The Latest Invention: The Disorienting Sequencing Strobe Light of DOOM!3

The walls were closing in on me.

The barely-illuminated objects in the room seemed to spin.

The lights were flashing madly and intensely.

My Disorienting Sequencing Strobe Light of Madness (DSSLoM) was working!

The overhead lights came on. Einida walked in and carefully adjusted the array of buttons on the control panel, stating, “I've changed the speed, brightness, and duration of each light...This may prove to be more...disorienting.”

To my great relief, I did not have to suffer through too many more tests, as the perfect setting for variables for maximum distortion was found quickly.

The strobe light requires the perfect combination of speed, duration, and brightness to change an entire room into a weird, animated, flashing nether world.

I once dreamed of a series of sequencing strobe lights, and ever since had longed to build such a set-up. But the technology simply did not exist. I spent years waiting for LEDs to become powerful enough to match the lighting in my dream.

Just think of what one could do with this technology! One could create fascinating effects with low-light photography, or a silent but disturbing burglar alarm. It could be a marvel of entertainment at such annual Lab rumpuses as New Sock Weekend, El Dia de las Muertos, and Guy Fawkes Day.

After I surveyed many available light sources, I found the answer in the new, super-bright LEDs that have recently been appearing on the market. I ordered a handful, wired them up, and added a device to control the speed of the strobing effect. This was my first attempt to recreate my vision, and it provided a simple and effective solution.

This primitive contraption was installed in a sophisticated haunted house environment. It was used in a black room, the walls of which were painted with white circles. Also in the room were performers dressed i n black body-suits, which in turn were painted with white circles.

When the lights were flashing in spinning sequences, the wary haunted house visitors were scared witless--the walls seemed to move in peculiar ways, and eventually oozed and crept towards them. The visitors could not actually distinguish the performers from the walls.

I had discovered this latest generation of the lights by a happy accident: I'd spotted a clip-on desk lamp at the local store, carelessly tucked away on the bottom shelf, almost out of sight. I required the assistance of an employee to test the brightness of the lamp, as I doubted that it would be bright enough to suit my nefarious purpose.

The lamp proved to be fantastically bright, and perfect for my disorientation goals. I promptly and gleefully purchased five.

As soon as I returned to the Lab, I soldered the desk lamps to reels of wire, and built a controller with two buttons--one for the speed of the light flashes, the other for the brightness.

And then the days of testing for “Ultimate Disorientation” began. After many hours of fine-tuning the settings, I was extremely pleased with the results of this invention and even more so to be out of the testing chamber, though it did take time for me to shake the illusion of lights flashing before my eyes.