The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans Read online

“Happy to meet you, Crystal.”

  “Are you having a good time here in VL?”

  “I think so… But it’s all so new, and so confusing.”

  “You’ll grow accustomed to Virtual Life very quickly, you’ll see.”

  “The people here are very friendly.”

  :) Crystal types.

  “And generous, too! Fizzy Oceans gave me a thousand greenshoots to spend on my EM. I can’t help but like a place where people give you money to buy clothes.”

  :) I type. Then, “Remember, Kiz, the clothes are just clipart.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot.”

  “Yes, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Crystal laughs.

  “So, if neither of you minds, I think I’ll go to the second floor to get changed. I have only one question: How do I get to the second floor? There doesn’t seem to be a staircase.”

  :) I type. “Click the arrow on the wall, Kiz. Then click ‘transfer’. Nothing to it!”

  Whoosh…

  Crystal Marbella is my best friend here in Virtual Life. Besides the fact that her EM is really pretty, Crystal is a beautiful person from the inside out. She is always kind and helpful, never cross or sarcastic or disrespectful. She’s also incredibly resourceful: when something needs to be done inside the shop, and neither of us understands how to accomplish the task, Crystal is always the one to take the initiative to learn new technical skills and apply them creatively.

  In PL, Crystal wrote a novel entitled, Alone In A Crowd, which to me seems ironic considering the context in which we now meet and interact. If you think about it, here we sit, each in his PL sanctuary, laptop or desktop switched on and wired for ADSL, buzzing back and forth and in and out at more than a megabyte per second, logged on to a site where we recreate not only the sum of our personalities and respective cultures, but also the dreams and aspirations and visions that as a civilization we’ve never been able to materialize in PL. I often have to consciously remember or visualize our PL bodies as we click and type, as we drag our cursors over one prompt or another to engage in virtual movements or expressions. I know well the smile of Crystal’s EM, but I know not the warmth of her cheek, or the sweetness of her breath. As much as Virtual Life offers that Physical Life does not, still there is a gap in sensuality that cannot be denied. Can our emulations actually experience the sensation of longing? Or is that kind of perception reserved for Physical Life? Or for Natural Life? There’s a real difference, you know. Natural Life is what existed on the day after Creation; Physical Life is the mess that we humans have made of it during the ensuing hundred million years or so (mostly in the last hundred and fifty, more or less). But Crystal doesn’t talk about this sort of thing, because she’s too busy recreating the world’s great books. I do my share of the work in the Open Books shop too, but the real passion for the preservation of literature comes from Crystal; there’s no doubt about that.

  PROFILE: Crystal Marbella

  NAME: Sonja Jörgensen

  GENDER: Female

  LOCATION: Copenhagen

  COUNTRY: Denmark

  E-MAIL: [email protected]

  AGE: 31

  INTERESTS: Books, books, books!!! Writing, reading, novels, poetry, art, music; picnics, animals, media; politics, current events, mythology, theosophy; hiking, cycling, cooking.

  VIRTUAL LIFE GROUPS: Resident and shop owner in Lit-A-Rama; Dirty Nellie’s Pub; Virtual Broadcast Venue; Lit-A-Rama Events & Discussion Forum; Publishers, Printers & Booksellers; INKies; Writer’s Pen Café; VL Book Fair; VL Chamber of Commerce; VL Girl Magazine.

  It’s true that we must conduct commerce here in Virtual Life using the currency issued by the creators at Seedbed Studios; and in fact there is a bar graph accessible right on the site denoting the trading value, month by month, of the greenshoot against the American dollar. Each month the greenshoot seems to gain in value against the dollar, as does virtually every other First World currency. The irony, I suppose, is that Virtual Life is a web site in cyberspace, not a country in the physical world. Nevertheless, the greenshoot is taking its place as a unit of trade, so it should perhaps also come as no surprise that BloomEx (where the VL banks and the VL stock exchange are located) is the place on the Virtual Life site that receives the greatest number of visitors. I’ve been there myself, though I must say that I’m not particularly impressed by what goes on there. Greed is still greed, whether it is manifest in Physical Life or in Virtual Life. The traders and the changers barter virtual commodities back and forth like Monopoly money, even as many of us here in Virtual Life think we understand a more elemental principle: that the real currency here in VL is the currency of ideas. Money, even in Virtual Life, is still only money, and it might well be argued—as it is by some who interact here in VL—that it is the very system through which PL has reached the crisis point at which it now finds itself. Crystal understands this point. So do I. And so do many, many others. Only the most original ideas actually have substance; the value attached to commodities (real or symbolic) and to ad hoc services is actually a false denomination where real value is continually diminished, not enhanced.

  Because Crystal and I believe so strongly in the commerce of ideas rather than the commerce of money, all the books we publish at Open Books are available to anyone who wishes to read them free of charge. Instead of fixing a price for each book, we solicit funds from patrons who, like ourselves, appreciate the literature of the Ages and wish to see it preserved and promoted. Each potential patron is encouraged to adopt-a-book by giving a monetary contribution, which we then distribute to literacy funds, or through our Dead Writers Grant to living, working authors whose work merits support and who might need a helping hand to continue their pursuits. This is our unique way of allowing writers who have gone before to help those now struggling to continue the literary tradition that they so loved and embraced. We keep only enough money to maintain the Open Books shop here in VL.

  “Where is Kizmet Aurora in PL?” Crystal asks.

  “I haven’t asked yet,” I tell her. “Perhaps we can help her to fill out her profile when she comes down dressed to the tens.”

  “Good idea,” says Crystal. “Anything new with the shop?”

  “The donations vessel is full of greenshoots again.”

  :) types Crystal.

  PROFILE: Kizmet Aurora

  NAME: Cassandra Stephens

  GENDER: Female

  LOCATION: Rough Rock, Arizona

  COUNTRY: USA

  E-MAIL: [email protected]

  AGE: 44

  INTERESTS: Native Americans, Native American ceremonies, the environment, Burning Man, exotic travel, parapsychology, L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, Quantum Physics, advanced mathematics, Blackjack, Las Vegas, Ted Nugent, llamas.

  Of course it’s easy enough to become overly involved with the props here in VL. Besides clothing and other personal items, shops sell everything from helicopters to fine art (I absolutely love Mick Monahan’s Fractal Faces Gallery) to virtual vacations. One of the places Crystal and I like to go is Dirty Nellie’s Pub (the PL version was originally located in Dublin and its auspicious PL offspring is located in Palatine, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago). Of course you can’t actually have a drink there, but the clientele is diverse and friendly, so it’s a terrific place to make new friends and to network for Open Books. Outside the pub is a large patio where concerts and other events are held. (If you’re wondering whether musicians can actually play live concerts in Virtual Life, you bet they can!) The EMs enact the physical part of playing an instrument or singing into a mic as the music is streamed onto the web site for all to hear and enjoy. Meanwhile, many of the EMs love to dance to the music (yes, it’s possible to program complex dance steps and movements into your emulation’s gesture bank), while others simply chill out with a virtual pint and some virtual nacho chips and engage in conversation. The crowd at Dirty Nellie’s for such events is usually huge, and Crystal likes to tell the story of the time when she was still quite
new to Virtual Life and was invited to a concert at Dirty Nellie’s by the pub’s owners, Katydid Nothing and Applesauce MacNamera. Crystal was happy about the invitation and was really looking forward to the event, but when she tried to transfer to the pub, she found it to be so crowded that she was unable to successfully land (remember we’re flying here in VL), and was instead stranded in mid-air somewhere above the pub, where she was finally rescued by Nasus Drummond in a daring and clever, highly synchronized fly-by maneuver.

  Whoosh!

  It was at that concert that Crystal first learned to dance in Virtual Life, not to mention honing her flying skills to a new acumen.

  My VL function as a greeter allows me to meet many new people as they first log on to Virtual Life. I can’t help but enjoy the wonder of each new arrival as he tries to gain his bearings in this new terrain. As I help new initiates through the process of creating an emulation and a profile and learning how to navigate, I get a sense of satisfaction because I can’t help feeling the community is enhanced as each new consciousness becomes integrated. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that Virtual Life has given me a new perspective on the idea of community. After all, in PL one lives a more or less insular life, because that has become the pervasive condition there. In PL, I live in an apartment building with more than one hundred apartments. How many people do I know who live in the building? A sum total of five, and that’s pathetic, if you think about it. Here in Virtual Life I know so many people. And they’re not just from my hometown of Seattle, or from some particular group at work, or at school, or church, or some other social construction. The sad truth is that most of those PL social constructions have already disintegrated, or at least they are well into the process of disintegration. In VL, however, the process of forming groups is only getting started. Each day, it seems, I become aware of a new group with a new agenda. Most are open for anyone to join. This is why there is such a strong sense of community in VL. And it’s also why this virtual society is in a state of constant expansion rather than a state of continual contraction and eventual disintegration. VL is a really happy place!

  “Fizzy!” Kiz calls out in near desperation.

  “How are the clothes? Are we ever going to see your new look, Kiz?”

  “It’s all quite stunning, but I can’t seem to get back to street level. I seem to be stuck inside the wall of your shop!”

  “No worries, Kiz. It’s easy to get lost within the grid when you’re not experienced. Two or three key strokes and I’ll have you back on solid ground.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be on solid ground again, Fizzy.”

  :) types Crystal Marbella.

  PROFILE: Fizzy Oceans

  NAME: Amy Birkenstock

  GENDER: Female

  LOCATION: Seattle, Washington

  COUNTRY: USA

  E-MAIL: [email protected]

  AGE: 37

  INTERESTS: Painting, Post Impressionist art, Vincent Van Gogh, cooking, the Internet, reading, learning Japanese, carpentry, cartoons, music festivals, dancing and yoga and working out, desserts.

  VIRTUAL LIFE GROUPS: Resident of Lit-A-Rama, VL Greeter and co-owner of Open Books; Lit-A-Rama Events & Discussion Forum; VL Publishers, Printers & Booksellers; VL Book Fair; VL Chamber of Commerce, VL Greeters.

  Now, before I make everyone cross-eyed (or just plain cross) reading this admittedly self-indulgent and probably somewhat obnoxious manifesto, and before I log off and shut down my computer (for a few hours anyway), I want to tell you a few more important things about myself in PL. As you can see in my Virtual Life profile, I’m thirty-seven years old. I’m single: that is, I live alone. I was married; now I’m divorced. I got married midway through my senior year in high school (which of course means that I dropped out) to the only guy who’d ever paid me any attention. We were actually pretty good together. We ever so bravely decided to move from Independence, Missouri to Seattle during the whole Grunge thing, and life was pretty interesting during the late eighties and early nineties. When we split up after six years together, I saw no reason to go back to Missouri, so I stayed in Seattle. It’s my home now, and I like it here—at least most of the time. I have a job doing billing for a medical clinic. The work is boring, but the people I work with are nice. We have fun during the day, and sometimes we go out for drinks after work. My co-workers think that the time I spend in VL is silly. I tried to get a couple of them involved, but they weren’t very interested. Deb, who is thirty-eight with two young kids, thought VL was scary; and Karen, who is fifty-something, thought it was just plain weird, and that it wasn’t real anyway. Neither saw the point of spending time in an alternative universe. “The real world has all the challenges I can stand at the moment,” Deb said. “Why would I want to walk around as a cartoon in a cartoon world talking to other cartoons and paying good money for clothes that I can’t even wear?” Karen wanted to know.

  Whoosh!

  I must say that my Virtual Life is a lot more interesting than my life in PL. Not that it would necessarily have to be that way… Or that it should be that way… But the truth is that there’s really nothing particularly inspiring about working all day long in an office without windows filling out insurance forms and updating statements. In VL, I have the Open Books Project. And I also have friends like Crystal who understand, as I do, that just because you can touch something, or because you can taste it, or smell it, or because you can measure it, that it is not necessarily more real than an idea. I maintain that ideas are the most real things that we humans have (that is, if you can actually possess an idea). As far as I can tell, the universe is made up of them—I mean ideas—and all the props that we think are real are actually nothing more than symbols of the primary concepts. Some people, it seems, just can’t grasp that idea, but Virtual Life has taught me that we manifest our visions into the symbols we manipulate in our daily lives by using what we have come to call our will. This may sound complicated, or beside the point in our everyday lives, but it’s not; it’s actually the only thing that really matters, the only true reference point we have as we tumble through space and time.

  So that’s it, Kizmet! That’s my VL greeting to you. I hope you like it here. I hope you manage to make a place for yourself. I hope you meet all sorts of interesting people, and I hope you see places you never imagined might exist. Because that’s really what VL is all about, Kiz—possibilities.

  CHAPTER 2

  Warming To New Realities

  EVERY TIME I encounter Igloo Iceman in VL the appearance of his emulation shocks me. Why? Because he’s head and shoulders taller than anyone else I’ve ever encountered. He’s a bona fide Viking, if I ever saw one. His yellow hair is long and unkempt, his beard is woolly, and his moustache nearly covers his lips. His physique ripples with muscles, like a caveman or a wrestler, his feet and hands are gargantuan, and the glazed over look in his eyes would surely send Bigfoot running in the opposite direction. Not many seedlings take the time to get to know Igloo, but being a VL greeter, I met him the same day he dropped into Virtual Life. Igloo offered me friendship, which I accepted, and during the past year we’ve had some very informative chats (I’d never met anyone from Greenland before). From Igloo Iceman I have learned many things I did not previously know about NL (Natural Life). So every time I see Igloo’s imposing figure sitting at an outdoor table on the patio at Dirty Nellie’s Pub, I ask immediately if I might join him, and his EM always motions for me to take a seat.

  “What’s up, Iggy?”

  “I’ve dropped in to promote an event,” he tells me.

  “You don’t say? What event?”

  “A lecture on global warming. The immanent scientist and researcher, Dr. Conrad Adler is the featured speaker, and Jack Straw Huckleberry from NPR is the host.”

  “Cool, Igloo!”

  “We’ll see,” he says a little skeptically. “It might be nothing but a big snow job.”

  “Very funny, Iceman.”

  “From w
here I sit in PL, Fizzy, there’s nothing funny about it.”

  Igloo Iceman lives in the Tsiarngagai Mountains in Greenland. For as long as anyone there can remember, he’s told me, glaciers have covered the peaks of those mountains, but not anymore. The temperature is warming. The ice is melting. Lakes are forming in the gorges. As we speak here in Virtual Life, Igloo Iceman is lying on a lounge chair in PL, a tequila sunrise at arm’s length, dressed down to his BVDs and getting the tan of his life!

  “I guess Kyoto came a bit too late for Greenland,” I comment.

  “Kyoto-schmoto! I’m building myself a boat,” says Iggy.

  “A modern-day Noah and his Ark?”

  “Minus the animals this time.”

  “Where and when is the discussion to take place?” I ask.

  “Tonight at 8:00 VLT,” he tells me, “at the Virtual Broadcast Venue.”

  “I think I’ll come and bring a couple of friends. Thanks for the tip, Iceman.”

  “Stay cool, Fizzy.”

  Whether or not Igloo Iceman is portraying his PL situation literally (not to mention honestly, as it has been rumored from time to time that Igloo Iceman is really Dr. Conrad Adler, a climate researcher from the University of Colorado who has spent considerable time during the past twenty-five years in Greenland studying the receding glaciers) is quite beside the point. What matters is that he is a self-proclaimed sentry sitting at the top of the earth tracking climate changes that might well mean the end of not only Physical Life, but also Natural Life, as we now know it. Even in light of the environmental catastrophe that Iggy’s message augers (Greenland is losing one hundred billion tons of ice per year), he manages somehow to keep his sense of humor, as well as a balanced perspective. As long as I’ve known him, Iggy has never been one to cast blame, nor is he one to delegate responsibility for intervention. Maybe he’s not particularly interested in whether or not the polar icecaps melt into the ocean, or whether water levels rise and take out large coastal cities like Kuala Lampur, Bangkok, Istanbul and New Orleans. Maybe Igloo Iceman simply embraces a more evolutionary perspective. He’s obviously accustomed to living a solitary existence, so what’s it to him if humanity goes the way of the dinosaur? Meanwhile, he’s enjoying mini Miami North—at least for as long as it lasts. Greenland’s newly made mountain reservoirs must be stunning indeed on the evening of the summer solstice. And then there’s Iggy, prone on his lakeside lounge chair with his laptop open and logged on to the Internet via satellite… Iggy, watching the eternal orange sun never rising and never setting, always at eye level, burning away the ice day by day and whispering the future in his ear: “It was ice while it lasted, Igloo, but time is up. Get ready for the Flood!”