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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| SPOOKS | ||
| A live-action role playing (LARP) game that lets ordinary people play at being secret agents. |
Tired of your boring life? Aren't most of us? Maybe you could spice things up by participating in a game that plays out in real life - with you as a secret agent.
| ...your phone rings. You look at the display with a sinking feeling: It's a particularly tedious LARP called SPOOKS, a real-time game in which you're acting your parts in a shadowy pan-European intelligence agency locked in a struggle for global hegemony with the forces of Chinese military intelligence, the Russian FSB, and, of course, the CIA. |
| Technovelgy from Halting State,
by Charles Stross. Published by Ace in 2007 Additional resources -
|
So, you're out of town on business, and someone calls you with a chance to participate in the game:
"Not particularly. You know I'm in Edinburgh?"
"That's why we're calling... We need a small parcel delivering."
So, you go to a place, pick up a parcel, and take it to another place. All done anonymously.
If you think there are opportunities for misuse, you're right. Read the book, and find out more.
See also the entry for International Fantasy Gaming Society">International Fantasy Gaming Society, the sfnal inspiration for this idea.
"...Tbis is Spooks Control. Are you busy right now?"
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'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
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'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
