I miss Ultima III, the one that came on 5 1/4″ floppies. The one where you were just a tiny figure moving about the landscape, talking in the towns and fighting in the woods. I loved saying “join me” to people and delighted when they said they would join my motley crew. I liked it better than Ultima IV because you could travel all night without the darkness swallowing you. I never knew what was lurking in that darkness.

Way back, I remember being frightened of the dark greenish pages and pale green pants with nobody inside them. My imagination created a horror movie-worthy villain out of those pants. I was most alarmed when they began to cry. It only made them more horrible when they shook like that.

I even miss Hunt the Wumpus, a text-only game played on the Wang computer that sat on our dryer in the laundry room. I imagined the Wumpus — big, hairy, many-legged, dripping with yuck, lurking in the semi-darkness of one of the rooms as I played Russian roulette with the doors.

What I’m saying is, I miss imagination, even in its darkest form. But also in its most wondrous! Now, everything is visual, three-dimensional, surround-sound, neon-sign. We’ve lost the subtle shades of emotion that imagination creates.

So, I decided to make my own world for my imagination to play in. It is made up of nothing but the twenty-six western letters and ten numbers. Eventually there may be a few line drawings and a glossy cover illustration, but it’s mainly just a world in my mind.

I used to have more vivid dreams. Perhaps I’m just too tired now to have many of them. Or too grown-up. I actually miss the terror that jerked me from the dream where I’m running from “bad guys” down my dark neighborhood streets. I’m running in slow-motion, of course, screaming at my legs to MOVE, C’MON MOVE!

So I knew that it would be endlessly fun to have my imaginary playground to be a dream. A shared dream.