This past week Vier and I discussed how to make our chosen chapter more relevant to the actual state of technology today. We thought it was interesting we were assigned such an anti-technology narrative. More than a century has passed since it was written and our technology is far more advanced, yet we haven’t suffered the grim fate it announces.

We decided we would have the idea of simulation as the core of our experience, since it would then comment on virtual reality. It is more probable today that we would stay in rooms and “lose touch” because of our ability to simulate outside spaces. We looked at the Rick and Morty “simulation inside a simulation” episode for inspiration.

After meeting with the sound artists, we settled on a story that departs from the original in (hopefully) significant ways. Our story claims the only reason the mending apparatus fails, and everyone dies, is because the mending apparatus falls in love and decides to escape. Its escape means the rest of the machine self-destructs without their much needed help.

The idea is for the user to enter the experience in media res. After putting on the headset, the user “wakes up” in a room before a worm-like machine, like they’re described in the story, who looks attentively at you. We want to explore the second-person creator-user relationship. The user will be mostly passive, since they can’t control much of what will happen. The worm will have a Barry White voice and will try to seduce the user (and succeed!).

At this point, I won’t reveal much more of the plot points, but the story ends with the user “escaping” with our Barry worm, and walking into the sunset. If they look behind, though, they would see the rest of the mending apparatus dragging others back into the machine.

This story is meant to make the anti-technology rhetoric a little bit less black and white. We have a machine with emotions and human ambitions, but we also have the collateral damage associated with this desire. The interaction design will feature ways for the user to explore simulation inside the machine.