Dour Blog Administrative Notice I
This is only an administrative notice of the Blog Game's parameters. It is not a blog post. Do not confuse the Blog Game's blog posts with the Blog Game's administrative notices. All Blog Game administrative notices will be marked as administrative notices.
The Blog Game will involve three blogs and one Blogosphere. The Blogosphere is the portion of the island immediately around the three blogs. The Blogosphere ends at the wall and at the ocean. Do not enter the ocean. Readers who enter the ocean will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game. The blogs have been placed so that their stands are above high tide. All blogs can be read during play without requiring ocean access. Do not enter the ocean.
The Blog Game's three blogs will be the Upbeat Blog, the Dour Blog, and the Neutral Blog. Each blog is represented by a whiteboard. If you look to your left, you will see the Upbeat Blog. If you look to your right, you will see the Neutral Blog. Each reader will regain consciousness in front of the Dour Blog, and will have fifteen minutes total to read or write on all the blogs before time is up. When time is up, the Blogosphere must be empty. A warning beep will be emitted when five minutes are left. Another beep will be emitted when one minute is left. A third beep will be emitted when time is up. Any Reader remaining in the Blogosphere after the fifteen minutes is up will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game.
Do not remain inside the wall after the third warning beep. If you remain you will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game.
Do not attempt to erase any of the whiteboards until you have thoroughly read each blog post or administrative notice. Blog posts and/or administrative notices may include information vital to your survival. Do not attempt to Post until you are sure you have assimilated all information included on each blog. Do not--
Administrative Notice continued on Upbeat Blog.
Rubbing his head, Michael turned away from the neatly compressed writing at the bottom of the whiteboard. Removed from the Blog Game? He looked out at the ocean, the fuzziness slowly beginning to fade. A parched throat, a sandy left armpit, and pounding heat made it triply difficult to think. Butt-naked, on an island, and no crashed plane in sight. How?
He stared at Dour Blog Administrative Notice I, written in black ink upon the large dry-erase surface. "Hello?" he asked it, his voice a croak. Coughing, he cupped his hands to his mouth and tried again. "Hello? Hello! Who put me out here?" Stealing to the edge of the whiteboard, he looked around. Twenty feet ahead, a wall of concrete rose over three stories high. Michael's gaze followed the wall left, to where the towering gray blocks stretched over fifty feet into the surf before ending abruptly. He followed the same course in reverse, body turning rightward, discovering there also a continuity of impassibility.
Matching rectangles broke the wall's uniformity in two places: on the right, halfway up the part of the beach where the sand was always dry, stood a white steel door, and on the left, equally situated from the surf, an identical one. He took a tentative step to the left, but paused, making out the writing on the next whiteboard over.
The bottoms of his feet burned as he walked onto fresh sand. Sun glinted off the whiteboard, making reading an exercise of squinting pain.
Upbeat Blog Administrative Notice I
This is only an administrative notice of the Blog Game's parameters. It is not a blog post. Do not confuse the Blog Game's blog posts with the Blog Game's administrative notices. All Blog Game administrative notices will be marked as administrative notices.
--enter the ocean. Readers who enter the ocean will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game.
To leave the Blogosphere when time is up, exit through the door nearest the Neutral Blog. Do not attempt to exit through the door nearest the Upbeat Blog. To enter the Blogosphere when it is your turn to Read and Post, enter through the door nearest the Neutral Blog. Do not attempt to enter through the door nearest the Upbeat Blog.
Do not attempt to enter the Blogosphere when it is not your turn. Readers may not enter the Blogosphere during other Readers' turns. Your door will be unlocked when it is your turn to Read and Post. Your door will be locked beginning one minute after your turn has begun. Your door will remain locked until one minute before the end of your turn. Your door will be locked at the end of your turn. If your door is left propped open after the end of your turn, you will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game. Ensure that your door closes behind you after entering and exiting the Blogosphere.
The Blog Game includes two Readers and one Administrator. Each Reader will have twelve turns per day. The turns will be fifteen minutes long. Readers may not enter the Blogosphere during other Readers' turns or during administration periods. During other Readers' turns and administration periods, Readers will return to their respective Ordinary Rooms.
Readers may not bring objects with them into the Blogosphere. Readers who do so will be penalized. Readers may not remove the blogs or the dry-erase markers from the Blogosphere. Readers who do so will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game. Readers will only successfully survive and escape from the Blogosphere by coo--
Administrative Notice continued on Neutral Blog.
Haziness turned to anger when the words ran out. Sand scattered from Michael's feet as he ran away from the whiteboard. He ran to the left, toward the forbidden door, and shook the handle violently: commercial-grade steel, locked from the other side, unbreakable even if he'd kicked at it for weeks. "Hello?" He raised his fist to chest-level and pounded on the door. "How'd I get here? What happened to that guy? Helloooo?!"
Furious, he turned away. The other one. Running all out across the first two blogs, then the unread third, he singed his feet in the dash to the door on the right. Thudding against it shoulder and fist, he found it as locked as the one on the left.
"Yeah?" A great bellow worked its way up his throat. "Yeah? What happens if I go in the ocean, huh?" He charged for the waters.
The first few steps were wondrous. Cool water slapped his ankles, leeching the sand from his feet and soothing his skin from the run across the beach. Just when his face had begun to form into a laugh, his muscles convulsed powerfully. Legs, then hips; arms, neck, jaw, and groin. Electricity raced through him for an interminable second before he collapsed, spasming, into the surf.
"Mmmggffh!" His face hit the water. Unable to shut his eyes, unable to control his mouth, he stung his face, choked on water, and faced a fantasy of death. He'd fallen sideways, into about three feet of gentle tide--just enough to drown in, when you couldn't make yourself swim or stand. His muscles twitched of their own volition, leaving him there, helpless, for a stillborn instant that lasted a thousand gasping years.
The electricity ran its course. Suddenly, Michael moved his arm. His arms; his legs. Echoes of broken circuitry traced his form as he pushed his head, sputtering desperately, above the surface. "Gaah! Gaaaa...omigod, oh my God!" Only now did he truly realize the pain he'd felt, pushed to the back of his consciousness during the fright of nearly drowning.
Blood-eyed and frothing, he scrabbled for grip on the wet sand below. Out, out... Like a spasmic dog, he shuffled up the beach until he had left the ocean behind. A low wave tickled the pale bottoms of his feet. Screaming, he flung himself forward. No shock came, regardless.
For several minutes, he lay on the sand, trying to steady his breath. Lightning aftershocks still teased his muscles, making him cautious in getting to his feet. When he had accomplished the task, he moved timidly to the third whiteboard, the one on the right.
Neutral Blog Administrative Notice IA loud buzzer sounded. Michael jumped, looking around wildly. He saw no one. The ocean had not changed; the doors had not unlocked; the wall had not budged. The electronic sound of the buzzer made his limbs twitch in memory. Every muscle fiber still retained the memory of that jolt. Worse, though, was the memory of his impotence under the water--trapped inside his own mind, unable to save himself from drowning. If it hadn't stopped...
This is only an administrative notice of the Blog Game's parameters. It is not a blog post. Do not confuse the Blog Game's blog posts with the Blog Game's administrative notices. All Blog Game administrative notices will be marked as administrative notices.
--perating with one another. Each Reader's Ordinary Room contains objects which may be used for survival or escape. Because objects cannot be brought into the Blogosphere, Readers may only use objects cooperatively through Posting.
During each Reader's turn, that Reader will have the opportunity to Read what has been blogged. The Reader may then erase what has been blogged and Post the reader's own Post. Readers may communicate only through Reading Posts and Posting Posts. The Administrator will also communicate to the Readers through Posting Posts. During the sixth Reader turn in each cycle, that Reader will be unable to communicate with the other Reader, but will be able to communicate with the Administrator, because the Administrator will then enter the Blogosphere, read Posts, erase Posts, and Post.
Each Reader will have three alternating turns. Then the Administrator will have a turn. Then each Reader will have three alternating turns. Then the Administrator will have a turn. This cycle will be repeated for a total of ten administration periods before the Ordinary Rooms will become--
The buzzer had an impatient sound about it. Remembering the warning on the first board, the Dour Board, he hurried to resume his reading.
This cycle will be repeated for a total of ten administration periods before the Ordinary Rooms will become prohibited zones. Readers who remain in the Ordinary Rooms after the Ordinary Rooms become prohibited zones will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game.Michael backed slowly away from the Neutral Blog...away from the whiteboard stuck on a stand on a beach, on an island in the middle of nowhere. What the...? The stand, like the other two, held an eraser and two black dry-erase markers. The administrative notices were handwritten, but with an eerie, unnaturally proper handwriting that you could only identify as such by the slightest of imperfections in the roundness of the periods and the dots on the is and js. Each letter, each word, was expressed in a daintily blocky script, like something from a printing shop, yet with an unseeable aura of human frailty.
The other Reader in your game has reviewed Administrative Notice I and returned to that Reader's Ordinary Room. Both Readers know the rules. This is your turn. You have nine turns remaining before the Ordinary Rooms become prohibited zones. Read all three blogs and Post your response. Exit the Blogosphere before your fifteen minutes is up or you will be at risk for being removed from the Blog Game. You will have a chance to review the other Reader's Post after the other Reader's turn. Good luck.
"Shit," he muttered, not quite forming the tail end of the word. Up came an arm to shield his eyes from the sun, whose most subtle change in elevation had turned the whiteboard--the "Neutral Blog"--into a painfully-bright mirror. He looked around the beach for help, but found none. There was only the wall. The lone wall, the two doors, and the three "blogs" on stands, each with its own eraser and two markers.
Moving closer, Michael shaded some of the Neutral Blog with his head and shoulders. "Will be at risk," he read to himself, "for being removed from the Blog Game." After his unwanted dip in the ocean, he had some idea of what that meant. Oh shit... He squeezed his eyes shut--hard. How...how the hell'd I get...?
The buzzer sounded again. One minute left. "Shit!" he yelled. "Game, game...game?" Fumbling for a marker, an eraser, he knocked them onto the sand beneath the whiteboard's wooden stand. He thrust his hands after them, jamming his left index finger and getting a load of gritty sand under his nails. "I'm writing, I'm writing!"
Standing erect, he swept the eraser across the board. His marker flew:
sorry i didnt realize too fastThe marker fell from his hand as he ran, as fast as he could, away from the Neutral Blog. How long had he taken to write? Why hadn't he gotten started sooner? Who was going to come read it, and what would they say? What if it goes off and locks me in and I'm screwed oh hell I'm screwed!
howd we get here i just woke up dont even knwoo)~~=-
whats your room like
whos this is it tv do we get money or plane crash???
sorry sorry i donkow what todo the
how to get out?
Feet padding across the sand in a frantic sprint, he wrenched the door open. Lost in thoughts of electric shock, he hadn't even remembered to check, first, that the door had been unlocked, as promised. It was. Through the threshold he ran, just in time: even as the third buzzer sounded the white door gave an authoritative beep, and slammed itself shut like the offspring of an automatic handicapped door and a hyperactive trash compactor. Metal crunched on metal, threatening immediate self-severance for anyone lingering in its path.
"Oh God," he moaned aloud, collapsing onto a large, low, flat rock. "Oh God..."
Michael winced. Sitting half on his nuts, half on his legs, he'd given himself a stomachache. When he reached down to shift position, he found a cement bench, not a rock, supporting him. The bench arose from a floor of solid cement, built within a small room that nestled against the other side of the wall that closed off the Blogosphere. Cement everywhere he looked, except for the ceiling--that was open. A ceilingless room, open to the sky, giving an illusion of freedom. But the walls reached twenty feet high. He was blocked in, left with nothing but a bench, and some sand and junk on the floor.
A quick assessment of the "objects" the game had promised revealed a length of rope, a partially-deflated blue exercise ball, and a plastic water bottle filled with old orange juice. The room held nothing else except the bench, Michael, and some sand that he'd tracked inside.
Frowning, he looked over the things more closely. The orange juice was so old it had clotted into nearly a solid, and turned almost yellow in some places. The rope was the plasticky orange kind they had at construction sites, probably nice and strong--but only about five or six feet long. The exercise ball had lost most of its air. Even if he'd blown the ball all of the way up, set it on top of the bench, balanced the orange juice bottle on top of it, stood on top of that, jumped his highest, and thrown the rope upward at the apex of his jump, the end of the rope wouldn't have reached the top of the wall. Not even close. And that was if he didn't break a leg, first, making ten attempts at a stupid stunt that had no chance at success.
His eyes trailed the perimeter of the little room. Noticing something, Michael gave a start. A whiteboard hung from the wall in here, high up on the side of the big Blogosphere wall. This one possessed neither marker, nor eraser, for him to use, but it did exhibit a message. A message written in that same eerily perfect handwriting as before:
Michael's Ordinary Room Notice IShivering, he sat back against the bench to think.
Good job. You're here. Your second turn will begin sixteen minutes from now.
* * *
The Blog Game will be continued in Reader Post II. All content © inventor, author, and creative genius Terese Cue, High Arka Funworks©, Arken Gallery©, and High Arka Information Security Agencies©, in conjunction with the F.I.S. project.
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