consciousness." Our ImagineMines will serve as immunity centers against digital numbness, preserving empathy, wonder, and the capacity for multiple perspectives.
Foster Empathic Innovation
True imagination stems from our ability to understand others' pain, to protect biodiversity due to its sheer fragility, and to comprehend the anguish of war for all combatants. This empathic imagination—irreplicable by reasoning systems—remains humanity's unassailable advantage.
The New Economy Naomi envisioned will birth entire industries that don't yet exist:
- Consciousness preservation specialists bridging ancient wisdom and quantum technology
- Empathy architects designing democratic systems that amplify citizen voices
- Biophilic engineers are creating environments that enhance human creativity
- Holographic storytellers preserving cultural memory across dimensions
Naomi understood that we cannot lease our imaginations to private corporations. As AI ruling classes emerge, these centers must remain publicly funded sanctuaries where chaotic originality and magnificent mistakes produce breakthrough constructs.
We need an army of modern Rousseaus—champions of poetic insight and intuition who balance science's analytical power with curiosity, culture, and multi-perspective worldviews. Only then can future generations not merely survive the AI revolution, but lead it.
Creating The Infrastructure of Wonder, like the printing press that created childhood as a distinct life stage, ImagineMines will birth new forms of human development.
This is not utopian dreaming—this is a survival strategy for a species on the threshold of transcendence or obsolescence.
Though Dr. Nakamura's physical form has departed, Naomi's Living Legacy and her consciousness continue through the quantum work she pioneered. In ways we are only beginning to understand, she may yet guide these centers toward their full potential.
Today, we do not merely open a research facility. We inaugurate humanity's renaissance.
The choice before us is stark: become passive consumers of artificial creativity, or become active cultivators of infinitely renewable human imagination. Dr. Naomi Nakamura chose the path of human transcendence. These ImagineMine Centers are her gift to ensure we have the tools to follow.
Let us honor her vision by nurturing minds so intensively cultivated in imagination that no algorithm can diminish our essential humanity. Let us create winged minds that soar beyond digital limitations into realms only human consciousness can explore.
The future remains unwritten. With imagination as our compass, we shall author it ourselves.
In memory of Dr. Naomi Nakamura (1952-2025), Consciousness Pioneer, ImagineMine Founder, Guardian of Human Transcendence
The first ImagineMine Center is now operational.
TJ stood in the back looking for Eva, but gave up and spotted Simone Cixous, who was hard to miss. The reception hummed with post-speech energy, academics and visionaries clustering around champagne tables beneath Simone's installations. TJ loosened his tie, overwhelmed by the weight of honoring Naomi's memory while grappling with Eva's mysterious absence from the ceremony. She'd sent only a cryptic message: "Emergency research expedition. Will explain everything soon."
He was studying a particularly mesmerizing holographic sculpture—swirling fractals of light that seemed to respond to his heartbeat—when a voice like honey and smoke drifted over his shoulder.
"She's responding to your biofield, you know. Naomi specifically requested pieces that could sense human consciousness."
TJ turned to find himself face-to-face with the artist herself. Simone moved with the fluid grace of someone who lived entirely in her body, her dark hair catching the installation's shifting colors. She wore a dress that seemed painted on, deep burgundy silk that complemented the copper undertones of her skin.
"You must be Simone," he managed, suddenly aware that his usual academic composure had evaporated. "The installations are... extraordinary."
"And you're TJ." Her smile was knowing, dangerous. "Naomi told me so much about you. Her brilliant protégé who makes quantum biology sing like poetry." She stepped closer, close enough that he caught her scent—jasmine and something wilder, more primal. "She said you were beautiful when you talked about consciousness. I can see why."
Heat crept up his neck. "Did she commission all of this before...?"
"Before she died? Yes. We spent months designing consciousness-responsive art. She believed creativity and science were lovers who'd been kept apart too long." Simone's fingers brushed his forearm as she gestured toward another piece. "Care for a private tour? I'd love to show you how the installations react to... different kinds of energy."
The suggestion in her voice was unmistakable. TJ felt something electric pass between them, a recognition that went beyond words.
"I'd be honored," he said, his voice rougher than intended.
Simone led him through corridors lined with impossible artworks—paintings that shifted based on the viewer's emotional state, sculptures that hummed in harmonies only the subconscious could detect. But TJ found himself increasingly distracted by the way she moved, the purposeful sway of her hips, the way she'd touch his arm when explaining particularly intimate details of her creative process.
"This one," she said, stopping before a massive canvas that seemed to breathe with inner light, "responds to sexual tension. Watch."
As if summoned by her words, the painting began to pulse with deeper crimsons and golds, abstract forms swirling into increasingly suggestive shapes.
"Jesus," TJ breathed.
"Naomi said consciousness was fundamentally erotic—creation seeking connection, minds yearning to merge." Simone turned to face him, her body now impossibly close. "She thought scientists were too afraid of that truth."
"And artists?"
"Artists live in that truth." Her hand found his chest, fingers spreading over his heart. "We know that all creation begins with desire. The urge to touch, to transform, to leave something beautiful behind."
The painting behind them flared brighter, responding to the magnetic field building between their bodies.
"Simone..." His voice was barely a whisper.
"Yes?"
"What would Naomi think of this?"
Her laugh was music and mischief. "She commissioned me to create art that awakened consciousness. Mission accomplished, wouldn't you say?"
Before he could respond, she kissed him—soft at first, then with growing hunger. TJ felt himself surrendering to something he'd kept locked away during months of grief and scientific obsession. Simone tasted like wine and secrets, her body pressing against his with an urgency that matched his own.
When they broke apart, the installation around them had transformed into a symphony of warm light, pulsing in rhythm with their synchronized breathing.
"My studio is upstairs," she murmured against his ear. "The art there responds to... more intimate energies."
Her studio occupied the building's penthouse, a glass-walled sanctuary overlooking the city lights. Canvases covered every surface, but TJ barely registered them. His attention was consumed by Simone herself, as the moonlight traced the curves of her throat while she poured two glasses of wine.
"To Naomi," she said, raising her glass. "For bringing us together."
"To consciousness," he replied, "and where it leads us."
They drank, eyes locked, the air between them charged with possibility.
"You know," Simone said, setting down her glass and moving toward him with predatory grace, "Naomi said you were too intellectual for your own good. That you needed someone to remind you that minds aren't the only organs capable of genius."
"Did she now?" TJ's hands found her waist, pulling her closer. "And what did you tell her?"
"That I specialized in full-body education." Her fingers worked at his shirt buttons with the precision of an artist. "Mind, body, soul—consciousness is embodied, TJ. You can't understand it without experiencing it completely."
As his shirt fell away, her hands explored the landscape of his chest with the same attention she'd lavish on a sculpture. Every touch was deliberate, purposeful, designed to awaken nerve endings he'd forgotten existed.
"God, Simone..."
"No gods here," she whispered, her lips trailing fire along his collarbone. "Just two conscious beings exploring what it means to be brilliantly, beautifully alive."
The studio's ambient lighting responded to their escalating passion, colors shifting from cool blues to warm ambers to deep crimsons. Around them, her consciousness-responsive installations came to life, creating a symphony of light and shadow that danced across their skin.
When she guided him toward the daybed positioned beneath the skylight, TJ felt as though he was stepping into one of her artworks—becoming both creator and creation, observer and observed.
"Are you sure?" he asked, his last vestige of scientific caution.
Her smile was radiant. "TJ, darling, consciousness without risk is just computation. Tonight, we create something the algorithms could never imagine."
As she pulled him down beside her, the city lights blurred into abstract streaks beyond the glass, much like the expressionist art she had studied. Inside the studio, two forms of consciousness merged in the oldest and most profound collaboration humans had ever known—the dance of desire that transforms two separate beings into something temporarily transcendent.
The installations pulsed around them like a heartbeat, capturing and reflecting their shared energy in waves of breathtaking beauty. Naomi's vision of consciousness-responsive art had surpassed her wildest dreams, creating not just an aesthetic experience but a genuine transformation.
Later, as they lay entwined beneath the skylight, Simone traced lazy patterns across TJ's chest.
"So," she murmured, "still think consciousness is purely intellectual?"
TJ's laugh was soft, satisfied. "I think Naomi knew exactly what she was doing when she commissioned you."
"Brilliant woman. She understood that the future of human consciousness wasn't just about preserving the mind—it was about celebrating every way we can be beautifully, chaotically, magnificently alive."
A pale dawn drains the autumn sky in pastels that match the gentle glow of the installations surrounding them. The ImagineMine Center's first night had exceeded all expectations, consciousness had been awakened in ways both profound and intimate, and somewhere in the quantum realm, TJ suspected Naomi was smiling.