As you gradually become enveloped by the vaporous surround emitted from the fog mass, you lose visual and aural contact with the terrestrial environment you have just left and begin to immerse yourself in a cool zone made up of soft sounds of water spray and the semisweet smell of vapor. Upon reaching the end of the narrow bridge, you enter a space of indeterminate size, comprised entirely (or so it seems to you) of incredibly dense fog continuously billowing out all around you. Nestled into a densely packed, tactilely palpable, almost viscous medium in which the only thing you can sense with certainty is your body, you are struck by a vaguely uncomfortable feeling of constriction (see Figure 4.2).
Yet, you soon become accustomed to this oddly materialized space and, as you do so, you begin to perceive a forest of vertical red and green lights around you. Moving close to one of these lights, you notice that they are LED columns scrolling suggestive adjectives like "obsessive" and “passionate" which, you cannot help feel, are eerily apt descriptions of your personality. You notice too that your raincoat has started to glow with a faint blue-green hue; you also perceive a muffled ping reverberating at regular intervals and, as you concentrate on the sound, you realize that it is coming from your coat.
Feeling more and more at home in this weird, sensorily inverted world, you start to walk in the direction of a smaller, moving red light off in the distance. As you do so, the pinging noise emanating from your coat becomes more rapid and grows louder. Momentarily flustered by this, you look down at your coat and when you look up again, you see the blurred outlines of another person move toward you; you stop and, as you do, you notice that the red glow surrounding this person is becoming more intense as the distance between you diminishes. Excited and also a bit frightened, you perceive suddenly that the blue-green hue of your coat has become a red glow that is also gradually intensifying. Recalling the instructions you distractedly read at the log-in center, you realize that this person is someone whose profile bears affinity with yours. What flashes instantly to your mind is whether you will have the courage to talk to this person when he reaches you; overcoming your natural inclination to flee into the now altogether inviting neutrality of the fog, you steel yourself for contact.
WEARABLE SPACE
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