The first story on the website is ‘Dasein.’ I’ll put my cards on the table right away: I wrote this a while ago. Probably six years ago. I was trying to explore some philosophical ideas I’d been reading about and see if I could inspire myself to create something with them for academic purposes. Sadly, I never managed to come up with a really interesting discovery in that area, but I still think this is a fun story. On a side note, I realise this story isn’t particularly original and I’m sure I’ve read many stories with similar themes, but there are only so many stories to be told. I think it’s in the telling that writers must try to differentiate themselves.
The story talks a bit about interactive fiction. This was the height of gaming excellence in the 1980’s and the works were sometimes referred to as ‘text adventures.’ Generally speaking, they were games that were played out entirely through text. The computer would describe a situation, you would describe how you wanted to interact with it and then the computer would describe the result. This back and forth continued until you finished the game or gave up. Don’t underestimate the power of these experiences though. Anyone who has gotten lost in a good book knows to what extent a world can be created with just the written word. Even big budget games can’t beat the raw graphic capabilities of the human imagination.
As you may have guessed, I am a fan of interactive fiction and thought it would fit nicely as a story mechanic in Dasein. I bring this up here because I happen to make a cameo appearance in a work of interactive fiction under my ‘rock band’ pseudonym of Nexami Engeo. It’s a fantastically fun work called “Counterfeit Monkey” by one of my favourite authors of interactive fiction, Emily Short. It was only released yesterday, but you can find it over at her website.
I hope you enjoy the story as I publish the upcoming chapters. New work will follow … I swear.