On a bad note, I woke up at 9:30 in the morning. I had set the alarm clock at 6 in hope that I’ll be able to look at my ICS 161 homework and BS my way through the ICS 175B homework, but I end up accomplishing neither – and that’s a really crappy feeling to have.
On the plus side, I have a really interesting dream right before I woke up. Note that there’s stuffed marked with (*X)… those are footnotes. I always thought that putting things inside paranthesis during a story is annoying (as if I don’t elaborate enough already) so I’ll do the footnote thing and hopefully that’ll make the story more coherent.
The machine is like a combination of PPP and DDR. Basically, you have a pad that has 6 sensors in the center and more on the outside, probably ending up having some 20 sensors on the dance pad. I don’t know how the dance steps are displayed on screen (it looks something like DDR steps), but basically you will stomp “arrows” on some steps and fling your hand over the spot at other times.
A girl was playing her first game on that machine and failed on the first song (as it should be). There’s a ridiculously long(*1) line, and I presume that it is the line that leads to the machine, so I got in line as soon as possible, since I checked the clock at remember that the Expo closes at 12:30(*2), and it was Sunday so it was the last day.
Lo and behold, this girl(*3) and her boyfriend was right in front of me in line. And for some reason I just started pulling my worst lines out on them – anything I’d pull out on the internet, I unloaded on them in “real life”. The line kept going, but at one point I was so disgusted at them that I puked, and so I ran off the line to the nearest bathroom in order to clean up.
When I got out, I went back to the line because I was really close to the front when I left the line. A kind lady sitting on a chair(*4) told me that “by the judge’s decision, I can’t go back in line”. I got so frustrated at their crap that I basically left the room by kicking the glass door open. Then the lady suddenly went after me. I retorted,
“Are you going to throw me out of the ‘con too, now?”
And that shut her up.
So here I am, moseying along until I saw my brother coming down the escalator. I told him about the machine and he got excited, so we decided to get in line and give it one more try.
This time, there’s nobody to provoke and I thought I fast-forwarded the waiting in my dream. But right before it was my turn I realized that it wasn’t the line for the dance machine afterall. A guy was wearing a pair of virtual glasses and holding two guns, shooting around. When it was my turn, they showed me a different machine.
I stood in front of a bunch of monitors and wires and go “Where is the machine?”
Then something closed in behind me and covered my entire body. And something started to rise out of the floor from the front two, and I got sandwiched. It was pitch black as they tilted the machine so that I’m lying flat. It basically felt like a coffin but I could still move my limbs somewhat, it felt like moving inside a pile of those packaging foams.
After that, the really cool part started. Somehow during the process a pair of 3D glasses got attached to my eyes. Basically, it was like I was glimpsing out of gas mask goggles. I also found myself with a pair of pistol like the other guy. Basically, wherever I point my gun at, the screen responds – so I can point my gun sideways and shoot from there. If I want to move, I simply bump my body against a direction and I’d be “moving” that way. Since the gel is semi rigid, it’s actually pretty responsive. I can also rotate by rotating my entire body. I think the entire machine rotates when I do that, I’m not sure since I’m still inside their “coffin” thing.
So I’ve spent the first few minutes in a deserted city war zone shooting down aliens(*5), pretty standard FPS stuff. I’ve gone as far as maybe the “second level” where vehicles(*6) started to show up, then I died, but when they open up the “coffin” everyone was appluding, including all those who were waiting in line. Apparently I was the one who lasted the longest in their records.
I realized that my brother was either done or he got off the line somehow. So I found him playing this children’s version of DDR(*7), and I thought “no way, this is too ridiculous!”(*8)
And that’s when I woke up and realized that I hadn’t set my alarm clock the previous night.
Footnotes:
1)Actually, by AX standard, that wasn’t a long line. It was rather typical compared to the line for the masquerade… well, you know what I mean.
2)I think that’s around the time when the exhibit hall closes on Sunday at AX.
4)I think this is a reflection to scenes I read from the 10K Commotion manga.
5)The aliens are obviously from the movie “The Returner”, which I saw the previous night.
6)The vehicle is obviously the one from the Half-Life 2 demonstration video.
7)This… machine… exists. I saw an e-bay link to sell one of these things some time ago, it had a yellow colored pad with 3 arrows (the back arrow is gone). It’s just wierd.