Visiting the City

Dad checks GPS and drops a pin on their parked car.

Son briskly walks across the street to the next corner and up the block.

Dad sprints after him, barefoot.

There was…

an indoor chicken coop

a tiny red and black grasshopper

a miniature white-dotted brown frog

How Friendships End

“I gotta go man,” I projected from the dark mahogany appointed dining room, so that my student could hear me from the kitchen.

He was no longer really my student; we hadn’t had a conversation in over three months. Last time we got together was six months ago.

What had changed? It seemed like not only had he spiraled more into self obsession - the job hunt and new career, new business opportunities, endless projects at home - but he had also bought into the latest political propaganda. Slick posters adorned the walls of the hallway, stationed like soldiers welcoming you into his home, menacingly.

I squatted in my antique tin pedal car and slowly trundled away, hopefully forever.

Demo Build

I’m previewing a demo build of a game by a four-person team; one of them is controlling the movement of the camera over mountainous terrain.

I ask about the development hardware and frame rate target, suggesting to try a cinematic 24fps as we glide over highly-detailed rock formations, and applying LOD techniques to optimize the geometry.

About the time I became annoyed with the camera operator trucking sideways I gained control over the movement of the game, navigating closer to the surface of the terrain, noticing details like craters and crop circles.

I wondered and asked whether these features were interactive, as a kind of mapping mechanic, when I noticed that most of the craters were filled with mossy vegetation, while some were empty, here and there.

I followed the empty ones when I answered my own question, reaching out to a moss-filled crater; the green lichen dissolving to the rim of the crater, and extending a little beyond its circumference.

With a kind of hand-over-hand locomotion I continued following the dot-to-dot trail of cleared craters, discovering a square opening in a sheer cliff face. The trail of craters became a string of dried puddles.

Gliding through the square opening, I continued following through a cave system, spotting the continuing trail of pock marks dotting the walls, floor, and ceiling.

An unmistakeable large cavern contained a rectangular abstract skull inset into the floor, while a suspicious blank panel faced it from an opposite wall. Near the panel lay a glass beaker half-full with a neon magenta liquid among a few more empty ones.

I didn’t hesitate before lifting the beaker and consuming the liquid.

Nearby, another assortment of beakers lay with different-colored liquids inside: black, white, green, yellow. I mixed liquids until achieving the same neon magenta color in the first beaker.

The demo ended there.