Robot

This weekend, I had the once in a lifetime opportunity to become a robot. As I was going to the special place I will describe later, I had a nice text conversation with my sister. This is how it went.

Me: we are going to some place in rosedale and will become robots

Renae: what

Me: I am serious Chris has been there

Renae: awesome have fun

Me: It is Aaron Shane Aaron (SIC) Chris Carla Nathan Megan and me. Will tell you all about it. Frances is sleeping

Renae: cool I'm excited for you. I'm grocery shopping while malcolm naps, but I'm probably going to become a robot too.


Of course, Renae was only joking (and I wasn't). She only wished she could be a robot. Maybe next time, if there is a next time...

My cousin Chris and I did everything together as children (see previous post). Once we grew up, our interests started to vary. He's smart and into sci-fi and when he was in junior high started role playing games. I was always curious about these games and quite a few times we tried to start one, but we only got to the part where my character was created and never actually started the game. I liked video games and Star Wars/Star Trek, but didn't consider myself a sci/fi nerd or anything like that. When he got older, he stayed interested in that genre and luckily for me went to an Anime convention recently. At the convention he heard about these robot games and ended up playing it some.

Me, I had veered away from all that stuff. I focused on medicine, knitting, sewing, raising a family and things like that. Still, that inner nerd was inside me and would creep up while I was playing Zelda or watching the new Star Trek (so great by the way). I'm actually watching Battlestar Galactica and loving it right now. I've come to embrace my inner nerdliness and was ready and willing to take the next step.

Even though this family reunion was thoroughly planned, there was free time built in. On Saturday afternoon, there was nothing. Chris brought up that we could go be robots (well, I'm not sure how he phrased it, but this is my story). As soon as he mentioned it, I was sold. I fed my baby, put her to sleep and got into the car so I could become a robot.

The actual address was somewhere north of the U of M campus. It was a very industrial area and when we got to the place, there was no labels. We were going to go in one random door, but my cousin shouted from another unmarked door, so we headed that way. Once we were in the building, we headed to the basement. For the first time, I saw a sign and an arrow. There were signs that it was a fallout shelter. We finally entered a cement bordered, cold room. Right away I knew we had arrived.

The first thing I saw was a guy on a computer just typing away. In the corner behind him were two guys playing a role playing game. They had a board and were rolling dice. I kid you not, but one of them wore a beret and had camouflage pants.  In most of the room, there were these huge....well pods. The guy on the computer looked up and started his spiel. To play the game, we all had to pick code names and he said that he would make fun of us if we picked a code name from Top Gun.  Now, in college, I had the nick name Ace, but I thought there was a character named Ace in Top Gun, so when my turn came up, I called myself Dr.Death.  It seemed the computer guy approved.

Now another older guy came over and introduced us to the pod. He showed us the "basic" movements, and then it was time to go.

You know that movie Avatar where humans can become one of the creatures? This is exactly what I did.  All the pods had our names on them. We sat down in a chair and closed the door and we became the robot. We had foot pedals, a gun with triggers on the right hand and throttle on the left had. There were about 30 or so buttons in front of us and a screen showing us the robot's view.  The goal of the game was simple, destroy everyone else.

It was......great! I could see all of my family of robots on the screen and I would shoot them until they died. I mean, who doesn't like that right? I was having a lot of fun and started experimenting with the buttons and I handicapped myself a little, but it was still a blast. It was sort of like lazer tag for the lazy. When we were done with the mission, we exited our pods and we got a print out of our score and a narrative. Mine included bits like this...

"DrDeath (me) is delivered unto the inferno with regards from Suedehead (Aaron)."

"Tragedy strikes Nicola (Carla) as DrDeath guns the Atlas (the robot) down."

"DrDeath brings the four horsemen of the apocalypse down upon FeeBlor (Phil)."

"Best wishes in the afterlife are present to Suedehead from DrDeath"

Pretty awesome, right? After about an hour or so, my maternal instinct tugged at me and told me my baby needed me.

My fantasy was done, but not forgotten