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The blissful scene is smashed by the arrival of the outside
world. Cars stream into the driveway while a BBC helicopter whirls overhead
preparing to land. Unwilling to face the press just yet, you seek the sanctuary
of the mansion.
A phone is ringing in the lobby. You lift the receiver and hear
Lord Rollinsby saying that the new remote-controller is available if you’d
like to experience “a new mode of transportation.” You soon locate the
device, careful to prevent it from accidentally switching on. Then decide to
hide in the lab to collect your wits.
As soon as you enter a light switches on and—shock!—you’re face to
face with Arthur Hanover, who is anything but dead.
He sits you down and begins
to dole out astonishing revelations: He’s neither a noble nor a scientist, and
no new life awaits you. Nobody here has cracked the genetic code and that
controller you’re holding only works in Star
Trek episodes. You’re nowhere near the UK; instead, you’re in a
futuristic theme park called “Camelot” high in the mountains of central
Japan. But most shocking is this: He says you
are the author of this game and stage production, which is still in development,
and every member of the manor staff, including him, is a professional actor.
He hands over production specs and
recording scripts that convince you really are on a stage set. Since you
believed yourself to be an ordinary person who flew to England, obviously you
must be suffering from some sort of amnesia or dementia.
Stuart Arthur (his real name) assures you this is not so. Be patient, he
says, for there’s important work to accomplish tonight. It’s vital you and
he first go over the scenario in detail. Otherwise, if he explains everything,
you’ll likely recover your true memories, but forget having played. Such is
the nature of a dual consciousness he claims you possess. Stuart then informs you that everybody who knows you in this country
knows you only by your pen name, “Masa Ginza.” Apparently you’ve adopted a
completely imaginary persona over here. What can you say or do? The new life you thought you had has just
vanished into thin air. The real one he’s describing now you’ve no
recollection of. The old one you brought has utterly no confluence with this
scene. Though no longer your “uncle,” Stuart strikes you as completely
sincere. You decide to trust him.
He explains that you are the chief scenarist and lead programmer for a
company called imagine21 that produces new-media entertainment for Camelot. The
just-concluded scenario was actually a test of a new title for the park’s
interactive theater offerings. However, imagine21 is a company currently torn by
internal strife. Two Japanese marketing managers, whom Stuart derisively terms les
saboteurs, are making an all-out effort to wreck this project. And they are
being abetted by none other than James Farnsworth, an unscrupulous man who stars
in your plays but is also your rival in real life.
Using a giant HDTV monitor, he streams video into twelve
separate windows. It is the most phenomenal experience—seeing your every
waking moment from the past five days while he explains how it was all secretly
and expertly filmed. He takes detailed notes as you review scenes and recall
your thoughts and feelings at key junctures.
Stuart explains the Shakespeare illusion and holographic sky
spectaculars. And speaking of special effects, all those interactions among
servants you secretly observed—of course they don’t happen in real time.
They’re all digital clips rear-projected from the paintings themselves.
Hundreds were filmed in advance, covering most situations. For those that
aren’t, i21 can quickly script and film, composite and digitize scenes on the
fly. You are joined by director Malcolm Dupont, composer Raymond Starr, and
three Japanese sound and visual effects artists, Namiko, Yoko and Reiko;
all of whom are introduced as
your closest colleagues, people you work with every day.
But to your mind,
you’ve never seen any of these people in your life.
One of them hands you a
binder entitled “Manor House Production Guide.”
Thumbing through, you see a
complete account of everything you went through. In the “Alternate
Scenarios” section you read about events that did not occur at venues you
never got to. You note choices you didn’t make, and get quick impressions of
directions in which the scenario can veer at critical stages. The central character, the “you” in the narrative, may
not always choose to buddy-up with Christopher—sometimes it’s Bruce, Reggie or Mildred, or a combination of the “good guys.” Sometimes the
participant confides in no one and attempts to go it alone without an
accomplice.
You read dialogues
for dozens of surveillance clips you never saw, noting how the characters of
Farnsworth, Van Scoy and Le Clercq are scripted to be much more vicious in
several alternates.
Their level of villainy appears to constantly adjust to how
the central character perceives them and in response to the moves he or she
actually makes. “Manor House” does not always end happily,
but always seems to make the effort. Your bottom-line judgment: The
play, your experience was fantastic—beyond anything you could have imagined.
And, if indeed this is all possible, you can certainly see how a trained actor
might well perform an unconscious masterpiece, and why audiences would flock to
this new type of cinema verité. Throughout the debriefing, there are constant interruptions. Stuart and
the others must constantly deal with Farnsworth’s unrelenting battle to lobby
the i21 chairman and the president to cancel the production. Later, when les saboteurs actually appear in the lab, a heated argument nearly
turns into a brawl. Satisfied that the creative team has received the all-important direct
feedback, Stuart and the others now attempt bring you back.
