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Tales for Makers Episode 1 - Where is Tommy?

balearicdynamics
Tales for Makers Episode 1 - Where is Tommy?

[Episode 2]
[Episode 3]

Introduction

In cooperation with Project14, thanks to the conspiracy of Tariq Ahmad (), the idea of the Tales for Makers became an original publishing project, connected to the challenges and webinars Make a Better World With Arduino.

The idea is to use story-telling to create a fictional world. The reader gets inspired by fictional technologies through short stories and is challenged to develop real-world projects using Arduino boards.

The Project

Venice Bearch, L.A. (CA)

Tales for Makers is a series of (at least) eight stories set in the BDTH6159 Amusement Park in Los Angeles. 

Every two weeks, I will post the plot of one of the tales, threaded by a unique path, following the adventures of Ray Badmington, our main character, searching for his son Tommy (Badmington, of course!), our second main character. Tommy has mysteriously disappeared from Venice Beach, near Marina del Rey, L.A. (CA).

You Are Challenged!

All community members who joined the Project14 section can post their projects with the tag #Tales4MakersCH on Project14. Inspired by the posted episodes, the most impacting projects will be presented during the next two webinars of Make a Better World With Arduino. 

Not only but – expected in September – the selected projects will be included in the book together with the full-length stories. More details on the book will be updated later.

Episode 1. Where is Tommy?

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BDTH6159 Amusement Park is a (fictionary, you sure?) place located in Los Angeles, CA. It extends on the beach, from the Marina del Rey Getty up to the end of the Venice beach. 

It is a long amusement park where two realms meet over the same sand. 

These are the multi-dimensional adventures of Ray Badmington, an intelligent engineer from Wisconsin visiting Los Angeles on holiday with his son Tommy, enjoying the sun on the Marina del Rey beach. Everything started on a sunny afternoon while they were walking on the beach.

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25.000 – twenty-five-thousand – steps! Tommy's smartwatch rang when Ray and his son Tommy arrived at the Marina del Rey Getty. – Dad! Look, we walked so far! – told Tommy. Then he started playing with an old parking meter.

– Dad! Look, a cryptex! – and started playing with it.

– Tommy, it is an old parking meter – answered Ray – strange it is here; all this old stuff was dismantled years ago. – While Ray said this, his son seemed to be walking through an invisible wall then suddenly disappeared.

Ray was speechless! He thought his preferred ten-counting sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34) then realized that Tommy had disappeared! Luckily decided to try to discover more about the mystery before calling 911 (to be honest, he had never done this).

"Uhm... what can it be? There should be some connection to the last things he has done", he started thinking. "What was doing Tommy before?" asked himself. Then went a few steps back and observed the old mechanical parking meter in detail. 

"Uhm... It's so strange. There is no coin slot in this stuff, and it has these strange four number wheels. It sounds really like a cryptex..."

Ray tried to play with the four number wheels; unfortunately, every time he reached the fourth cypher, the strange machine was just playing a "Ding!" bell, and the wheels returned to the original "0000." After a couple of hours of useless retries, Ray had an idea. "Let me check. This stuff, more or less, is from the Nokia 3310 age, when we all were used to chatting with SMS." After Ray set the wheels to the number 6736, the magic happened!

On the top side, the parking gauge indicator (or something very similar, I can assure you) went to the extreme right side, playing the same "Ding!" bell. Ray ran where Tommy disappeared and saw a strange red curtain like a theatre entrance. While he walked in, the last thing Ray saw from the sunny beach reality was the parking meter (actually, it was something else, but Ray had no idea what was the name) gauge indicator moving back to zero. Then he disappeared somewhere else.

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TO BE CONTINUED ...

Spoiler

#1

During the second webinar "Make a Better World With Arduino" on Arduino Nicla Sense ME, together with our guest  (Furio Piccinini) we will present the first project based on Arduino Nicla Sense ME inspired by this first story. Subscribe!

#2

Exploring the features and some performances of the Nicla Sense ME board I found some issues, together with some mistake on the documentation. We will discuss them during the second webinar "Make a Better World With Arduino" Sobscribe to the webinar and ask your questions.