Published
Edited
Feb 22, 2021
md`# Pseudocode
<pre>
You walk into a room. A work boot sits on the countertop, seductively. It’s deep mossy green and reeks of vegan leather. How do you proceed?
After 5 seconds without interaction: red engulfs screen and heartbeat sound starts low volume then increases
Reader clicks option 1: Put the boot on, even though it’s too small.
Display: You should’ve cut your toenails this morning. Now the boot is crying. Look at it. You’re cutting into the lining. How could you do this?
Audio: Tea pot wailing sound starts soft then increases until reader interacts
Reader clicks option A: I’m sorry.
Display: The boot sighs and wriggles over to make more room for your toes. At least you were polite about it, the boot thinks.
All audio and visual effect vanish
Reader clicks option B: I’m just breaking it in.
Display: Just as many cowboys tried and failed to break the spirits of the strongest stallions of colonial north America, you too will fail to tame this admittedly charismatic boot.
Pause for 2 seconds
Display: You lean down to stroke the calm beast’s side, only for its skin to tremble and assume a liquid-like quality. The surface gleams like an oil slick, and molds away from your hand in drowsy, gloopy movements. You feel alienated.
If mouse hovers over word, word and adjecent words slide to the side and distort the entire text block.
Reader clicks option C: What’s the boot gonna do about it, huh?
Display: The boot oozes a sickly yellow mucus from its now-visible pores. You try pulling the boot off, but it’s locked onto your ankle like a bear trap. You try leaning over to get a better look at the foot un-cozy, but unfortunately your calves are extremely tight ever since you started skipping your daily morning stretches, so you’re only able to bend far enough to see just past the laces. Even from this vantage point, you can see the boot’s vegan leather rise and fall with every breath it takes.
Text grows and shrinks to similuate an animal's breath
Reader clicks option 2: Ask the boot how it got there.
Display: The boot doesn’t reply because it is a boot. How do you proceed?
All audio and visual effects vanish
Reader click option A: Take a picture to send to your roommate. Maybe the boot is hers.
Display: You take the picture, but upon doing so realize you’ve never seen this room in your entire life. Maybe your roommate had a 5-cornered, starch-white chamber installed across from the bathroom while you were out getting groceries. Coming to think of it, the ornate copper embellishments on the door probably should’ve tipped you off to its strange appearance in your two-bedroom shithole. You turn around to further inspect the door only to realize it has vanished.
As soon as the text is displayed, the first words begin to vanish until all words are gone, so that reader must read
quickly.
Reader clicks option B: Stare at the boot
Display: The boot starts blushing. It doesn’t like being the center of attention, but damn does it always seem to be.
Screen blushes.
Reader clicks option C: Maybe the boot just isn’t sure of the answer. Try asking a different question: how long have you been here?
Display: Water droplets mist down from the ceiling and catch an invisible light source, casting rainbows across the room. The boot does not answer in words. Instead, it eases into a song, singing many parts at once. Tears come to your eyes. You already know. You’ve always known.
After 3 seconds, words and letters begin to switch places, the switching getting faster the more time that goes by, until the entire text block is gibberish, emulating the boot's alien, musical language.
Audio: pretty but weird song start playing, think The Caretaker.
</pre>
`
Purpose-built for displays of data
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