Phase Q/Phase Q

The lights come down. Down in elevation, down in intensity, down in frequency. Down in energy.

With the dimming lights, clarity fades to obscurity. You have a hard time seeing a foot in front of your face.

You experience the world around you through sound.

Grumph grumph grumph.

Mmmmmrprg.

Zwap. Zwap. Zwap.

Ploop, pl-pl-pl—pl-pl-pl-pl-oop.

Tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of bodies come falling from the sky. Swooping down through space, they do aerial acrobatics as they glide. Bright laser-like lights of different colors come bursting out from the sea of bodies.

Networks come crashing to the ground. Voltaics fry. A storm of refined power sweeps through the city, the state, the country. Civilization gets flattened.

“Welcome to Phase Q.”

The cloud of bodies swarms World2. Zonnyxes flinch, then fight back. A lengthy exchange of laser fire fills the sky with rainbow madness. Some new figures, Optonts, fall from the sky, some Zonnyx sparklets fall from the sky.

You watch. In curiosity. Mystified.

Bolts of electricity sizzle, the planet reels. An intensely bright explosion zooms through the air, temporarily noising out the sun.

You transmorph into a nanocraft, flying through the battlefield. In your new form, you can make out the sides, who’s winning and who’s losing. It looks like the Optonts are winning.

Zonnyxes conjure new elements from their damaged network. The plaxinides, a Z chem group, form a metastate of matter that instantly blows the whole planet to smithereens.

The battle continues in empty space. New Optonts continue falling through the sky. Some perform what looks like an arcane form of magic, converting the dusty remains of the planet into a launcher for their lightbombs.

For some reason, intuitively, almost innately, you side with the Optonts. You transmorph into an artificial moon, and send out waves of rod missiles.

The Zonnyxes continue to fight back. They seem to aim a disproportionate part of their attack at you.

Dodging in and out of your orbital trajectory, you send out space probes to investigate the Optonts further. They now look vaguely humanoid.

You see Natalya, and Smitty, and even Tommi. You see Zank, Lupak, and Valbeena. You see the Flowriser emblem. Glowing brightly.

“What the light's going on?” You yell over to Natalya, sending your message in seismic waves.

“You heard,” she says. “We made it.”

“You made it?” you ask.

“Phase Q.”

All around you, the elementary constituents of spacetime reassemble themselves into forms that serve the millions of pursuits of the warring factions. Much of it weaponry, some communications and transportations. Each component looks like a dreamthing, an invention of pure fantasy. Yet, it operates in the real dimensional world.

You swim in a mixture of signals, many self-generated. What should you make of this world?

As the new war rages on, an intricate economy seems to take shape underneath. In small bubbles within the spatiotemporal battlefield, Zonnyxes and New Flowrisers create a kind of symphonic playground, melding multiple voices into a harmonious distribution of phrasal activities.

A Zonnyx electrical field focuses a beam that blasts right through your lunar core, disrupting your transmorpher.

• Wake up.
• Sleep.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.