As Bad As Real Life

I scan the map for the green dots that represent people.

Warren Ellis is exactly right. Second Life is an obscene amount of land and buildings with a rotating population of only thousands at a time. You walk through a world depopulated by plague or aliens or spontaneous combustion.

I teleport toward a clump of green dots. I have no idea what might be there.

I walk through the door cube. The world around me fluctuates between degrees of completeness.

Shit, it's a country bar. There are a bunch of people stuck in a clipped line-dancing animation. I watch for a few moments. Cowboy hats and jeans. I fucking hate it.

Exchanges of salutations. Over and over again. It's like replaying the first ten minutes of a cocktail party.

"Hello, Sally."

"Hello, Rick."

"Greetings, Rick."

Someone drops the equivalent of a shared LSD trip and an array of billboards with a shirtless hunk in a cowboy hat sprays out of the floor and dissipates into the air. Nice.

I walk outside. The streets are empty. Fuck this. I need to be drunk.

Confederate flag hanging from a pole. Where do I buy a molotov?

---

A welcome center. There are a few clusters of avatars.

Asshole with wings. Guy in military costume. Scantily-clad female with large honkers.

I need to get myself a pair of tits. And/or a giant, swaying phallus. Both readily available for purchase.

I stumble into the middle of a discussion. World War II. Fuck is it a stupid conversation.

"If the Russians hadn't attacked Germany, the US wouldn't have had a chance."

"Yeah they would've. The US is the best."

Then someone flashed a swastika and was asked to remove it, to which they complied. Then a quick lesson about how the swastika is sometimes used by Indians, but nary a mention of its direction of movement and then I try to drive a jeep and am rejected.

Stupid jeeps.

And the conversation goes on and it's got a 1:100 signal-to-noise ratio.

---

There's no way to die, not that I can figure out.

I wonder if I can build a suicide machine that will permanently forbid certain skins and shapes?

I go to Integral Castle, thinking that maybe Mr. Ellis will be there, or at least some interesting member of his readership.

It's just me, alone in a castle with a giant banana chair and a small rocket. Most of the time it's like that, alone in a room with [fill in the blank with something unexpected].

---

I don't have a lot of money. I want to buy a guitar.

There are some great guitars for sale and I try one out, shredding and giving off actual flames.

I don't feel like purchasing any Lindens, so I try my luck at a casino. I'm up, then down, then up, then only a little down, then I call it quits. To win big, you have to play big.

Just like Vegas. Just like any money-sucking operation.

---

I haven't figured out what to do, or even if there's anything to do.

Sometimes I feel like asking, "What's the point?"