It stirs me from the haze of another brutally early morning. At first it's just a whisper in the breeze, almost imperceptible, the patter of hooves across a distant plain. A sparrow chirrups in the trees and takes flight, only to be intercepted and savaged by a sparrowhawk. I can't decide if it's a good omen, or a bad one. I listen awhile, and a clamour begins to swell, a battle roar hot on the heels of a lone outrider, all of it headed very much in my direction.
It was a bad one. War is upon Second Life.
Who else would be the bearer of such grim tidings but self-appointed sidekick and mistress to the masses Emilly O, coming to me from the frontline. "Airlift me in," I tell her, "I've always wanted to cover a warzone." Well, ever since reading
Dispatches. If they ever bring back conscription I want to be a shoo-in for the Press Corp. Conscientious objection looks great on paper, but I bet when it comes to the crunch you end up sloping round town feeling like the only guy not packing heavy artillery.
I check my map on arrival. The sim is heavily populated, and I can see a cluster of bodies to the north. I try to fly in that direction, and spin out immediately, flung away on a crash course with nowhere. Damn my laptop, drunk on my excesses and clogged up with skin, semen and faecal matter. Damn the six Greeks living next door, who sit their with their laptops drinking my precious bandwidth like cheap Ouzo. And damn the Lindens, trying to power their precious grid,
our precious grid, with a hamster on an exercise bicycle. Damn them all, and damn you too. War is hell.
"Bring me back," I tell Em. She TP's me back in, and this time I take a moment to survey my surroundings. It's night time, and the sim is full of dark corners. Nearby I can see a deserted building, the Second Life Developer University. It seems to be abandoned, presumably by students and professors running scared from the dogs of war. Speaking of which, where exactly are the dogs of war? All I can see is a throng of unfeasibly beautiful women, wearing even more unfeasibly pointy hats. And... hang on... isn't that a burning body lying on the ground between them. Oh, and look, there's Em, gleefully circling the fringes of this miniature conflagration, adding fuel to the fire with occasional, highly provocative remarks. Hang on a second. This is no war. This is something much, much worse.
This is a fracas.
A fracas, I immediately construe, with its origins in disorganised religion.
I have an instinctive aversion to most established faiths, but at least for the most part they keep themselves to themselves - and erect attractive buildings - albeit in the name of whatever ludicrous omnipotent force they've conjured up to subserve. The kind of DIY allegorical demagoguery you find in SL is far more insidious.
In here every flea-brained Joe can start their own cult for less than the cost of a hand shandy. What's more, they onlt need drop in on their local strip club to find a more than willing flock, punters and pros looking for something to do between hard-ons. Nothing illustrates this better than the story of Stiv:
"One summery day in Rivula, the itinerant wandering musician Stiv was burned to death by his soon to be nemesis, forever after known as the Anti-Stiv."
"As he lay under the blackjack tables of the Enigma, he reflected that even here, there was gum on the underside of the table. He swore in that smoking moment that if he lived, he would dedicate his life to making sure gum was removed from all places of gambling."
"He died, so the next day he decided on a new goal--be God. God, that night, called forth the people in his holy place, and bade them join him to spread the gospel of Stiv. This is why there's so many sex workers in the Church."
It was Emilly who regaled me with the story of Stiv. Yes, that Emilly. She's a resident of Rivula. And a dancer at the Enigma. Oh, and a member of the church. In fact, you might say, she's a Mary Magdalen to Stiv's messiah, and, in current context, the Helen to his Menelaus.
Stiv is not alone in having found in SL a loyal congregation, where in RL he could have hoped for little more than ridicule and alienation. Take for example the deity Bib. Little is known about Bib, nothing in fact, except that his many followers signal their devotion to his cause by wearing pointy hats, channeling the fruit of their doctrine-addled brains towards the heavens in which he claims to reside. Bib, being a celestial body, requires ambassadors on earth. Ninja Tsiolkovsy is one of them.
Tsiolkovsky, a gentleman of leisure and soldier of fortune, is known for expert martial artistry and keeping snails under his hat. Many have speculated that Bib is but his invention, and that his parables are but crude, plainly derivative devices for soliciting money and liturgical sexual favours from impressionable young women. That is to say, I have speculated to this effect, and I can't believe that I'm alone in doing so.
Tsiolkovsky also happens to be a recent flame of Emilly O. A very recent flame in fact, when you reflect upon the fact that his is the freshly incinerated body now smouldering on the ground in front of me. Even as whisps of smoke rise from his ashes he can be heard imploring his attendant minions not to permit the followers of Stiv to steal and desecrate his body. There doesn't seem to be any danger of that, given that the followers of Stiv have apparently followed him all the way back to Rivula, where they are no doubt banqueting on marshmallows and char-grilled chicken.
Except for, that is, for Emilly O, who was plainly the catalyst for the whole sorry shenanigan. I later learn that she felt it necessary to introduce Tsiolkovsky to Stiv, driven by some perverse logic leading to the cataclysmic conclusion that the metaverse would be made better for this meeting of minds.
Just as I am coming to reflect on the fact that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and that the fall of Bib may have taken place to the betterment of us all, Em makes a desperate attempt to revive hostilities. She invites her trigger-happy cohort Ryce - and his bazooka - to join the fray, and transforms herself into a zombie, intent on devouring the brains of all and sundry. I feel a gentle stirring in my loins, and sense that this is an appropriate moment to withdraw.
Standing on some ethereal plane and raising my eyes to the virtual heavens, I feel confident that neither Stiv nor Bib is frowning down upon me. I feel confident in fact, suddenly and completely, that there is no god.
I bet this sort of shit doesn't happen in World of Warcraft.
