Apocalypse

Our small group of survivors stumble across an untouched board game store. We hurry in and set up defenses. Against the bugs it would be useless but it will keep any human adversaries at bay. There is a commercial soda-pop refrigerator stocked with energy drinks, water, and some "potions" marketed toward the D&D crowd. The counter also has some junk food and snack materials. Our group consists of four guys and three women. Aaron thinks himself as leader of the group, but Mike and I both know that Mike is the real leader. To keep our mind off the bugs we decide to do some role playing. Luckily we all love role-playing games, and the shop has role-playing dice tubes. The dice tubes are stocked with all the dice needed to play the brand new RPG, Aliens vs. Humans. Each tubes contain all the dice needed for one new player, in fact to find initial stats one just has to dump out the tube. The dungeon master, or rule sheet-- one contained within each tube-- will inform the player of their base stats. Unlike most table top RPGs rolling low is good on initial stats, as it's subtracted from a predetermined number, so "1" is the most favorable roll.

Mike takes a few tubes down and gives one to Aaron and I. Aaron opens and rolls poorly, only one "1" out of seven dice, and an "11" on his d-12 and a "7" on his d-8 and a "4" on his d-4. I roll much better with my tube, I max four stats including my d-20. Mike is going to act as DM and the others are preparing an inside camp and dividing rations. Having already prepared the fortifications Aaron, Mike, and I are taking a break. As the de facto leaders of this rag tag bunch, this game carriers an unspoken but indisputable sole leadership roll as reward for winning. Aaron and I will be playing as the humans, and Mike, as the dungeon master, will be playing as the Aliens. While Aaron and I are working together to beat the bugs, we are also competing against each other for limited resources and weapons. Any of the players may win at this game, while the DM has some advantage in controlling an incredibly hostile and powerful bug army, the humans can use teamwork to set traps and ambushes. However, the humans also have to worry about each other, if the bugs are successfully defeated, the remaining human players fight for supremacy. All the while the radioactive environment is enervating the humans. Winning against the bugs is hard, but if no post-bug/radiation-survival scenarios are planned for, the other humans will wipe that player out, but if everyone is planning for post-bug/radiation survival scenarios then the bugs win easily. Juggling all the elements requires delicate balance, even if the bugs are wiped out, the humans can succumb to radiation and each other. In that case, the bugs win as surely this is just the first wave of invaders; the game tries to closely resemble the actual state of the world.

The Aliens, soon to be called "bugs", bombed the Earth before they landed, while picking large metropolitan areas for their nuclear bombs, many cities remained untouched. New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Chicago were all spared. The Americas were hit the hardest, while most of Europe went almost unscathed. Oddest to humans is that vast areas of wilderness we also targeted, many of the US national parks were destroyed, later when we were low on basic resources did we discover that the parks would have provided essential natural resources. The radiation didn't seem to affect the giant blue beetle-esque bugs, their ships landed close to all of the scorched earth. North America was completely overrun. How our small group made it over to Europe was a complete mystery, as was the condition of this game shop.

Governments mostly fell apart, some we're reforming and trying to organize people, but mostly people were scared and trying to survive, even if that meant killing other people for food and water. There was some talk of sending Old-Soviet ICBMs over to America. The radiation wouldn't do anything to the bugs but the atomic blast should still prove to be deadly.

The game is dragging on, I'm trying to let Mike win, but I don't want it to be obvious, and letting the bugs win, even in a game is distasteful to me. Aaron is a good leader and when we are working together we seem to be unstoppable, but we never cooperate long enough to make a lasting impact. Mike, I sense, also finds it unpleasant letting the bugs win, even at his command, so the game enters a monotonous stalemate.

Now I'm a filthy blue bug. We've learned of the plan to bomb the Americas, it will happen shortly, the missiles may already be on their way. We are scrambling to burrow underground. Our huge, house sized bodies burrow with some ease but we are so numerous and densely congregated it's hard to find enough space underground. We enter an existing cave, then burrow out space for more. America is becoming our protective blanket as we burrow, shove, burrow, shove. I'm sandwiched in between two disgusting bugs. I cannot burrow, somehow we've managed to become a single file line of bugs all shoving the first bug to burrow further, which it somehow manages to do, in bug sized chunks at regular intervals. Now we are all aware of a large underground cavern coming up, we can all fit inside if we can just reach it. The missiles are very close, the female bug in front of me is worried and crying. I assure her we'll make it to the cave in time, that most of our fellow bugs must be underground by now. She's not so sure, we have the cave and a champion burrower. We tumble into the cavern as the missiles hit.

Months later I'm human again and my group has made it to LA. LA and some of the west coast were untouched by bombs from both humans and aliens. The bugs settled the west coast extensively, but now pockets of human resistance, reinforced with returning Americans and new European allies were reclaiming small parts of cities and some of their surrounding areas. Every human is now armed and has the primary focus of exterminating the bugs. Our ragtag bunch had turned into an elite group of four. We worked in teams of two, both male-female mixes. I am specialized in reconnaissance and my partner provides the muscle for our team.

High up in the sky scrapers of LA I'm guiding her actions. She dresses in shiny red leather so she may be seen at a distance. The bugs, apparently color blind, don't notice her as well. She's blond, wields a battle sledgehammer, an uzi, and a backpack full of grenades. The uzi is mostly useless, unless she runs into some unfriendly humans. Like spider-man she swings from building to building, unlike spider-man all the cables have been installed by the human resistance. To harm the bugs at all a person must swing onto the back of the bug and hammer a grenade into one of the bugs joints where their protective armor doesn't quite overlap. There is also a gap by the neck, it's the only sure way to kill a bug, as even their heads are armored, rockets sometimes do the trick but neck grenades always do their job. I'm also swinging from building to building, only higher up. I try to stay close. Swing, hammer, swing, EXPLODE! Bug down. We mange to kill four bugs on this outing, each one a fountain of red and blue chunks. My red leather companion stands on the bridge between two skyscrapers, the noon sun shining down, sky extra blue, and her blond hair blowing in the wind. It's like a comic book hero just saved the day.

Australia

The sun is warm and undermines the feeling of conflict. The Australian coast seems more porous than it should be, the river delta immediately outlets into a vast archipelago. It is impossible to tell where the delta ends and the archipelago begins. The current is slow and inviting in all the waterways. The swaths of land in the delta are dotted with old western style wood buildings, some are even on the larger islands in the archipelago. The locals are primitive but have developed gondolas to travel between the land masses and islands. Not everyone uses the gondolas and many prefer to swim across the narrow channels instead.

I'm visiting during a local holiday. As a tribute to their hardy ancestors in honor them for being the fit enough to pass on their genes to the current population, water balloons and rocks are thrown in a giant citywide dodge ball like activity. The rocks thrown are usually small and thrown slowly, more quickly between friends. Water balloons are plentiful and rain down on everyone. Even villagers on their primitive gondolas are not safe from the bombardment. Finally figuring out the motives behind the chaos of the day make me more at ease but there is still the tension of conflict and danger in the air. I worry about the stones as some are thrown with little care to where they land, not getting hit by random missiles is good luck and shows fitness to pass on genes. There is even a mostly water balloon gauntlet and upon completion without getting hit yields high honor and sometimes marks the ascension into manhood.

I cautiously make my way from island to island, savoring the warm tropical air and lush green vegetation when I find myself alone and away from the celebrations. I have no official business today so I'm just visiting friends. I'm almost dancing through the streets, dodging balloons and the occasional rock, picking up pre-filled balloons and throwing them at particularly energetic revelers. Enthusiastic youths find my participation amusing, not only am I an outsider, but my active involvement is somewhat unusual for adults. Adults mainly stay out of the unpaved roads and throw balloons from the relative safety of the wooden boardwalks that line the muddy avenues. The boardwalks act as de facto safe zones, but even the most absent minded adults are weary when passing by small ancestor day skirmishes.

I'm soaked when I arrive at my first friends house. We have a great conversation about something, and I'm off again. I choose to swim between sandbars as I'm already wet. I visit three other friends with greater success at dodging projectiles and even earn some respect from a group of boys that tried to ambush me. I was lucky mostly and only had a small rock hit me in the chest, I scored two hits with water balloons.

Feeling confident, I lazily floated out to an island closer to the ocean. Enjoying the sun, the sense of danger finally passed. As I was getting out of the water I looked up and -- POW!-- squarely got hit in the face with a large rock. My had flew up to my mouth just in time to catch my front four teeth. They looked strangely white in the small red pool in my hand. I noticed that behind my front two teeth there was another pair of small teeth, as if I had a second row of teeth and the rock had knocked out the front four on my top row and then two more from my top second row. I tongued the gap in my teeth, tasting blood, but not finding my second row of teeth. The kids who knocked them out ran up and grabbed them from my hand. Souvenirs!! I plead with them that I need them back. I offer to buy them with the coins in my pocket. The girl sells me my tooth back, but I have to use mild force and the rest of my coins to obtain the one from the boy. I'm not mad, but am panicking about my teeth. The blood won't stop.

Triple play

Danger is in the air, everybody is trying to escape something. Our small fishing community is threatened by an unknown menace. Running up and down the coast with cheetah like speed, the morning light is beautiful and foreboding. I still don't know what I should be doing, but I've met up with two other survivors. All of us are strong swimmers; we take to the water. We swim until the afternoon sun shines down on us and we're finally getting tired.

The salty sea air calms me, and I feel safe. Just as I close my eyes my companions shout. There is a small fishing boat makes it's over to us. It's towing a even smaller orange life raft. Hope floods through us the moment we see survivors on the boat, and turns into confidence when we see the pillar of our community captaining the tiny flotilla. While the boat and life raft are full, the captain throws out another self-inflating life raft with a line attached to it. I quickly tie it to the fishing boat. We can't get onto the raft, our arms like jelly after swimming for so long. Our captain navigates the trawler towards the closest known sandbar to aid us in our boarding.

The sandbar is very close to the coast and when I stand up, the setting sun casts long shadows across the doomed land. A women from the trawler jumps onto the sand bar to help us. Unfortunately, the tide is going out and the tied together flotilla is pulled away from us. The woman and I are holding onto the trawler with everything we've got. No one seems to be aware of our struggle, but we manage to keep the trawler adjacent to the sandbar. My traveling companions barely manage to claw their way onto the raft and pass out almost immediately once on it. After hours of fighting the tide, it finally changes directions. Exhausted, the woman and I are forced to be content staying in the water, unable to muster the strength to pull ourselves onto the raft. We lock arms with the raft and each other to make sure that neither of us float away in the moonlight.

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Searching for something in the woods by my house is yielding no results. I check under our extensive elevated deck. Built on a hillside I could probably get a better look at the woods from the second story south facing bedrooms. The snow is missing.

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Friendship montage. Carol and I are talking about the past over the phone. Mostly we're reading each others blogs. We speculate on how different our lives would be if our romantic lives had been different. Alternate Universe montage, scenes of our alternate lovers flash through many domestic situations. How different our lives could have been be, so many different paths they could have taken, but only one path is reality. Friendship montage. Reading blogs, and emails, proof of our current reality, surely text wouldn't change if everything else did. We reassure each other that the alternate universe montage was a shared hallucination, even if it felt like we lived each of our different paths.

Capture the Flag

I'm playing StarCraft 2 but the interface takes up my entire field of vision so that I don't even see the sides of the monitor. I have two groups of marines standing in 5 by 5 squares. My base is very sparse and there is a large tree in the middle of it, there is only one ramp up to my elevated fortress. I'm playing a new scenario, capture the flag. I'm focused on my base and flag defense. Unlike other capture the flag games, my units can pick up and move our flag. I try throwing it into a valley next to my base. Enemy units are approaching, also Terran, and I order everyone to the choke point on the ramp.

Then my view zooms in, way in, now I have a first person shooter interface. Jack Bauer is leading me on a covert operation behind the enemy forces assaulting our base, we pick off a large number of troops at the back of the formation. My marines have no problem handling the rest, but Jack and I have more work to do. He leads me to a cave and we plunge into the semi-darkness. Sliver sections of the cave are exposed to open air, wide enough to see out but too small to accommodate even the slightest person. We can see terrorists through some of the slots as we run through the cave system. We exchange fire sporadically, but somehow the echoes are muffled. I find it odd, but Jack isn't concerned about it. Finally the cave outlets after nearly a dozen micro fire fights. Jack scrambles up the steep wall and out the hole in the cave's ceiling, the only exit. I can't seem to get a good hand hold. I've been rock climbing before but nothing is coming to me and I'm starting to panic. I'm never going to get out before the bomb goes off. Jack tries to pull me up but I'm too heavy. I'm in full panic mode and there is nothing Jack can do to calm me down, so he leaves. I sit down and accept my bitter fate, glad I could help my marines as much as I did.

Drinking Accident

I'm inside a bar. The lights are low, the music loud, colors flash randomly to encourage dancing and seizures. I'm drinking a beer, and doing shots of Tequila. It's my buddy's birthday and he's finally convinced me to start drinking again. Three years sober and tired of listening to his QQing I finally acquiesce. I'm having a great time drinking and dancing but in the back of my mind I know that each shot brings me closer to my destruction. We keep dancing for hours and everybody keeps drinking but the pressure in my mind keeps reminding me that drinking is a terrible idea, so I start smoking again to try to balance things out. The colors flash continuously now, so they are not really flashing but bathing the entire bar in colored light. The bar is blue, now red, now green, now blue, still blue, purple, orangeredyellowblueredblue, blue blue, yellow orange. Each shot I take pushes me closer to losing control. We're all still dancing and drinking but my panic is spilling out everywhere. I stumble around confused and disoriented, I dread the next drink but our small party flows to the bar in a periodic manner I find most disturbing. I can't stop drinking, my destruction is assured. I'm chain smoking and suffocating but I can't stop smoking either. Shame and failure wash over me and I start crying, there is no worse feeling in the world. I have-blue- no will. I will-orange-die. How can I fail at keeping myself alive? We keep dancing-sepia-.

World of Duty

My guild is under attack, we PvP all the time, but this is our ultimate test. If we die here, we will not be able to log back in, it will be as if our characters died. The interface is close to the pinnacle of full immersion. Our bodies control our characters flawlessly, and the only way I can tell that it is a video game and not real life is the cartoony environment, otherwise it stimulates my senses flawlessly. The cartoonish environment creates a sharp juxtaposition with the fierce modern warfare battles that take place on it. It's cold and raining, night is unforgiving in our PvP campaign. We check to make sure our guns are fully loaded and that we are set up in the most defensible position. Most of us are set up under a large over hang. The rocky banks of a swift flowing river extend right up to the edge of the evergreen forest. Ages ago the river ate away the bottom of the gigantic bolder that now shelters us, or that's what would have happened if it was an actual river and not a virtual one.

Enemy commandos are advancing on our position. I can't see or hear them but I know they are close. The rain clears and the moonlight gives us a clear view of the tree line across the river. We watch as the enemy spring from the darkness and rush for the river. We turn on our laser sights and fire wildly. This is different from our usual calm and precise combat operations. Everyone is nervous now that everything is on the table. My heart is racing and I'm trying to pick off the people closest to our position. A lone guild mate has taken cover behind a small bolder outside of the cave at my 10 o'clock. I'm desperately trying to keep their forces off of him. He seems oblivious to his danger, three times snipers prevent his inevitable demise.

The rain starts again and the moon no longer guides our bullets, flashes of lightning are our only sources of information. We've repelled the fist wave of enemy forces successfully but the second wave is more highly trained. Tiny red dots in the distance mark the coming of the second wave, aiming towards their laser sights we fire frantically. I dash out of the overhang and scramble up to the top of the bolder. 10 o'clock is still there, but there are red dots all around his position. I fire blindly, then aided by lightning, but he's already dead. Maybe I killed him, maybe I helped as much as I could. I'm crushed that he's gone, but we've survived the second wave, we bunk down for the night.

In the morning we have to travel all the was across the map. We could use flight points, and some of us have horses, and a couple want to catch the zeppelins, but we decide to hike instead. We banter lightly as we hike away from river, down the rocky slopes to Thunderbluff. The ground here is split up into steep rectangular sections, as if a poorly made checkerboard was elevated a small amount with every new row, with slight variations within the row, so that the first row was ground level and the last row, our current position, was 300 feet higher. Snow still covered the ground so we slid and jumped from level to level, quickly reaching dangerous speeds with no way to stop. Flying down the slope with the cold air stinging my eyes, I struggled to keep my balance. Adrenaline pulsed through my body at every near miss and I thought my heart would burst, but then I was at the bottom catching my breath. I made a mental note to return here to do that again someday. Our unit split up here as we each made our own way to Orgrimmar. I sauntered over to the Flight Master and savored our victory for the first time. The sunrise, now early morning sun, warmed my face as my mount leveled off and turn toward home.

Gemini

Dual Dreams

Futurama cast members and I are working through World of Warcraft dungeons. I retain the female form of my priest, it is odd being a woman, but there is work to be done so I don't dwell on it. The caves are foreign to me, but Fry and Leila seem to know the way. There is no real danger, so healing is easy and unchallenging, yet I'm having a fantastic time. My complacency leads to catastrophic damage. Limbs are torn from most everyone in the party. I have to recombine flesh with those of the monsters freshly slain. Tentacles, hooves, and nameless machinations become living extensions of my refreshed raiding party. Their grizzly appendages do not bother or hinder my appreciative group. Leila has escaped harm and Fry, easily the worst off, is now beyond recognition. Our quest is some long lost crystal, it's powers unknown, but it's importance paramount. We enter the final chamber.


I'm in a recording studio, sitting on a beat up, worn out, unmistakably stained couch. A female recording exec is sitting on the other end of the three cushion mess. She cozies into the soft cushions with no regard to her pinstripe suit. It is 1972, and I'm hear to record the beginning of various famous musician's careers. Jimi Hendrix is here. Bob Dylan, and Ella Fitzgerald are fighting over who will do the vocals. Barney the purple dinosaur is here as well, though I can see the man's face through the costumes mouth. I was surprised to see that Barney was played by an African American. I was more surprised that Barney's career started in 1972. Then Barney laid down the most impressive guitar track I'd ever heard, and realized that Barney and Jimi Hendrix were actually the same person. This made complete sense and I explained it to the exec. She was unimpressed as everyone already knew that. I lounged on the couch for several hours while the sounds of the seventies washed over my sleepy body. Eventually I fell asleep.