Dow
and Union
Carbide to merge
At the bottom of this page there is an unintuitive navigation widget containing links to all 18 pages (nodes) of the hypertext story. Each triangle represents a page. Each of the 6 colors represents one of the characters.
Red - Jerome the burnout
Orange - Werd, Johnny, temp worker
Yellow - Annabel the Administrator
Green - Simon the Secretary
Blue - The Terrorist
Purple - Bartender
Each triangle has two letters. The first letter indicates the character (making the widget accessible for the color-blind), the second indicates the sequence (A, B, C) of that character's scenes. On the widget, time passes to the right and also down, which creates distortion. The effects of this distortion were in fact what interested me the most about this structure, though it really seems to affect only Simon, who has to spend a tedious eight-hour shift moving backwards in time. You pass from one scene to another by moving either down or to the right across the border between triangles. The triangles are set in a grid of nine squares. Two triangles in the same square usually indicates that the two characters are in the same scene - the same time and place - and the scene is narrated from two points of view. Whereever you start (the actual beginning is JA), you will follow links whose path ends at the lower right of the widget: BC, the bartender's monologue. And, wherever you start, you will not pass through all the scenes without extensive use of your browser's back button. The hope was that the story might tell itself differently depending on which path you follow. Feedback is welcome. This is one of those stories (written in 1999) that I wish seemed passe, but no such luck: there is even a reference to Osama Bin Laden. Happy hypertext writing! William
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