Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [15]
I click the conversation window, and immediately, skyward* throws up a personal firewall that locks us into private chat.
>>skyward*: hey.
>> 10: Sup in the Dam, my man? Listen, I'm thinking of calling it off, I got watchlisted today.
>> skyward*: you're gonna have to be more careful. come on, we should take a walk.
>>10: Yeah. Okay.
It's dead quiet this time, past midnight in Japan, so only the most devout of players are online, and I don't know why skyward* is antsy about eavesdroppers, especially in my home. But I'm not gonna take issue if he wants to play it noir. Avalon LA lends itself to that. We step outside my domicile and walk down the driveway into the night, which is far brighter than realworld, every star visible, every orbit hotel and satellite.
We set off into the wilderness around the apartments, modelled on an idealised movie versioning of Mulholland Drive, so no gated communities, no Mexican labour riots, and there are even virtual coyotes, although I have yet to see one. Some of them are people too, playing out an entirely different kind of alternalife, which I can relate to far more than the celeb clones.
We head up towards a hill, the one furthest from the civilisation, which sometimes means the pixels drop off the page. Gamespace maintenance doesn't pay that much attention to the uninhabited areas, not in a freeworld, anyhow. If we were on premium subscription base, we might have justification to complain.
skyward* picks up the conversation only when we reach the top, looking down on the lights glittering in the dark. There are several parties happening in the valley tonight, no doubt careful re-creations of the real deal, thumping bass drifting up. I pull up my private settings, toggle the ambient audio to lock out the human-generated, so the incessant doefdoef vanishes immediately, leaving us with the sound of crickets and wind in the grass. Not that the grass is actually stirring – too much render time for my connection speed to handle.
There's a flickering on the horizon, and at first I think it's some bug in the software, but as it spreads, multi-coloured, I figure that someone has hacked the sky. It's doing a northern lights thing. And that's the beauty of Pluslife. That here you can actually have an influence on the world.
>> skyward*: i'll be straight with you. calling it off is not an option.
>> 10: It's not a cancel. It's a raincheck. >> skyward*: it's critical we go ahead. >> 10: Hey, man. I got crisped and marked once already today. I'm down for twentyfour hours as it is. And I can't do fucking anything. I'm impotent here.
>> skyward*: think of it as a test. prove to me that you're NOT impotent. that you can get around. how am I going to trust you with bigger ops if you can't handle a minor setback? you do still want in on the heavy impact stuff, don't you, 10? stop splashing around in the kiddie pool.
>> 10: Don't hardball me. This is serious shit. If I get picked up in criminal activity during a watch period, that's a fucking disconnect offence!!!!!! It's easy for you to kick back in fucking Amsterdam and be telling me I have to risk a disconnect in Cape Town.
>> skyward*: you're right. it is serious shit. either you can handle, or you're just playing. i don't have time for dabbler wannabes.
>> 10: …
>> skyward*: well?
I watch the northern lights flickering above our avatars, the digital representation of myself and a dumpy woman who might or might not look anything like skyward*. The sky loops in fractals of colour, pale-blue fire washing into acid green and purple like tie-dye. Just lines of code, really. Some bored programmer, a kid with extra time to waste. No different from the wannabes re-creating some rock star's mansion. It's pretty. But empty. Just a distraction.
>>10: Okay.
Lerato
Gaborone has all the soul and personality of a strip mall, or maybe the teenage blank-heads who hang out in strip malls all desperately