I was riding on some kind of moving platform bus, speaking to a man and a woman. The woman held out a short flat piece of material and tilted it slightly.
woman: "It's sort of like... everyone is on this slightly tilted path, trying to go uphill. But the tilt is subtle, so it looks flat."
me: "Wait, what? Go back to the beginning. What's this about?"
She arranged a couple of items in space on the tilted board, and knocked one off.
woman: "I was saying that for people, growth is like this path that is just barely tilted. Over the long run everyone's sort of moving in the same direction, trying to go up. Yet if you see someone else who's ahead of you are behind you, it just looks like you've got rocks on either side blocking you. You don't see the path, you don't see which way to go."
me: "Um. Okay, I guess?"
The platform started pulling into an open area with lots of people.
me: "I think... one thing, well, let me say one thing that worries me about becoming 'post-human' is that near future is going to be weird. Uncanny valley stuff, robots and spam, just scary crap. It's one of the reasons I don't trust things like cryogenics--I don't think near-term ethics are ready to do the right thing with frozen heads and such. Is it possible to skip all of that and go straight to the post-post-human, or whatever?"
man: "Okay...stop and listen to yourself. Now you actually are going crazy. Do you think--even for a minute, given what you've pieced together so far--that the way to address this 'scary' stuff is to jump full steam ahead into an even deeper mire of complexity? Especially for someone who couldn't even finish the last two courses we tried to put you through."
me: "I... don't remember what courses you're talking about."
man: "Regardless, everything's ready. He's run the numbers backwards and forwards, the DNA is picked out, the body is already grown. We'll be getting you soon enough--it's almost time. Hang in there."
Note
I don't know who 'he' referred to in this case.
man: "You know Owens Corning? Glass company... they make the pots and things."
me: (confused) "Yes, I'm familiar... is Corning alive?"
man: (shaking his head) "No. And it's Owens we need to talk about."
Note
It turns out that "Owens Corning" is actually a partnership name, not someone's full name like "Orville Redenbocker". Michael J. Owens was an inventor of automatic bottling machines, and Corning is actually not a person, but a place: Corning, New York.