The One When I'm Sherlock Holmes - Very simple premise: I am Sherlock Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and a fantastic grey greatcoat with slightly darker grey scarf, and I am fleeing hostile gunmen down back alleys. An unbroken line of sight means my untimely demise due to lead poisoning. Simple. Chuck into the mix the standard dream-type lack of running ability and alleyways filled with time consuming tangle-type obstacles and you've got a pretty archetypal running-the-fuck-away type dream.
The One with M. Night Shyamalan - Was short and intense. It was set in the hallway at the base of the stairs at my Mum's house in Basinstoke, where my mother the inventor (IRL) had called in the help of M. Night Shyamalan the next-door neighbour and also inventor (not-IRL) to go over some plans for a child's buggy (stroller for our USAsian pals) which had to be made of a gel. After a little use of Wikipaedia, I pointed out that gel could be any of a number of substances and didn't have to be standard Jelly (USAsian: Jello). My mother agreed, stating quite plainly that the "Buggy didn't have to be transparent". Well, *OBVIOUSLY!*. But MNS disagreed. Insisted that we stick to the oldschool and use Jelly. Argument ensued. I poked him with a 2H (4H possibly?) pencil, which I'd sharpened for sketching out buggies, but the lead was off-centre and that had annoyed me. Drew blood. Woke up.
Which brings us to the One With Lt Cdr Doig - Setting: Royal Naval Base - 2035 (ish). All warfare and peacekeeping missions are done by drones (aerial and land-based) controlled remotely from a command centre in the UK. I passed-out of the cadets to a placement in Drone-Control (DC) due to quick reflexes and lateral thinking. On this day, I have advocated that a group of cadets be allowed a single days observation privilege in DC to inspire them to continued excellence in the academy.
Needless to day, all does not go as planned. The group of cadets are late, poorly turned-out and do not listen attentively as the Commodore IC (played by Mr Ralph Fiennes) reels off an inspirational less than 2 metres from them. One of them, acting on a severe and obvious hangover (and being played by my cousin Erica. Sorry Erica) goes to far as to vomit within inches of the Cdre's incredibly shiny shoes.
All eyes are now on me, as my suggested group visit rapidly descends into chaos. The cadets are wandering all over DC, playing with controls, getting in the way, breaking things. As more and more officers are taken from their posts to control the unruly youths, more and more drones in the field will be going dead or unresponsive.
Which wouldn't be a problem, normally: They can be put onto auto-pilot. But one of them, an exceedingly difficult station being run by Lt cdr Doig mission (I can't remember if it was a very powerful drone, or a very delicate mission) can't be left unattended. And with a fire now having broken out and ASBO-Youf running riot, the long-legged and very-beautiful Lieutenant-Commander Doig (played, in full-uniform, by my stunning house-mate Guen) has been forced to abandon her post.
Not a problem, think I, jumping into the nearest seat with a terminal. The system is set up so that any terminal can be used on any drone. You use a program something like a browser to select the link that opens a pop-up window and control the drone from that pop-up.
But, unfortunately for me, Lt-cdr Doig is a very competent programmer, she's written an embedded executable onto "her" drone's control page, which hijacks my terminal and starts to re-configure all of the settings to her preferences. Screen colours and contrast, cursor speed and control aspect ratio. The mouse changes to black cross-hairs. Very accurate, but not very visible. The UI is now yellows, oranges and ochres. The information scroll rate is *far* higher than I can process and every time I try to change a setting back to something I can understand, the executable auto-heals. A very clever, time-saving move in a crisis where she is forced to act from another terminal, but very difficult for me to control the tense situation developing on the other end of the line. So, tense, in fact, that I woke up.
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