blog

the machine can dream

Posted on By Wil

Because of my headphones, I can’t hear the sound my feet make when they hit the pavement, but my brain imagines a thumping sound that I can feel as it travels up my legs with each step.

I ran for five minutes, and though I felt like I could keep going, I stopped to catch my breath for a minute, before going again for another ten minutes. It was important to pace myself, because I had a long way to go, and if I wanted to get out and back without hurting myself, I had to stick to the plan.

It turns out that it’s as hard to stick to the plan when things are going better than expected as it is when things are falling apart around me.

I sipped my water, shook out my legs, and began to run again. A gentle downward slope made it so easy to go, I had to resist the urge to go faster than I should have.

Running, for me, is not just a series of steps and a log of miles. Running, for me, is and endless series of metaphors, wrapped up in one giant metaphors.

It’s metaphors all the way down.

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JoCoCruiseCrazy

I am no longer on a boat (despite what my inner ear thinks).

Posted on By Wil

One of the primary reasons I got a waterproof point-n-shoot camera was so I could do stupid stuff like this:

HI FISHES I'M A BIG DUMB PRIMATE WANT TO PLAY
HI FISHES I’M A BIG DUMB PRIMATE WANT TO PLAY WAIT COME OUT I CAN’T BREATHE DOWN THERE WHERE ARE YOU GOING

Before I write anything here at all, I need to give an enormous and heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who made stuff and put it here while I was gone. I almost don’t want to write my own dumb stuff, because I’m dragging the curve down. I’m lucky and grateful to know so many awesome and creative people. If you haven’t, yet, go check it out. It’s way better than this thing I’m about to write, I promise.

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An Episode Guide for TIME LORD, Season 1, Starring Wil Wheaton

Posted on By Will Hindmarch

Please welcome Will Hindmarch back to WWdN! He’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea.

This is a thank-you note to Wil Wheaton for sharing his blog with us this week. Thank you, Wil! I cooked this up with a bit of help from other guest authors, this week.

And, yes, this is very much what it looks like: Wil Wheaton fanfic.

Even if Wil gets to play a Time Lord someday, I bet they won’t do it quite like this — which is why I am writing it like this. While I believe Wil could imagine, write, and play a great Time Lord, I thought it might be fun to imagine Wil Wheaton as a Time Lord himself. This is how it turned out: in ten short episode synopses.

1. “A Traveler in Time”

Wil stands alone in a Los Angeles beercade long after last call, playing the only remaining cabinet-edition of the unfinished 1984 spaceship-combat game, Armada, when he hears a sound: the thrumming of a TARDIS! Before Wil’s eyes, what looks like a sit-down video-game pod fades into existence in the middle of the shop — and a black-and-white dog steps out. “Come with me,” says the dog. “It’s time.”

After locking up the beercade, Wil and the Dog journey to the edge of the Milky Way galaxy in the year 7494, where the Dog reveals that Wil is a Time Lord who was hidden away on Earth as a child to await the day when Wil’s TARDIS came looking for him. The Dog explains that it is a facet of this particular TARDIS, capable of taking different shapes to blend with different spaces and times. “I just like being a dog right now,” it says.

Together, Wil and the Dog head back toward Earth’s 21st century so Wil can bring his wife on his adventures, but on the way they are attacked by time-eating aliens called the Vye, who damage the TARDIS and send it careening across time and space — and out of control!

2. “Fix Everything”

Stranded in a deep, rocky quarry in a remote corner of an alien planet, Wil and the Dog attempt to repair the TARDIS. Wil tries to re-harmonize the quantum-flux emitter by reversing its polarity, but Dog explains that it won’t work until the neutrino matrix cools enough to be turned off and on again. So Wil and the Dog venture out to explore, while they can, only to discover they are on 1L-729, a planet inhabited by millions of humans who crash-landed there a thousand years before and are now dwelling in a peaceful but forlorn society governed by a tyrannical and vocal computer system — the Defense Imperative Command Computer — infused into every facet of their lives. Wil attempts to rouse the populace to stand up to the computer, but the populace is too timid, too dependent on the computer’s automated factories, and too afraid to make things themselves, lest DICC leave them to the mercy of the alien monsters that dwell on other planets in the star system. Wil is saddened to find that he can’t make people change.

“We can’t fix everything,” the Dog tells Wil. “Besides, you’re just getting started.”

Unwilling to do nothing, however, Wil goes back to the TARDIS and prints out burrito recipes and shares them with the people. “They help,” he says, before stepping back into the TARDIS and heading back toward Earth.

3. “Every Rose Has Its Gorn”

Headed back to 21st-century Earth, the TARDIS misses its target by a few decades. Stranded for three days in Los Angeles in the 1960s, the Time Lord and the Dog thwart a murder plot on the set of the original Star Trek television series, where it turns out that a reptilian alien monster isn’t a rubber suit after all!

4. “Table Stop”

The TARDIS carries Wil the Time Lord to 6th-century India, where the precursor game that will lead to chess is currently being invented. The Dog takes the form of an elephant, but is captured by alien bandits! To free him, Wil challenges the Bandit Prince to a duel — in the form of a proto-chess match. Along the way, Wil stops the aliens from adding a new rule to the game called “Whoopsie-Poo Takebacksies,” which would make all games terrible forever.

5. “Call A Doctor”

On the ancient planet of Seebeus, where crime is rampant despite the work of a vast array of detectives, Wil and the Dog find themselves apprehended for a crime they did not commit when local law enforcement detects the arrival of the TARDIS. Before long, Wil and the Dog discover they have been mistaken for another Time Lord with a warrant for his arrest on the planet: the Doctor! With the TARDIS and the Dog locked in a prison with notorious interstellar criminals, Wil must prove he is not a regenerated identity of the Doctor by securing testimony from the Doctor himself. But drawing the Doctor to Seebeus could land both Time Lords in a Dalek trap!

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5 Absolutely True Facts About Wil Wheaton…

Posted on By Joel Watson

…that he can’t refute, because he’s on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no access to the internet.

Welcome Joel Watson to WWdN! He’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Find more of his videos on his YouTube Channel, follow him on Twitter, check out his comics and other work at HijiNKS ENSUE and listen to the Harry Potter Podcast he makes with his 8-year-old daughter. He’s the genuine Fancy Bastard best.

Emotional Downsizing

Posted on By Nika Harper

Welcome Nika Harper to WWdN! She’s sharing this guest-post-story-thing with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Check out other stories and writing at nikaharper.tumblr.com and various reading/gaming on YouTube. Her penchant for unusual cocktails is the genuine best.

The first thing to go is the easy stuff; the junk that you needed to clean anyway.
Boxes, trash, procrastinated piles of rubble left behind from a trip to the electronics store or a night in with pizza. Normal things that should be cleaned, are broken or useless but nonetheless make up a small percentage of your life. Yes, you feel strong, but relief is fleeting. As soon as it’s gone, it’s forgotten.
You won’t notice the missing burden, the assumption is it was never there.

The second thing is organization, and it comes at a cost.
Plotting every step of your routine, shuffling and sorting the necessities from the unique items, crafting mental boxes like “fun” or “useful” or “special.” Applying sortable tags that make the culling easier. Categorize, agonize, simplify, look with the eyes of a stranger.
“Good for me.”
“Reliable.”
“Exhausting.”
“Better in memory.”

The third thing is utility, and it requires diligence.
You can survive with nothing, sustain with little, thrive with ample, drown with excess. Those labeled boxes drip and overflow as you toss them, one by one by one, closing your eyes and trusting instinct.
Pretend there isn’t room. Pretend you already don’t have it. Look away, throw away, push harder, squeeze tighter.

The fourth thing is sentimentality. It hurts.
Everything disappears, someday. This time you make the choice.
Take pictures. Hold it close. Store it in your memory. Let it go.

The fifth thing, and the last one, is everything you’ve forgotten.
Overlooked comforts. What made your life your own. What separated hotel from home. Everything you took for granted, reached for, and had nothing but air to grasp. The feeling of loss.
Yet, it’s over. The repair, the replacement, they begin along the way. It’s exhilarating to live on bare minimum. Only what you need. A restart. The elation of being lean and agile. The first step in a clean new life. The ability to build up what is needed, nothing more.

Then the second step is doubt…