This years overall theme was originally called "Little Things Made Big" but was changed to "Larger Than Life". At first we were going to do a large scale pinball machine, my idea. I still think it would be really neat. You'd get to walk around in the machine, ball-sized, with lights flashing and sound and everything, then the game could be playing it, or something. But it was eventually decided that this would be impossible to build. We switched themes to doing a sort of space-themed booth that we called "The Outer Realm". The outside was pretty much just a grey box, which was sort of disappointing. We only let people in 5 at a time and gave them a little tour. First you are taken into a white security room and given lab coats. Then you are lead into a NASA-like command center, complete with map with flashing dots and paths (if they had worked), main screen, and 3 control consoles with working switches and buttons. The "new recruits" are given a briefing by Alan Zimmerman, the director of our organization via satellite from the moon base. He explains that we are the Advanced Earth Protection Initiative, a secret division of NASA, designed to research ways to protect earth from outside threats such as commets or aliens. The technology we are developing is used to take small ships and enlarge them to make it easier to put hardware into space. Suddenly there is an accident and an asteriod is detected heading straight for Earth. Now the only chance to save the planet is to use the enlarging machine (which wasn't designed or tested for humans) on the new recruits so that they will be big enough to travel quickly to the moon and shoot down the asteroids with normal guns made large.

( Read more... )