This is an original story written for my class (21W.765J Interactive and Nonlinear Narrative by Janet Murray, MIT) This page happens to be written in a structure we call 'Bad Lexia'.
All characters in this story are purely fictional and any resemblence to persons alive or dead are purely coincidental, unless they are in the Singapore Army, where my people like my characters are fairly common. No animals were hurt in the making of this narrative. Well, just one, but he's writing this lexia.
Spoiler below. If you want to enjoy this story, read it first, then return here.
The story is based loosely on my experiences in the Singapore Army. The dialogue is amended so that you'll get enough jargon to feel the military atmosphere, but not so much that you'll end up being confused ('blur'). Also, the language is far more eloquent compared to what we would use in the Army. What we really use in the Army...you don't want to know. Trust me.
One of the interesting things about a battle is 'Fog of War'. The Lieutenant dwells on it a little during the story. To simulate the inexorable movement of time and the inability to absorb enough information, the story has its own tempo. The pages change even if you don't click on anything. You can pause the story like a VCR most of the time. Not always. Pausing usually allows you to understand some of the events a little better.
You shouldn't be able to read all the lexias the first time you go through the story. Confused? Frustrated? Welcome to the Fog of War. If you can read everything in the story before the timer changes, you read too fast. Slow down. I spent a lot of time on this story.
That was the small spoiler. If you haven't already read the story, you really should. What follows is the big spoiler.
If you're reading this, you must really like the story (in which case, send me email), or you're Janet Murray, or you're just nosy. Below is a list of the textual lexia that are in the story. Clicking on any one will show you what you might read in middle frames of the story. You will not see the navigational controls, the timing footsteps, no links will work, and the story will be entirely out of context.
Unless you click on the very first page. The rest of the HTML pages are purely technical or for aesthetics and really should not be accessed outside the structure of the story.
All the coding was done in HTML and JavaScript. It was designed to run on Netscape Navigator 3.0 for Sun Workstations. This story thus may not work very well on Microsoft Internet Explorer. I didn't need to test it on MSIE, so I don't know. Don't even try Lynx. Personally, it sometimes crashes my Mac Netscape 3.0, but 4.0 should work fine.
Graphics were processed by Adobe Photoshop 4.0 and GifBuilder 0.4. Photos are courtesy of the Singapore Army. The code was written in BBEdit 4.5.1. It doesn't suck. All running on a Mac. It doesn't suck either. Oh, the radio picture is from some CB radio online catalogue. I can't find it anymore. Oh well.
Why are you still reading this? You must love my writing style. Or you must be Janet Murray. Okay Teach, I'll quit here.
- Philip Tan
Framing story lexias
index - Click here if you want to start the story again
end
Radio lexias
Personal lexias