Hypothetical trailer for a hypothetical game about running around (figuratively) in zero gravity

[Originally posted right here right now.]
[Just something quick and rough]
[Italics are voice over.]

So, you know how it is when you think you're living in a small town on earth that is, perhaps, too isolated for its own good but otherwise fairly unremarkable, and then your entire understanding of reality is shattered when the gravity fails?

[short scene of when the gravity failed, and the immediate aftermath (based on computer physics simulations rather than assumptions about what it would look like.)]

Yeah . . . that.

[adults looking completely freaked out, confused, and/or in utter shock]
[kids having fun 'flying' by launching themselves from building to building]

As near as we can tell, we're in some form of bio-dome or other on some kind of space station, with absentee landlords.

[A town meeting, in the high school auditorium.  Why?  Because the seats are nailed down, which gives people something to latch onto.]

"We're somewhat close to sure," a speaker says, "that the sea migrating into the sky will not cause the local fish population die off, provided that we implement some simple and straightforward safeguards."

Life goes on, because it kind of has to . . .

[People attempting to shop at a supermarket, which has been modified for zero-g by people who clearly had no idea what they were doing.]

. . . and some of us even attempt to understand things . . .

[Two floating people, anchoring themselves by holding onto a workbench.  Said workbench has clearly alien/future/{otherwise unlike what we know} technology strapped to it.]

One Person: "I'm telling you, if we hook the doohicky into the thingamajig--"

The Other: "Then the whole thing will explode!"

One Person: "Don't be so dramatic.  The worst that would happen is we'd void our warranty."

The Other: "We don't have a warranty,"

One Person: "Then everything's fine."

. . . but answers are kind of hard to come by . . .

"It was hard enough figuring out how high up the sky is, now you want to know what it's made of‽"

. . . and no one really knows what to do . . .

Public figure: "Provided we all stay calm--"

Random Heckler: "No one will notice you don't have a plan!"

. . . so any ideas at all, no matter how ill conceived . . .

Leader of a ragtag group: "We'll just steal some construction equipment and drill a hole in the . . . the . . ."

Member of group: "Sky/bedrock/wall/thing."

Leader: "Yeah, that."

. . . are kind of welcome . . .

[Narrator is on screen for the first time, and is talking to members of the rag tag group]

Narrator: "I just want you to know that I'm only doing this--"

Member of group: "--because you're bored and have nothing better to do, we know."

Narrator: "Look, I just want it to be on-record that I think this is a stupid idea that has no chance of working."

Member of group: "When we appoint a scribe, making that record will be the first thing we have them do; let's get on with it."

. . . given the lack of clear alternatives.

[Explosion rips a hole in what looks like reality itself, but clearly has to be the wall around the enclosure.]

Which is more or less where we find ourselves.

[Quick shots of gameplay involving human-powered movement through zero gravity in various environments.]

[Lots of the zero-g equivalent of running (toward, from, between), possible non-euclidean geometry (not sure on that one), and a distinct lack of combat.]

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So, where this comes from is long, roundabout, and only tangentially related to what this actually ended up being.  I'll have a separate post on the game Adr1ft (along with what I wanted, and didn't get, from it) in the near future.

The short version: I was thinking thoughts about a person (not vehicle) moving in zero gravity as a game mechanic, and how, properly implemented, that could be awesome.  Then, somehow, the idea of a terrestrial setting came into my head.  Given that terrestrial settings aren't particularly known for their lack of gravity, that's when the "not really on earth" part of the idea came in.

The idea proper started with what became the first two italic bits.

The first bit was never completely formed.  "You know how it is when . . ." something about the sudden realization that one isn't in figurative-Kansas anymore being brought about by the gravity turning off.  (Figurative-Kansas not mentioned, but hopefully that gets the idea across.

The second bit of, "Yeah, that," was always pretty clear.

Those two things were the start of the idea, the next thing I came up with was having people who had scavenged some of the habitat technology trying to understand it with the exchange of:

"I'm telling you, if we hook the doohicky into the thingamajig--"

The Other: "Then everything will explode!"

or thereabouts.  The rest of that particular bit grew pretty naturally.

Everything else I sort of hastily filled in in the process of writing.

The "hastily" is important here because none of it is particularly well thought out.  Nor is there any clear concept of how it fits together.  For example: Did the people at the work bench get the doohicky and the thingamajig on their own, or did they salvage it after the ragtag group blew a hole in the wall? No idea.

I very much don't know what would happen to a body of water if gravity turned off.  That means that I also very much do not know if there's any hope for fish.  (This is well before we get to the fact that fish, apparently, do very badly in zero gravity.)  I just needed something for someone to say in a town meeting.

Another update, another list of things that might come in the future.

It's been a while, clearly, and I just . . . I don't know what to say here really.  Things seem to be looking up.  Every time that things seemed to be looking up since mid February 2017, it turned out to be nothing more than false hope.

Sickness

[This was originally going to be a comment in the  open thread at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]
[It may or may not be the case that it reflects the fact it wasn't intended to be a full post.]
[This is what's been going on of late.]

I am so very extremely sick right now.  In two different ways.  I'm not sure that the sinus infection I mentioned two weeks ago [in the then-current open thread at Ana's] ever went away.  I think it didn't.  I think that it just got less bad, and I thought that meant it was going away, and thus never actually made a trip to any doctor about it.

If the above is correct, it reasserted itself like whoa this passed weekend.  If it isn't, then Sinus Infection: The Sequel is way worse than the original.

On Saturday night, it decided to ask for company.  No idea how it managed it (I haven't been around anyone who could plausibly have given me this sickness) but into my life was introduced some kind of evil gastrointestinal thing.

I'm not going to talk about the gastrointestinal thing beyond noting that amoungst its symptoms is abdominal pain that's had me crying out in incoherent non-words.  The reason that I'm not going to say anything else is that gastrointestinal == ick in a way that, say, muscle aches or fatigue really don't.

So, on to the rest.

No fever (I'm not dying of influenza, woo!) but a lot of flu symptoms can and will show up in other conditions.  Fatigue, weakness, headaches like I've never known (I thought Migraines were the giant scary monarch of headaches, but it turns out sinus headaches are worse, by leaps and bounds no less), and oh so very much muscle aching.

On that last point, from Monday evening through Tuesday noonish (times are approximate in that I wasn't keeping track, and so am sort of guessing) my everything hurt.  It's possible that some little used muscle somewhere didn't hurt and I just didn't notice the lack of pain (it would be like a "meh" needle in a pain haystack), but even if that were true, the muscles around it must necessarily have been aching because there was definitely no part of me that wasn't aching

And, of course, it wasn't just little aches.  I'm aching today, but wasn't planning on mentioning it because it's not an all-consuming kind of pain.

This has, naturally, completely disrupted my sleep.  In particular, the sinus headache medicine lasts for four hours, which is not, in fact, how long I prefer to remain asleep.  The rest obviously doesn't help either.

Yesterday, I got a ride to a walk-in medical place.  They mostly told me what I expected them to tell me, but I wasn't actually going there for information.  I was going there in hopes that they'd give me antibiotics for my sinus infection.  They did.

That was too late in the day to actually pick up the prescription, so I started this morning.  Two pills down and 19 to go.  (Three daily for a week.)

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So, that's life right now.  It sucks, but it should improve.