Into The Grid

Greetings, programs. Tonight SCUL left behind the familiar comforts of interstellar space travel to instead descend upon the electronic microcosm known as The Grid. Eight users, one beta user, and one brand-new alpha user mounted their fully illuminated lightcycles and plugged into the grid's complex series of tubes and wires. Excess led the pack to the tune of Dr.Claw's energetic electronic soundtrack, but barely one micron into the routine, Mad Rabbit suffered a mechanical failure of its freewheel mechanism, which caused its propulsion transfer conduit to slack and derail any time Dogi attempted to coast. We determined the problem was not something we could fix in the grid, so we sent Dogi back to base to swap out his lightcycle.

Excess marked time performing extremely intricate loops around the Harvard circuit, taking full advantage of the fact that Cloudbuster was sans Disco Death Star following last week's unfortunate run-in with a low-hanging bridge. After we got our fill of hairpin turns and low clearance scaffolding, we headed up to the Davis circuit, where Dogi lay in wait on Rhinoceros to rejoin us.

From there we headed toward Alewife, where we suspended to gather input. We consumed an abundance of ice cream, and then took off again to do some more looping around the quiet back streets of the Cambridge Highlands, before entering the Great Loop around Fresh Pond, a sublime stretch of natural isolation which again was made possible by the absence of the Disco Death Star.

En route to our final destination, we again suspended at the Artesani Park along the Charles, where Dr.Claw treated us to an extended musical interlude from the Tron soundtrack, and XXIII did his usual thing and climbed a giant flagpole. Continuing on, we ventured across the bounds of the Watertown district, where we eventually reached our lightcycle derby field in a secluded hoverboard park behind the Arsenal Moonbelt.

Several users engaged in lightcycle derby, in which each cycle was fitted with an additional trailing ribbon to produce an impenetrable light wall, while others watched, and XXIII climbed more things. Dreadflint won the most lightcycle derbies. Dr.Claw did manage to win one when the last other user ran into his own wall. Our departure was precipitated when a rogue program in an adjacent field began setting off fireworks, and we wanted to avoid any potential confrontation with the Master Control Program.

The return to base was a pleasant jaunt along Mt. Auburn and Brattle Streets in the cooler than usual summer air. Back at the landing pad Sidekick introduced her appropriately named alpha user Loop, who was then mercilously hazed and promoted to beta user status anyway.