I have not played any computer games since the 1980s and those were on a BBC computer. I have no immersion into gaming culture aside from having watched the film Assassins’ Creed. Here is this morning’s dream. Completely out of the blue.

The dream starts in a wide open boulevard with coconut trees. I understand the location to be California possibly South. I am going into a small nondescript low rise building through some sliding smoked glass doors. Inside the air conditioning is fierce. It is a hive of activity with young men and women in their twenties and thirties. It is full of information technology with multiple wide screens and computers and floor to ceiling television screens. I check in at a round reception desk. I know that I am recruited because of my imagination and the fact that I have no immersion in gaming culture therefore any ideas I have will not be generic and formulaic.

This young company wants to revolutionize gaming and sees those non immersed as a part of the key.

I am taken down into the basement, their development lab. They are working on an immersive virtual reality full chair experience. The young sandy haired American ushers me to sit in the chair. I do this and it re-configures to surround me. Two arms come up under mine and hand controllers on servos adjust themselves into my hands.

As I touch them a full heads up display becomes visible in front of my eyes. It is clear that I am going to need to fly along an alpine valley at considerable speed. I am not a plane. I am a pterodactyl. I fly off down the valley and pull a sharp ascent at the end.

They are delighted that I understood the controls intuitively and without instruction.

I wake up and get an ice pack for the wife from downstairs.

Back in the dream. A young man, one of the founders, knocks on my door. He says for the time being I will need to drive him to work until they figure out the next steps. He ushers me to sit on an open designed bench like structure with four small white walled tyres. As I sit down a small control panel comes up. I touch it and the vehicle surges forward. I now also have bicycle like handles with breaks. I break. He says that I need to disengage the fully automatic clutch which is a red button on the control panel. I do this and the electric engine is now in neutral. He sits next to me on my right hand side and shows me how to activate the heads up display. We set off. He says that we need to go faster. Some bicycle pedals appear and our rate of pedalling controls the speed.

He says that we are not going fast enough. The vehicle splits into two two-wheelers and he rides off into the distance. I follow. He parks his vehicle and goes into the building of the day previous. In the grounds a young man is being exposed to the contents of an English rowing boat house. There are an eight, oars, old-school rowing clothing, a coxes’ bronze megaphone and wet-bob caps. I know he is being trained for a role in a Harry Potter style game.

I go up the steps and to the sliding smoked glass doors. As I do this I am met by a young man with dark hair, an American. He says that they have decided that I will be the croupier in the next game development, the croupier being a very important oversight role who to an extent controls the game.

Dream ends.