here I sit...

[miriam_e]

Here I sit in darkened room, facing a glowing screen and surrounded by trance thud and sparkle... aaaah, beautiful music energises the core of my being. Here I sit, groping my way toward a glorious future borne on the backs of those geniuses who labor for love of knowledge... better beings than I, by far. Here I sit trying to help in some small way... here in my darkened room before a glowing portal immersed in cascades of trance... beautiful music. Here I sit, illuminating, painfully and slowly, corners of the wondrous architecture, intricate and self-evolving under clever hands guided by many scintillating minds. Surely it is not far now... will I see? Will I feel? Will I live? and live... and live... and live? and grow... and learn... and love? Will this be the time? So many ones, better than I, have passed before, the gift denied. Will we be the ones who hold it? Born to us in the hands of those shining ones -- those who labor for love of knowledge. Here I sit in dark comfort, daylight outside, but here I sit in my enfolding burrow... words dribble from crawling cursor. Here I sit. I wait... building and learning while I wait, hoping I have time. Having tasted the pale shadow of godlike realities in the worlds I visit while I sit here... here I sit wanting more... the hunger... the ache... appalled at the thought that it could be snatched away at the last moment... like so many before... many before... better people than I. They could not even hope. At least I can have the hope. So here I sit in my warm dark room, hoping, bathed in music and the glow from the strange window before me -- window to many worlds. Here I sit... hoping that soon I'll not be here, nor sitting, not in light or dark... hoping to be a god among gods with endless worlds of my own creating... with endless time for my living... endless knowledge for my exploring... Here I sit... learning... creating... feeling... hoping... waiting... Here I sit

Comments

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Not sure if that was uplifting or downbeat. :) Everything okay?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Single/multiple threads - have you been watching Boomtown lately? It shows a story through the eyes of several people. Showing such a thing is very hard to do in film, but a natural for VR fiction. In VR fiction just the one sequence would play out, but the viewer would be able to start over to watch it again and again from different points of view.

Linear/nonlinear - a conventional film or book is a linear narrative. If you visit a piece of VR fiction like a ghost, able to wander about invisibly watching events unfold, yet unable to affect the course then that is a linear story. If you can interact with the story, usually by directing one or more characters within the story, then that becomes nonlinear -- the story branches out into many possibilities.

Deterministic/nondeterministic - if you have written every action into the story and know exactly how it will come out -- even if it is nonlinear and have mapped out all the possible actions and written out their consequences -- then that is a deterministic story. If you use chance and randomness, or inbuilt logic to respond naturally to the interacting user, and guide the story then that is nondeterministic.

You can combine degrees of any of these -- from a totally controlled story which has a single viewpoint like a film that plays out exactly the same way each time, to a completely chaotic experiment where the artist creates a world of artificial lifeforms which are affected by visitors and simply sets it running and growing. There are infinite other possibilities in between.