It was a convention akin to PAX – my housemates and I had managed to get into the main event, where some company was poised to make some sort of fantastic announcement. Showing off, they peppered the seating with flatscreens that you could plug your laptop into and play with your friends while you were waiting.

We were making fun of one super nerd, skinny and small with long ratty brown hair, who was wearing what looked like bear pajamas, and saying everything stupid thing that came into his head loudly so that everyone else would hear. Me and Ryan speculated that he was the Molly Monster, reincarnated as a bear.

Finally, the presentation started – and my perspective sort of faded, picking back up after it was over, and we migrated out of the event hall. I caught something out of the corner of my eye, and, telling Andrew and Ryan to wait a few seconds. I ducked after a shady looking guy, and my suspicions were correct: he was selling a new kind of drug that basically enduced group-hypnosis and let you explore a fantasy world, accompanied by anyone else who had dosed at the same time. Naturally I wanted to try some – and we were headed back to wherever we were staying for the night anyway, so I bought 3.

Later, at the house, we had somehow brought the annoying nerd back (I think he was hitting on me,) and after we more-or-less drank him under the table (it didn’t take long before he was passed out on the couch) we excitedly cracked open the packaging on the drugs. Ryan suggested that we do them like cocaine – he demonstrated, popping his capsule open, pouring out about a tablespoon of chunky white flour-like powder, then leaning in and snorting it up one nostril.

“Whoa – it comes on fast,” he warned, as Andrew and I followed suit.

My vision was swimming, blurring and twisting, darkness bleeding in from around the edges, and we all sort of slumped forward onto the table to enjoy the experience. There was about 30 seconds where we were all paralyzed, blind and unable to move, except that we could still talk before the game started -

“Who’s that on the couch again?” Ryan asked.

“The new Molly Monster, remember?” I reminded him.

When I opened my eyes, I was lounging on the couch in a log cabin. Ryan was standing unsteadily against one wall, and Andrew was sprawled unconscious over a chair.

“Have you been up long?” I try to ask Ryan, but there’s a noticeable lag between my trying to speak, and the words actually coming out, so I end up sort of slurring the words.

Andrew fidgeted, then opened his eyes – and within a few minutes, we were all walking around, shaking off the effects of transitioning from the real world to this new one.

The rules of this new Dead Rising game were simple – you were given a safehouse, which contained a bunch of weapons to get you started, several exits, vending machines and/or stocked refrigerator, and furniture to nap in while you were recovering from outings. After three days, the several exits would become unsecured entrances, and you’d have to defend yourself against as many waves of enraged zombies as you could, using all the weapons and tools and allies you’d found from the surrounding territory up to that point – until finally you had to duck back into the saferoom, and end the game, getting points for each piece of ordinance, each rescued survivor, and each zombie kill.

I found the melee weapons stash on the back porch: lengths of pipe, aluminum baseball bats, complicated looking sword/cudgel things, night sticks (which Ryan decided to wield two of) and legit mace-and-chains, which I said I’d hold onto. Andrew found a glock and remarked that it looked like something that had been used in a movie we’d seen, so he would take that.

Afterwards, we had a few awkward moments where the game was still giving us time to explore our safehouse and the border of our property – the zombies were all at half-opacity, we couldn’t swing and hit them, and they weren’t aggressive. So we sat up on the roof, drinking out of the maltov cocktails we’d found – which turned out to be filled with brandy.

—

Analysis time!

• PAX is a gaming convention in Seattle that Andrew and I have gone to for the past few years. It’s always been a big deal, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it had fixed itself in my mind as the prototypical convention setting.
• The nerd sounds like a variety of people we could’ve met at the real life PAX, or even people I knew from college or highschool.
• The bear pajamas were identical to the bear suit that the main character wears in Serial Experiments Lain, the cyberpunk anime I’ve been watching lately.
• The Molly Monster was a real guy that Ryan and I met at a halloween party – he’s now right up there with Karma Kurt on the list of ‘people we meet who are high on something and have alliterations for names.;
• Also, we met Karma Kurt on a camping trip with another friend of ours, who used to pass out on our couch at parties, much in the same way that the bear-suited nerd did.
• Dead Rising 2 is a real game, and the whole concept of your safehouse being unimpeachable, but only provisioned with basic supplies, the treasures being outside with the zombies there to stop you from getting to it… that’s the game, basically. I played a demo/preview version a month or so ago, and thought it was fun.
• Speaking lag – we were playing a game after all. Also, my brother and I were voice-chatting while playing a game called League of Legends last night, which may have contributed.
• The glock – I don’t remember what Walter Sobcheck wielded in The Big Lebowski, but we all understood that it was that character that Andrew was referring to – the character he’d dressed up as at one of our previous halloween parties.
• Also, Ryan and Andrew and I have been known to get together and play Left 4 Dead 2, which is another multiplayer zombie video game, though very different from Dead Rising – we just played last week, in fact, while Andrew’s friend was visiting.
• Oh, and the maltov cocktail brandy at the end was probably Metaxa, our house’s favorite brand of brandy, which I myself was enjoying a sip of before I went to bed.