Headset technology is cheaper and better than ever

THE CUBES fly towards your correspondent slowly at first, then quickly gather pace as the music speeds up. On his head he wears a chunky set of goggles. In each hand, he holds an imaginary laser sword that can chop the cubes in half before they reach his body. Each cube is marked with an arrow (designating the direction in which it must be sliced) and a colour (for which hand has to do the slicing—blue for right, red for left). The more vigorously the cubes are sliced in time with the music, the more points are scored. Horizontal and vertical barriers, mixed in with the cubes, must be avoided at all costs. A few minutes of swinging the imaginary swords around is tiring but oddly diverting. The simulation breaks down only when your correspondent gets too energetic with his jabs and crashes into a nearby (non-virtual) bookshelf.