wait until dark

Here's something people don't know about me: I'm a bit afraid of the dark. Not very afraid, not afraid like I really think there are monsters under the bed or in the wardrobe, not like I freak out if I'm in a tube train and the lights go off for a bit. But just, unsettled. Like a lot of people who grew up in the city, who've lived all their lives in the city, I find total darkness intimidating. Better if there's just a bit of light.

But somehow I don't like feeling like that. And so when I heard about a project that involved wandering round in pitch-darkness, I wanted to experience it for myself. Rather appropriately (or inappropriately?) for the longest days of the year, this weekend I visited The Question, a demonstration of what the organisers hope will become a larger project, open to the public. I hope it will too, it was magical.

The technological aspect is interesting - and I hope to write more about it - you're guided around the space by a mechanical lotus flower which opens and closes depending on how near you are to a 'zone of interest' - in these zones there are things to touch, and the headphones you're wearing play music or snippets of dialogue. But talking about the technology doesn't really get to the heart of the experience.

Here's what it's like. First of all, I felt nervous. A small group of us walked through the 'light lock'. The door closed behind us. The space really was black. It made no difference whether my eyes were open or closed, so I closed them. I shuffled forward. I had no idea of the size of room I was in, where the other people were or where I was. I held on tightly to the wall. I realised, comfortingly, that my hand was quite a good enough guide to lead me around the room. I became bolder. I walked a little more. I started to realise that I could hear things: other people, the faint hum of electronic devices, and feel things: the wall, the sensation of the floor, the lotus buzzing in my hand, and smell things: cologne, perfume. I realised that no one could see me - that there was nothing to be embarrassed about in my  slow exploration, because no one was watching. My hands started to feel like eyes, mapping out the space, finding familiar and unfamiliar objects. I'm not sure I can quite convey how, over the half-hour 'performance', I began to understand the incredible richness of what we can sense without sight.

Yesterday evening, I began to get impatient for it to get dark. I wanted to turn off the lights, close the blackout curtains, and navigate my flat by the faint glimmer of light from the street, and touch, and sound. Darkness suddenly felt comforting, safe, less distracting than the gaudy day.

Another thing I noticed, from this altered perspective: as a culture we're afraid of the dark. Characters in movies and TV who go into dark rooms have horrible things happen to them. Our entertainment mostly takes the form of glowing backlit screens. We expend vast resources ensuring that our streets are never dark, that we can banish darkness at a touch of a button. I wonder if this is connected to a kind of superficiality, a constant obsession with what things look like. I close my eyes and the world feels more peaceful, more friendly. A bit of a revelation.

One down

Am I the only person who noticed that BBC Radio 4 made a sort of ARG last week? In the Woman's Hour drama slot, which may well be why it hasn't been picked up more. There was a crossword with daily clues which related to the unfolding story. All they needed was a phone number you could call to provide the solution to the mystery yourself and it would have been all the way there. One thing - they keep mentioning websites in this story, but don't say what the urls are. The alternate reality gamer in me believes that it *must* be possible to work out the urls from the story but maybe I'm just overthinking.

Presume not that I am the thing I was

Very many things have changed for me since I published my novel. My life sometimes seems completely unrecognisable to me. It can be quite unsettling. So I hoped that I'd manage to keep some things that were important to me just the same; but life doesn't always work out how we hoped. One of the things I most wanted to keep in my life was this game I've been working on for the past three years: Perplex City. It has been, I think it's fair to say, the best job I've ever had. Like all good things, though, it's come to an end. Not forever, they say, but indefinitely enough for me and the other members of the Perplex City team to have been told our services are no longer required. Endings are hard, even endings that are called "indefinite postponement". So, if you've come here looking for thoughts about the book, apologies - I just want to take a little bit of time to mourn Perplex City. To think about what it's meant to be involved in it.

It's funny, but I've always been a bit invisible in the Perplex City world. I think I thought that the *writer* of a game that tried to pretend it wasn't a game *ought* to be invisible. I haven't taken part in the fan forums or appeared in public as a spokesperson for the game. When I wrote that I knew where the Cube was buried, several of the players decided I was probably making it up. But, despite my invisibility, Perplex City has been important to me.

It has been a real privilege to work on something so groundbreaking, so innovative. It's been exciting, stimulating and rewarding to be able to pursue so many different projects. From graphic novel writing to puzzle design, from episodic fiction to live writing improv (who even knew such a thing was possible?) Perplex City has pushed me in dozens of new directions. To say it's been an education is to say too little. I have heard the chimes at midnight.

But most of all it's been the people. We'll all say this, I expect, in different ways. Perplex City hasn't just been a place to work, for me, it's been a community; and coming from where I come from, I value community more than most. It hasn't been so easy for me to be part of the Orthodox Jewish world this past year, and Perplex City has been my safe place. I have felt held by it, sustained by it, even while so many other parts of my life swirled and dissolved. I have never ever worked somewhere where I've made so many real friends. I never even knew it was possible.

When I left Freshfields to write full-time I always imagined that my ideal life would be one of pure writing; endless days of concentrating on my own work. And that life is great, really it is. I just never imagined I'd actually find something even better. I think we all feel - Adrian and Andrea, David and Jey, and me - that this has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We've been so lucky; so many people never get to feel this passion. It's worse, when something you truly loved is over, than if you didn't really care. But it's better to have cared.

So, if anyone happens to know of a ground-breaking geeky game mixing skills from role-playing games, treasure-hunt books and video games with a stonking narrative who happen to be in need of a writer then... ah, I could be the bitter curmudgeon sitting in a corner saying "yeah, this is fine, but it's not as good as Perplex City".