ATLANTA — Hypnotist Vincent LeMaine wowed the employees of Park ‘N Fly, Inc. last week when he successfully got DOOM to run on an audience volunteer’s mind during the company’s annual awards banquet at the Radisson Hotel Atlanta Airport, according to sources within the company.
“Gamers have been installing DOOM on any and every type of computing device for decades, and what is the human brain if not the most powerful, most energy-efficient computer in the known universe?” LeMaine explained, deftly altering his cadence to get us to focus on his voice and only his voice. “If I could play it on my 386-based PC with four megabytes of RAM back in 1993, surely I could get it to run on a volunteer’s one-exaflop organic processor.”
Using the power of suggestion, LeMaine explained to shuttle driver Wayne “Curly” Jackson, who had somehow instantly fallen into a deep sleep after just the count of three, that he was installing the original DOOM on his brain and to please be patient, as he had to swap four floppy disks in and out of the A: drive. When Jackson awoke, LeMaine said, he would feel refreshed and be able to play the revolutionary first-person shooter by just thinking about it.
“Our lives have been an absolute nightmare since that day,” said a visibly shaken Lisa Jackson. “My husband can’t sleep, he gets spontaneous nosebleeds, he keeps yelling, ‘I’m too young to die!’ Wayne thinks he is actually in the game, that he is a space marine. I pleaded with Mr. LeMaine to at least get Curly to type ‘IDDQD’ with his thoughts, but all he said was, ‘That’s not how it works,’ before blocking my number.”
Experts are calling what happened to Wayne Jackson “getting Jumanji’d.” Friends and family have reported seeing Mr. Jackson press random spots on walls at his home, frantically repeat “I need the BFG! Where is the BFG?” in between episodes of sheer panic, and crying about losing contact with UAC. In rare moments of lucidity, Mr. Jackson has horrified his wife with descriptions of his view into portals of Hell.
When asked for comment, DOOM co-creator and game designer John Romero said: “Goddamn, that sounds so metal.”
At press time, Mr. Jackson was spotted clucking like a chicken when someone said the word “Cacodemon.”
