Coolest Book Ever

Date: 10/9/2020

A dream version of my dad (I knew it was him, but he looked totally different & had a different voice) created a choose your own adventure type game book where your choices influenced both the book & your awareness about yourself in the real world. It was supposed to track your tendencies (for personal purposes, not to hand over to advertisers or a government or anything, allegedly), so you could be aware of your own personality. You could learn your eating habits, relationship preferences, aspirations, fears, etc. Everything you learned shaped the book. You even got to choose the genre after reading a few pages. The option would come up "Ah! You see, this seems like a ____ kind of story!" & you could choose what impression you got from those pages or what you wanted to read based on your mood or the like. The characters also got different dialogue & action options as you made your choices, so their personalities & backstories were ultimately shaped by your influence. People loved to compare their favorite characters, showing each other how they'd influenced them. "My version of ____ did this in the ______ chapter, what did yours do? Woah, yours had a totally different attitude in his dialogue choices than mine!" This book never played out exactly the same between readers, & could change so drastically that lots of people thought it was some kind of magic instead of an actual pre-written book or even an algorithm. Magic was prevalent in every version of the book, too, even the sci-fi genre versions, so it became easy for people to believe in the existence of magic in the real world. They were influencing this story, after all. Who's to say it didn't influence their world as well? I can't really remember where the plot went, in the dream itself or in my particular copy of the book. I remember comparing my version with family & friends. I got attached to my main character, who I think was named Trevor. I saw so much of myself in him (which makes sense, given the nature of the book), & I was rooting for him at every turn. I also got attached to the other main character who sometimes got chapters from her perspective, but more in the sense that she fascinated me & I wanted to see how she would act. It seemed like Trevor was shaped by my choices, while the girl was more steadfast in her personality as her world changed based on my whims. I remember something about an old temple or shrine... I'm not sure why she was there, but it was key to the plot & made me interested in her story as well as Trevor's. Both were in a magic school together when they weren't going through plot things that kept them separate. I honestly wish this book existed, because it sounds extremely interesting & fun to read. It'd also be fascinating to see how choices I don't normally think of as influencing anything at all -- at least outside my immediate self -- could change so much in such a visible way. I may be a writer, but this felt like instant gratification of choice in a way even writing doesn't when I choose what to make canon in my own stories. I miss that book already. Until next I wander.