All you need if you’re really really smart…

 

Just click on the graphic. Then we’ll talk.

Your ticket to the ultimate vidgame/graphic novel/labyrinth/puzzle piece/immersion experience. North of 3,500 graphic files all computer-drawn by yours truly 25 prescient years ago. 

How does it work? You click on specific parts of the image files. Which takes you to some other graphic. Your back buttons work too. You can try a thing and change your mind. Easy peasy. One problem. Very soon, you will come up on this screen…

Which is when you will be stopped dead in your tracks. See, I never made a dime on this gigantic work. Which was okay until it seemed like the whole world was conspiring against it. The Internet host of a huge website about Shuteye Town 1999 just shut it down with no contact point for appeal. Zip, zero, zilch. According to them, they don’t even exist. Thinking some people don’t want you to see this monumental work.

Later on, I’ll explain why I made it so hard to get into Shuteye Town. Things were different back in 1999. Gamers were relentless, determined, inspired by challenge. I wanted to bid up the challenge quotient. Now I just want you to see how prophetic I was about where we were headed as a nation, a culture, and a civilization. 

What I need from every one of you is $10 to get past the nearly impossible screen above. Here’s a glimpse of what you’re missing if you don’t come up with the scratch, mailed as an actual $10 bill mailed to the Post Office box shown at the end of this post.

If you want to read, you can always pause the video. Well over a book’s worth of text…

What can I tell you after that intro? Oh. How big it is. 42 subway stations. 35 stores in the mall. Plus working ATMs, vending machines, mini video games you can actually play, a whole bunch of television networks featuring your favorite shows, news, and infomercial stations, and you get to be the star of the show — gender indeterminate J. Doe — with infinite lives (and deaths) while you navigate the last minute of the 20th Century, all of which is happening simultaneously. Your mission? Figuring out what the hell is going on. At the high school, the university, the airport, the movie theaters, the bookstore, the video store, the hotels, the courts, the police stations and jails, the hospitals, the government, the TV and radio, the Internet, the homes, and the sex lives of absolutely everybody. Ten bucks. Crisp $10 dollar bill. Mailed here…

Thing is, I wasn’t lying in the title. If you’re really really smart, you can beat the screen I just showed you. No money required. You just gotta want it enough.

Don’t think you can find me. You can’t. I don’t live anywhere near the Post Office box shown below. I just need the cash. I’m getting older, to put it mildly. Your ten bucks might even be tax deductible as a charitable contribution. Helping a tottery old man maintain his cane in the best possible condition…

Here’s the P.O. Box address: [TBD]