“Sure. Which type of mystery would you like to play? You
can say, ‘Sci-fi, murder mystery, escape room, Encyclopedia
Brown,
horror, Sherlock Holmes classic, or random.’”
“Random.”
“Sure. How many people will be playing, and what is the
age of the youngest player?”
“8 people playing.
11 years old.”
“Initiating. Please set your smart TV to the Prime channel,
where the details of the mystery will be explained.”
The TV was switched over to Prime, and a picture of a
dead body in a space suit showed up. The lights in the
room adjusted to a bluish space ship tone. The microwave
set a timer counting down from 37 minutes and 23
seconds.
“The captain has died. The ship is currently drifting in a
decaying orbit around the ice planet ‘Bursa 3,’ and unless
you, the crew, can figure out how to start the ship’s
auxiliary engines, the ship will burn up in the atmosphere
in 37 minutes and 19 seconds. The first officer seems to
have removed his locator badge, and so I am not able to
trace his current position.”
As we went from room to room, various connected
devices assumed their role in the mystery. My phone
displayed a timer until destruction and plotted our position
on the ship. An augmented reality app showed us various
broken ship bits we had to find to reassemble and start
the engine controls. From time to time, Alexa would
announce that there had been another murder on the ship,
and a player would be removed from the game.
With 2 minutes left to spare, we had solved the mystery of
the captain’s death, and restarted the engines.
“Congratulations for solving the murder mystery and
repairing the ship. You may now use your microwave to
start some popcorn for the upcoming feature film.”
We flopped down on the couch, and pressed ‘play’ to
watch Mission Impossible, but got bored of it and flipped it
off.
And then the couch disappeared entirely.
“Hmm... must be a programming glitch. Computer, arch.
End simulation of 21’st century technology: virtual
assistant.”
Ryker stepped outside of the holodeck and went across a
few corridors into Ten-Forward. Outside, the planet ‘Bursa
3’ was looming very large...