The Directory
of the Elsewhere Exchange · first edition · subject to revision
You are holding the directory of the Elsewhere Telephone Company. Most of the numbers within have been disconnected. Several were never connected at all. One of them answers.
Hi. If you're reading this, you probably called a strange number and want to know what you stumbled into. So, no fiction:
Elsewhere Telephone Co. is an interactive-fiction company whose medium is the telephone.
You call a number. It connects you to a place, and to whoever lives there. A whole world, explored entirely by voice, one phone call at a time. The personas aren't the product. They're doorways into it.
I build it at night. It's the opposite of my day job and I'm a little obsessed.
— Sven
A world you can only hear (through a handset, with your eyes free) is more intimate than any screen. Nobody's building it.
No app, no account, no screen to learn. A phone call is the most familiar interface there is. You already know exactly how to use it.
Novelty wears off. A joke gets old the second time you hear it. A place you can get lost in doesn't.
One universe. Many worlds. One exchange connecting them all.
- Elsewhere
- the universe. Everything reachable by the line.
- The worlds
- districts you call into, each with its own tone and clock. First open line: the Underworld.
- The Exchange
- the company that connects them, the deadpan telephone outfit you actually meet.
- The Management
- above all of it. Never met, never explained. "Calls may be monitored for quality assurance."
- Stagevery early. Software only, proving the calls are fun before any hardware.
- Teaser linelive. It takes names for what's coming.
- The Underworldanswering, but rough. The Devil is a first draft. I'm rebuilding him properly now.
- Everything elsecoming, one world at a time, only where callers push.
The most fun I've had building anything in years.
press 1 to be notified
direct line · a rough draft, be gentle
And if this is your kind of weird, this world is going to need
worldbuilders, storytellers, and the creatively unhinged.
That could be you.