The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans

Xenos: A Novel of Travel and Self-discovery in the Grecian Isles

(1998, Escape Media; 2009, Open Books)

Stones: Art, Love, Intrigue and Magic in the South of France

(2001, Escape Media; 2010, Open Books)

A Winter Garden

(2003, Escape Media; 2010, Open Books)

Sacrifice and the Sweet Life

(2004, Escape Media; 2010, Open Books)

How High The Wall

(2006, Open Books)

Calico Pennants

(2009, Open Books)

Good Morning Corfu

(2010, Open Books)

This book is dedicated to Kelly,

who encourages me each and every day to be the best person I can be,

then gives me the space to try.

HI! MY NAME IS FIZZY OCEANS—at least that’s my emulation’s name here in VL (Virtual Life). I’m an official VL greeter. Let me offer you this welcome package. I’ll just place it in your cache, where you can read it later, at your convenience.

“Where am I?” 

“Ah! I see you don’t have an emulation yet. Or a name…”

“What’s an emulation? Am I going to need one?”

“Oh, yes, my friend. You certainly are going to need one.”

Look! I became a citizen in Virtual Life about a year ago, and these days I spend most of my time here. The first time I logged on to VL, I was like you: uncertain, disoriented, and skeptical. I thought it was very strange here, but really fascinating, too. All these caricatures with strange names walking around in animated environments. I thought to myself: “What a bizarre game!”

But VL is not a game at all, that’s the really interesting thing about it. In some ways it’s exactly like Physical Life, but in other ways it’s totally different. If you like, I’ll show you what I mean.

Of course anybody can log on to Virtual Life. And it’s free to register, too. There are already millions of people in VL. They live in every country in the world: America (like me), Canada, Australia, and South Africa. I’ve met lots of people who live in Europe, and I have VL friends who live in Columbia and Japan and Israel and China! I even know one guy who says he lives in the remote mountains of Greenland! His emulation is called Igloo Iceman, and he tells everybody he meets in VL about how it’s getting warmer than it used to be above the Arctic Circle, and about how these days he sunbathes beside a lake that used to be a glacier. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s transfer to the Hothouse (Orientation Center) and I’ll show you what my life here in VL is all about.

Whoosh
…

Once you’ve registered, the first thing you’ll have to do is to create an EM (emulation). An EM is a digital representation of you—a body, so to speak—so you can walk around and interact with other seedlings (Virtual Lifers). You might construct your EM to look similar to the way you appear in Physical Life, but you don’t have to. You can make your EM look any way you want it to look. You can be male or female, young or old, white or black or somewhere in between. You can have long hair, short hair, or no hair at all. You can have a tattoo. You can change your eye color every day if you want to. And you can dress very creatively in VL, because most of the rules and regulations in PL don’t exist in Virtual Life. (PL stands for ‘Physical Life’, which used to be called RL, or ‘Real Life’, until those of us in VL came to the realization that there was actually nothing any more real about what we have come to call ‘real life’ than other dimensions in which we exist, such as ‘Virtual Life’, where we are now, and NL, or ‘Natural Life’—not to mention FL, ‘Future Life’.) Here in VL we’re not defined or bound by our limitations, physical or otherwise, and we’re not prisoners of our expectations, or the expectations of others. In Virtual Life we can even fly!

One thing that is the same in VL as it is in Physical Life is that we have money. It’s not dollars or euros or yen. In VL the money is called greenshoots. The consortium that created Virtual Life, Seedbed Studios, named the currency. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is that we create your emulation so you’ll look good when you go out to meet people. Let me give you a thousand greenshoots to get you started here in VL. Don’t worry; it’s okay. Here lots of people give stuff away.

So, what are you going to call yourself? Or more specifically, what are you going to call your EM? Right from the start it’s easy to confuse VL with Physical Life, I know. But you’ll get used to that. After a while, you’ll barely notice which world you’re in. Which is more or less the point, isn’t it? Because in VL there are no rules concerning names, and the possibilities are endless. Here you can be the person you’ve always wanted to be, the one you always knew you were! Are you male or female? Are you light or dark? Are you kind and helpful, or mean-spirited and sarcastic? We’ll find out about that in good time, but for now, what will your VL name be?

Ah! Kizmet Aurora. What a splendid name! An EM is born.

Now, what about your gender: male, female, or somewhere in between? In Virtual Life it won’t really matter. Here we’re dealing with something more elemental. Emulations are only symbolic representations to give us a point of reference. In Virtual Life, everything is symbolic: the cities and villages, the landscapes and buildings, the weather, the clothes, the food… None of it is real, at least not in the PL sense. Yet, in another sense, it is even more real than PL. Anyway, you should fashion your EM however you choose—your skin, your hair, your make-up. Construct a man’s body or a woman’s body. Or a eunuch’s, I don’t care! Here in Virtual Life, I know an eleven-year-old kid (or a displaced American nun) who lives in Bolivia (or Brazil) and who walks around VL in the body of a hundred-year-old man. His EM’s name is Omar Paquero. What kind of craziness is that, Kiz?

Virtual Life is a big place. It has hundreds of smaller communities within the greater Virtual Life system, and it would not be possible to visit every VL community, let alone every establishment. In that sense it’s like Physical Life, you have to pick and choose. We connect with others and form relationships as a result of common interests, or through other friends we meet; but just as it is in Physical Life, whom one meets in VL is at least in part a matter of chance. Just as I do in PL, I have a core group of friends here in VL. I have my favorite places too, who doesn’t? I spend most of my time while logged on to VL at a place called Lit-A-Rama. I first decided to explore the REP (Replica) because in Physical Life I’m a voracious reader. What I found there was a community of VL literati. The first EM I met there was Crystal Marbella, and because we had common literary interests, Crystal and I became friends. Together we rented a VL shop that we now call Open Books. We publish classic literature (books no longer protected by copyright and now in public domain) on the worldwide web—books like
Pride and Prejudice
and
Moby Dick
and
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, as well as many others—and we offer them free of charge to anyone who wants to read them. By republishing these books on the Internet, Crystal and I feel that we are doing something to preserve literature at a time when other media—media that is perhaps more glamorous or more compelling in the twenty-first century—threaten to obscure such timeless tales in favor of what? Stories that are devoid of any symbolic value whatsoever? Linear legends in living color whose messages are decidedly black and white? Redundant presentations devoid of metaphor that numb the mind into a smug and self-satisfied complacency so enveloping and so insidious that human behavior begins to mimic such mundane stories? I think you can see, Kiz, why Virtual Life had to be created. The culture cried out for it—not in its everyday voice, but in the voice that once moved shadow over the Face of the Deep. Which goddess was it, anyway, that first created Natural Life? Ki? Gaia? Moria? Caillech? I’m sure I’ll have much more to say about that, about NL, a bit later, but what I’m saying here is that the same creative force that made the world we have always known has also created Virtual Life. Of course the reasons are complex and the implications profound. That’s what we’re here to experience, Kiz. But first we have to create your EM. So I want you to right click your mouse, that’s it! Don’t be timid. Open your menu. It’s time to begin your Virtual Life.

It is certainly true that appearance isn’t everything, Kiz, but it is one way we express our overall identity, isn’t it? That’s true in Physical Life, and it’s true in Virtual Life too. That’s why most people in Virtual Life make an effort to customize the appearance of their EM. When you registered for Virtual Life, Kiz, you got a starter package: various skin tones, hairstyles, and a basic outfit to clothe yourself. But your kit contains only the essentials—not because the Seedbeds are stingy, but because they understand that you must create your emulation from elements that you discover as you move through the various Virtual Life communities. Not only do they understand that it would be utterly impossible for them to create and oversee the entirety of Virtual Life, they understand that it is far better if we, the citizens, create the world in which we wish to live and function. What a concept! Just like Physical Life, Virtual Life is a multi-tiered reflection of mass consciousness. Except here in VL the boundaries are far less constricting than we might find them to be in Physical Life. In VL, for example, there is no pre-determined class structure. In VL, there is no racism or sanctioned religion. There is no gender distinction. In VL, there is no gravity—nothing to hold you down, so to speak. In effect, Kiz, Virtual Life is a fresh start, a place where each of us is free to become the embodiment of his fundamental persona, his higher self, without fear, or reticence, or skepticism, or expectations to conform. We are, after all, only VL emulations, representations of that which Nature made us over the eons. Through our emulations we have the opportunity to express our diversity in ways that have now become stifled in Physical Life. That’s why your appearance is an important part of your Virtual Life, Kiz. So let’s go shopping for all the essentials—a virtual makeover for your vessel in Virtual Life!

“So, where would you like to shop?”

“Shop? I don’t know what you mean, Fizzy. What’s possible?”

“Just about anything is possible in Virtual Life. You can go ‘virtually’ anywhere. You don’t need a plane ticket.”

“I’ve always wanted to shop for clothes in a French boutique.”

“Now you’re talking, Kiz! I know just the place.”

“Where are we going, Fizzy?”

“The Còte d’azur!”

Of course our emulations can walk from place to place once we arrive at a major location within the VL complex, but to move between locations, ‘transferring’ is the only way to travel. Transferring is a lot like the old Star Trek TV series, where the transporter machine decomposes bodies into atoms and then reassembles them at a desired location. Everybody remembers ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ Except here in Virtual Life we don’t need a machine (except our computers, of course). We can transfer from location to location at will. One click and we’re at our desired location. A simple search for clothing boutiques shows us many possibilities, including Riviera West, where we will find all the latest fashions from top French designers, and at a fraction of the price we would pay in PL. A thousand greenshoots is enough to buy an outfit that is
tres chic
and fits your figure perfectly. We simply click and wait to arrive at Blue Fellini or Chalet Madame Sophie.

“But I’m afraid of flying, Fizzy!”

“Have no fear, Kiz; transferring is without sensation.”

Whoosh
!

“We’re arriving now. Are you ready to shop?”

“Everything looks blurry on my screen, Fizzy.”

“That’s because you’re still rezzing.”

“What’s rezzing?”

“The images are still loading. You are waiting for resolution.”

“There’s a unique language here in VL, I think.”

“A few terms relevant to Virtual Life and to computer technology. Nothing you won’t master quickly. Are you rezzed yet?”

“Yes, I think so. What now?”

“Take a look around? Where would you like to shop?”

“Maybe you could show me around; you’ve obviously been here before.”

“I’d be happy to, Kiz. Let’s visit my friend Monique Maçonnerie at Le Petit Chardonneret.”

I know all this must seem strange at first, even a bit shocking. I mean, where else might you be walking down a boulevard and look up to see a man with the head of a cat pass by as if nothing is wrong, as if nothing is out of place? Well, here in Virtual Life nothing
is
wrong, and nothing is out of place. What we encounter here is the result of free expression combined with the facility to implement one’s particular vision—immediately! Right now we’re headed for the quay along the beach.
La plage
, as the French call it. That’s where all the best boutiques are located.

“Fizzy, those emulations lying on the sand are naked!”

“One might choose to be naked in VL, Kiz. It’s not a crime.”

“But why are they just lying on the beach? The water is not real. Nor is the sunshine. It’s not as if an EM can go for a swim, or get a tan.”

“By lying on the beach, they are earning greenshoots.”

“Are you telling me that in VL you can earn money by lying on the beach, Fizzy?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“What a world!”

“Well, we make it what it is, Kiz.”

Here is Le Petit Chardonneret. Shall we go inside? Why not? Well, it looks as if Monique is not here now, but that doesn’t matter. Here in VL the shops are open 24/7. And as you can see, Kiz, the clothes are extraordinary. Look at this dress… And that top… Those shoes are to die for!

“Fizzy, these clothes aren’t real. They’re digital creations. Clipart!”

“That’s more or less correct, Kiz.”

“But why would I pay money to buy clothing that isn’t real?”

“Kiz, do you want your EM walking around stark naked in Virtual Life?”

“Well, I suppose not.”

“Then get into the spirit of this thing. C’mon, buy yourself a new outfit. After all, I’m paying this time.”