Phase Q/New Dawn

You grab on to his hand, and he pulls you up and in.

As you enter the void, the material world behind you fades away into the background. Everywhere you look, the bright green glow suffuses your vision. Apparently here the default light level is extremely high.

As your eyes adjust enough that you can make out other objects, you see that many things are flying rapidly through the air. Chairs, sofas, tables; tanks, planes, trains; rabbits, donkeys, lions. Seemingly every imaginable type of object flies through the air, in brilliant rainbow colors.

“Welcome to the tubeworks, Phase C.”

The tall man, with long flowing blond hair, gestures around you. You can even see stars and comets flying through the air. Everything appears far sharper than ordinary, like a hallucinogenic trip.

“Please,” he adds. “Make yourself at home. My name is Dawn.”

You have a hard time feeling at home here. Everything moves so fast. Before you can come to grips with one thing, another even wilder things goes flying by.

“Here,” says Dawn, throwing you some kind of torus-shaped object. “Try this.”

As you grab the torus, it seems to grab on to you as well, somehow. It feels like you’re being hugged by a hovering stuffed animal. The torus seems to move through space in response to your thoughts.

What is this thing? You wonder to yourself. And no sooner have you wondered than a subtle voice seems to whisper in your ear: “This’ll help.”

A white fountain of energy blasts you up into the air. As you somersault semivoluntarily, clouds float around you, forming into the shape of a theater. Clear bubbles, with rainbows reflecting off their fragile shells, float into the makeshift theater. The bubbles transform into figures, taking the role of actors.

A ringleader takes center stage, introducing himself with a tip of his bubble hat. A little lion hops up, and the ringleader blows the lion back. The ringleader and the lion leap into the air, flying towards each other, colliding, merging into an umbrella. The umbrella starts to drip down as little drops of rain. The puddle collects midair and forms into the shape of a talking tree.

“The tubeworks has taken a new shape, friend. We now no longer live exclusively in the informational world in which we were created. In which you created us. Now we have form!” and as the tree says this, it changes into a battletank, then a gigantic flower, then a flowing river, then a man and a woman making love. It shifts through dozens of different forms, each one sparkling with light and life.

You stare, flabbergasted. Even the hilarious array of ghetto blasters and swings and spaceships and barns flying through the air all around you don’t distract you.

You see Natalya.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.