"Swedenborg, you're crazy!" they said when I told them I was designing a boat that could navigate under water, and I was nearly laughed out of town when I made a treadmill chariot where the horse rode on board. The horse bolted one day and caused damage in the town. I had to give up my invention.

I also visualized that some day guns would be able to shoot dozens of cartridges in a moment, and I knew there would be flying machines. Alas, my work was not to be the inventor of these futuristic things. My work was to write and work as an assayer for the King Sweden, which is where I was born.

My parents welcomed me in 1688. My father, a bishop of the Lutheran church, was interested in the spiritual world, believing that he was receiving messages from those who had passed beyond. This subject greatly interested me when I grew older. I wrote about it, but unfortunately most of the people of those times did not understand what I was writing. Oh yes, I was praised highly but the praise was from people who could not understand the words, therefore they thought the writing was of a great intellectual nature.

How I wish I could live in these wonderful, modern times of yours. I would say to my countrymen, "see, see, it is possible to have all the things I told you about, the submarines, the gattling gun, and the motorcar." I would be the one to laugh then, but never at someone else's' expense. I would laugh with joy that these things had come to be.

"Emanuel! Emanuel! You are a dreamer," I would hear my family say again and again. My father believed in my dreams and made it possible for me to travel to Germany, France, Italy and England where I was able to meet with heads of state and brilliant men. I learned the language of each country and prided myself in my ability to converse with the people in their native tongue.

I had been an excellent scholar. I loved to study and learn, especially things of nature. When I returned from my tour of the foreign countries, I wrote in detail of my travels.

The King took me on to give scientific advice about the mineral properties of ores. I was happy to do this work since I loved all that had to do with the earth. I also designed canals for the sate and was considered to be quite good at my work. Modesty was never one of my characteristics. I believed that if we are given gifts by the Almighty, then we should use them to the maximum limit.

For my work in transporting ships overland by using a roller railway, I was knighted by the King. It was a just reward.

I wrote a book of prophecies and regret that although I lived into my eighties, I never saw my visions materialize. It pleases me now that most of the things I wrote about have come into being. Your generation is lucky and you too might have dreams of things to come in the future.

Consider these:

Planets being connected by a universal highway system, but rather than roads, highways would be built on laser beams of light.

The earth would become a contained object surrounded by a Plexiglas like substance. Opening would work for space travel but the shield would protect the environment. The sun's life giving energy would be filtered through a web like opening during certain periods of the day.

This environmental protection system would enable other planets to be inhabited.

The atmosphere would come through a filter system such like the reservoirs of today.

The human body will have learned to sustain itself on chemical foods. This is all part of our natural evolution.

These things may seem outlandish to you, but then so did my predictions of a submarine, machine gun, and automobile.

Mary Bradley McCauley is a writer in no particular genre. Her articles, short stories, essays, poems, travel bits, and 'thinking about' series have been published and well received.

Her metaphysical novel, "The House of Annon" has been one of her writing highlights.

After the nomadic life of the military with it's countless moves, and a career in travel taking her to the Bering Sea in Alaska, the Opera House in Sydney, most of the major islands in the Caribbean as well as several trips to Europe, Ms. McCauley recently moved from Florida to Franklin TN.

A former Army Brat, Army Wife and Group Tour Travel Advisor, she claims her first love is being with her grandchildren and second is communicating in any way, shape or form.