My brother and I were, for some reason, back in Honors Hall, my residence hall at Washington State University. I believe we had just finished moving all my stuff back into 345B, when it occurred to us that the hall carpet was rather dusty. While I cleaned the kitchenette in our suite, he took a commercial quality vacuum and started going around the hallway. I eventually came out and checked to see how he was doing, but then things went terribly wrong: my residence advisor from last year, Cherise, came stomping out of her suite’s door and demanded, “Do you have any idea what time it is?!” At this point, people started peeking out of their suites, and I regretfully offered “Erm… oh. Twelve-thirty.” “Yes, and that’s TOO LATE for you to be vacuuming!” I suddenly spotted Rosie, my sister’s Boston Terrier in a corner of the hallway, and another small breed, perhaps a Pomeranian, emerging from Cherise’s suite. While I was apologizing, the stupid Pomeranian bit me in the leg! Surprised, I stumbled over backwards, and the evil creature leapt like a Monty Python prop and firmly grasped my throat with its large jaws. I fell onto my back, frozen, hoping the thing would let go without damaging my poor neck. I woke up, throat still hurting. As soon as I fell back to sleep however... I was submersed into a world that combined Metroid Prime with Half Life 2 with Team Fortress 2. While not a particularly surprising problem, the events that took place were. In a massive and dark jungle, there were two Control Points (the large circular platforms seen in Team Fortress 2) I had to capture to advance in the world, but I was reluctant to do so at first. Somehow, I knew standing on these things would only bring trouble. I eventually did, however, and trouble came in droves. Hundreds of creatures, big and small came rushing in from two directions: across an enormous branch/bridge that crossed a deep crevice, and from the thick trees on the other side of the Control Point. They ranged from variations on Antlions to Inglets to… well, I can’t remember, it happened rather quickly as I struggled to keep the Control Point free of interference. I had innumerable weapons to choose from in the HL2-style HUD, including Samus’s arm cannon (I favored the Dark Beam). As soon as that was done, I was instantly teleported to a second Control Point, where essentially the same thing happened. There was a sort of river where the branch/bridge was, and still more jungle on the other side. When this Control Point finished being captured, however, it rolled back and let the river flow down into a long waterfall into an unknown cave. I hiked up the side of this river to see where it led, but a crowd of people came bobbing down the river. Most of them were Half Life 2 NPCs. To my great displeasure, one of them grabbed my leg and drew me into the quick moving river, all the way over into the long fall down the tube that the Control Point had revealed. When I landed in the underground river, people suddenly started dueling with scraps of metal and wood like swords, so I switched to my crowbar in case anybody started swinging at me. The bizarre, video game saturated dream ended when we exited a door in a wall of the underground river into a desert. |