Diagnostic Dream: Atrial Fibrillation

I am looking at a wind powered kinetic sculpture of a two engine airplane, similar to the DC 3 (that I flew in while in Vietnam in 1966 or ’67). On each wing, the sculpture has one engine with a four bladed propeller, and, oddly, just behind each engine and rising from the wing there is a vertical shaft with a long streamer-like white flag at the top. Just below the flag there is a squirrel-cage fan, and below it, a device I recognize as a centrifugal speed controller, much like that used to control antique steam and gas engines. In the construction of the speed controller, the builder has used four soup cans instead of the heavy solid iron balls originally used by the inventor of the device.

The four –bladed propellers on the airplane’s wings are spinning nicely. The flag atop the vertical shaft is snapping in a brisk breeze, and the squirrel cage fan below it is a blur. I look at the soup-can speed controller, and comment. “I don’t think that’s going to work very well. The cans are catching the wind and making it go faster, not slowing it down.” Just as I say that, the bearing at the bottom of the vertical shaft on the left wing starts to smoke, and the squirrel cage fan quickly comes to a smoky stop as the bearing overheats and seizes. I note that the main engine propeller continues to spin unaffected by the malfunction that has occurred above it. As I leave the dream, I am turning my attention to the device on the right wing, knowing that it too will soon fail. . . and I awake to pick up a pencil and draw.