LGBTQ+ Time Capsule

 

Click the pic to enter Gayz Station. But don’t go anywhere YET.

The biggest misconception about all the LGBTQetc activism we’re seeing these days is the unchallenged assumption that all of this little demimonde is news to the millions of dumbasses who are resisting its excesses. I can prove it. Back in 1999 I published a CD-based multimedia project that used videogame tools to satirize the state of American culture at the turn of the century. It was called Shuteye Town 1999. It was huge and like so much of what occurs without serious scrutiny, it was all underground. There was a mall with about 20 stores (including books, videos, and faces/bodies), more than 40 subway stations, dozens of TV shows on multiple cable networks, homes, apartments, hotels, hospitals, police stations, prisons, business and government complexes, an airport, a huge sports arena, a university, as well as a bunch of ATMs and restrooms and ST99’s own version of the Internet. All of this exists in the final seconds of 1999, and while there are hundreds of people all over the place, the only one in motion is an androgynous character named J. Doe, who is the experiencer in control of the cursor/clicker, meaning you, the player. He can be killed, but he has unlimited lives, so there is no easy way out.

There’s also a lot of sex and drugs and other clandestine stuff in town. This post is here to focus on just one thing, the keen awareness of issues that the mass media somehow believes were entirely unknown (unknowable?) to the American people in general. I can prove in a very few screens of ST99 that this is just not so, including the issues of transgenderism, mixed sex bathrooms, and everything sexual short of pedophilia, a topic I omitted for what should be obvious reasons.

When you click the pic up top, you will enter the same screen inside the game. You have the ability to move to another screen by clicking on individual locations within the image on screen. The version on my iPad insists on reducing the screen image size somewhat. You can blow it up on tablets with thumb and forefinger, which makes it easier to find the exact places to click. Cursors highlight links, and fingertip interfaces activate links on touch but without highlighting them. (The back button also works to return to previous screens, as many as you want.)

I deliberately made the links at this station small, because I wanted people to work, to make a decision to find what’s hidden. Making the image larger helps.  I’m going to make it easy for you to see what’s here on your tablet or laptop. (iPhones probably won’t get you there.)  It will save you much time if you read all the helpful hints before you start exploring. You can always back button your way to this post if you need to…

1. Ordinarily train station stairways lead directly to what’s behind the station façade. That doesn’t work here.

2. There are only four functioning links on the platform of Gayz Station. The Lounge sign, the vending machine, the doorway next to the stairway, and the down arrow. We’ll cover the Lounge option later.

3. The down arrow takes you to a train departing for the next station. You can board the train by clicking on the lighted doors.

4. The doorway arrow leads to another train that takes you back to the beginning of the subway line. Click on the train’s red eye and then on the red letters ‘East Station.’ Disembarking there, you can take another down stairway to a secret train that gives you access to every subway station in ST99 by clicking on the secret train’s interior doors.

5. But items 3 and 4 aren’t why you’re here. You’re here to explore the LGBTQ corner of town. You’re here for the Hormone Vending Machine. To get to it, you click on he coin slot, which gives you a closeup of the machine and your own hand holding a coin.

6. Click on the coin, which brings the machine even closer. Now you must choose whether you will enter Gayz Station as a male or a female. Click the right or the left paired boxes showing gender icons, which will you show your own hand again holding a syringe containing blue or pink liquid, depending on which sex you selected.

7. To use the syringe, click on the little black button between thumb and forefinger. This will take you to a display of what your new body will look like. If you then click the down arrow, you will be shown a pink stairway. 

8. Click on the stairway. You will enter the lobby of the Gay and Lezbian Ballroom. You have a choice of doors on the left and right. click one.

9. Now you know how it works. Click to find where the links are, including doors, arrows, and what all. As noted above, the back button works, so you can explore all of the options. Have fun. At least one arrow returns you to the platform, from which you can visit the Lounge.

10. Click the Lounge door to enter. You have three options here: Ladies Room, Men’s Room, and the bartender. (You can also click on the cameras.) The restrooms are self explanatory. The bartender leads to a screen promising a “conversation.” This version of ST99 does not contain that conversation, which is still available in a book of all such conversations:

Click the book cover to go to Amazon’s listing for the book.

Where you go from here is up to you. You can always hop on the subway…