Time Travel

"You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?" said Filby.
"Into the future or the past - I don't, for certain, know which."
After an interval, the Psychologist had an inspiration. "It must have gone into the past, if it has gone anywhere," he said.
"Why?" said the Time Traveller.
"Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and it if travelled into the future it would be here all this time, since it must have traveled through this time."
"But," I said, "if it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came into this room; and last Thursdday when we were here, and the Thursday before that; and so forth!"
- The Time Traveller, H.G. Wells

Time is doing strange things, at the moment. In that half-real twilight that happens between being sick and getting better, minutes slip into hours and afternoons can take forever. I'm not sick any more, but my sense of time is still a little hazy. Walking home at 4am feels just as unreal as reading a book at midday - it's not that "unusual" hours are now normal; more that everything has that sheen of not-quite-real glazing the surface.

Still, there's a warm breeze coming in through my doorway, I just loaded another four hours of Pink Floyd into this playlist, and I can type with my feet on the desk. Life is grand.

I very briefly went to Conquest over the weekend. Left super-early on Friday, as I was still sick; played Aaron's game on Sunday, and ended up at the after-party after training last night. All told, it was a much more relaxing Easter than in the past - probably in no small part due to the fact that I wasn't writing or GMing any games at the con. That would be a first in quite a few years, I think. I'm all enthused to write for Arc, though - Unicon will happen only weeks before my thesis is due, but after that all the cons are fair game.

Some of the current mad plans:
* Starting my Melbourne-that-isn't game (Places Between) once this lit review is written. The first arc will be short (5-6 sessions), and designed to build more of a tangible world to run other stories in. I'll also be looking for extra people to play one-off characters in a few sessions - more details when I next procrastinate. After the first story ends, I'll run occasional afternoon-length games in that setting, whenever I have new stories to tell, and people to play with them.
* Writing an Iron Kingdoms game, possibly to run at Arcanacon next year. We need more arcane technomagickal steampunk at cons... more cogs and gears, and steam-powered robots. It will be a systemless game, borrowing background and setting material from the Iron Kingdoms and War Machine setting.
* An Exalted: Dragon Kings game, again in a one-session format, set during the Locus Crusade. The setting and storyline are already done, and I just need to write characters to place into it. Jye is to blame for this - he pointed out that it boils down to Dinosaurs and Robots, and suddenly I feel compelled to write the game. Residual seven-year-old fascinations? Hmmm.... well, I did grow up to be a Mad Scientist after all, so there is still hope...

For now, though, I'll get stuck into the literature review, and restrict the flights of fancy to my imagination, instead of my screen. The sooner this is over, the sooner I can start writing things that I really want to be writing..