Begin by Entering into a Unique World

We meet Hobson, the mastermind behind the scheme to manipulate elements. He's in a lab in the beautiful Swiss alps.

He and his nine-year-old daughter take a stroll out of the lab. Hobson's got a device with him with a series of antennae and knobs.

As they walk and stroll, he tells his daughter how man's evolution was shaped by the elements in which he found himself. But now it's time for the next stage of evolution, when man shapes the elements. (The conversation, of course, would be enlivened and deepened with all the techniques discussed in the Chapter 2.31.)

As Hobson strolls and talks, he turns knobs and flips switches on the device. Around he and his daughter:

• A river reverses direction and starts flowing up hill.

• Hobson picks a leaf off a tree and turns a knob. A small whirlwind appears and blows the leaf around and around in a lazy circle. It would do that forever, except Hobson's delighted daughter snags it out of the air.

• Hobson turns another switch and a rainbow crosses the sky and then a second rainbow, a third, a dozen, as his daughter laughs.^[1]

  ^[1] Although the technology Hobson is using might as yet be a bit mysterious, we still know what he's doing. It's not a mystery on the same level of the water creeping out of a pot, as in the earlier example.

In this version, we begin the game by being swept into a very unique world.