Once you’ve purchased your new clothes, they will be placed in your personal cache. That’s where everything you acquire here in Virtual Life goes until you are ready to use it. If you’re too shy to change clothes here at Le Petit Chardonneret, then you can wait until we go back to Lit-A-Rama and change on the second floor at Open Books. There you can have a bit of privacy and do your girl thing in the mirror.
Now, let’s see about getting you a better hairstyle. Standard issue hair is enough to cover your head, but as you can see from many of the emulations walking past us, there are far more stylish samples available. The hair you have now is static. The style really doesn’t become you at all, Kiz. I think what you need is a flexi-tress, like mine! It moves naturally when I move. See?
“And what about your complexion? What is your skin color in PL?”
“I’m red. I live in the desert.”
“Then you shall have reddish skin in your Virtual Life. What about your eyes? What color are they in PL?”
“I have brown eyes. But I’ve always wished I had big violet eyes, like Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Liz Taylor eyes for you, Kiz. No problem! I know just where to acquire them.”
“This kind of shopping can be fun, Fizzy.”
“Just part of your Virtual Life, Kiz. Are you ready to transfer out of Còte d’azur?”
“Whatever you say, Fizzy. Today, you’re my guide.”
“Then type ‘Open Books’ into your destination bar and click ‘transfer’.”
Whoosh
…
“This is so much fun, Fizzy!”
“We’re arriving now, Kiz. And it seems that we’re in luck, because Crystal is here. You must meet Crystal.”
In front of the Open Books shop Crystal Marbella is fixing a new poster in the front window—one that announces the publication of
The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran. “Hello, Fizzy,” she says. “Who is your friend?”
“Crystal, this is Kizmet Aurora. I greeted her as she dropped into VL for the first time. I’ve been showing her around a bit. We went shopping on the Còte d’azur for a new outfit, all the essentials.”
“Hi, Kiz. I’m Crystal Marbella.”
“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.