0
(Ghost mode takes you to a different reality— a plane parallel to the normal game world where the current mission takes place. Ghost mode is only available in multiplayer games, and only to human players (AI-controlled players cannot switch to ghost mode). While in you are in ghost mode you can still take your turns, while other human players take turns in the normal game world.) (i)
0
The Primary Universe is fraught with peril. War, plague, famine and natural disaster are common. The Fourth Dimension of Time is a stable construct, though it is not impenetrable. Incidents when the fabric of the fourth dimension becomes corrupted are rare. If ghost machines occur, they will be highly unstable. Ghost machines are able to contact the Living Receiver through the Fourth Dimensional Construct. No one knows how or why the Living Receiver is chosen. When the Living Receiver awakens, they are often haunted by the experience. Many of them will not remember. (ii)
0
“Since my early years until now, the natural world and its visual wonders and horrors— man-made devices with their mind-boggling engineering feats and destructive abominations, elusive human nature and its multiple ramifications from the sublime to unbelievable abhorrences— to me are all one. It is in the spirit of this feeling that the ghost machines have occurred. As for my contemporaries, it was my personal friends who were the other basic influence on the ghost machines.” (iii)
0
“The title of this work would justify the inclusion of Prince Hamlet, of the point, of the line, of the surface, of n-dimensional hyperplanes and hypervolumes, of all generic terms, and perhaps of each one of us and of the godhead. In brief, the sum of all things - the universe. We have limited ourselves, however, to what is immediately suggested by the words ‘ghost machines’; we have compiled a handbook of ghost machines conceived through time and space. We are ignorant of the meaning of ghost machines in the same way that we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe, but there is something in the ghost machines that fits our imagination, and this accounts for their appearances in different places and periods.” (iv)
0
It really isn’t necessary to see the ghost machines or know where they are because I have seen them. Perhaps I might point them out to you. The best way is to go about your business not thinking about silly ghost machines because when you begin seeing them, describing what they are or where they are going is So just make sure you wake up from sleeping and go your way and go to sleep when you will. The ghost machines do that too and don’t worry about you. Perhaps you are the ghost machines. They are everywhere. As I write this I wish someone were here to point one out to me because I know they exist.
0
“I dearly love the ghost machines. Particularly because they make light visible, and light is a sublime substance. We only see light when it is reflected from the surface of a ghost machine and the diverse materials of which it is made. It is not only that light pervades the universe and is a kind of messenger of the histories and mysteries of the time and space, but that it is also the most intimate of phenomena, even as it is the most ephemeral. Maybe the two concepts are inexorably linked, sensuality and transience, intensity of experience and its brevity. Ghost machines are, for me, less important than the light they reveal. This proves, I suppose, that I am not a tactile person, but a visual one. What I see moves me more deeply than what I touch.” (v)
0
“And if I understand the ghost machines, why can’t I explain them? Knowledge, the ghost machines believe, resides only in particulars. I try to tell them that all words are plastic. Word images begin to distort in the instant of utterance. Ideas imbedded in a language require that particular language for expression. It is an outside frame of reference, a particular system. Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change. Does it serve any purpose for me to tell the ghost machines that there are no languages for some things?” (vi)
0
ghost machines are empty jewels / figment plays a filtering role / the spectrum of ambient light / dots the abyssal night / surprising and disorienting the machine / anyone who has seen a ghost machine will keep an image of it / in their memory forever / for its isolation, for its cosmic cold, its eternal obscurity / adapted for collecting the maximum available light / with no teeth, no poison, and no shell / soft bodied machine with no strings / an almost complete transparency / fills its cavity with ink (vii)
0
[(i) Heroes of Might & Magic V. Ubisoft, May 24th, 2006. Instruction manual. (ii) Sparrow, Roberta. “The Philosophy of Time Travel.” Donnie Darko, 2001. Film. (iii) Bontecou, Lee. Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008. Artist’s Statement. (iv) Borges, Jorge Luis, The Book of Imaginary Beings. New York: Penguin, 1967. Preface. (v) Johnson, Ray. “What is a Moticos.” (vi) Woods, Lebbeus, Woods. SFMOMA 151 3rd St. San Francisco, “Lebbeus Woods: Architect.” February 16 – June 02, 2013. Wall text. (vii) Emperor Leto. “The Stolen Journals.” God Emperor of Dune, 1981. (viii) Prince Albert I of Monaco. Beebe, William. Monod, Theodore. The Deep: Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss. University of Chicago Press, 2007. Print. (Some of the text from these sources has been altered from its original form.)]