06 Jun 2011
Via dormiens was actually a street that ran from the northern part of the city where I was staying, in urbs speculorum, down through regio ignis dei and then east to regio luti. The area in the center of the city surrounding the temple of Morpheus eventually took on the name of that same street. So I did the natural thing and simply followed the street down, until I reached the temple.
And, well, I’ll be honest, I was pretty surprised by what I saw. Now, every other district of the city wasn’t that far off from my expectations of what a city would should look like. The city was beautiful, no doubt, but it had clear points of reference to other cities I’ve seen. The lively bazaars of regio serpentes to the skyscrapers of where I’d just come from. The comforting, quiet regio lunae that reminded me of the nicer parts of Boston. But here… The streets were barren. One or two people on the main road, never looking left or right, and that’s it. Not a single person on any of the side streets. And the buildings were all flat, stone gray. No molding, no character. Most importantly, though, no windows. Just a single door, painted to match the stone, and the only splash of “color” anywhere – a small brass number above the handle, presumably the address.
At first, I merely thought it odd, but the further I got in, my unease grew. It was incredibly disconcerting. What was going on here? I decided I may as well continue looking for the temple… But would I even be able to find it? I hadn’t taken down the address, assuming I’d be able to find it without much issue, given that I knew it was on the main road. For that matter, I had no idea where the hostel was in this district. I resolved to find that first, and then work my way to the temple after I’d settled in.
Asking around, it became clear that none of the few people I’d seen on the street lived in this section of town – they were all just passing through. Where were all the residents? There weren’t even any shops, as far as I could see. Eventually I did meet someone, a courier who’d finished his routes for the day, who was able to point me in the direction of the hostel. He gave me the address, and warned me that it, like all the other buildings in the area, was unmarked otherwise.
06 Jun 2011
I was, eventually, able to catch up with the kid. But he seemed apprehensive – before I could speak, he quickly put his finger to his lips, bidding me to be quiet. Without looking down to see what he was writing, he scrawled a quick note and placed it in my hand. And walked away.
On the paper he’d handed me was the address of a school in via dormiens, and a date – the 21st of May, a Saturday, a couple weeks from then. But no time.
Over the next few days, I noticed quite a few kids wearing the same sort of glasses the one had. Seems they were fashionable with that age group. The immediately obvious differences, once I knew what I was looking for, however, were the short wire running from them, and the tint. Theirs were much darker than the “normal” pairs – I can’t be sure, but I think they’re actually opaque. I took care not to let my recognition show. I’d just have to wait and hope that I’d be able to clear things up at my secret rendevous.
At the end of the month, when it was time for me to move on to the next district, one thing was still bothering me – I still didn’t have a time. Woud I have to wait all day? Was he going to wait there for me all day to show up? This was far too interesting to give up on now, even if it did mean losing time from my original goal. That said, my meeting was in via dormiens, so I decided it’d be easy enough to make that my next destination.
07 May 2011
First pass at a roughly working wall-crawler in Unity.
wallcrawler
25 Apr 2011
Try as I might, I couldn’t find any more information on these kids, though. All signs pointed to the fact that this … game? cult? passtime? was sweeping the district, but I couldn’t actually find any of them. People I talked to in person denied any knowledge of it, though tellingly no one denied its existence. Supposedly they never take the hardware off, so you’d think it would be noticeable on the streets.
That is, until today. I caught a glimpse of a group of schoolkids down a side street, each wearing these cumbersome head units that completely covered their faces and ears. They were mounted with tiny cameras pointing in all directions, and wires ran down into backpacks protruding with various electronics. Interestingly, the facial hardware also included breathing apparati – as the things completely covered their mouths and noses – I hadn’t realized that their setup was that hardcore. There were also no eye slits – all the visual information came from the cameras.
One of them noticed my interest, and they started running. Faster than I’d have expected them to be able to, but they weren’t able to run at top speed so I was able to keep up.
As I was equally interested in seeing where they were heading as I was catching them, I tried not to overtake them too quickly. They kept to unpopulated side street, out of the sight of people. Which certainly explained why they’d been so hard to track down in the first place.
When the group of them split up & ran in separate directions, I decided to stay back for a bit and let them think they lost me. Noting that one of them had gone off roughly in the direction of my hostel, I waited as long as I dared just out of sight, and then peeked around the corner.
And I saw something interesting. He’d taken off the cumbersome headgear and stowed it in his bag, but he wasn’t completely separated. He was still wearing large, dark glasses, with a small wire running down behind his ear where it met up with his headphone wires. I never would have noticed if I didn’t know what I was looking for. So he was still hooked in, but no one would know, and he could blend in. I wonder where the camera is.
25 Apr 2011
Turns out these stories were a cover of sort for some strange fad or cult popular with the youth in the area. Looks like some wise man of sorts came from the neighboring district, a priest or worshipper of Morpheus, and took some of the kids under his wing. Being resourceful teenagers with parents in the tech industry, they took his teachings and applied those resources to it.
From what I can gather, it seems like the ultimate goal of these kids is to re-wire their brains using AR technology, eventually making it so they can freely pass between the real world and dreams.
Though I’m reserving judgment on the efficacy of it, their methods are certainly interesting. Though I have yet to see any of the hardware in person, it seems it centers around the use of wearable computers that take in sensory information and filter it. They’re constantly tweaking the filters, so that they never get too comfortable with a single mode of perception. And a large part of their method involves pinging the input from one sensor to different sensory organs. Sort of like a technologically-assisted synesthesia.