Null Sector

Jacob and I spend the day touring the attractions at Electromagnetic Field: Human-carrying hexapod robots. The retro-games arcade. Wars between robot unicorns popping balloons on each other. A pulse-jet engine provides the booming echo of 1940s doodlebugs. In the afternoon we sign up for a rocketry workshop. Our spin-stabilised design is only a mild success and our recovery system fails. A joyful nonetheless.

As darkness falls we watch the firenado demonstration, faces pressed up to the safety fence. The swirling vortex towers above us. Apparently it’s a particularly good one.

Then we move onto the Null Sector, a mysterious maze-like area constructed from shipping containers. Inside, smoke. Lasers. More lasers. Chinese lanterns, and huge gas flares controlled by buttons passers by can trigger, light our way. With torrential rain you could be in Blade Runner, though thankfully the weather is dry. We mill among girls with LED eyelashes, and other cyborg-like appendages, trying to take it all in through the non-stop throb of electronic dance music.

Permission has been obtained from the Civil Aviation Authority to clear the airspace from zero to unlimited altitude for the lasers. You can see why. In a shipping container a vendor sells laser-cut acrylic covers for the conference badge, which is itself a computer complete with screen, cell-phone connection to the EMF cell network, and T9 keyboard. The fumes from the laser cutter contribute to the already thick atmosphere. In another container, the skeleton of a robot quadruped is walking tirelessly to nowhere.

Jacob dances under the fireballs.