Post by Catsmate on Nov 8, 2022 19:57:52 GMT
An odd little idea inspired by events last Sunday.
Lost in Suburbia.
This is going to require a bit of exposition before I get to the point, so please forgive my ramblings
My partners (T and C) and I were off visiting a friend for dinner on Sunday, along with a few others, for a total party of almost a dozen people. N, the host, lives in an old (about two hundred years) house that was once quite a distance from the city of Dublin but has been absorbed into suburbia, now surrounded by a housing estate that winds around it.
The estate is one of those stereotypical constructions of suburbia (reminding me a bit of the stories associated with Levittown in the fifties of a returning husband not realising he was in the wrong house until a different wife greeted him); all identically designed houses, along slightly curved streets. And all the streets all named some variant of DUNDUKE1, Road, Street, Green, Meadow, View, Court, Park, Close, Way, Vale, Lane, Rise, Crescent, Glade, Lawn, Gardens…. et cetera2.
We arrived in various ways, some drove, but most used the excellent local public transport network3, and we were supposed to be there by noon-ish, with dinner at one PM. Now a couple of the guests were…..navigationally challenged shall we say, and one person, let’s call him ‘Dave’, managed to ignore out hosts’s excellent and detailed directions4 and get lost.
Then, despite the existence of cellphones and GPS (Dave’s not good with technology), he still couldn’t find the house. So I rambled off to meet him on Dunduke Vale and bring him back with me. Fifteen minutes and sign of him, other than being “at the park” so I returned, calls were made, and T and I went off to find David.
Nearly an hour and twenty calls later we located David, who was in the early stages of Hypoglycemia (he’s diabetic) and we returned safely to N's house where C (who’s a physician) dosed David and told him he was an idiot.
Anyway, not exactly a major crisis, but it was a somewhat surreal experience. Two adults, not exactly strangers to suburbia, equipped with modern technology, wandering around a suburban housing estate, while trying to find a third person whom would could talk to but never seem to find....
For a while it was if he’d fallen through a hole in reality into another world5.
Which brings me to the premise of this post; What if he had, without noticing, strolled through a break in reality, into another version of Dublin, a slightly (or greatly) different one, from which he could communicate but never find his destination?
This could be an introductory scenario for a Earthbound game; perhaps the guests are ordinary people, suddenly confronted by a slightly weird situation. Do they call the police? Or does the matter just seem too silly and trivial to bother the authorities with. Might there be multiple search parties, with one of them also passing into the other world.
Or, if the party-goers do call in the authorities (maybe they lose contact with 'David' or worry about his health), what do they do? Given the seeming triviality of the situation it'd probably be the police (or Gardaí over here) initially, followed maybe by the people who do the 'Weird Stuff', GUBU or the Misfit Mob perhaps.
What happens next?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. Name changed to protect the guilty.
2. I'm not exaggerating, there were nearly twenty of them.
3. Now that 'Bus Connect' has settled down.
4. "Get bus X1 to <location>, get off at Stop 1234, walk on to the roundabout, turn left and take the second exit onto Dunduke Road [there was a sign there], walk to the traffic lights and turn left again onto Dunduke Avenue. Walk to the end of the road and through the gap until you get to a green gate in the hedge".
5. Or perhaps that’s just my peculiar mindset
6. Poor reception due to having to pass through the wormhole connecting the universes. No Telco covers trans-universal roaming....
Lost in Suburbia.
This is going to require a bit of exposition before I get to the point, so please forgive my ramblings
My partners (T and C) and I were off visiting a friend for dinner on Sunday, along with a few others, for a total party of almost a dozen people. N, the host, lives in an old (about two hundred years) house that was once quite a distance from the city of Dublin but has been absorbed into suburbia, now surrounded by a housing estate that winds around it.
The estate is one of those stereotypical constructions of suburbia (reminding me a bit of the stories associated with Levittown in the fifties of a returning husband not realising he was in the wrong house until a different wife greeted him); all identically designed houses, along slightly curved streets. And all the streets all named some variant of DUNDUKE1, Road, Street, Green, Meadow, View, Court, Park, Close, Way, Vale, Lane, Rise, Crescent, Glade, Lawn, Gardens…. et cetera2.
We arrived in various ways, some drove, but most used the excellent local public transport network3, and we were supposed to be there by noon-ish, with dinner at one PM. Now a couple of the guests were…..navigationally challenged shall we say, and one person, let’s call him ‘Dave’, managed to ignore out hosts’s excellent and detailed directions4 and get lost.
Then, despite the existence of cellphones and GPS (Dave’s not good with technology), he still couldn’t find the house. So I rambled off to meet him on Dunduke Vale and bring him back with me. Fifteen minutes and sign of him, other than being “at the park” so I returned, calls were made, and T and I went off to find David.
Nearly an hour and twenty calls later we located David, who was in the early stages of Hypoglycemia (he’s diabetic) and we returned safely to N's house where C (who’s a physician) dosed David and told him he was an idiot.
Anyway, not exactly a major crisis, but it was a somewhat surreal experience. Two adults, not exactly strangers to suburbia, equipped with modern technology, wandering around a suburban housing estate, while trying to find a third person whom would could talk to but never seem to find....
For a while it was if he’d fallen through a hole in reality into another world5.
Which brings me to the premise of this post; What if he had, without noticing, strolled through a break in reality, into another version of Dublin, a slightly (or greatly) different one, from which he could communicate but never find his destination?
- Or could he? What would he find if he arrived at N's house? Would the house be there, or a long gone casualty of urban rebuilding? Would we be there? Or someone completely different?
This could be an introductory scenario for a Earthbound game; perhaps the guests are ordinary people, suddenly confronted by a slightly weird situation. Do they call the police? Or does the matter just seem too silly and trivial to bother the authorities with. Might there be multiple search parties, with one of them also passing into the other world.
- And can they access the internet of that world? Is the news notably different? Does someone start checking history websites
- Maybe one of the people at the party knows about the 'Weird Stuff', a Mobster or worker at Coco's for example. Do they call in some assistance? Is there anyone available to help?
Or, if the party-goers do call in the authorities (maybe they lose contact with 'David' or worry about his health), what do they do? Given the seeming triviality of the situation it'd probably be the police (or Gardaí over here) initially, followed maybe by the people who do the 'Weird Stuff', GUBU or the Misfit Mob perhaps.
What happens next?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. Name changed to protect the guilty.
2. I'm not exaggerating, there were nearly twenty of them.
3. Now that 'Bus Connect' has settled down.
4. "Get bus X1 to <location>, get off at Stop 1234, walk on to the roundabout, turn left and take the second exit onto Dunduke Road [there was a sign there], walk to the traffic lights and turn left again onto Dunduke Avenue. Walk to the end of the road and through the gap until you get to a green gate in the hedge".
5. Or perhaps that’s just my peculiar mindset
6. Poor reception due to having to pass through the wormhole connecting the universes. No Telco covers trans-universal roaming....
