Re: A Personal Invitation…

Note: High encryption settings were used for this message.

My name is Professor Fielding and I’d like to invite you to experience our ‘game’ within a game. It’s not new, no, not really. In fact, it’s extremely old. But this is our re-invention of it, if you will.

As dedicated torch-bearers for a certain kind of metaverse my team and I are hoping you will accept this invitation to try this ‘green game’ for yourself, along with the few others so far invited.

Despite recently being opened to Early Access players only, it will remain in a continual state of beta development long after its secret doorways are open to everyone.

Possible errors and residual bugs together with any suggestions can be reported by vocal commands once you have ‘acclimatised’ to the surroundings.

Please ensure you follow carefully the in-world tutorials for the Interface as you may find it makes potent use of specially dedicated, fully-immersive technology.

Considering anything you may have read or heard, we also hope you will experience it simply from your own perspective and without any preconceived beliefs or expectations, since we feel its evolution, now set in motion, will ultimately form part of the responsibility of all its players.

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Instructions for your special ‘Fountellion’ access are as follows…

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[if you’d like to become more involved with the project, post-testing, see the new Gitbook website.]

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That morning; he remembered it well. It seemed to mark a union of sorts; of his past with his future, and a door into his next… level. A new dream had been given to him, on a path to what he had always been looking for: the ultimate game? If it were really possible…

Why had he been chosen? He supposed it was because of something in his — still humble — gamer’s channel, where he used to enjoy picking out older, ‘retro’ game-worlds and re-appraise them in the light of more recent ones.

That virtual note: it hadn’t looked like a spam message; it had appeared in his avatar’s pocket directly after all, written in small, neat handwriting and in a brilliant, spidery green ink. A nice fantasy-style RPG gesture, which he instantly appreciated.

So… had a real game developer finally recognised his online adventures — his ‘avalogs’ — all that time spent highlighting overlooked areas of old game-worlds? Would he finally get the break he needed, to be invited — early access — into a massive new project? Just think of the hits.

He had looked again at the text and re-read the sections. He would come to know much better the emotions that neat but swift writing could trigger. But for now, the message just matched what he’d read about online; that there were strange invites from some professor who was developing a game which was a world, which was also a super-simulation.…

He remembered trying to clear his mind and think objectively but part of him couldn’t help wondering bigger questions, or feeling some excitement. Were the rumours actually true?

Would this be the game-changer, that would begin to transform the worlds of games, and the lives of their players — and his own?

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Certainly, this was why he played games. This was their allure. Their promise of adventure and even mystical experience. And this was why — personally — he would jack in so soon and — as the cliche line went — would afterwards never be the same again.

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An origin fragment from ‘In the Spiral: Connected Stories & Fragments from the Connected Future’

YOU can enter Fountellion through the fragments…