Date of Play: 9/20/14

Players: Jerome and Tim

The Hero: Everett Davies, first person to travel through a worm hole and survive. Traits: Bravery, Genius-Level Intellect, Obsessive Nature

The Palette:

Yes: Dystopia, Self-Aware Matter (Elements that are able to act independently of outside influence), and Speaking w/ the Dead

No: War or Life on Earth

Highlights: The majority of the story took place on either Hermes III (a new planetary body that had entered the sun's orbit and been terraformed through what could be called "matter-coaxing" by Annabelle, Everett's great-grandmother) or in the Mars Biodome. Essentially, Hermes III was for the upper echelons of society, whereas Mars was for the dregs. Everett's family came from both sides of this societal line.

Unsurprisingly, there were a number of scientists in the family. In addition to Annabelle, mentioned above, there was also Soon-Yook Kim, a prodigy who designed the Mars Biodome when she was 17 years old but who was emotionally unstable and prone to deep depression--which led to her stealing her therapist's (Jurgen Shweitzer) genetic material from the Planetary Genetic Library to impregnate herself and coerce him into loving her...yep, that happened. Then there was Yogyi Paramanan, an Indonesian researcher who designed the first post-mortem communication systems, involving downloading someone's consciousness into a computer shortly before they died (which ultimately led to Soon-Yook Kim being able to pass on her knowledge to her great-grandson years after she died). And lastly there was Anna Kreshkov, a pioneer in conscious matter who was obsessed w/ her dead brother. She ultimately formed a union with Dr. Paramanan, although we never did find out how. That space will forever remain blank.

Everett's parents, bizarrely enough, were not scientists at all, but were instead political dissidents. The first, Valery Carroway, was a terrorist who destroyed the Planetary Genetic Library. Everett's other mother was Ariana Davies, a well-loved protest leader in the Mars Biodome, who ultimately helped bring about Mars's secession from the dystopian solar government.

There were more members of the family tree, and more story that went with them, but I'm going to leave it there.

For those who are interested, the method that Everett Davies would ultimately use to survive his passage through the worm hole was to integrate conscious matter into his body, thereby allowing it to reform itself post-black-hole-obliteration.

Thoughts: This was an enjoyable session and led to some interesting thoughts about theoretical science and human nature. A somewhat odd attribute of this session was that we ended up making no scenes at all. This is the first game of Union, and only the second game of Microscope, I've played where that happened. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that there were only two of us. Due to the way Focuses are set up in Union, the more people that are playing the more the game will just naturally nudge you into making scenes. With only us two, there was no "nudge factor."

Thanks to Jerome for creating a dark vision of an extra-planetary future with me!

I am a sucker for serious but slightly dark futures. Very nice.

For two-player Microscope games (Union or otherwise), I recommend doing the double-loop thing from the back of the book. Instead of AA-B-AA you wind up with AA-B-A-B-AA (the Lens doesn't go twice on the middle turn), which is closer to a normal game and gives the Focus more time in the sun.