In THE SPIRAL

IN T H E  S P I R A L

Connected Stories, Voices and Nano-Fragments from the Virtual Future

“VIRTUAL  INSPIRATION”

by Ade M. Campbell

Original Kindle version : April 2017
Initial version 2006.
Re-compiled for Scribd publication, 2009.
Revised Edition 2015-17
Paperback edition 2023 with minor updates + now on Arweave 2024.

You have reached a gateway... to possible worlds, possible times... for the Convergence is upon us... new media storms to free the senses and unleash the inspiration in our souls... where Art and Technology combine to enhance or corrupt the spiritual growth of connected people within the cyberspaces and web-worlds...
[Neuroceans wikispace 2004]

FYI…

-THE SPIRAL WORLDS
Some of the major SPIRAL ‘SuperWeb-worlds’ / shared virtual spaces (post-Neuroceans) [7XP]
-ARRIVAL IN THE SPIRAL
[From the original design notes]
--THE DOORWAYS...

VOICES / FRAGMENTS...

-TO INTERFACE… WITH THOUGHTS [7XP]
-SUPER-NEWS : EXPERIENCING INFORMATION [7XP]
-GRID LINES: ‘Are Virtual Games the new Church?!’ [5XP]
-A MESSAGE TO MY CLAN [5XP]
-NATTER@THESPIRAL [7XP]
-ROOM WITH A VIEW [7XP]
-THE INTERFACE ARRIVES [7XP]
-THE CYBER-EMPORIUM [12XP]
‘Experiences, Wonders and Revelations’
-BLAKE [5XP]
-ARIELLA [7XP]
‘-I MUST CREATE A SYSTEM’ [3XP]
-A DAY FOR FOCUS [5XP]
-IDENTITY CRISIS [7XP]
-PAINTER [7XP]
-SONOWORLD [7XP]
-SLAP IN THE (PIP) FACE [5XP]
-FALL-OUT [12XP]
-DIODE [5XP]
-SYMBOL EXCHANGE / COMPATIBILITY TEST [5XP]
-ARIELLA (2) [7XP]
-THE GAME CHANGER [12XP]
-NEW SHERWOOD [5XP]
-MEETING IN DREAMELD [5XP]
-EMAIL SUBJECT: Progress Update from New Sherwood Game World [5XP]
-THE MIND FEEDERS [7XP]
-A GLIMPSE OF FOUNTELLION [5XP]
-NEW SHERWOOD 2 [7 XP]
-NATTER-SPHERE
-THE INTERVIEW [7 XP]
-VESTIGES [7 XP]
-GATEKEEPER [7 XP]
-BEYOND THE TOWER [7 XP]

Background (Long) SHORT STORIES...

-RECRUITMENT TO FIRECUBE - head-hunted by a mysterious, powerful avatar -----Walls
--New London
--Introduction: The Fire in the Cube
--The Innervating Way

-THE NEUROCEAN LINE - a new interface is tested with dangerous results
--Ladder
--Testing
--The Beta Island
--Into Thin Air

PART 2....

THE NEUROCEAN LINE (continued....)
--The Way Back

APPENDIX...

-XP SCORE OF READERSHIP + RANKING
-PERSONAL RANKING
-A ‘DISRUPTIVE’ HISTORY : Origins of THE SPIRAL ‘Superweb-Worlds’ [7XP]
-From ‘The ORIGINAL PREMISE for ‘NEUROCEANS’ Project Wikispace (2004) [3XP]
-OUTLINE OF THE (NATURAL) LORE (OF BEING) connected to THE GAME OF BEING
-GAME DESIGN NOTES and INFORMATION [3XP]
-SOME CHARACTERS AND GROUPS [3XP]
-TERMINOLOGY

CYBERPUNK POETRY & Perspectives... [5XP]

POST-CONVERGENCE
CRY OF THE LORDS
CALL TO THRIVE
THE GAMERS
THE UNRELATED SPACE
PRELUDE / OVERWHELMING WORLDS
THE FEARLESS LORDS
THE DARKENED
SCREEN PEOPLE
CONFLICTION
HOLLOW GAZE
THE TECHNO TOWER
ENCLOSURES
YOU ARE ME
ITEMS
THE COMPUTER
E-ODE TO LONE GUN 3O

AUTHOR NOTES
COPYRIGHT

The Spiral Times – orig. site for the books and project

Ade’s Press – author info, updates, art and news

and… search ‘Fountellion’ online….

The terra-stella Techno-Tower -
Tall-standing now and soon to swallow souls -
Is holding close its gold, and gleaming
With absorbefacient songs, and shadows stolen from the world -
We fill with colour there, and turn over, so amazed
To know reflections of ourselves, inside our prisons within glass;
Our distance under stone.

- from ‘The Techno-Tower’, see Appendix

Complete (just by reading) each fragment and level up in Spiral lore….

Varying from the mildly involving to the highly addictive, to the time-restricted, focused and professional, or the truly open-world, these curated Virtual Worlds appearing in The Spiral Tower are widely used and are always changing or updating, reshuffling daily so the most recent ‘space’ appears towards the base.

It’s a towering portal of portal doorways into diverse and permanent, evolving worlds within The Spiral metaverse, to transient and long-lasting worlds, and also to some metaverses beyond its more familiar traits.

Categories are important, although the tower allows for casual, visual perusal of its worlds, via separate ‘staircases’ winding upwards in order of the most recently edited or updated. But a visitor may simply say or whisper a category — or even a world ‘codename’ for a direct portal — to be transported to the related, alternative position upon one of the staircases. Such categories include: Science, Education, Entertainment, Social, Inspiration, Sport etc…

All ‘arrivals’ begin in an impressive, but dimly-lit hallway that allows users time to acclimatise to their interfaces in this default, startup ‘spawn’ location.

START HERE….

They may hear the hushed voices of fellow visitors around them. Light comes from small, glowing candles in a chandelier suspended — not far — above them from a moderately high ceiling. Images, maps and designs from some of the worlds either familiar or soon to be discovered can be seen illuminated in different frames and paintings that change on each arrival. (Helpful hints are available in the room to aid people to quickly familiarise with the unique virtual physics of The Spiral Tower). Users will be automatically dressed (in smart attire dependent on the gender they have chosen for their avatar).

Old-style, scratchy waltz music is playing from somewhere and users will feel ushered or guided towards this temptation and towards another light source. Both come from a large, grand wooden door which has been left ajar at the far end, enough to slow any large numbers of arrivals down to a single file.

As users pass through the door they will be met by the sight of a much brighter, grander open space: a vibrant foyer illuminated by many more candles set at many tables about the room and from a much more impressive series of overhead chandeliers.

It’s a grand setting, and all eyes are to be drawn towards a beautiful spiral staircase in the centre disappearing up into the ceiling, allowing avatars to encircle it at its base.

The music is louder as the arrivals are now attended on by smartly-attired servants. They will take coats or serve virtual drinks. It is a party atmosphere in an old, refined sense. Users may choose to ‘enter’ or be swept up into the ongoing dance of couples simply by issuing verbal commands whispered to them by the servants.

Decoration will change depending on local celebrations and events relevant to a user’s real-world location.

Around the perimeter there are circular tables for people to sit and watch the dancing if they wish and then behind these (and in the corners) the more comfortable armchairs for the more quieter talk. These may also have two-person gaming tables for perfectly simulated old-world games such as chess and backgammon.

By moving among people, engaging in the dance, sitting at tables or visiting the music band (sometimes present on special occasions to replace the large, old gramophone player), newer users are beginning to familiarise with Spiral control over their avatar.

NPCs — computer AI avatars — are present in the guise of the servants and occasionally the more charismatic ‘characters’ that may help populate the environment. These can be interacted with to provide enigmatic help to guests.

The staircase embodies the almost unassuming terminal or access portal to other virtual worlds. But standing at the base of the stairs looking up it’s possible to be lost in the spiralling, fractal shape that disappears above. It is very large and ungoverned — beyond the ceiling of the foyer — by any physical laws. One can make out the beginnings of many doors set into the curves of the walls.

Still in the foyer, users will begin to experiment with the act of floating using the interface. This involves a mix of careful hand gesture — opening and closing of hands — combined with control using the mind (with full Spiral Interfaces). Avatars can choose to float or drift with the music around and above the heads of the dance occurring on the floor. However, the feature of floating is designed more specifically for use with ascending the Spiral staircase in a pleasing and accessible sensation of control and motion, and for discovering the different doors into worlds.

It’s possible to jump directly to a doorway by uttering its relevant name, or, if you have previously visited the spaces before you may be aware of their unique access phrases — so you may jump directly into them.

OTHERWISE YOU MAY ASCEND THE STAIRS AND DISCOVER A NEW DOOR…

(Every day the doors alter their position via a complex algorithm based on longevity, popularity/visitor numbers etc.)

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM  - see more re: XP + Ranking ]

[Ideally, these would link to related stories within this document]

• New Sherwood - the door is sturdy, wooden. A tree-house door. A long, feathered arrow is sticking lightly into it by a well-fashioned tip. It leads into a forest setting in the trees and is the a centre for gaming clans within The Spiral. 

• Sonoworld / Embertime Music and Jam-worlds  - ‘music realms’ - this door is surrounded by musical note and instrument carvings and a slightly hypnotic sound of an orchestra preparing to play can be heard on its step.

• Revel - this is a clean, airlock door into the main base station for the revived space-exploration and survival game simulator universe, amongst other space simulation experiences.

• Ariella - a rich, intricate Elven-style fantasy gateway glows with translucent energy and transcendent sounds and leads to a realm of RPG gaming.

• Super-News - experience information. The virtual news center, feed-spaces and an interactive guide to converse with about topical events and trends.

• Know-Zones (Knowledge Zones) and location of Firecube (elite virtual shapers) -
  these are advanced spaces that enable creating, sharing and demonstration of real-world and virtual skills. They allow for great possibilities in learning through experience, communication and understanding/insight. (The Lore of Being from the Game of Being (updated) is still ‘shown’ here and retains influence.)  

• Dreameld - the doorway is heartshaped in glowing gold and the ‘whispered promises of Eros’ can be heard by lingering beneath its arches. It opens into a romantic realm for dating and couples to assist in ‘the respectful union of hearts and minds.’ 

• Bedlam4 - dark doorways have reported to appear illegally, posing a risk to new or younger users for the experiences they lead to. They are quickly locked down and removed by Spiral curators. Reports of skull-lined, twisted arches or simple, disguised doorways have said to have appeared, putting the fabric of Spiral security into serious question. Users are requested to report suspect doors and to exit the virtual at once if entered accidentally for their own mental safety.

• Fountellion…? - its doorways too have taken different forms including simple, stone doors (contributing to rumours that it forms part of the tower itself) and doors within other worlds. However, there is also a Spiral doorway: it is lined with animal-carvings, natural motifs and ivy leaves covering almost completely an iron garden gateway. It is believed to be a ‘secret garden’; a closed beta world of nature, in a perpetual state of development and as yet full release date is unknown... 

I was having trouble finishing my writings about my virtual worlds, especially with so much going on in my real world. For all the promise and the ideas they held, I just could never find the time to finish them. So, I thought; why bother to finish them? Maybe other people might. Maybe I would, one day, if they were really worth it. Besides, beginnings are more interesting than endings, because at the beginning there can be so many possibilities, so many paths to guess at... And besides, ‘endings’, well... they always lead on to new beginnings, and rarely finish the way they do in real life.

But it’s also the case that beginnings may start to overlap with others… especially, I found, the ones about the latest interfaces, and their eager, hungry new users... 

I liked reading the breaking tech stories in the morning, seeing how, everyday, technology was changing people’s lives, either imprisoning them or inspiring them via new ways to communicate, express, to work and to belong, and, for those purposes build certain machines and interfaces. And, just as I liked to read, so did I start to find people to write about or write for. Coffee always helped, maybe too much (and a meeting with an old colleague named John Leaven also helped – a great deal in fact.)

Gradually, I started to find that these people began to reappear and have various parts to play in the way that certain technology – like its powerful interfaces – began to change, even overtake, as well as to empower, both in subtle or sudden ways, their own lives and the lives of others. 

These ‘players’ gradually began to form a timeline in particular - ok, a beginning and an end, I suppose – in the continuing story of how our natures fare, when they enter into enhanced spaces for desire, learning, wonder, inspiration, business… and are left to wander there.

And so it’s these writings that fall or have fallen loosely into the story, or the idea, of one, major, ultimate interface… The Spiral Interface…

Even as I write I feel the call of my own gear, hanging up - ready - in its special place, for continuing an access into a more instant, ‘super-time’ of building and communicating, working and belonging - actual interfacing - and cease this game of writing and thinking. Although, writing has its own pace in the formulation of thoughts. It will always - I hope - be a most potent medium for reflection. But it’s also just one more path back into the playing, where many play blind, knowing only a little of why, or how, or what it is they are playing… 

Just like in that old line from an Paul Simon song: 

Half of the time we're gone
But we don't know where,
And we don't know where…

You see, we’re all playing ‘games’, these reflections, these experiences of nature, that can test our nature. They are reflections where we apply our nature and our skills, however simple or complex. They are all linked and are a part of Life - that living game we all must play…

Take me back to The Spiral...

Of course, I feel that summons too, but will stay a little longer, lost in thought. For maybe it’s helpful to know or share a little about ‘the why’ and ‘the what’, if I can convey something of them. 

You can stay too, if you can spare the time, away from your game…

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Beyond the Super-news Door within the Spiral there are no physical limits to architectural possibility; no boundaries with how to receive and explore the breaking events, ideas and opinions crackling across the globe. 

The overall impression is of clarity and glass, transparency and enclosure, as the structures vary between open, square platforms and closed, focussed ‘pod spaces’ that resemble plant buds with windows. When entering it is almost like some polished tree, or some organic, interconnected plant. Avatars are either seated or quick-moving as they work on all the live broadcasting activity and extra content that the world seems to require. 

Before you choose to enter such a hub, in a small nod to the past, a young, scruffy ‘avabot’ stands outside the door reading out headlines. The boy stands on a stack of virtual newspapers and his hair moves from the simulated breeze coming from the nearby portal. He carries a paper rolled up and calls down it from time to time. Other shreds of pages blow across a cobbled, foggy street that sets the outside scene, as if the doorway was set in pre-war London. If you hold out your hand your avatar will be thrown a copy, and on opening it there are - in this old-fashioned, broadsheet format - many customisable story feeds, videoclips and numerous options for interaction. Tapping thrice with one finger on a story allows you to jump ‘into’ the headline, clip or article  - and into a space within Super-news designated for all the work unfolding on the chosen topic. 

It’s another feature of this living, breathing organ through which to access coverage and debate; the bright, essential evolution of news coverage blossoming in the new, immersive virtual fabric.  

I’ve only been there a few times. 

No, unless you work with news you wouldn’t have to go there. Today, as usual, I just jumped directly into my personal ‘feed-space’...

FEED-SPACE

Here, the bigger stories mix with my own interests and appear in a floating grid of moving images, easily rotatable with voice and gesture. Selecting an item will cause my headset to conjure a huge, all-encompassing ‘presence’ inside a changing landscape of footage, where a recent story occurred, or still unfolds - live - all around. In every one it features a smart lady dressed in white. She always appears in the midst of it, and I can make her small or large, or just move her aside.

This is my News-Guide and it was her - who I’d only vaguely customised - that I needed. Not only did she recount to me what I wanted to see and hear about the world - tell me about any aspect of a story - but she could converse with me also. I pulled her out of the default story.

Everything faded to white so that the ceiling was indistinguishable from the floor. But her figure remained visible, sitting on a simple white sofa now, looking at me expectantly; pleasantly. 

“Any recent article about Benjamin Fielding,” I said to her and, also, the empty space around her, filled only with possibility. 

A virtual paper appeared in her lap and she began reading it out, only without looking at it. Images and helpful graphics appeared occasionally behind her and the sofa to help illustrate the content, some of which had been designed specifically to accompany the piece. 

I don’t often extract stuff but today I grabbed the article from her and threw it out onto my linear blog - here - for later thought and comment…

VETERAN GAMER FINDS NEW KEY INTO ‘FOUNTELLION’! LEARN ALL ABOUT THE NEW ‘FIELDING FRAGMENT’… 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Can people handle the absorbing potential of new tech when it’s now so ‘up close and personal?’ To counteract cleverly some of the emerging power - and danger - that potentially overpowering new technology is bringing to the eyes of a largely media-saturated, over-connected society, it seems the secretive Firecube Academy is releasing a MMOVRSW - a new, Massively Multiuser Online Virtual Reality Super World. Basically, an antidote in the form of a new game.

They have been working ‘around the clock’ not only to acclimatise users to cutting edge Virtual Reality interfaces but also to elevate the potential of the entire industry. They have stated that they are now ‘fully motivated to raise the bar’ for those utilising either the latest brainwave-harnessing kits to the most readily available headsets from the street. Syla Rooker, (as her avatar is known), thought to be a deeply influential figure in the Academy has said that they are effectively working ‘to save an industry from self-destruction’. So how will they pull that off?

To be fair, the experience looks set to be an enthralling, spiritual masterpiece that presents also an uplifting - and consolatory - design for living: a green code based on the natural world. Completing its tasks in collaboration with other players will unlock mystical pages from the ‘Lore of Being’, presenting not only relevant information for a player’s in-game progression but also a record of how that progression is uniquely achieved. 

You can already overhear the conversation in the physical and virtual playgrounds as young adults compare game notes, captures and recordings. Another super-experience to provide a personal mark of status - only this time a more nature-based, or ‘Source-inspiring’ one. 

Its green ‘code of conduct’ already appears to be - just as the designers intended - finding itself being scrutinised and even adopted (pre-open beta release) not just by big kids but all manner of everyday folk outside of the game. 

So… this leads to another interesting question. Is this the start of a new, harmless religion? Are these game-worlds the technological successors to old world church communities where we go to escape and be inspired in the company of others? And more… The bigger question is how much of an antidote will this Game of Being prove to be, and has it arrived at a perfect time to help staunch the widespread escapism of just so many games and visions competing for our time, our senses - and our souls? Yes, we could even be singing its songs and talking of its great game heroes and mages for years to come…’ 

Natters: #gridlines #spiralwritings #firecube

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1. Us

Today there are many people living on Planet Earth. I don’t know for sure what a lot of them are doing most of the time. Judging by TV, there seems to be a lot of strange ideas out there. But I’d reckon that most of them are trying to survive and occupy themselves, hopefully in collaboration and in harmony with others and their environment. One way or the other, they’re hopefully trying to feel a part of something, trying to contribute - in some way - while also fulfilling and reconciling their natural desires and behaviors. Maybe even, they’re managing to gain a harmony and security through a bit of respect gained within their communities… Maybe…

What I do know – because I’ve tried to understand it from those older worlds called ‘books’ – is where we’ve come from. The great past. Massive and silent, now. It holds many secrets and many stark truths… and one thing is sure. We came from tribes. For 6 million years we were hunting and gathering. Then only 11, 000 years ago, farming came along. Now... we have large societies and our own mini-tribes within it, often fragmented; joining and rejoining as we restlessly drive about the place. For such a long time limited by physical geography, now we are trying to belong in a world of easy travel and communication, separated from geography and from need - and struggling to find context and meaning, within the modern, technology-powered civilisation.

Our tribe – what we call our clan - at this time is mostly scattered in the real world, but we are united by the worlds online. I have over 100 friends on my list. But only 50 of these I see regularly as I connect to the Virtual Worlds and share leisure and working time together. There is one word and one sign that we share; that unite us. One title. 

Firecube. Secret Builders and Artists of the Virtual. 

A great strength is that we actually do know each other, offline (from ‘meetups’ or ‘get-togethers’), and we rarely add new members. We are everything social media wanted us to be: loyal, intimately acquainted, creative and brilliant. And we are deeply collaborative.

That is, we were. Only, perhaps, for a brief, shining time. For now, so many cracks are appearing. There is restlessness and secrecy in the group. Things are fragmenting. A final straw is that we have now lost our youngest and brightest. Ben Fielding. Of course, Blake and Rosa, have gone with him.

Has something happened to them? I cannot think of an answer, at this time. Have they gone rogue? Why would Ben go rogue? He was one of us. One of our small tribe in a “brave” new virtual world. But he would not sell our secrets to a non-secretive world. I fear for them.

2. Implications

They had been working on great projects in the Virtual Worlds, in the Neuroceans. In particular, applying an interface that, connecting intimately with the mind, can be made to manipulate the fabric of super-environments, their sights and their sounds. We are not sure yet how much this is connected to their disappearance, just as we’re not yet sure of the precise implications of these developments... 

For with such conjunctions, shaping into new things, there are great concerns over how we should limit the emerging power, at the same time as focus on and increase its potential. Our work up until now has been ensuring positive experiences and constructive games from without, such as the Game of Being, via coding and design… and now we have new tools that overturn these techniques. Now we have the power to develop from within and more directly wield control over the elements that will create a virtual space.

However, despite this, since my last entry I have discovered a few unsettling things, not any one reason and I have thought about this further…

I don’t believe the cause could have been any one thing. It is a more due to a tide, like a tendency in nature. 

They left because they have had a bright vision… and they must grow… I have found fragments in their previous projects, certain traces...

So now we will see. Maybe one day they will make contact. When they’re ready they may need us...for they will always remain a part of our clan, which will also grow, as the Neuroceans grows. Some of you are growing too, and in this I ask only one thing. That you keep our flame burning. And if Firecube is to change in order to evolve then so it must, although for us founders that will be painful.

For now, we will watch, and we will wait… 

S.R.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

'Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.'
- from poem 'The Next War' by Wilfred Owen

He decided it was time for a break. Releasing his head - and mind - from the virtual testing console in the Division, Dr. Benjamin Fielding let his eyes adjust to the mellow light, taking a sip of dark, totally cold coffee. He couldn’t resist tapping some keys and bringing up an info-site on a nearby terminal. Rubbing tired eyes and forehead he just needed to check the noise in the Nattersphere…

@spiratimes: The Tower Rising: report on the latest Game Worlds arriving in The Spiral Tower #spiralworlds

@spiraltimes: Users still acclimatizing well to the new Interface #spiralinterface

@spiraltimes : Rumours of a nature game world buried within The Spiral... follow for more...! @superworldnotes

@spiraltimes : a mystical nature game world takes Spiral users back to their roots... and changes their games?...rumours here @spiraltimes

Good news, Ben figured. He was excited at this stage. A little.  It’s starting. And that meant something else too, now that all the doors had been locked; the keys scattered and ‘sown’. It meant it was at last time for him to go. To disappear. Finally… to disconnect. As far as this was possible in a super-connected age. 

He let his mind wander further as he gazed towards the nearest, non-intensive source of light. Would it be possible? To die is no easy thing, after all. But then, he wasn’t... dying. But... changing. And one can only change when one has finished something, or if one must escape something, in order to alter the immediate environment and see clearly again, to continue again... even begin something - brand new… 

He started his long, routine walk out of the complex, to the place where - only he - was permitted to smoke.

It might be possible to change environment in the virtual, to see many things; many perspectives. But even there you couldn’t feel a new environment. The real breath of the Source. The breath and the legacy of death in everything, despite how hard they had worked to simulate even that… 

Oh, but death was ‘in there’ alright, but it was... very different… old chum…

The fabric of Fountellion still illuminated this, starkly… even to him…

And it would so to others, he was sure.

When he arrived he took a deep drag and closed his eyes in the warm light, mostly unaware that at this moment another man - quite some distance away - was also smoking a cigarette and looking forwards and... outwards. A much younger man named Dan Harvester, tired gamer seeking a new world that just might change his game...

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

News update @spiralwritings: 

ENTER THE NEW AND IMPROVED VIRTUAL

By now we’re hearing a lot of incredible hype coming out of ‘The Spiral’, as the virtual tower of new and incredible virtual ‘trips’ is still being called. The success of ImmerTech's Interface [V-space link] in uniting – and breathing new life into – virtual worlds and spaces has been fast and widespread. The legacy of the Neuroceans lives on, but the memory of its negative elements seems already distant. Will this negativity re-surface after the dust in the Spiral Worlds has settled?  Time will tell. Nothing but reports of praise and wonder are appearing daily onto the V-web on the range of experiences accessible; everything from scientific illuminations, exciting creative platforms to vibrant, constructive game worlds. In fact, the Spiral has ‘constructive’ and ‘sensible’ written into its whole DNA. New additions to the tower are carefully screened and so far the positive response and immersive capabilities have far outweighed any negatives. The ‘positive Spiral’ tower is growing well in its infancy. Let’s hope it proves invulnerable from turbulence inside or out as user-numbers and investment look set to increase. 

So you don’t own a Spiral Interface yet? Well, if you’ve not found yourself able to drift up the enchanting, signature staircase, gazing over the intriguing doors and portals that line it, we’ve been talking to a user who found – and opened - a very strange one indeed…

‘I’ve seen many things so far ‘inside’ but on this visit I noticed a very unusual doorway. This is what made me stop and check it out. It was kind of a lot more humble than any I’ve so far seen. Many of the doorways are well-decorated or shaped in relation to the worlds they give access to. An Egyptian space, recreating a period in that ancient civilization will obviously have hieroglyphs and motifs surrounding or forming the style of the entrance. However, this one was just… wooden. Simple. It had nothing on it, except for the faintest trace of ivy leaves embedded in the rep[resentation]. I lifted the basic latch and it actually creaked open like any old, heavy wooden door needing some work on the hinges. That was even stranger. Then what I saw straight away was just so out of place. I mean, it was a basic, grey room with a window in the far wall that was just an opening, much like a castle or something.  I went over and looked out and was surprised not to be able to see anything but... white clouds. It was very windy when I put my head out and for a moment I wondered if I was supposed to jump. I dismissed this: my instinct even in the virtual was to keep my well-configured avatar intact. However, I did try and see if I could make anything out below. 

A wall dropped beneath me like any wall with a window and I thought I might have seen some kind of land far below – a green countryside, or possibly the tops of tall trees – but I didn’t really bother to look much more. There were voices nearby which was strange as it felt high up. Actually they sounded more like vague whispers and I kept catching a name like ‘found-bellion’ or ‘found-gellion’. I thought it all must be a mistake or traces from some world overlapping or still in progress or testing. My immediate response was of slight annoyance and boredom! Is this the sort of virtual experience I’m going to be paying for in the future that will fill up the Tower, to make it seem there are lots of doors, when actually there are mostly empty ones? For the first time I had doubts so I wanted to leave quickly to go and open another door. The next one, however, was amazing: a Know-Zone re-creating a classic kids book with readings and scenarios re-created gloriously in the virtual: Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.  

I’ve not seen anything like the bland room since. Later on I remembered it and thought it significant. I realized – thinking back - that the room walls shared the same colour as the staircase and walls of the tower, where the portals are inlaid. So the general effect when I entered the room was that it belonged to the tower itself. Had I seen inside an actual room in the Tower? This would then mean that the view from the window would have been an actual view outside, the height corresponding to how many stairs I had ‘climbed’ before. This makes more sense and now I wished I had jumped from that window! Had I seen outside – beyond - the Spiral Tower itself?’

The Development Division had no comment when we tried to reach them about this mysterious room. Glitch? Or mystery? An actual view to a hidden land outside the Tower? At this stage no-one seems to know. There are rumours that the Game of Being has been upgraded and may shortly appear in development but no-one knows how and if something may already exist… virtually!

Follow us and check Natter: #spiralmystery

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

He’d opened the box, offline at first, treating it like a sacred artifact; being very careful not to tear it… anywhere.  After he’d laid out the contents on his bedroom floor; after he had taken out the hardware with its scent of freshness; the compact headset, the light casing of the visor and its crisp instruction manuals; after he had cradled the main components in his hands he sat down on the floor and just… looked.  He took in the gleaming, rounded shapes waiting for energy; for new life to enter them. It had never before been fired-up, at least not by many ‘mortals’, i.e. outside ImmerTech's post-production tests. It belonged to him now; he needed to take a moment to think carefully. 

He tried not to think about the cost, or what it might cost him later on, in other ways. What was immediately exciting was the tiny amount of people - among the teeming millions of people - who would be staring at a similar sight. Staring at the next major upgrade for the future of immersive capability for the mind. The next chapter in the chronicle for greater interaction with: information, experience, learning, concepts… and other people. He still remembered the early ads on TV for the first versions: This is not a fad. Take a look into the future.

He knew he would have to carefully re-box it all, for his online audience later that night. He’d be filming the ‘unboxing’ webcast, of course, straight after his barbecue chicken pizza. Maybe he’d include the pizza; it might make an amusing, casual addition to the big event.

The ‘next future’ had now come. So many tekkies were guessing across the medias at the impact of this interface; the next commercial movements. Many of them had tried and tested it; used it for weeks or months for the purposes of trials and magazine articles… but so few in comparison had actually owned it; pre-ordered it through industry contacts and brought its power – as he had now - into the sphere of their own, everyday lives. And from this evening it would be up to him to report on its ‘real’ capabilities; its power to change his life and others around him. What power would it bring him - if any at all - and at what price? Who was really controlling who with this custom-made, spidery device attaching itself intimately to his own, more honest, more natural interface? What visions had been created for it - so far - to render it useful or powerful at all?

Well, he knew for certain that it would be his ticket to ‘The Spiral’, as they were calling it. Ever since the notorious – mysterious - incident with the Neuroceans with its many rumours there had been wide changes including a large migration and upgrade onto a new network. This was visually accessed via the ‘Spiral Tower’ filling with doors to worlds each designed in-line with the traits of this new interface. He’d be able to see inside this tower now, for himself; to see the bright portals to the new worlds of the future; the continuing virtual future…

What would these visions be? Would the overhaul have just made impressive enhancements or would the migrated worlds now feel very different? If not, perhaps he wouldn’t have to bother with any of them; he could send the device back to its makers and go outside, into his garden to spend evenings under the mellow sun. 

It was unlikely. If the rumours were true, the features of this interface looked set to be incorporated into every Virtual World currently available. These spaces either existed already, or you could say were locked in books and films and all the older media. But they would be brought closer; to become more vivid; more real. Some visions you could imagine but not fully; not these new realms.  They would have to be seen to be believed; to be made real; to be made resonant and relevant to the real world - or else kept hidden: divorced and escapist. There would be winners and losers:  the rulers and the shapers and their victims; those lost amongst the riches and distractions. And there would be glorious insights; ‘wonderful things’ just like the opening of tombs long buried…

Yes, the worlds of the past would be brought into the present, times from the dinosaurs to the moon landings so we could re-live our progress and inspire the new.  3D realms of information relating to every subject bringing information to life for understanding and training. It would be a great tool for survival; for practicing the numerous arts of survival in a complex society or a primitive tribe. Like the Game of Being, there would be worlds preparing us for realities, and realities to replace our worlds. And would we become more real in these spaces existing beyond our walls and the walls of space and time?  

Another thing he knew about the - initially - big, technological ‘game-changers’ in both hardware and online innovations, is that very often the old systems took a long time to be replaced, if ever. There is room for new things. Especially in the case of software, and particularly ‘social networking’ platforms – they must stand the test of time. They must fill a deeper need in humanity as it continues to try and transcend space and time; to reach out in closer and more immediate forms of vision and sound. Such a test would be no easy thing to stand.

For this gadget in front of him - ‘The Spiral Interface’ - its time started… this evening. 

And one more thing he knew for sure, as he cast one, final look over the contents of the pristine, sharp-edged box, was that his viewers were going to love his next video, and his hits were going to get one hell of a boost. He hoped so! It was an investment and it would need to pay off.

He sighed. The pressure had begun to steal already some of his sense of wonder and privilege. 

Yes… now he would have to play his cards right.

Preparatory Notes:

‘Unboxing’ notes for the new SPIRAL INTERFACE for my followers.
Remember Online Presence angle: a wry, amusingly skeptical view on new technology and VR, hiding worthwhile reviews.

Include: 

- Description of all the components, demonstrate how to hook up. Easy to install?
- My expectations, comparison with Neuroceans interfaces + design.
- Technical specs, subtle features and promises.
- Background poster behind me on wall: The Spiral Tower.
- Promotion for blog etc: Come with me! Sign up! As we test out all the features and review web worlds and what the interface may bring.
- Remember to say: help me on my quest to uncover the truth behind rumours about a mysterious game world.
- Finish by turning on the equipment…

NATTER-CAST:
@spiral - Go on then show me the real Innerspace [link to Video] 
#unboxingspiralinterface #spiralinterfacedevelopment #vrworldsblog @superworldnotes  

BLOG ENTRY:
Post Title: The Interface Arrives !
[‘Super World Notes’ website FEATURING UNBOXING VIDEO]

Hi everyone! Today I’ve been so excited! Yes… it arrived!… And now I’ve opened my custom-made Spiral Interface and taken a first look into the future! Who’s coming with me?! Check out the video exclusive here: [insert VIDEO]

Check the video to see what’s contained in the long-awaited box of Immer-tricks. Shall I send it back to them and complain? Or keep it under the bed? Yes, it’s the upgrade for VR access and the Neuroceans from ImmerTech… but what else? With limited access to any of the worlds we’re used to, what’s it gonna be good for? How does it work and what does it improve on? Where is the new Game of Being? And what on earth is this thing called The Spiral Tower? 

Well… follow this blog – and me! - into super-space, to find more about the much-hyped Spiral, and what exactly lies… inside… 

Find out more about what has happened to the Knowledge Zones, Ariella and the Sonoworld? What will the Game Grid become? And just how tame are the so-called pleasure-realms? Are we going to see anything we’ve not seen before? Do we stand on the threshold to new powers of control, understanding and virtual collaboration?

More reports to follow…

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That day was to be – literally – a game-changer, but it had started in a mental mist.

Doubts and daydreams…

It was morning, he remembered, and again his thoughts had been interfering with his equilibrium, standing at the counter of his small, quirky, real-world games shop. It had a genuinely welcoming sign above the door, and a logo with a magical holy grail linked with a VR headset.

Welcome, Friend, to THE CYBER EMPORIUM: ‘Experiences, Wonders and Revelations. 

Choose your Next Immersion… wisely!’

He had just lit some incense, so the spicy, smoky tendrils – perhaps too many - had drifted across his vision. The chosen aroma was supposed to be helping but he had still been… distracted. He’d gazed around the dim interior, his eyes almost following the lazy smoke, drifting around titles of cyber-worlds he’d visited, (and mostly completed), around frozen figurines of archetypal characters and collector’s edition game-world maps, tied in elegant scrolls or displayed in large, rustic wall-frames. He’d heard his store called a boutique before, by the more patronizing customers, but where everything these days was online or in the V-Cloud, his shop actually existed too, tucked away from a busy high street. And it wasn’t really old-fashioned; it was completely ‘overlaid’ and perpetually open for business on the Virtual Web. He was quite proud of his avatar there (or at least, the Mage’s robe he wore) standing mysteriously 24/7 in virtual space, doing the same job of representing and selling old and new games. Not just ‘games’ though: rich experiences; feasts for the mind and soul and super-senses… 

On that particular day, however, he had been feeling his middle-age. 

It was about time then, that a game-changing day should come along. The day of the mysterious visitor.

Dear God I hate blogging…

He recalled that he’d been trying to concentrate at his terminal; trying to finish a blog entry about a new open-world game adventure involving witches, demons etc... It was not what he really liked to stock in his shop; not anymore. If there was one theme hidden behind the titles on offer, the range of experiences for purchase, from the retro to the cutting edge; it was that he was looking for something not just new and more totally immersive, but… closer to Life. Not just realms of pure fantasy, but something that illuminated more about this reality… who we are, what we are… where we are going. More recently, many of his selected titles had more spiritual ideas or were meditational realms to try and re-acclimatize people to the Source, inspire them about their world, or its past. Especially, he seemed to be more enthralled by games that revealed something about oneself or illuminated ways of seeing the world. And his whole store ethos was - perhaps detrimentally - coming to reflect that trend.

His hopes for these kind of virtual titles now rested in The Spiral, with its vivid interface and connected worlds rapidly becoming the most popular thing he sold access to. Before this it had been the Game of Being, the closest thing so far to his ultimate game-world, but that had been taken offline following the ‘fall’ of the Neuroceans servers. Many of his items relating to it still sold well - and some of them were not for sale. He knew that his Cyborium was a responsible store, and although at certain times of the year his servers strained with downloads, he never had any sights set on expansion. You could be sure you were purchasing something worthwhile, anything from the latest geographical experiences (such as driving games modelled on real cities), or astronomically-correct space simulators or dinosaur-hunting adventures (with the most vivid and accurate paleontological re-creations yet).

He had put his thoughts on pause. Suddenly the old door bell had sounded on closure and - looking up from his screen, with its mocking cursor - he noticed an old, white-haired man had just entered the store, calmly. It was not any of his usual, real-world customers.

No, not at all…

And in the days that followed this visitor - their brief encounter - he’d replay many times in his mind, either in the early hours of the morning or flashing back to him, deep inside the Island…

For one thing, it wasn’t exactly common to have a real-world customer. Most of his trade was done on the V-web like any software store. However, he used his real space more as an office and showroom for particular customers who liked to buy the more exclusive items. He either knew or remembered most of these visitors. He liked them, for they were enthusiasts and very often motivated or inspired him in his occupation, his dedication to the virtual. 

In fact, he had gone to some lengths to make it a welcoming shrine to this dedication. There were old gaming posters, ‘ancient’ console games, early PC game boxes and a magical-themed book library (with leather sofa) for famous rulebooks and companions, or accounts written by legendary designers or coders. You could get a more real sense of how far games as a medium had evolved. Towards the back he had desks and hardware for when he found the time or energy to host retro gaming sessions (dedicated to one or two classic titles) or even board games.  The whole place had a mystical slant, so he’d often light candles and have ambient music playing or famous in-world soundtracks. On the walls, or dotted about, were cool, ‘cyberpunk’ features such as recycled game controllers and replicas of signature ‘world items’ and trophies. It was partly a mini-museum that celebrated the greater, more spiritual or more intelligent creations of the video-gaming past and present. 

And my visitor that day – a legend in his own time – had come to him? It was still so curious!

To the kids who came by, he would also act as a ‘real’ presence or ambassador; a guide to the vast range of classic and new experiences, continually advanced by the latest interfaces. There was always a chance he could inspire the world-builders – the demiurges - of tomorrow. When not sharing tips, releasing secrets or walkthroughs, he tried to inspire them with immersive experiences that would prepare them for their future dreams, even suggesting avatars and identities that might be suitable to their interests. And he would tell tales of his own adventures in the Online Realms, as a former tester at the Academy. 

Although that was a long time ago… 

The elderly man meanwhile seemed to be taking his time (he’d liked him already), and seemed currently engrossed in one of the old companions on the opposite side of the store. 

I wonder if he’d actually been looking at anything…

He’d abandoned his blog and waited, to see if he was going to be asked anything, but nothing was forthcoming. So his mind had wandered again, still questioning the nature of his vocation…

Yes, he’d seen many things, both real and illusion, and often he had trouble distinguishing them, in his memories. Since the dawn of the Virtual and the first potent interfaces had emerged, such new gateways for the senses had led him into even more heightened interaction with man-made reflections of the world. The dangers he knew too; of seeing too much, knowing too much, without a proper foundation. Kids these days, especially the ones from broken down homes and families, could just get lost and damaged mentally or physically.

The only eternal danger is the danger in ourselves…

The tendrils of smoke – just like his thoughts - were now drifting up and loosening in the slowly spinning sails of the overhead fan. Increasing the fan speed was too damn noisy, and wouldn't alleviate this heat much anyways. 

At the end of the day, we are grounded by our own natures; a sense and need for meaning, or simple purpose; to glean success, or balance - freedom - before we become worn down by the world.

This quote that came to him sounded like it was from The Game of Being, and now it applied to him. Where did I start out? He had started as an artist, and he’d thought then that it was only a humble thing, with meaning only in the transitory appreciation of it with others; sharing in the beauty of the world.

But it was never just this. For art is also about influence, about communicating possible effects and influence to others; sharing the timeless signs and forces of our species with the world with one another. From the walls of the Egyptian tombs to the screens in our pockets. Reducing the world. Containing it. Knowing it. Controlling it.

And, as he gazed about his Cyber-emporium, (which, before technology might have been a bookshop, and, before books, an art gallery or some religious mural), he realised how far his outlook - embedded too inside of it – had changed. Inside this shrine to digital experience and training, systems of mastery to bring power to the user - and so many portals into cyber-worlds of summoning and spirit - was a cautionary note.

For Man had extended the nature within him now for ages, had searched and discovered ways to communicate, express, belong and be as one – safe and individualistic – and now as one global tribe of tribes. And this impressive pace of progress continued – ever faster - conquering space and time. And it had become – these days – his quest to bring a positive influence to Art itself; to this mastery of nature by Man; and likewise to nature’s eternal mastery of Man.

Out there - in the Virtual Web-worlds and its new, golden Spiral Tower - had we gone too far already, affecting the careful balance of mood through flights of escapist fantasies? And coupled with this: the many cases of those mixing hard drugs with VR. Even he, a one-time tester, had trouble shutting out the memories of his own numerous intoxications while patched in. His senses had frequently OD’d on the rhythms of nature that seemed so often amplified into the soul, through these safe, idealistic, supplicant, unrestricted worlds. It began as harmless fun, until the pendulum of emotion swings painfully back again to a more shaky centre -  the everyday centre - where reality must function. It struck him as sad, where the young look for release and inspiration they are continually tricked with new fantasies and dark delusions of what life is about. Many a Superworld can only really be said to be stealing their time and casting strange, distorted spells of Nature’s light upon them. 

For you can see too much and wish for something lost along the way.

His best cyber-hand still sometimes shook despite many sessions of innervation, a form of ‘re-connection’ for the nerves inside.

But… he must keep going. The games he proffered and the worlds he proscribed had been filtered - by his hand - a little more towards teaching the world through beauty, teaching communion with nature by example; suggesting outlooks. His titles would not lodge too deeply in the muscle of the mind and shape it too permanently; hinder it in its role as a child of evolution and the Source; the mother-world. Their influence would aim to touch it, or inspire it; to sooth it or even restore it. His Cyborium - so he was resolved - would stay open to the world but only in service to it. This had become his updated mission.

‘Ok…’ he thought, and sighed, feeling resolved again.

Scarred, wise and wary, he would continue to do what he could to banish his own inner demons, and to keep down or out those demons hidden within worlds...

And that must have been why he’d been chosen… invited… The work of so many years rewarded on a single morning…

For the old man had appeared at his desk, jolting him out of his renewed intentions. As he found himself looking into the man’s calm expression he had remembered his face from somewhere… he just couldn’t think where at that time. A wizardly face, if ever there was one, certainly a professor of some kind. But he would find out very soon.

“Nice place you have here.” The guy had a pleasant voice and manner too. Unassuming.

“Why, thanks… Be welcome!” he croaked, clearing a dry throat. “I guess I’m… pretty proud of it... these days.  What can I help you with?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I thought I’d be able to help you.”

“Ah… ok,” and he’d said something like: “That’d actually be a welcome change.”

They’d laughed briefly for a moment. What game would he be selling though? Most likely, he’d thought, a very independent game. Maybe he was still programming, in retirement, still trying to give something out to the game industry. But he had seemed more self-assured than this, despite the glint in his eye.

The stranger continued: “It might be easier… if I just mention that I’d prepared you a quick email.” He held up a store card briefly, so he obviously had the address already. “It’s more of a key… and an invitation.” He paused, checking his mobile device briefly. Looking up again he said, “I didn’t want to send it until I’d told you about it first, personally. For one thing, I thought it would be more polite. And I just don’t want you to delete it that’s all… because I… hope… you’re… going to agree… that doing that… would prove a shame. Overall.”

It had seemed interesting. “Well sure…” he’d replied, simply. “That’s fine by me. I await your message, sir.”

“I’m a follower of your ‘Notes from Super-Worlds’ blog too, you see, and your reviews on Spiral worlds.  So before I go, I should say thank-you, and again, for this great place. I hope I get a chance to visit again… sometime.” He looked away, talking now to the light coming in from the front windows. “I’m so busy… at the moment. And you’ll understand why.” 

The man seemed to be getting lost in the light from the storefront. And meanwhile he had felt - properly - intrigued now. Possibly this guy wasn’t just another time-haunted, indie-game peddler, fishing for promo. But as a further reply he’d only said something ordinary, like “Why, thanks...and, don’t worry, I’ll look out for the invite.” Partly it was because the familiar, slightly edgy old man was already on his way out.

But he had turned back. Nodding once he’d said “Good-bye for now then… at least, from in this world,” and the words came with a warm, genuine smile, before he turned to go. 

And he’d been right they would meet again, but it would be in the virtual, in a very different setting. 

“So long,” he replied. “Maybe you’ll get more time next time. Thanks for coming by. “

The white-haired man had already reached the door, but there was a chuckle and a “Hope so!” before he’d gone. 

The low sighing from the fan above was once more the only sound and the incense was beginning to die out. The old door had started to close problematically again, so he’d gone to check it was now completely shut. By the time he’d resumed his post behind the counter, a light notification sound sang out from his mobile device.  His particular sound signaling a new email. He picked it up eagerly and read the new message, subject: ‘A Personal Invitation…’

My name is Professor Ben Fielding and I’d like to invite you to experience our ‘Game’.

It remains currently in a Closed Beta stage but will remain in a continual state of ‘live development’. As a dedicated spokesman for a certain kind of Game-world my team and I feel sure that you’ll accept our invitation to try it for yourself, along with the few others in number so far invited. 

Possible errors and residual bugs together with any suggestions may be reported by vocal commands when you have ‘acclimatised’ to the surroundings.

Please ensure that you follow the tutorials for the Interface as you may find it makes potent use of its fully immersive features. 

Despite anything you may have read or heard about it, we hold high hopes that you will experience it simply as yourself and without pre-conceived notions.

Instructions for access are as follows…

So… that morning would mark a marriage of sorts, of his past with his future, and a door into his next quest. A dream had been given to him, to what he had been looking for: an ultimate game, if it were possible.

He’d lost no time in drawing out his still recently-acquired Spiral Interface. It was certainly the most powerful immersive device currently on the market. He’d lost many hours familiarizing with its still-early game-worlds and experiences whose portals lay waiting - glittering - in the hallways of The Spiral. The Ben Fielding – a developer both of the interface and many of these initial worlds - must have read his recent reviews and come to visit his store for himself. Firing up the equipment eagerly, feeling the old excitement well up in him again, his hand trembled. 

Rumours were abundant online across the Superworld channels about something as yet still undisclosed related to The Spiral. Was it possible that had he been granted an exclusive right to see the update to the Game of Being? It was a game-world that allegedly could form the very heart and bedrock of The Spiral…? The magnitude and significance of the meeting now created an empty pit in his stomach. The implications were scary.

An enigmatic voice – full of wisdom and time - prompted him out of some high-tech shade of darkness.

‘How much shall I be changed? Before I am changed?’

Then, from inside his securely-fastened headgear, this empowered darkness began to move and shift before him like a mist, the mist of a new world…

It prompted him to try the whispered instruction: “Take me back to The Spiral,’” his own voice sounding mysterious to himself in the mic.

Suddenly, much quicker than he expected, a world came into being. It wasn’t new – no, how could anything be, really, under the sun? But it was… fresh… green. And so lush and incredibly detailed that he couldn’t help but inhale, expecting a change of purer air to reach down into his lungs.

One thing was sure, he wasn’t inside… at all. So he wasn’t... inside... The Tower! So… where was he; so where was the Tower? All he had to do then was look up…

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He had given his time to the Virtual, and more, that was for sure. One of the last times they’d talked properly Blake had already spent over ten years designing, coding and testing… immersed. Longer than most. But somehow he’d managed to keep… fairly well balanced.

Blake owned a small house, not far from the ImmerTech complex, and its overall state reflected that he was more often at work, inside, or... outside, in the garden.

This garden was something else. You could tell it received the remainder of his attention; it was both wild and abundant, and yet controlled and laid out so that a path led through various sections. In the middle was a great, single cedar tree with a high tree cabin which acted as his - more secluded - second home. At its base, surrounding the tree, were a set of large, worn paving stones forming a spiral, creating a spiritual effect beneath the structure. A simple wooden ladder could be raised up for privacy. 

And it was here, in this setting that Ben Fielding, by then a ‘legendary’ game designer himself, had met with his old friend and discussed the new project… 

Blake hadn’t wasted much time: “So how are the meetings with Leaven?” Together they had fastened the ladder like always to the pine fence surrounding the walkway.

“We’ve completed most of the plans. Some of the design has begun. It’s... exciting stuff.” He remembered thinking his own conviction sounded a bit off due to his tiredness. He always tried to detect how Blake’s bigger hands shook - a bit too much - both from the effort of the ladder - and from many hours of immersion. They did, of course, but now not as badly as his own.

Maybe just too exciting, and he felt the familiar face surveying his own, probably for signs of change and strain already. As if there wasn’t enough to do right now... in the Neuroceans. Ben knew about the shadows that lay under his still young eyes. It was the added weight of ‘the dream’; a growing mission - on top of the weight of the EEG testing. They were all feeling the latter. As for the dream well, it was one they shared, which was why he had tried to contain his fatigue. Blake wanted just to hear that things were progressing, and to feel excited by it all, like the earlier times.

They entered the treehouse, as Ben continued, “I miss your input. Leaven worries a lot about Carter. He needs reassurance that the Spiral will be… safer... than what’s happening. It’s a big part of why he’s involved. And he keeps mentioning the Salvagers.” 

“Hmm,” Blake reflected, running a hand over shaggy hair and an overgrown beard, that went well with the setting. “There have been some more cases. But we’re not far off… are we? The next breakthrough…”

“Yeah, it’s close. But... this swimming process. It’s… messy. As much as it amazes me, this testing has shown up too many weaknesses. There is so much work ahead Blake. For one thing, it’s all got to be easier. Seamless, even.”

Blake had looked away and began pottering about the cosy cabin, as if hoping to avoid or prolong the direction of the conversation. “Well, I’m not sure how much I’ve got left, Ben. I... miss this garden you know.” He had other things to say, it was clear, but would wait for the right moment, during the game.

Ben filled the space, “Hey... it’s good to be up here again, and to see you, in the Source. Taking some time out. Thanks for inviting me.”

“Yeah, it’s easy to forget how honest a real meeting can be.” His familiar chuckle. “I figured correctly we both needed an evening offline.”

“Hell... yeah, and also I’ve missed your terrible games-master ideas. You’ve got a game set up I hope?” They would always play some kind of old-style fantasy board game together in this cabin. And Ben never failed to make fun of Blake’s talent for coming up with far-fetched ideas - and loopholes.

“Of course. But just the simple one… Basic Heroquest.”

It was a board game of dice and figurines - elves, dwarves and wizards. The bottle of sloe gin emerged along with it, and Blake’s rich, cherry pipe smoke soon mixed with the woody smell of the cabin. It drifted everywhere, including outside into the warm evening air to hang in the spiky canopy. That smell. 

During a game the two wizards could always talk easier, and, finally, Blake found his moment. “Look Ben, I just wanted to tell you, before the next test-session, and in person, that you guys have got to do this thing right; this Spiral project. Bring the Source back out to people. And you’ve got all the right people and components, to push it all. It just makes such... sense.“

“Yes…” Ben answered simply, watching the other man examine the board; this act helping him choose his next words with the dice clenched in his rough hands, as though for ballast.

After a moment, Blake had stated: “You know that I see reality and fantasy as being intertwined. Or more like the cogs of a system, working the wheel of life; in tandem. What did you call it? Confluence. They complement one another. Always have.”

“And it’s where we’re going, yes… A more - seamless - integration.” Ben waited for any further council still sure to be forthcoming from the older man.

“Well… the balance you want to create... for now it will need to be a careful one. Don’t rush it... ok?  And this existing technology… It may not be... ready... for our dream. Your plans. And if it isn’t, then you should wait. Take, measures… however hard that might be.”

“You mean failsafes, right? On a large, heavy, fast-moving train....” He smiled a little, incredulously, then looked at the floor for a moment before continuing. “There will be breaks, don’t worry Blake. But otherwise, we just do what we can, you know that… which is - most often I guess - what we have to do. The way of the Source, if you like. As will you too… I hope...”

Blake sighed and he was looking up now, from the board. “For my sanity I have to stop. And soon. But look, you know I can even see the complex from here, right?” It was true, the white shapes and glass just gleamed in the late light, beyond the rooftops of the small houses. “By coming here I wanted you to know that I will not be far… I will want to keep an eye on things. And if you ever need to come and work here, then you must.” 

“Offer accepted. You still need the help with your garden.” 

They’d laughed. “Hey...” Blake continued, after a pause. “You’re going to need my garden, if you’re going to try and rip it off to make your own. Besides, I know someone, besides me, who would want you to be careful…”

“Rosa?”

“You know too well.” He moved more pieces swiftly across the board. “She will probably wait for you, you know.” 

“I do know.” Ben moved both his hands through his own hair, sitting back slowly with his head and eyes squinting up at the roof. He remembered examining all the carefully joined wooden planks. “There may be a new world for us coming. For us all. But first we need to save this one… by revealing it - accessing it - again - and more completely.”

“Hmm, you sound a bit like a game character yourself.” The dice rolled out onto the board.

Ben had chuckled then, sighing heavily. “Aren’t we all? But for now just be quiet and pass me the bottle ok? And the damn pipe Blake... Put something stronger in it too. Today this rod for my own back; it just needs breaking.” 

“Nothing less for the first folk headed for a new... dimension, I guess!” Blake had said this, proudly; smiling; some of the old fire returning. And not knowing then that only Ben would return.

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How pale and cold - and of course how wild - the first world seems to us now, so confined as once we were to it, and so repressed in mind and spirit. And with that very repression forging our drive to overthrow it!… And so, it is still and will always remain the first world, however battered and bruised we have made it, our Mother-world, where we were born and forged by its pressure...

But also, have there not always been other worlds in tandem with it, since people first emerged with more useful talk and over-active minds?

Well, so it is that… here… I have an old book for you with words that do not move. Although: they can be found one day and made to move… out from these pages onto screens into worlds and stories again. But know this: that it was necessary for me to make them here; to lay them down directly for others to heed and to seed and to plant so they may grow – and live on in the minds of you who receive them. I hope - if I can - to plant them well, as they may tell a valid, vivid story… the story of a first, great web-world... 

We used to live believing we could achieve power and mastery and fame… and create realms where men could be more free and honest and even, a little less lonely…

And yes, I can live knowing that I was once a designer on the great team that forged the first fluctuating vision of a utopia into some kind of being, where before it lay only locked up and darkened in its original, printed form. As well you may have heard this was a super-world where the soul could go… and belong… share kinship and and make great memories. For pure expression to be enabled and for those individual spirits (who first found us and brought us into its arms) to grow and become proud…

And still I wander the worlds searching for these first pilgrims, or for the PIPs or ghosts of these first pilgrims, so that I might meet them again, and talk about this dream that once was, and cannot come again. For this land has no Arthur…and none that I can ever hope to give it now, except for the finding of its original. And this quest grows increasingly hopeless, if it was ever really – truly - embarked upon…

For a true Ariella cannot come again, not as we remember it. Not where the dark heart of man bleeds always its own despair at its own rabid being… its great fear and despair… and the Game of Being now takes its place as a more fitting refuge and hope for a mankind growing increasingly lost in its creations. 

But Ariella still has something to give. If only a new - dedicated - king and queen can be found and seated its vast castle, and restore the moderation and leadership so urgently required for the realm. And there are a few who know of its code, and who know how first it may be destroyed - so it can one day be re-born...

• From A Chronicle of the Protectors of  Ariella in the Neuroceans

NEW ACCESS

He had finally been granted access again to the legendary super-world Ariella, renowned for its fluidity and ‘stickability’. They said that once you had found it, and spent time there, you would remember it, for life. This was the case for only several other MMOs he knew already, but with the case of Ariella, it was said to be on a higher level; a level of peace, purity, and inspiration. A home of the Cyber-Knights and for Arthurian legend. It was the original web mecca, and had apparently maintained the standard.

It was the interface that intrigued him at first. It was a natural configuration yes, connected to breathing rhythms and pulse. So when he looked round at first, the light on the strange tree-structures gently moved and contracted in accordance it seemed, with his own presence. And it was all so beautiful, certainly. Faint, fragile music reached his ears. He was already on the alert for fellow users, squinting ahead to see if he could make out, within the light, airiness like an early morning, the famed figures that were also said to appear. Some were said to be the few, select Moderators of the world.

THE SPELL

Parsifal2 pulled himself out of his absorption to reach into his robe for his trusty quill. Tiny, golden dust could be seen speckling down from it. Another feature of the world, he realised. Everything emanated a fine, golden dust. Entrancing. With the quill he painted in the air a thin square before writing in thick, bold strokes the following words:

My love, I have found Ariella again at last.
Access has somehow been permitted to me after so long banished.
It truly is still the dream.
More shall follow but in the meantime:
May this news bring you joy and some peace.
In so many ways is it a shame that we must do what we now must
And… yes… one of the New Lords will be arriving soon…

The script was calligraphic; some natural-named 3D font and it glittered and hung in the air. Tiny leaves or fronds could be seen growing from the ends of the serifs.

“Camera.” He uttered the word softly and a small eye appeared and hovered in the air, at the end of where he raised a hand and pointed. He then positioned himself accordingly, clutching the text upwards so it would appear above his head, black against the white light. 

The in-world ‘capture’ would be sent in moments to to his partner – Morgana-Again  - although she possessed many an in-world name. A card would reach her in the real-world also, to her persona there, although very few besides he knew who this really was…

It would not be the end for this game-world. They would see to its destruction today, yes, but also its preservation...For its code would be re-planted and renewed in the fresh reaches of some new, virtual soil... And until that time, they would be its keepers.

‘All goes onward and outward... ‘ He began to chant the Whitman Spell into the deep code of the Neuroceans fabric.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

God this heat! 

It was just as hot inside as it was out. His face and upper body were overdressed for the VR trainer but his mind was no longer drained - no longer dismayed - by his own lethargy from a whole day in midsummer heat. He was alert and upright in his chair at the glowing terminal.

Even better; here, in the Testing Wing of the Development Division complex, they had apparently fixed the Air Con, so his body would soon cool down once he was immersed and online.

He thought of the masses of people that would be outside, across the western world, baking at barbecues, raking at the soil, clinking glasses at restricted social occasions, or crowding resort hotels. Or maybe playing a sport for some insane reason in this heat while their time seemed true, while they felt their own struggle for power over their being; their ways of being.

And this was all good. More healthy for me. For it meant that the new virtual web would be faster than usual. 

He would have less restriction in accessing what he needed, finishing what he once started...

He thought of the old William Blake quote:
I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's'.

For what though, exactly? For personal fame and freedom? For glory and success upon one's name and one's family? Or for the power for oneself - or a potent combination of all of these - or just for the testing of it; to see what wonders it can... bring forth... 

So... it's a power game.

But not here; not right now...

As he stood up to take a last look at the evening sun he thought that it was more a necessity to create. The blinds changed, smothering all the light in the room. Simply as a bid for freedom and understanding, simply as powers to be gained over any possible alternative.

He moved into the Virtual Trainer. 

Imaginative freedom for oneself in one's present lifetime; a place or some new medium where everything runs wild against physical restrictions...a place to belong... enhanced...

He thought for a while longer, his mind searching more for something; some answer as to why he had arrived at this moment...

Would we go mad if, over the reality where we dwelled, we possessed a total control? Perhaps... but it would be a victory over our fears, over any form of dependence on another; over Nature and over Death ... over God?... So we would become, in a sense, Gods ourselves?

He clicked open the portal...

...The power in the phantom web-worlds awaited their creators; their innervators; their cyber-artists and demiurges... even its new Kings... 

And from out of that deep void within his headset some cool, incalculably advanced phrase greeted him in the depleting darkness:

“You are now entering: THE NEUROCEANS … Forsake not the Lore of Being!”

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +3 XP : LESSER BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

From Spiral Writings Blog:
Goldsmith: A Secret Cyber-Artist begins a new day of Focus 

So… I am here, this day, and many days; an incessantly potentially powerful and inspired cyber-artist, working as a latter-day wizard within and yet above the flux of the Real World. And these though they be good times, seemingly, are never without their inspired, seeping evils, failing to nourish the needy soul and fill it with its proper zest, or spark again to fuller heights its inner, dancing flame… And you… you are not to read these lines without feeling the fire that lies behind them...

He shuddered with a burst of excitement for the day now completely before him, like a land of dreams wherein he was free to forage inside the Know-Zones of The Spiral. His limbs and bones clenched in their attempt at containment of the fire he knew could not be released and harnessed yet. Not until he had reached his secret chamber, carefully arranged for the expressive harnessing of his mediums. There they awaited his direct attention, connected to the ongoing developments across the globe. Once settled in his cockpit of control, he would sip leisurely at a coffee and awaken his initial passions, begin to allow the fertile fluid raise his blood slowly up into the tendrils of his brain. For the focussing that was his power as an artist would occur primarily within the fickleness of his mind, and it would require careful, acquired control to begin and then to channel the energy; the burning fire. For it transcended the shadows of the platform world, the Source, flowing fiercely about him and through him.

And how it makes the world itself so strange. 

For the world itself summoned this need for transcendence (away from itself) within him. He was merely its force and instrument; its being similarly as it was his being, his need; his salvation. Transcendence, and control. To turn over the strange and unravel it, expose it, bring it forth into the familiar until it grows strange one day again. Well, so be it. I will not run from its demands, he thought. Let it drain him until he held some mastery of it in return. If the world demanded a rider that could steer itself and its minions free of its own confines, then he would willingly take his place as one of them. Let the exhilarating quest for fresh, empowering symbols - fresh inspirational gold - continue…

These thoughts were always of this ilk that would grip Goldsmith in his early hours, while he changed carefully into his outfit for the day and prepared his equipment; his interface customised for regular use. Today it was cold, and he felt glad for the softness of his clothes, a blue checkered shirt and jumper. As his thoughts turned inwards to the strangeness of his fire, still burning as he brushed his rows of neat teeth, he thought that his mission today might involve more recording of these feelings regarding creativity. The urgency, the call unto immersion and transcendent thought. Yes, for in turn, such emotion within him towards the powers of the world, and those yet unknown, may be shared, may be stoked in another - through others -  through his creations, and serve the inheritance of the secret and apparent arts. And he would make it dramatic, and include the phrase, or something like it, all by itself, on its very own line, in some world he would conjure just for its celebration:

Let me not lose the fire inside! ...For if it should die then…

...For he did not want to wake one morning to find himself without his sense of wonder; without his sense of purpose that promised to his own deep being that he could face the world and vanquish it; quell it through his own emotion and particular brand of thought. For it was only through his very own inner sense of the possibilities, together with his abilities for reportage, his stream of discovery and use of light magic, that could awaken and so show unto others, such glories of the day, and future days. 

Thus, later, in his chamber, cup in hand, Goldsmith closed his eyes and let his thoughts run wild. 

As wild as charging horses, the wind breathing through the tendrils of their manes.

It was his nature, his being as a hermit of thought and art that it should be he, to inhale the fierce air and iron tang of the world and turn it into gold; a thin, small figure withdrawn and sunken from such breeze, and yet to feel it now, and to always feel it... 

Let not the fire die, that burns inside...

…And that comes when it is beckoned, leads where it is unexpected, pours its worship into words and marks and light. Invincible, it could make him, forever young. And freeeee. Unchained by any systems built too snugly by his crafty, controlling comrades of the Academy. So long as the fire burned he could remain angelic to himself; alive to the fullest, where the kite soars from the grip of a small boy, and wipes the memory of the long time of waiting, muddling, making in the shadows, to walk out, at last, upon the grass and seize more days of great and natural harnessing. 

The sun and the wind are a dream upon the face that stares towards the blue sky and beholds its own spirit; staring. He would keep alive; and it would keep him alive. Always, where the fire burns on and nature churns its rugged souls through pain and joy; his would live to shine and burn and then grow dull with its ruddy glow, and his body would pass between the horrors of the world as a hermit spirit, with always the simple pleasures surrounding him, until finally he would slip beyond into its sleep, still enthralled by its treasures.

The Secret Cyber-Artists of Firecube are many. They work with many forms. They are a brand that feel chosen, who encounter drudgeries and dampened spirits and so withdraw and seek to change or raise them. Deep within their ivory cyber-towers where they may see far beyond and in such calm, and yet descend, reach back again to go below into the bustle of the forum and in the darkened places, in secret and in love…the bleeding, feeding, frenzied, life-giving love for the world; for all the worlds...

And so then, this segment concerning I, Goldsmith and the nature of my work, comes currently to an end. More – so many more - could come that are imaginative and inspired about all aspects and details of one single life. They intend to be an outlet for feelings of acute inspiration, full of ideas to hopefully rub off upon other lives and incite them in turn to acts of deep, long-lasting creativity. Or just to feel again some childish sense of wonder at the glories of the world.

Come… join me then in Focus: the release through the aim of perfecting our interfacing powers in that Spiral Tower of dreams making systems and the bright Beacon of Fountellion… Our delight will reign from it and pour out into the Source...in a dream of control that shatters on the rocks to be re-formed...

Let not the fire die, that burns inside...

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

What he loved about the new virtual web was not only its compelling and immersive properties but its potential to impart a man with a life and a trade. From any place. At any time. But it took time… 

This was because you had to manage your numerous, accessible contacts, test out the expressive characteristics of your character in safe but unexpected scenarios and, more crucially, build up an extensive OP: Online Presence.

He'd spent much time in business game ‘sims’ where every decision had a bearing on the direction that the game would take, so that a series of inappropriate ones made it harder and harder to succeed. But it was more than a game now. It was tied to a new form of reality that had real influence, real friends, and a real way to make real money... This game was not a game.

And it was his enhanced avatar – his living, online profile - that was the key to the whole enterprise.


Where am I today? He thought, jacking into the Know-Zones, richly sensual, educational environments in The Spiral. Oh yeah… more training. 

He was unhealthy this morning – a proper student – with a strong coffee and cigarette both shedding their fumes beside his console. The smoke competed with the steam from the coffee and soon defeated it; mocking it, curling around it. He took a drag, dulling his mind that was too sharp and awake now due to the coffee. Where he was stationed, in his sound-padded lair, he could sit secreted away from the mad world, above an everyday shop selling computer hardware. No one would disturb him today, a sleepy Sunday. And I’ve worked like a dog this week. Many hours had slipped by organising his online trade; a virtual store selling software downloads. At last it was set up and running… but today he would cut himself a break and soak up some alternative online experiences.

However, as his equipment purred into life, the headset fastened around his primary senses, the landscape rendering swiftly before him was not any he had encountered before, and nor was the avatar he embodied.

He was on a precipice and it was dark; very dark. He felt uneasy. Before him the vista was also misty, until he made out a thin red line of a horizon and leading up to it, a mass of ill-defined shapes. And they were… writhing. Oh... this was wrong. He double-checked the location he’d announced into the system… damn it … the vision remained. Just brilliant.

Immediately he was worried. Worried sick. Worried for his entire, online life. This is a Hellworld if ever I saw one. Dim sounds of pain and from god-knows-what kind of tortured avatars were exposing themselves to thrills and mindless acts beneath him. He immediately made gestures to teleport away, to his Home location; to any location at all. But… nothing. The thing was tampered. He’d been hacked and he knew it. Shit!

His avatar had been bred in the world. It had a DNA setting and a personality modelled from his own. It was certainly never supposed to malfunction; it was part of the whole system and he paid an annual fee for it. The cost would be more than a considerable amount of in-game credits: it would also be the access to his worlds, his business, his friends, his data and memories… himself… 

Over the years it had learned about his ways, his preferences; his personality. And this was a vital feature as it meant whenever he wasn’t directly present it could interact with others while he was offline. It could run his virtual store in his absence. It was a wandering profile. And just another Personal Interactive Profile. But it walked like him, it talked like him; it was him.

It was also supposed to have extensive in-built security. But there were always ways… He couldn't afford this. Not now!

He tried to speak to his profile but there was nothing; just the sinister sounds in the fallen gloom of this online underworld. The avatar he had found himself occupying was just a default version, blandly asking for settings; the cheapest possible. Was there a clue to be found here… in this place? Left by an enemy? By a religious fanatic? Had someone wanted to expose him to this? A naked avatar ran passed him suddenly and dived off into the mass of bodies below, arms outstretched for an ultimate crowd-surf, seeking a perverted form of redemption. Well, I'm not going in there...

He dialled a number on his HUD, and at once a voice came to his ears.

“Second Police, Salvager Dept, how can I help?” A metallic, formal voice responded, quickly at least.

He explained that he’d been sent straight to hell while his profile was now possessed and officially AWOL.

The official voice responded. “We’ll get someone straight on your case… We’ve had quite a few reports coming in these last two weeks... Not many of them Identity Thefts perhaps... because believe it or not, the avatars that were recovered… hadn’t exactly been stolen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… it’s as if they had become… self-aware… somehow. Acting on their own volition. I don’t know… we’re looking into it. Anything’s possible. We’ll get back to you as soon as we hear more. For now, we advise you to contact your friends through your current avatar and be prepared for possible interference with your affairs. We’ll take some details of course…”

He could only hope they could help. He’d backed up his information but it would be useless if someone juiced his profile and was now running loose in it. So much now would need changing. So much would be lost. At least, no-one knew his avatar better than he. Or did he? 

Ok… one thing was certain: he’d stop at nothing until he got himself back.


Sentient profiles… Rogue P.I.P’s…

Later, he sat back and nervously lit another cigarette. His hand trembled. Staring out of the window, he thought about the morning, when all had been up and running well and he had at last been relaxing. He wondered where his avatar could be. He thought of the final scene to an old film called Tron.

He still had himself, here; his own character. And this reality. Yes, he could always fall back on that. Start over in a new life. A simpler one. At the mercy of no system at all. He could… disconnect. He rolled the word around

He sighed. What are we? Our talents, our skills, our experience; our knowledge. And the people we know or love... He’d lost many in pursuit of his online dream: his own virtual store. And without the key to it all – his precious profile, his PIP - he was locked out of it. What do you do in such a scenario? You have to break back in somehow, and see what’s been taken. Catch them in the act of taking...?

The salvagers might help, but it might not be enough. I can’t take the chance, he decided. 

Opening a channel on his screen he left a message for Castellan, an old ally – a hacker now doing corporate security - who might get him back into his store; his profile… his career. It was the only other chance he had just now, of regaining his life. But if he was to contact Castellan, might not his avatar also try this contact? If it really had gone rogue; become a loose cannon; highly valuable and sentient.

He tried to keep calm and consider the possibilities... It was true that AI developments had been accelerating to the point where it would be difficult to control the new digital life forms that were appearing. There were some very powerful companies pushing now for more experiments with Artificial Life algorithms in-world, but people were too concerned about the uncontrollable results. Rogue minds based on DNA personalities could grow beyond anything beneficial to mankind. They could grow beyond anything in the virtual webworlds, where, conceivably, they could glean all they needed to know about reality - the Source - from its reflection...

... But if minds were somehow transferred illegally and implanted into avatars the crime would be blamed on identity theft. It was possible someone considered him to be a suitable lab rat. His profile might somehow have been infected with a ‘sentient virus’. Or else, could sentience really be developing – independently - within the coding of such sophisticated profiles themselves? If so, he would be in for quite some compensation.

Whatever the case, no matter how corny it sounded: someone was to blame, and someone would pay.  Even if it was… himself.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Interaction. Absorption. The present age we’ve entered now and the new super worlds spin and spiral around these forces.

Ever since being once captivated by the earliest Sinclair ZX81 cursor sign - blinking - against an illuminated white screen on a small, black-and-white TV set have I felt the possibilities that have become real. Blinking… appearing and disappearing. The whiteness like a blank canvas where the paint moves back at you; responds to a personal touch.


For there is nature and its laws; its laws of attraction and reaction... and there is experience; human experience and its intelligence; its awareness; the hyper-real, the super worlds... 

Where we are loosened further from space and time… and nature may be released through its own imaginings… unto new heights… into new depths... of feeling, connection... of understanding...


Worlds have hung around my neck in silver cobalt seahorses, craved by cults of gamers and sonar shapers and what has been ‘me’ has been many different personas in the online crypts and pinnacles of the emergent cyber-culture... And now I am ‘this’ again... just a man… an ex-world-maker painting alone in a cabin on the edge of a country... and my time runs…

I have coloured skies and measured lengths of symbols that live and die in spaces that still inspire the online, searching souls with wonder. What I have seen I have shared; what I have ‘been’ still lingers in such reflections and what I have meant has faded as the hearts of those who have cherished me have faded… in worlds no longer visited. 

No one will buy these real-world retro fine-art paintings that I forge now, scraping the paint on liberally. I will give them freely. And few will find these last, lingering thoughts that shall join the crowded ghost-realms full of ghost profiles un-accessed by those alive but self-absorbed and interacting with their own ideas; their own dreams...

Only a few may wish to hear the reasons for my wish to paint only, now, for unshrouded eyes; for those around me on this near shore where I've set myself to breathe towards my final breath... A place where a dear tribe of simple, fellow-’disconnected’ folk depend upon my presence for a time and can be certain that I depend upon them. For perhaps we are alive only inasmuch as others appreciate that we’re alive. It’s not been easy to find and foster such a tribe and my mind still clenches my hand when it thinks back to... before... but... perhaps a backlash to bring some balance has begun.

And to you who either find or stumble on my voice still muttering in the virtual winds and in the winds of change, I give thee a simple quest: to create one painting in the Source for yourself. It must be abstracted; it must be of some detail that inspires or amazes. Make this painting when – like me - you have found your way out of the towering Spiral and all its dark, alluring worlds and dreams. It will help you.

For to be alive is to connect and to share. And so I paint to be alive here at last – to appreciate this - still in the nature around me, within me, in this mother-world which carved me... and which first showed me love and beauty… yes, with all its myriad forms of a true and flowing world gripped by the shadows of time and hunger. 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

It is where I go, constantly. It is who I am. It was what I am now, entirely. Sonoworld. There is nowhere else I would rather be. I say 'be' because everything starts with a place, like the world we are born into. It shapes our thoughts and at the same time - it restricts them. With the Source, the mother world, there has always been something inside us that doesn't quite fit because it is indeed much larger than the world. It is the spirit and its imagination. Thus it is that we have had to tailor reality. Enhance it to empower us; increase our freedoms, with who we are in relation to others. And thus I come back to the Sonoworld...

Even here... now ... its colours and definitions draw my thoughts to linger, to immerse - a sublime absorption. Sonoworld is more directly a music world. And as a man of music this is my home; my real home. And as a Guardian it is a Republic that receives my power and unique contributions, even my improvements... How may I proceed? How can I attempt to describe it further? And why should I? For its existence does not entail or require anyone to write about it... This brief text of mine is the only silent accumulation of words I will allow on the subject, to serve perhaps as some idea of its importance and effect on me, and what I believe. For I am the Sonoworld… I am music… and words have a poor effect upon the spirit in comparison, unless they be made to mix with sound; with the landscapes of its music...

(I speak and my voice changes what I see… I move move my hands and sounds form in the air, to make magic that pours like sand across the virtual desert… It is a sublime connection to a world.)

When I turn off the Spiral Interface there is only one thing I take away into the Source: that this is a dry and barren place, but where here too, I am music. My life spreads across the lives of others; my voice sings positive or negative notes; energy or tragedy; passion and romance. Nature, all around, is a great force of sound and music… Its creatures sing quickly, its voice is slow and we do not hear it… if we do not listen.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

The options for talking to ‘him’ were limited.

“Shit!” (This was muttered to herself in case it was recording her right now in ‘spectate mode’).

She had hoped he was really Phil and not just his PIP standing before her here, in this retro webworld that reminded her of TRON, a very old film from the 1980s. But he was only a PIP - a ghost profile version - so there was no one at home; unless he was online in 'spectate' mode and this was unlikely; though it was still a creepy possibility.

She liked the way everything glowed here though. She liked the way he glowed. His clothes were Victorian; a fine jacket and shirt and tiny lines of iridescence filled and outlined the contours of his form. She had had high hopes for this one; this relaxed and friendly webface. He seemed genuine, as far as any PIP had so far been genuine. However, they'd argued last time; she was still worried that he had not understood her and would be still seem disturbed by her. Just as he was when they had last left the system. Since then she had spent a good while re-reading the history of their conversations; trying to read between the transcript lines. 

P.I.P.S - Personal Interactive Profiles. Chat agents, either inhabited by their user or rogue representations. They were a highly addictive area of the web. One of the seven or so 'Wonders of the Web' these days, and she had been jacking-in regularly now for what she knew it offered and she needed: the ease of direct or pre-meditated social interaction or communication and the thrill of artistic expression and debate. People – and their PIPs - were now so accessible and were always able to respond.

So, she tried an approach; not very imaginative. 'Hello...'  The PIP that she occupied was obviously 'live' but his was still motionless. It could mean he was 'double-timing': distracted by events in the realworld… or worse: he was simply not there, and had forgotten to leave his agent on 'autogather', which would allow it to mingle with others such as herself in his absence and to gather information and take messages.

The old ways had their charm and appeal, for his PIP's eyes dilated before her and became fixed upon her own. It was registering her code and information, and this always felt strange to her, like being a little naked, or as though the system around her was trying to recognise her existence. That she was really alive. It reminded her in a funny, fleeting way that in this brief and fragile life, she had a temporary identity and it might only be in here that she'd encounter such a direct attempt by anything to ever 'know' her. She hoped not. It was why she was here...

"Hello Rosa... I'm sorry I'm not able to talk to you anymore as I was offended by your previous callous comments concerning religious beliefs, and so it's best if we part ways."

Oh great. Just what she needed. The virtual cold shoulder. Religious beliefs? He'd totally misinterpreted her opinions of course but… nevermind!...

She sighed heavily. If that was just how narrow his opinions or beliefs were she knew at least where she stood. And it was certainly for the best. However, she couldn't help feeling upset and frustrated, and in fact her emotion had fallen away beneath her. I feel so alone. He had thought wrong about her and she was helpless. There was no longer any way for her to register a comment with his roaming virtual PIP, so the next best thing would be preferable.

She slapped him hard and watched as the PIP recoiled and registered the fact. Her glove had simulated the effect of contact on her hand. It felt worthwhile. 

Another old-fashioned method of getting through to someone, updated into the Virtual.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

Forster, Howards End

[author note: this fragment was originally written in the 1990s, pre-’The Matrix’ movies]

LEAVEN

The window was open. But the body lay sprawled out on the dirty floor, beside a cheap, low bed. A lock of brown hair was plastered to the side of the face that was visible. A sleek headset was tight against the temple and covered the eyes, but the serenity in the arrangement of limbs was awkward and total. The senses of the head were absorbed now in entertainment beyond any consciousness.

This one I will remember, Leaven thought.

Knowing the headset was linked - invisibly - to the smooth black case open on the bedside table, Leaven's pale blue eyes moved for a moment over the lights from the advanced hardware, indicating operations; secrets still alive and deadly within. The head of the unkempt man was positioned near to the case. It was as if it had attacked him as he had slept, pulling him in and sucking another spirit down, out of this world, to where we are all falling. The jaws of the case were still open; hungry, for more…

John Leaven was a few years younger than the dead man had been. Standing outside the door of the low-key hotel room with his fellow agents, he fought to reclaim the rhythm of his breathing that the rapid ascent of the stairs had disrupted. Getting far too old for this. But the fatigue felt deeper this time. Leaven had been tracking Carter and the way into the notorious Bedlam4 simulation for months. And now that he stood so close to where he knew his old friend must be he hesitated. He couldn’t afford to hesitate, but in this case the whole trace had been almost too great a struggle. He feared to see what lay now beyond the door, what, he knew, he might never have prevented anyway, if Carter so wished to become it; one more fall-out.


Leaven had involved only a few of his Salvager squad. Pete Hoff squatted against the door-frame opposite, and Jess waited as backup in the badly-lit hallway with a device providing information rarely tricked: a signature jacked in at this location, and no sound from within. Turning the knob and pushing, Leaven let the door swing open…

… and so it was that he saw the figure of his old friend from university so many days, hours and minutes ago sprawled out motionless; frozen in the last posture that its spirit was ever to choose for itself in the air of the world that had moulded it.

‘Dead end’, he spoke quietly.

G A T E W A Y

By the time he had soaked up the scene – imprinted it into memory – the door hit softly against the wall. This motion he’d remember echoing as a single instant entailing one end to a part of his life forever, and the challenge before the dawn of another. It was indeed a gateway...

An exhalation of air came from the agents in the hallway. As members of the Salvager squad of Web-Rescue, ‘fall-outs’ were now a common sight. They were normally in rooms like this where intense freejackers had hid themselves from reality in their advanced addiction to the Web, and probably to drugs. Frequently they were elaborate suicides that had been done online, others a matter of simply wasting away. Often the rooms were empty, for the virtual session might have teased their victims from the windows and cast them into the warm city air, as though their world had been on fire.

And it was their job – his job - to locate these people that included disrupters and hackers, and to ‘rescue’ them which meant to place them into jail or into rehab. They could be dangerous, even Carter had been dangerous, but whoever and whatever the situation, always such an end continued to wear on him. The weary presence of it. For it was this drab and dusty, top-floor hotel room that held all that remained of another lately receiving, interpreting, struggling organ of a force - a force that had given such powers to it - even those of Carter’s defiance against it. It sickened him now, that Carter could seem like such a victim, could have endorsed such an end. And whatever the explanations, the hard evidence was that he was just another form of wounded animal that had bled itself out to here. The wound was just a more elaborate and a tragic one. And he knew this wound.

‘Damn it Carter,’ he uttered, and his breath was heavy with the sorrow he felt from somewhere deep beneath the cleft of his ribs. There was something clutched in the body’s hand and an empty pill bottle had flown to the corner. There would be no more running for this strange, talented spirit; this complex fugitive.

He lingered with the body in the room. It was certainly lifeless. And he knew what the object was that lay beneath the curled fingers of the once dextrous powers of the slackened hand, before he stooped to extract it. It was feeling the texture of it - the small wooden figure - and the personal message it bore to his heart that made him sit down heavily with a sorrow that had been waiting to burn.

He held the carving for a moment and watched his hand clench around it too.

It had been their past, their present, their future, their prize and their gift to their own species and to all life….It had been their only chance for godliness….. It was a world; their world, haunting them ever since it had been… destroyed.

CARTER

It was almost a feeling of anger.  Anger for the mysteries in the cold hum of the equipment and the lifeless body in the dust on the floor that led him hastily towards what he knew he would do next. What he knew Carter would want him to do. What he would have to do, for himself...

Reaching for the equipment, Leaven's intention was to jack in and see for himself where Carter had been; where he had died. He nodded to his close colleague Hoff nearby, a heavy figure more at ease now, who responded by closing the door. He would then go and help Jess monitor his status from the corridor. Leaven lifted his radio and spoke to the others in the van to keep watch on the exterior, citing unforeseen complications. He did reckon that Syla would be trying to find them by now, but not here in the real world, outside of the super.

But he paused again, dropping his fingers from the laptop. He could not yet face handling the features and extracting the mask. He sat down on the bed and felt the loss of his dead friend dig in more powerfully in the closeness of the room, the presence that spoke directly to a new emptiness that had formed. Desertion. It came with thoughts of their university days, not more than ten years ago, and the unity that their circle had provided. This was a wholeness of its own and Carter had broken it now forever and suddenly all their times seemed further away only in private memory and closer to oblivion; along with the meaning of his own life.

They would hold him responsible now as well, for driving Carter to this. They were right to as well; he had failed, Carter had failed.

He was quiet for a time. No matter what was said, he had tried to save him! To draw him back to his world and what was real. It was like some play, where their paths had seemed already set and Carter had guessed this, and nurtured it. They were opposites. To Leaven, Caleb still represented everything that he strove against now as a realist and a Salvager.

He thought suddenly of a recent victim, thin and degenerating, that they had found. The physical evidence of such waste. Where are we all going? he thought. If humankind were to lose awareness of where it was rooted to there was surely no hope. The functionality that Carter so detested had to exist; all else was shadow and ideal. And yet the freshening of his principles in his mind did not convince him of its correctness; he knew it was a natural fulfilment; and this was not enough for some who could not find such a kind. You are decisive but you’ll always be a drifter of the machine. Carter’s words, sly and knowing. Another clever line rattled off like it was a game this awareness of their roles. And yet he hated it; as if Carter wanted to create the drama, to be some dumb entertainment in life. He remembered shaking him; trying to get through to him. Get real. And now this.

He rubbed the texture of the figure he held. Carter had carved it at university, and it was to stand in a courtyard in Fountellion, shining. The design for it he had made during one of the virtual seminar, so long ago. The figure was wood and was of a small naked man with a face animal and yet vexed. Roots twisted round the legs and the arms were open above the head, reaching out. The Fallen Satyr he had called it. His rub of it was like the lantern and more memories came into his mind like genies. Some of the moments when the differences that appeared between them were suddenly as stark as lightning illuminating a canyon. He had to force a re-awareness of what he had felt back then: passion, confusion, distraction, frustration.

There had been such discourse. Passionate, powerful talk of technology, philosophy and of being. They had learnt so much and witnessed the effect of such learning upon each other. There had been so many projects started and abandoned in the little rooms of their student house and the squalid lounge. He mind moved over all the late nights they’d lived through, stumbling back from the student bar in the cold nights, Carter suddenly producing a bottle of good red wine and discussing medias, politics and rock bands until the dawn came and the cigarettes were low. ‘I so want to express everything into new worlds’, Carter always said. They had talked about the rise of the web, about effective ways to harness media to animate their ideas, about the restriction of environment that prevented thought and awareness of art. Carter had always wanted to control images and avatars to make universes that captivated imaginations and set them loose in entertainment online to be inhabited. ‘To control art and image’ was uttered like a spell and their voices were full of money as they smoked the last tobacco pipe full of dreams for themselves. They had toasted it all together, Carter’s lazy eyes hooded and wise; ‘to fulfilment.’ And such a will to be rich through their ideas that were to be so beneficial for others and yet would enhance their own freedoms somehow made them old too fast in their pursuit of them. For they had both known and felt the presence of such dreams at such a time but also as the intense burden that they were as well; the burden they were to become…


Soon after, they had begun work on the virtual environment that was to take over their lives.


He looked down at the empty bottle of pills, picked up also from the floor; this in one hand, the figurine in the other. A few final moments to collect himself and his tired frame. Then he exchanged the trinkets for the transcendent gear, checking their settings, before getting ready to jack in… 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +12 XP : MAJOR BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

He walked quickly along the cobbled streets. They were the recently-installed cobbles that were catching on across the cities, with centres fashioned to look old in tribute to the generations who had walked within this area in times past. Their grooves, however, were fitted with UV lighting so that in the dark the streets looked unearthly; a gridwork in a spooky glow that reminded him of a spider's web, or the pulsing patterns to be found online, in the superscapes.

He had come from the library, focusing up on the latest trial of a new design system, adjusting his mind to the new ‘carving’ mechanisms for spatial fashioning. He felt he was progressing; the interface more in tune with his faculties.

As he hurried along he took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. The smooth feel of the ‘cadding’ - the fashioning - still resonated within him. It made him feel for shapes in a new way, like the bridge he was now approaching over the River Dee. It was an arc summoned forth like music, frozen music, and he wondered how this shape would feel being fastened down with the tools of the new system. I will melt it into place and festoon it with crystal garlands that shimmer when the fingers make a circle. People will float and bind around it. 

He already had some elaborate plans for a new landscape using the new sys. So many plans, he thought. His stomach was clenched again with his fire for art and absorption online; for the new medias flowing forth and for his own spirit spread within it for others to feel and to know. It was a fire that was always there, simmering away beneath his real-time moments; his facetime and even in the restless down-time of the Re-orientator, a system that re-synchronised the mind with reality.

Someone was approaching ahead. It might be a ‘disconnect’. He had only passed one of them on his trip back from the library and he was only about a hundred yards from his small flat. They were the ones also called 'bound' but realists would call them 'freed from super-addiction', some of them by choice, but most of them likely damaged from the older systems. Trying to re-orientate their damaged senses and re-fix their minds to the steady currents of real-time might have failed. You could see some of them twitching occasionally down along the waterfront, trying to lock on to the motion of the old, slow river rippling past and across the diagonal line of the weir. He would do it himself, for minutes just staring out when the wind spread the water out, flattening a miniature desert of water.

But the figure approaching was… clearly a girl, and now he looked forward to admiring her. He may be in training for a career in media, in altering and enhancing reality; in making it complex or hyper-cool, but there was nothing essentially cooler than the mother-world; the Source, whereby evolution had fashioned the female form to be attractive; to be alluring; to draw the eye. He thought of the Theory of Forms, an essential class in the long road of ‘focusing’ that it took to be a complete artist or designer of the virtual. Yet although we have made our lives and our natures more free; richer and more placated in super-time, it is still the Cave, and the hard edges of reality is the source and spring from which all forms evolve and our fashioned.

The girl drew closer. She wore jeans covered in intricate designs. Her hair was a unique blend of red and gold. As they drew even closer the fabric of her jeans, he noticed, were of the latest nano-thread, so that the patterns could be said to be moving, and the tints cycled shades of blue to match the supreme clarity of the clear evening sky. Her face was full and fresh; affable; radiant, and his eyes soaked up an overall air of wildness.

It was only in the last five years that ‘Open Source Style’ had exploded into individual freedom, ungoverned by the inhibitions of a previous, single reality, released by the influence of the super or virtual. Anything went, because it corresponded with the extent to which virtual life had brought down the barriers between people. People were now unbound from caring how they appeared in the one reality that was once so exclusively shared. Loneliness was not common now, although, as he knew well, loneliness was not just about people... but about the right people.

The girl's arm came out to him in a gesture that he was expecting; this was also customary. She held a small white card with electronic script and her wrist bands jangled at the same time as he saw the script illuminated. Those little effects he thought, with a mild wonder. So natural in the Source; still so hard to render in the Super. He took the card, which would remain illuminated as long as it was touched, and glanced swiftly at the text. It was something like ‘fountain’ and it would be a key to her v-space, or to a sect, or to a dance space. In reality people still looked like who they were and she was in her twenties, ‘studenty’; musical perhaps. She smiled swiftly and hurried on. Once more he'd been targeted.

He might access it later in a moment of supreme boredom and these were becoming increasingly rare. For one thing he already had a real-time partner, and today, while ‘cadding’ away in the training 'scape he he’d been 'pinged' by her already so that in ten minutes time they would due to be binding in Dreameld.

But suddenly he realised a possibility about that other girl. On the street.

She was familiar. Someone he had once known.

Diode.


He had known her only in the most basic way; in platonic real-time and later, via social networks. She was known by another name then but now he knew it was Diode, and likely to be one of many of her online PIPs would now try to make contact. She may not have recognised him. Besides, he’d left her behind, with many other friends when - like many of them too - his time had begun to shrink.

Much later, as he was immersed in his console, summoning a shape with the new interface and ‘bevelling’ it into being, his PIP icon pinged again.

Welcoming the distraction, he 'swiped' the icon and entered the sim where his PIP resided, dressed in cowboy-style attire in a futuristic saloon bar environment. He picked up the glass of virtual whiskey before him and this act triggered the replay routine for messages. The whiskey itself was energy for his PIP, a valuable commodity for being able to remain in the saloon space. The barman – usually a real-world moderator – then stopped polishing a glass and came over across the creaky floorboards to warn him:

'A girl... stylish... possibly arty... your type.'

Being inside a PIP was literally an out-of-body experience. It recorded space-time and, when inhabited, could replay encounters with other PIPs, either inhabited ones or the ones ‘gone zombie’. 

There was only the one re-play segment in his inbox that had occurred so he uttered the word ‘embody’. Now he could actually ‘witness’ the encounter with this ‘stylish’ girl avatar. Once again the it had been brief; she had entered the bar, scanned the room quickly before spotting his online presence in the corner table. Her avatar was similar to the real-world impression. Once again she wasted little time; leaving a half-smile and a white card on the table. He watched the saloon doors swing shut. 

He was sure it was her now, making a point of hand-delivering the card in both the real and the virtual. 

Diode was becoming well-known for her skill with avatar creation, identity and disguise. What could she be want to show him?

He looked down at the glowing card, with its tiny green script.

‘Everything is flowing in Fountellion. Find me there.’

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

He was jacked-in, interface secured tightly and his cyber-suit wired up in his Trainer. The mini-map gave away her location as somewhere in the dense club of thronging avatars before him.

It had been days since he had first spoken to her (in-world), but their swift meeting had taken him by surprise. Her words had found him from somewhere:

So I see you’re a fellow of the green shires?

The sound was dark and snake-like. It was likely she had been in the form of a goth or a vampire and she spoke of his preference - and progression - in the Ariella realms. At least, it was the most likely reference. He thought he had seen her, but it was only a fleeting glimpse. She had given him her friendship, without introduction, but had then rezzed out for some phantom reason; her distant appearance had dissolved into hazy particles, lifting like dust motes that caught on fire and vanished into the smoky light. It always reminded him of ‘Star Trek’ beaming in the old movies.

Since then, her name – Muldoon, of course something exotic - had been ghosted out on his Friends List and he had been waiting to find her…

Until now. When he had logged in, her status was showing online, and also… nearby. Scanning the club with his detection HUD, her avatar soon became highlighted. Sure enough, she was a vampire. She was dancing, and her avatar was gyrating in pre-animated routines that she could influence through her suit directly or through her controls. The effect was extremely cool.

At last… her visibility meant that he could now throw her an exclusive voice message. He was sure that it was her: the avatar had the same hair; the ends were illuminated cherry red and emitted tiny showers of sparks. He engaged voice and spoke into his mic:

Yes, I am from the shires… Why did you leave before?... I have symbols…

At once, her avatar came out of its gyration and her head looked up, seeing him immediately. The girl’s eyes glinted with flecks of fire, even at this distance, assuming she was a girl. For a moment his stomach turned, even in the safety of the virtual. But then, is anything ever really safe? Maybe outside of courtship. Courtship though, he had learned, was often more about personal destruction.

She vaporised and appeared beside him. They viewed each other. Her eyes were dark, her face was round. She seemed innocent, pretty, young, but also sunken slightly; fallen. It was an alluring impression though.

You show me yours and I’ll show you mine…

An enhanced voice, full of money slipping off the scales of a burning snake – in noise-cancelled sound - against his ears. But he nodded his avatar’s head, by nodding his own. He pulled up the sleeve of the same arm, and showed her his symbols, carved black into his virtual arm and glowing with a soft red light round the marks. Obviously they only showed in the virtual; he had never had a real tattoo in his life, and never would.

He spoke aloud once more, in his own voice, unembellished:

The first symbol is the Creative
The second is Firecube… Design & animation: Master level acquired
The environment is countryside so I know of peace and timelessness
The god is Apollo, so I look to a darkness
The fifth is for study and control
The sixth shows I feel more than I think

If you are the one for me, I offer you my time…


He watched her for a response. The delay was a long one. He had only a little hope, but he was ready now; he had to know. These moments, he thought… These are the ones…

She stood back, and her avatar head lifted carefully, taking in his appearance. The backdrop behind her was still a throng of imaginative avatars, twisting and interweaving their forms and appendages. The effect was demonic like her smile, and the fangs were there too.

Our symbols match, seeker demiurge…

Her eyes glistened again with the animated effect. He felt suddenly weightless and submissive, uncertain of what now to do. Just as it had before, once, when suddenly everything depended on someone else; on the distraction from oneself by a stranger’s thoughts and actions. Demiurge was a little-known academy-term for a builder; a creator of worlds. Would she ask about this mark? It would mean she wasn’t the one.  She spoke again, this time her avatar’s lips moving. It was her actual voice this time, but still very feminine.

You’re convincing. But it’s still possible you’ve been trying to tamper; you could be a Rogue. You could even have replicated those symbols, knowing of mine. Let me test you first, on your knowledge of Game Lore: tell me, what does it mean to win?

She flicked her hair back and the red particles lifted around her. What she spoke of was true. There had been recent breaches of symbol security.

He replied at once: Don’t worry. ‘To win is to bear the weight of winning. To lose is not to lose, but to have tried’, he spoke back. The Lore were a set of values that more and more people - not just the Innervators - were adopting.

The alluring look returned to her face. Alright then Innervator. I will tell you that you are old enough. She hesitated, thinking, and he let her continue. But before I respect you too soon, tell me, what exactly was it that you imagined?... What was your research area?

He triggered a slow smile. This very test I imagined. Symbols. People. Compatibility. It was a major advance in communication. But I’ve never had a proper match for myself until you. Tell me how you found me before... You knew I was from the shires. It is possible that you are deceiving me... Perhaps we are deceiving one another…

Her laugh was a vampire laugh, in keeping with her whole virtual style and appearance. The detail had improved so much, people could look and move identical to their real-life person, but still he wondered how she looked offline.

She was quiet a moment, just looking, and then the response came, back in the gothic.

Well, you’re still a victim either way though, of your own imagination…but I’ll try not to make you too much of one, Woodbury. A smile again. I’m yours! I’ve been lonely and you do seem my type. Hell, you must be my type, according to you. Shall we dance?

It came up on his HUD; an offer to accept a dance routine for his avatar. No sooner than he’d squeezed it than he felt his suit contract and they re-appeared on the dance floor, moving in steady flow and gyration. The grunge went deep through the sensors and into his soul. The music was his favourite kind. Their night was beginning… and their time…

How long will it last this time? he thought… How long?…He wasn’t tricking nature, but then again, by removing the risk that was involved in meeting the perfect match… was it not a kind of trickery still? He did have faith in the symbol system. He had been honest with her earlier.

But this new girl, a vibrant part of nature, had he still tricked her…?

Get thee to a nunnery… A line from some old play.

He started to enjoy dancing with her. But he felt himself smiling not only at her, but with himself too. He hoped it would never turn and the joke be on him, or on them both. Nothing was certain, but they had lessened the uncertainty; moved closer to the mystery of… love... the pair-bond. Only the timing and the practice remained, and this would remain as both the fun and the fear.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

In a time of web-world addiction a virtual world promises to release users from their addiction, where it also draws them into it...


He was not re-wiring himself into those realms again. The ones that had drained him so completely in the past; drained him of fire and time and money. Such sights had flushed his intense eyes pink at the edges, so that under certain real-world lighting he would feel himself to be a living vampire; a zombie monster in the eyes of others. It was a return to the self-consciousness endured in adolescence, so he would resort to wearing sunglasses.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...

These days, most people had seen these things. It felt this way anyway, because of their sheer accessibility. Dark images of blatant desire vividly imagined and unbound. It was easy as a young man to feel that purity and love were dead and no longer cherished in a distracted world. He had even sought these spaces out; through his desires and his needs; his nurture and his nature. It was easy to find such worlds if you searched for them. Partly from addiction, but partly just to see how far people would go, and how low - how long - before his own desire diminished or depleted, and he start the climb back out again.

Where others were concerned, you couldn't be sure. There were more people wearing sunglasses, but this could simply be the increased temperature and sunlight.

These were all just shower-thoughts; his conjectures; his suspicions. He just figured: if the modern world was sheltered and spoiled enough to foster this nature in himself, then surely such desires would occur in others too; a growing number of them. The modern world was not promoting the thing it needed - reality - but the opposite.

However, he felt at least that he had the gift that older years and - ironically - exposure to those realms had given him. This was the gift, or power, of restraint; an ability to see through desire to its after-effects. Was it really a power, this garnered insight? It wasn't something he felt he had gained for himself but simply survived and suffered. The dark times had simply been encountered, and now he could watch for them, and try his best to avoid their effects. Yes, surely the dark times would be over soon for him... or would they?

What were the words again? He made some motions with his hand and soon the letters appeared, burning slightly from their scroll of warm parchment that floated in the digital space. He made some more motions and found the highlighted passage with ease. The heaviness of the thumbprints in one of the corners accurately represented how many times he had read or listened to the section. The words came, of course, from The Lore of Being:

The Forces of the Game - Positivity (order) and Negativity (chaos) - counteract one another... Vicinity to chaos and its addictions serves one, vital function: to appreciate and struggle for a restoration of Positivity (peace of mind and of will; the subsequent return of Power).

It was an unfixed Lore, in that it was always evolving through the agreement of its keepers, its Innervators so that the text he summoned would not always be exactly the same. But this was a key passage so would be unlikely to change. He had had to memorize it - like all other designers - during his time as a shaper.

He thought of the Jedi Knights, now a very real, very powerful online order that had originated from the game worlds. Their enemies were, principally, those who would oppose their code, and attempt to break it, merely for the desire to break it. And also the Sith. Then there were also those Jedi who had achieved the Jedi status but were now bored, needing to feel the dark powers they opposed for a while, so that in future, they could be restored to the light again. It seemed to be a perpetual cycle.

Addictive tendencies take route through subtlety and lack of change, trial or growth, where environment is a key factor. However, tendencies may return after long periods or during therapy or at any triggered time. Although setbacks the process may lead to a level of moderation being restored until a final balance enables self-value and better growth to continue.

The words were read in an old, battered voice that crackled convincingly like old paper. But yes, they still held a reassurance of some truth.

He just needed to decide where to go. Environment. He needed a world to go to, that was for sure. Somewhere to lose himself for the evening. Keep busy. Inspired. 

He was drawn to this Neuroceans thing, even without owning one of its elaborate interfaces. He decided not to seek out a musical space. It was true that there was nothing better than playing a guitar chord and summoning shapes in the air but he didn’t feel like creating, working - concentrating - anywhere just now. Even in the elevated mind-set of sharing music. What he needed was… passivity yet inspiration; encouragement, relaxation; a place to fall-out for a while, with no after-effects.

He searched the list of Therapy sims. The trouble with this genre was that it was saturated with light and quiet, repetitive music; consoling animations without much thought about the world. He found the Game of Being and its Lore to be the strongest therapy. But he had been there. Done that. Maybe he was just a hard case. 

Maybe something in the RPG world. The mythical ones…

Suddenly something did catch his eye; a super-world he’d heard something about. The menu image showed a fantastic form of castle at the top of an oriental-style mountain staircase and his eyes skipped straight to the many reviews and feedback which were all positive, assuming they were real reviews. He scanned quickly some of the blurb that began to be read out in an alluring voice filled with antique mystery:

“Ariella… Inspiration, Elevation, Belonging... In a dark age across a wounded land stands a bright castle and a shining sword… First you begin as an elven thief; broken, shamed and cast out into the back of a horse-drawn wagon...Until you meet a knight willing to give you one more chance...”

It sounded... ok. Maybe he could find a little peace of mind there - some redemption - from the restlessness and longing for… escape and power… inside himself. Maybe he would meet a good-looking female warrior knight too...

As the shapes of the world began to materialise he quickly realised it was not going to be any experience he’d expected or had been tempted with. He was almost sure for a moment that he was in Bedlam. 

Ariella was… burning… or perhaps, dissolving.

SUPER-WORLD NOTES: by Blake Welder
PRIVACY SETTING: Locked

Today I saw another of the Neuroceans web-worlds die from the inside. 

Ariella.

It’s not that someone was tracking my avatar again. And it was not a coincidence. I’d received a summons by someone who must clearly know that I work for ImmerTech and waited for my arrival before unmaking - spoiling - Ariella’s great presence all around me. The message is somewhat clear to me: this bright world had been suffering from attacks and changes by The Falling and by those possibly overwhelmed by the richness of its content. The sheer strength of the virtual in its current configuration and the settings for interfaces. I suspect it was an act of sabotage, yes, but not just this. The spell was cast too carefully. It might have been for the preservation of its fabric and likely someone will be looking to migrate it - export it - away from the Neuroceans permanently - until some new home can be found or created. 

But Is this something I should be able to do something about? What can I do now? Many parts of the Neuroceans are undoing themselves… Is it time for me also to quit and join the Salvagers? 

I must get John, Rosa and Ben together soon to discuss this as I know they have so many plans and something seems likely to happen soon if we don’t directly challenge the board. However, it doesn’t look as though they’ll be so much time before the next testing session in the Boston sim… 

I hope one day Ariella may be resurrected. Now it will sleep and if it ever reappears it will be so changed but... while I knew it… as it was… it was a fine thing. 

Was this why I was brought in there, to witness its demise? So I may write this. So it can be remembered? 

NATTER-CAST:
@spiraltimes Was the downfall of the Neuroceans project predicted by one of its tragic testers? Read more from newly-disclosed blog entries…

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

VETERAN GAMER FINDS NEW KEY INTO ‘FOUNTELLION’!
LEARN ALL ABOUT THE NEW ‘FIELDING FRAGMENT’… HERE!
Latest @spiraltimes

Everyone knows of the mystery still surrounding the present location of Professor Ben Fielding, respected Virtual World creator and interface pioneer. Some of his former team also went underground, and off-grid - taking with them special access to a forthcoming online web-world called ‘Fountellion’. You’d need to be disconnected not to have heard something about what it offers: a beautiful, mature experience allegedly pushing VR immersion to dizzy new heights - or depths. No-one knows when or for how long exactly it’s been in development, but surely it’s been riding on the back of the huge success both of The Spiral - with its tower of connected, curated Web-world ‘portals’ - and its Spiral Interface (currently the best way to experience them).

Well, just yesterday it seems a new ‘Fielding Fragment’ was located. These ‘easter eggs’ - or perhaps more accurately ‘key-gems’ - have been popping up in various different forms inside The Spiral, allowing special access for a wide range of people into this world ‘beyond the worlds’ of the main tower. Some fragments are quotations, some are direct messages, some are extracts or entries from Fielding’s ‘game book’ stimulating a lot of talk and excitement - and some scepticism - across the net and the new grid. 

The recent finding was unlocked - virtually - by a young man and retro-games reviewer Dan Harvester from Plymouth, UK. Working at a local petrol station to make ends meet, he’s certainly scooped a big prize for his V-web channel, where he posted an avalog of his news about the fragment to a rapidly rising number of visits. In the post he shows captures of the finding (on some deserted planet in the revived, classic space-game universe ‘Revel’) and tells us about his brief time in the mysterious ‘Fountellion’; still mostly hidden within The Spiral. 

Fountellion remains mysterious because no virtual video or avalogs currently function there, meaning that only low-quality footage of the beta ‘game’ currently exists. This also means it’s not really been possible - despite attempts - to compare it as yet with any other virtual ‘trip’. 

But what led to the finding? Here’s some of what he says, holding a mug of coffee with his game-channel logo on display:

“I just remembered something one morning about how much Fielding had loved the game Revel, which is still one of my favourite, originally TV-based games. Initially I’d only been looking for old, buried treasures and messages from former players in-game… but maybe on a more subconscious level I was looking for something more... I remember looking at the space map trying to decide on a planet to visit when I saw one called ‘Only my Dream’. It seemed an odd name and its label read that it had been discovered by a B.F. Yeats. But it wasn’t until the following day it came to me, in my kitchen… a virtual memory of a Spiral logo I’d seen subconsciously in the game. And I recalled the initials B.F. while thinking about Ben Fielding and the promise of this ‘Fountellion’ to game-worlds as a whole…” 

“So you went back in?” 

[Dan’s face began to light up from this point] “Yeah, so then I just had to jack back into the game and check out the nature of that planet. I soon punched through the atmosphere and found it was pretty dead: mostly desert, dunes and golden sand, but a beacon (with the logo) brought me to the remnants of a temple that was tiny in comparison to its neighbour: a giant, broken statue that dwarfed it. It had only half of its two stone legs remaining - cut-off at the knees - standing on the sand. At one time, they must have belonged to a great statue… some kind of Titan that someone - Fielding himself I guess - had once put there. But now there was only sand covering it and everything, stretching far away around the site… My space suit was well caked when I got back on board my ship.”

“And what about the fragment itself?”

“Well, I want people to see my Vlogs for what happened next, it’s kind of why I made them.” 

Indeed, Dan has made some decent quality captures of the whole finding, which - to cut a virtual short story short - led him to unlocking the treasure and finding the prize: a message from Fielding regarding a free Spiral interface to be delivered by mail, with special access into the new world. 

“Which brings me to the next important question… Have you received your prize yet, and accessed Fountellion?”

“I have... It was very exciting to open it up, like I was a young kid at Christmas time getting my first game or phone. Magic.”

“And... What do you think? Is it going to be as big as everyone thinks? Or expects? And can you confirm for everyone that ‘Fountellion’ is - so far - the only virtual, Spiral web-world that resides outside of the Tower itself?” 

We noticed a secretive look come over Dan at this point, as if he couldn’t find words he may, already, have prepared. After a little more coffee he seemed more willing and had this to divulge. 

“Look… It’s just nice to know something most other people don’t know, for once, that’s for sure. To have seen something… still new. But funny enough, for once I don’t feel like I want to share it, or exploit it, or record it. Which feels strange. I was all prepared to be sceptical about it - for my channel - but it’s taken me by surprise. It’s nothing like I was expecting. Nothing like I’m used to playing. I can only say that I’ve not experienced anything so… exciting… for a long time… since I first received a PC game box with an inch-thick game manual inside. I guess it’s the next big thing, because... I can’t wait to go back...and yeah... I can see it being… big. But for now, it’s… special somehow. Like a dream only… real… and deeply connected to the Source [reality]. I only wish it would remain so… for everyone. And not get… broken.’

One thing seems possible: these surprises of new interfaces and special access rights seem somewhat planted or targeted to certain interested parties: gaming enthusiasts, marketers, scientists(!), ‘Fielding fans’.... Is this to generate the sort of feedback that B.F. and the D.D. (wherever they are) are hoping for in advance of the full ‘reveal’ of this interesting new Virtual space? 

However, with the rising success of their interface and The Spiral worlds already, why would they need Fountellion to be promoted in this premeditated way?

The plot thickens and questions remain, but particularly: Who’ll be that next, special someone to find the next ‘key’, and how many more do there need to be before we all get to check out the next big super-tech...

Visit Dan’s V-space for his full, Revel capture...

IN THE CIRCLE

‘But I, being poor, have only my dreams’ (W.B. Yeats)

Last night he'd had the dream again. He was struggling in slow-motion down a city street, tumbling over barriers, while wearing something heavy - riot gear, including a shock vest  - but it was all vague and emotional. He wore head protection - again - a kind of visor or helmet, of course. He’d been pushing, forcing his way against something. It felt like being in a riot. But the street had been… empty. Nothing and no-one. Just himself, wrestling forwards - alone. 

And now this morning, this lethargy. And all the usual thoughts brimming and burning inside him. His doubts about his life, his other life, and the numerous dreams he still had for the future of both.

If only you’d seen things… with my eyes...

He uttered this phrase aloud just for playback; to hear the sound of his own raspy voice; test its quality. It came out as an ironic parody of the introductory line to the game world where he’d spent nearly all of yesterday.

Dan Harvester lived alone in his low-key flat with his cat on the edge of the city. His view was not of the scenic, coastal harbour, but of run-down flats - like his - opposite and beyond that, a block of new, expensive flats - which did overlook the harbour. At any rate they were all, it seemed, living on the brink of something; some new change. It was the beckoning sea maybe, that promised only a boat ride off to a far land, into the west, that he, himself would never be able - or willing - to take. Too much damage and insecurity inside to take any such big, physical leap into the unknown. Last night had been another 'cider night' following a week of dull shifts at the petrol station where he worked on the forecourt, helping out. Hanging about, more like it.

So last night he'd bummed out again, jacked-in to some tired gamespace, forgetting himself. It had nearly worked...

Oh he felt like crap this morning, that was for sure. But the lethargy was good. That worked. In fact it was just what the doctor ordered for confronting a new day. Here. In the real world.

Yeah, he knew he might almost be done with his current job, and that Monday's shift very possibly wouldn't happen. He’d have to crawl back to the agency with yet another excuse. Still, he had one more day to recover. And think too much.

A pang of despair rose up and settled in him. This was his reality. Rubbish jobs. This little flat. And his games. A memory from the day before filled his mind, of his own starship in the deep of space. The cockpit panels he’d customised and knew so well. The beauty of control.  

He loved playing games. Not just playing them. Sharing his thoughts and experiences in them. He ran a gaming review ‘channel space’, where visitors could come and experience his edited replays or recordings; his Vlog and Avalog adventures - often narrated with dry sarcasm, or through a cider-induced fog - in virtual spaces, discussion rooms, game environments and - more rarely - real-life visits to local games ‘meetups’. Games were less games these days, they were experiences. And you could contribute to, or enhance those experiences for others too; building places, modifying them or creating challenging missions. More than just illusions, they showed you things; took you to places you could only imagine. Too many places.

He thought of the dream again, how emotional it had been. Sometimes he dreamed about games, then woke up in his flat and felt... disappointed. But now he’d started to feel disappointed, frustrated, inside his dreams. He guessed it was the job. Its novelty was wearing off, its heavy reality setting in, forcing the questioning to come back. 

He looked about his small bedroom, vaguely listening for the sound of neighbours to try and gauge the time but there was silence. He took less care of this place than his virtual space, which shared a resemblance only slightly in its actual layout. ‘In there’ everything else was changed by whatever template inspired him currently; often his favourite worlds. Except for the walls though; they were permanently covered with inspiring game posters, objects and maps. His inner ‘portal’ to his videos and recordings - where he interviewed fellow gamers - might often change to exotic, game-lands or environments. His room scanners were set to ‘auto-scan’ of the rooms daily, just to make sure all stray objects were overlaid correctly into the virtual. At the moment, the current design was space-age futuristic, a tribute to his new appreciation of an old space simulator: Revel.

‘Revel in your time!’ went the tagline, itself taken from an even older sci-fi movie...

What a game world! The memories cheered him. He stretched out in the warm bed and started to feel the lure of a hot beverage. Revel was where you flew as a pilot in a near-endless universe filled with planets, stars, space stations and alien races. But it was tough. If resources weren’t managed correctly then things got tricky, and fast. If you advanced sufficiently you won insights and ship upgrades, and also the right to leave some kind of legacy; messages or temples on planets you could name and that could be discovered or visited some day by other players… or never. There were so many worlds. It wasn’t a new game, but had seen a revival with its big update for Virtual Interfaces, so now it was a much more involving experience than it had been, seeing both a new wave of players and a ‘comeback’ of veterans, such as himself. 

But the result of all this was that a lot of treasures, or vestiges, were now being discovered, on all kinds of planets, making for some interesting, amusing trends - and a lot of hits - across the channels. Company secrets, photos of dead pets, messages to politicians past and present and just things that people had wanted to say to the future. This was maybe why he was revisiting the game. It wasn’t all about the hits - he was genuinely interested in finding a treasure. He might have been the only player online last night, making his way closer to the galactic centre, but he was sure there would be something buried on some alluring planet. If it was interesting enough then, yeah, sure he’d feature it in his games channel and hope to see a hit rise.

His games channel; it made him think of the struggling, silent riot in his dream. It was all a bandwagon he'd jumped on too late. Everyone was doing it, sharing their gaming thoughts and skills and ideas. Their own little escapes. His visitor-counts were low like the majority. The shows he made just weren't paying off. And he'd made hundreds of entries. But he did love the absorption, and the occasional mini-audience to his reviews, or his live avatar gameplay. He could share his inspiration as fantasy worlds came alive - and not feel quite so alone in his cyber-adventures, like the moment he reached an undiscovered planet, and it materialised into view. He’d found so many now, from the volcanic, dangerous, mountainous worlds to lush, watery, lizard-infested landscapes. His spaceship upgrades allowed him to detect the full range of signal types and beacons.

VIrtual games - their super-worlds - were getting bigger and better every day. He had barely enough money to afford one title a month. It was only thanks to his rich brother, still funding his grid connection and subscriptions that he could link up with other gamers. Yes, he had met friends and contacts, he'd joined communities and clans, but there was always something vaguely artificial and transient about it all. There was nothing that united anybody for very long online unless you knew them in the real world. Very few would become close friends. Very few would help him escape a vicious circle that he had grown scared - himself - to break out of. Besides, many of his old comrades, they had their own lives now and their own pressures in unrelenting, soul-sapping careers. Everyone was moving to be somewhere else instead of looking around them. Including himself, on mornings when another bad shift awaited him.

Offline, online; everything was forever updating and you had to keep up. It was a confliction in him. Somewhere he did believe in games, in informing people about the different kinds and experiences, but what could he do to attract more people to his sessions? With the continual demand to update, he had to find just one investor or a decent job to give him funds to buy more of the latest gear and titles. But where else could he look? Another crummy, virtual job for another channel? He’d tried that before. No… he wanted his own success. What big event or recording or review could he do? Did he need to keep looking for obscure, long-lost items and messages in old games?

He yawned hard and rubbed his eyes. The sound of the city's steady flow of traffic came to him; it must be past 10am already into his precious Sunday. He felt a wave of hopelessness well up from deep within. Face it, Dan. You're stuck mate. That was it. And that was the nature of his dream. He would always be stuck here, dreading the real world, dreading another shift in another crap job. Dreading the sound of that traffic. And running up against all the choices and dreams of his life; roads either closing or opening around him. As he grew older, cards were tumbling out of his deck.

His cat - Gorbash - meowed and jumped up onto his bed. But he turned over and ignored him. “No… I'm not ready for you,” he said. “You're alright. You only live in the present. And at least you’ve still got me to look after you.” For now…

He thought of the terrible state he could be in, some nights, and he’d lost some good contacts to super-addiction. Just to darken his mood further, he dwelled on his online friend, Axel-fire. Now just another fall-out. He’d never known him in the Source, but recently he’d been contacted by his blame-filled family, informing him that Axel’s real person had been found - fallen - out of a window of his home, apparently still locked into a web-world. It might have just been a flying simulation, to make him believe, just for the necessary, drunken moments, that he had changed into a bird, or a dragon. It’d probably been a Blacksim, but nobody would know now. You probably covered your tracks. Prepared himself ‘to leave’, and a Blacksim would be the normal choice to rig-up a suicide, or create one’s own. Maybe even Bedlam4, his personal choice. Such vIrtual realms helped your fantasies to live and thrive, take shape and mingle with others in organised sessions or in private, closed spaces. But to think of Axel-fire gone - out of the whole game - still felt shocking to him as they’d shared a lot of online time. He remembered looking up the news post and spending a little time just staring at the real, happy photo, before “the V-web had stolen our son’”, and the rest. He’d modelled his avatar very accurately on his real appearance.   

Not the worst way to go, by a long shot, when there was nothing left living for...or when the interface began to control you, overtake you… feed a madness for immersion…stealing your inner pride until you had nothing left to hold on to... for climbing up… For facing the daily climb... 

Maybe he was headed in the same direction. He sighed and licked his lips, tasting the dry effects of the dry cider. They’d shared good times back when the early worlds - the Neuroceans - had been live. When it had all been so new.

‘Revel in your time!’ Yeah, ok.

Why couldn't his channel start to pay off? Why couldn't something, at least one of his recordings or his exploits, have taken off, allowing him to focus and expand? He was good at games. He knew so much about them. And he had a head start with Revel... But he knew part of the answer already to his dreary hit-performance of his uploads: they were dreary. He didn't believe in games, not as a job. They weren’t real and he needed some reality. Some balance. Therefore his fate seemed set: he’d always be bound to crap jobs; to keeping one foot in reality; away from too much super; too much addiction. At least his current employment existed in a real world. To make his virtual time into a job would kill his love for his escape, the sense of wonder and his excitement for the next game. 

So… he managed to conclude... what did he need? Either something big, something radical - an antidote - or something in the middle - a balance, like a new, real job related to his passion but that could also fund it and keep it alive…

He sighed. It wasn’t so bad. He would find something else, beyond the petrol station. Good ole Tina - his agency avabot - would help him look. And he had Gory too, his trusty cat. They were all captives together.

He thought briefly again of that empty street again though. The silent struggle in his game. Pushing. And the jumping. Yes, it almost felt like it did sometimes, in the Virtual. With something radical in there he was missing...

He still couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't face the cold kitchen just yet. It would still be warming up if the radiator decided to come on this time.

No... he needed to find more motivation in his mind first; and it turned once more to Revel… What a creation! Where next would he explore?

But he’d figured out that this new technology came with a balance that had to be owned just like the gear - gear that was changing, interfaces changing, getting better and better. In fact, it was all about the interface. The latest ones - like the the Spiral interface - could be worn for long periods, apparently with little impact on health thanks to latest developments. For everyday else in normal society there were many kinds of side-effects. Forms of nausea. Trembles even, for the more hardened users.

He brought his hand up and watched it quiver from beneath it. He closed it slowly into a fist, watching the delay, measuring the effort it took him on his own, personal scale.

He felt one more kick of despair at it all; at his situation. The self-questioning flooded back. What would happen when even his love of games began to dissolve? Or his ability to spend time in them? He was in his thirties and some days he could feel his former passions wilting, even at the news of a next big title coming out. As the years passed, soon he'd be left only with a dead cat and an empty bottle of cider. Plus a whole lot of outdated memories to worlds nobody cared for or visited anymore; their game-servers shut down. His avatars haunting v-spaces and picking up all kinds of spam. 

Stop it Dan, stop feeling old, he told himself. He thought of the glinting beacons in Revel, that summoned a player deeper into the universe… Surely an answer lay there, somewhere in the rejuvenated Revel, in his great passion for this space survival simulator...There must be something he could create, or report on, to drive his channel.

For it was all just too costly and the rest of the V-web were in on it all too. Just as he had figured earlier: he needed something else, and needed it quickly.

And the answer had come, a little later…

REVEL-ATION

Still thinking of the beacons, he made it out of bed to the kitchen and started brewing a big mug of strong coffee. He seemed to need bigger mugs these days. While he waited for the water he reached inside himself for something he loved again; something exciting; either to break or to feed his dark mood. The next big thing in Virtuality. ‘The next promise of experience and power’. The allure of dark and light worlds... Bedlam...

Gazing out of the dirty window of the cluttered, cramped kitchen, he thought over some of the recent game news. The latest rumours on the internet; the linear web. They were about this new game-world hidden within the Spiral that no-one knew had been in development. Fragments of writings had been found scattered on sites, either real or faked and allegedly written by Ben Fielder, expert developer and the reclusive founder and designer of The Spiral itself. Was it Fielder? Or Field. Fielding. ‘Fielding Fragments’, that was it. Finders of these fragments got to test out the latest kit and take a peek into this new sim. Why had he thought of this? Fielding was the latest game industry ‘pioneer’ - but he’d disappeared off the map since originally kicking off the Spiral. 

He tried the coffee and realised it had no sugar. Just then he stopped and put down the mug. The water was still spiralling from the stirring motion.

It was at that moment that he realised what had been at the back of his mind. He remembered suddenly that Fielding had also loved the game Revel, which was maybe why it had actually been migrated into The Spiral Tower, the umbrella of worlds serviced and curated by the Development Division, Fielding’s company. It was so he could grow and protect it. Elevate it to the top-end. To… keep it alive. 

He’d read or heard about this. He was sure it was that guy and not another famous game designer. The Spiral logo was everywhere these days but now he thought about it… he’d... seen the logo recently… it had come from one of the missions. Where was it… above a beacon… last night. Pointing to a planet that was called ‘Only My Dream’, discovered by a... B.F. Yeats. He’d thought it a cool name, so he’d marked it out for investigation, but only now made the connection. Ben Fielding Yeats? 

Suddenly he was excited. Could it be? He had to go back in. Had he found another fragment about a way into Fielding’s new project? His mind started - cautiously again - to search, still combining as it was with non-sweetened caffeine. If he could get in, what a scoop for his channel...

But for a little while yet, he lingered, not wanting to bother to realise what - really, now - might be out there, waiting. This was partly because he felt the sudden lure instead for some easy escape...and the darker worlds were calling. He felt their pull like a he was a puppet on a string. He called them ‘the darker worlds’ but it was normally always Bedlam4 he ended up in - still operating, somehow - since the fall of the Neuroceans. He could just use a supreme slice of stimulation this Sunday, and still have time to recover from it all and, maybe, face the following day. 

But, at the same time, moving into his dusty lounge to sit on the edge of his tatty sofa, he now felt a little overwhelmed. There were just so many worlds offering such a wide assortment of escapes. They were like the stars and planets of Revel. And he was still too tired to be enticed; it was still too early. He remembered when it had all been more exciting. When there had been only a few connected V-worlds - a few doors in the Spiral - and they had all felt new and special. In those days it had been Christmas, the promise of bright things. Before the more immersive worlds and the brighter, better interfaces. Before it had become a case of too much. Of being overwhelmed by choice. As though Santa had now brought so many toys that when you came to want to play they seemed more like what they were… just toys. Most of them got tiring and felt, in different but similar ways… hollow. What was the name of this next, new world? 

He spoke out a quick search into the air: “Batty… search: Fielding’s new game-world.”

His house-bot replied: “Good Morning Dan. Fielding’s Fountellion. No current entries exist beyond personal accounts of a mysterious, nature-inspired game-world hidden beyond the Spiral.”

Ok… so he’d spend a little time reading up on the other accounts on the old web. And he’d leave the Bedlam session for today. He ran one hand through already tousled hair. Of course, he’d carry on; jump back into his starship and check out Only My Dream. It had a nice name. And because to find treasure or to just keep playing, was what he did, was who he was… until he became truly tired of playing… either physically or because something inside - or outside - changed his game…

He typed in a quick search on a keypad this time: ‘Only my dream. Yeats’...

Up came a bunch of links to one W.B. Yeats, some dead poet he’d never actually heard of, but he read through some lines including:

...I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’ 

Nice. He liked the poem. And it had the right effect: intrigue. So.. it’s to be some kind of a dream-world was it, this Fountellion? And what would it offer to him? Dreams? Money? A way to break out of a tired routine? Or more spaceships and guns? Well, he’d take any or all of those...

And yes, he’d also love one of those new interfaces…The news was that they were incredible. No more side-effects. It would surely be what he needed to find again some sense of magic. To cast off from the old and step into the new. It was that or face a world outside; a world grown tired and dependent on technology anyway. And cats. He tossed Gory a biscuit and he sniffed it curiously.

Outside, it had started to rain. He watched the streaks of raindrops finding their channels unfolding, but already pre-destined.

He tried for one moment to imagine his own, real life as a game that others were playing. What would he do to gain power? What would others - playing as him - do now…? For he had not the pleasure of such a fresh perspective, though he was trying, as usual, to refresh his own...

• Jack back into Revel and look for the fragment. 

• Find the fragment. Record the finding.

• Obtain the interface and the special access….

• Tidy up his old games, his old channel.

• Check out the hype and report on Fountellion… whatever it promised…

Would he be one of the converted too? Ranting and raving about it online, or let down by its false promise for power and freedom? If the latter, he’d at least be able to rip into it, and the future of game-worlds via a multi-vlog barrage of sarcastic critiques. Let the world know his veteran’s view, his frustrations, so maybe they could change it for the better. But... if it were to hold his attention, draw him back to spend hours feeding his mind and his nature, there would be another thing he’d do: 

• Play the game. Make Fountellion my new home. Become an expert, a mage. A… pioneer. And gain real respect.

Ok, he admitted his options had improved. It’s game-time. 

After he’d checked Gory was comfortable, he slipped into his game room or ‘cabinet’, more like it, where it didn’t take him long to pull on the gear and connect back in, at his last position in the game. This was just on the edge of an asteroid field, looking out at the sheer, silent detail of space through his multi-window cockpit. Of course it was modelled on the Millennium Falcon. Who’s ship wasn’t? But it had taken a long time to unlock all the right components and upgrades. He could even bring up a special feed of his real flat, where he’d put cameras so he could check on Gory, while still flying. Being uniquely customised, the last thing he needed was for his ship to be damaged right now. Although, he even had a hydro-spanner somewhere. 

Taking care to navigate clear of some asteroids, he brought up the space map and punched in the co-ordinates for the planet. Another reason he’d marked it out was because it reminded him of ‘Dune’, from a classic, 1980’s movie - sandy coloured and desolate. Maybe there were sand-worms too which could be good for a few hits, as people could tune in to watch his starship navigate skillfully around them.

Soon the planet ‘Only my Dream’ filled his viewing windows and the beacon began to flash on the HUD, telling him to set down at a location previously visited by ‘B.F. Yeats’. 

Once he’d broken through the atmosphere, the vessel bumping and shaking worryingly, a dry, dune-brushed desert spread impressively out before him. What could he expect to find… here? Lowering the vessel to an automatically-controlled height, he could take a good appreciation of the sand, brushing off the tops of the dunes and scattering realistically into the air. Procedural generation at its finest. 

“Begin capture,” he spoke to the gear, which would now begin recording, in plain video and full VR format, all his next moves. 

His ship told him about the potential threat of storms: seventy-four percent. There didn’t seem to be any near to the beacon, but it was a good reason to be quick about the exploration. He kept the pulse engines on full; the shiney animation seemed to be leading him towards some kind of ruin in the distance, coming out of the shimmering yellow horizon. 

As he circled a little around two massive, broken legs from some giant, ruined statue he noticed an equally ruined temple, small in comparison, next to one of the huge feet. That was where something was hidden: the true source of the signal. It seemed to be simply a staircase leading up onto a raised, ancient-looking courtyard, as there were no longer any walls to be seen. 

He landed the ship effortlessly and was soon striding up the stone staircase, next to the enormous, male feet, noting the wind level and seeing if there was any resources in the area that could be useful. There was nothing. He’d have to be careful not to get into trouble here. The temple was not alien but more ancient world - Greek, or something. 

When he reached the top of the stairs he looked down at the stone platform to see some kind of faded, Spiral-mosaic design, vague beneath all the sand brushing across the slabs of stone. A few broken pillars still lined the edges, but were more like stumps. Any sign of any former glory was all so faint. The beacon flashed at the end, so he went towards it, controlling his avatar expertly. Its feel was a mix of light and cumbersome, the game variables emulating a heavy suit in quite light gravity.

The beacon-sign rose and then faded out as he closed in on the source. The signal had been emanating from a simple, wooden box on top of a large, old stone, covered in moss and ivy strands and leaves. It was then that he looked around, to give himself - and his viewers - a complete panorama of where he stood, next to and looking out over the two sandalled feet, half-buried by small, fantastic dunes that spread away to meet bigger and higher ones in the distance. He looked up, his mind boggling at how large the male statue would once have been, how it might have looked and once more, what other settlements could possibly have rivalled its presence, if ever there had been any.

The degree of sand in the air brushing across everything, including his helmet visor, seemed to be increasing with wind gusts possibly getting more frequent.

He looked back down at the small, wooden box, the object of so much hope inside of him. It had carvings of leaves and vines chiselled into it, besides the virtual ones. There was a hole big enough for a hand at one end, so he put his gloved hand inside and quickly heard something like... paper, creasing inside. Indeed, he pinched down on something papery and pulled out… a parchment scroll with a green, glowing vine keeping it rolled. 

He tried to grab the cord to pull but it slipped - or blew - out of his gloves. Before he could worry about it blowing away completely to be lost in this desolate place, it magically blew around, returned and unrolled before him, hanging in the air with golden, glowing sand falling around its parchment

Words started to form, etching themselves in a dark, green, inky script on the scroll.

He was trying not to feel paranoid about his own excitement at finding something, unlocking something, looking so fragile and thin. 

An old, enigmatic voice read out the words as they appeared, the sound effortlessly - and somewhat eerily - travelling through the wind and the beginnings of an approaching storm.

Well done my friend, for the finding. 

My name is Professor Ben Fielding and I’d like to invite you to experience our ‘Game’.

It remains currently in a Closed Beta stage but will remain in a continual state of ‘live development’. As a dedicated spokesman for a certain kind of Game-world my team and I feel sure that you’ll accept our invitation to try it for yourself, along with the few others in number so far invited. 

Possible errors and residual bugs together with any suggestions may be reported by vocal commands when you have ‘acclimatised’ to the surroundings.

Please ensure that you follow the tutorials for the Interface as you may find it makes potent use of its fully immersive features. 

Despite anything you may have read or heard about it, we hold high hopes that you will experience it simply as yourself and without pre-conceived notions.

To progress, I will need to give you a code, a tool and a key.

But first let me ask you this: if you are willing to receive them, how then would you tread? 

There was no more writing or voice so he assumed he had to shout out a response into the wind…and now he felt suddenly worried he’d have no idea what to say, until quickly he connected ‘tread’ with the poem extract by Yeats… It was worth a go. Thinking his voice might suffer from having a grainy, mic effect placed on it, he snapped open his helmet with its familiar, cinematic ‘hiss’, and spoke out into the virtual air.

“Softly.” 

A short pause followed and in the space he felt now a little in awe and humbled by this question like some test, or ritual, as though he might not actually be worthy, perhaps because he was sharing the experience and via a drone camera, hovering nearby. Sullying the experience. For a moment in his mind he saw himself as a spectator might - a strange, desperate, suited presence in this abstract, deserted space, standing next to a box talking at a ‘magic’ scroll in an artificial wind. He almost expected the voice to reply, calmly negative: “Access denied!” 

Thankfully that didn’t happen. What he’d said had proved sufficient: the scroll began to unroll again for the ink scratching to resume along with the calm, weathered, sandy voice. A quick glance at his drone indicated that that was still there; still operating.

Well done… Pioneer. Speak out your name and address when you hear the following sound and a Spiral Interface will be sent out to you at your real location. 

He heard three, soft, enchanting bell sounds, each a different note and he was sure to speak clearly. The voice resumed.

Thank-you Dan. Your redeem code for special access to Fountellion is HARMONY8. Remember this, for if you speak it to the Librarian of the FIrecube Academy, then she will show you the way...  

Now look again into the box and you will find the key. Take this in your inventory as a reminder of this colossal wreck, boundless and bare.

Where the lone and level sands stretch far away.

A Spiral logo etched itself quickly in an elegant, animated flourish and then disappeared with all the other writing, leaving only drops of ink that slowly faded until there was nothing. A final line briefly appeared, reading: ‘certified by the DD - Development Division,’ before the scroll itself rolled up and it too disappeared into the wind.

Without hesitating he felt back inside the carved box. The tiny haptic feedback vibrations told him something heavy was now… yes, inside. Indeed it was a key, but not like one he expected, for it was just like a very old, iron key to some ancient, oak door or secret garden, or something. It was rusted but clearly ornate with intricate leaves and natural decorations carved into it. On both sides of the rounded ending, it had the letter eight embossed finely. It glowed just slightly as he turned it over; a soft, eerie green energy caught inside an otherwise dull, well-aged design.

So now he was holding one of the hugely-sought keys into Fountellion…and capturing a great piece of footage to share. He was feeling elated.

But the storm that had been threatening had now materialised across the dunes in the form of a thin, swirling twister of darker sand, rising to a much more orangey sky than when he’d arrived. If it was to head in his direction he could be caught up in it, as it was probably triggered by his discovery. In typical game fashion, it was probably now set to arrive and destroy the whole scene, and he didn’t want to find out, not while the heavy, settled bulk of his vessel, beckoned - his safe, quiet refuge across the broken, ruined slabs. 

Before turning back, he tapped the key twice against his other glove, a gesture to trigger the act of putting something into inventory. In a quick response, the key faded out into the air with a light notification chime. Then he leapt across the way he had come but in bigger, jetpacked strides. He noticed as he did so that the spiral logos were glowing on the slabs and green foliage was now growing quickly across the temple floor and up the sides of a stone wall now appearing all around, so he had to be careful not to trip or get tangled up in them. There were vines with fresh leaves and blue and white flowers like fallen blossoms, amongst sprouting bulbs. Grass was pushing up through the slabs in thick clumps and already hiding many of them. And all this with sand brushing more and more quickly and noisily across his helmet, which he was forced to close with the back of one glove. It was like the temple had changed into a secret garden, keeping him on its centre path, a beautiful canopy taking shape above him, which explained the blossoms. These were a lot of triggers like some Indiana Jones game, only more magical; thankfully less hazardous. It was tangled but there was a lushness to see so much green appearing in the stark context of the desert. The main worry he had about falling over was looking foolish, but he’d be able to burn through anything tangling with his multi-tool. A few times he had to quickly jetpack-jump and not get stuck in the canopy overhead.

Reaching the cargo door into his ship had a real sense of escape into safety, as the storm took over, drowning all other sights and sounds. It was nice and quiet back in the cockpit where he realised that the twister was already passing away, from the ship and the whole site, leaving the sand to begin settling again.

The lone and levels sands stretch far away…

A line from another poem? Had something else been built here, or tested, or buried here? Something else he’d have to look up and think about.

The statue looked even more impressive somehow with sand still reducing the visibility so much outside, with the huge toes just resting there, next to the white and green of the now overgrown garden, which the former temple had become. It looked much more alive there, but there’d be no point going back. It looked very closed.

A wave of relief, excitement and… self-confidence was firing through him. He’d been right. His memory had served him. He was not suffering from game-nesia just yet. He’d found the code, the tool and the key for getting to a brand new world. And a strange idea that he’d somehow meant to find it entered his mind.

And for almost a lost cause, what on earth could such a world - or any world - do for him?

That colossal wreck, boundless and bare...

Who or what was the wreck? Himself, or the statue with its broken legs beginning to emerge again out of the dust? This planet or his world beyond, that he must go back to? 

He whispered into the quietened, virtual space: “Raise shields and park. Stop capture,” gazing out a final time across the desert of the planet Only my Dream. Then he punched out of the game, seeing it all fade magically, just as it had materialised.

OUT OF THE CIRCLE

‘Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.’ - E. M. Forster

The answer to his previous question about what it might do for him was...quite a lot, in fact. He couldn’t believe the exhilaration he felt; could almost hear the ghosts of his old gaming buddies coming into his mind, asking him questions. 

A little later, back in his flat, he made another coffee to think about how it’d go.

He’d eat breakfast, tidy up his flat, his cider cans, food packets, cat hairs and do the whole ‘unboxing’ thing when the new interface arrived, for his show. He’d tidy up his online presence too, his avatar and PIP and make some... modifications. People might actually want to know about him soon. All about him. It was time to edit and clean up.

For the two days he spent waiting until the interface arrived, he researched Fielding, the new Spiral Worlds and the other findings on info sites like Spiral Times. Apparently the Professor had actually made a real appearance, in a scruffy games shop, giving access to the shop-keeper. He reckoned he’d be bound to make another one, especially to launch the world officially. It was no easy thing to keep such a mystery going these days. He also researched ‘Ozymandius’, a poem by a guy called Shelley, which features a similar, broken statue in it and the famous lines mentioned on the scroll. Its message was well-known: all things pass even the pride of the greatest civilisations of which statues symbolise. But, it seems, things are reborn, nature returns. He thought of the key again, stowed virtually in his avatar.

Maybe his humble channel would never be great, even beyond this next adventure, despite giving enough of himself to it now. He’d sold himself online for little return. Time had been wasted. Friends had been lost... fallen. And if some redemption was to come, he wouldn’t look back. He’d make no more reviews beyond this, but would cash out with whatever respect he’d gained from the distance he’d run. Then he’d start over.

A few days later, he took one last gulp from another cold mug of coffee and fastened the new interface carefully, ritualistically to his person. He stood in the main room, as he wasn’t sure how much space it would need for full function. 

He took a deep breath. Was it a means to something new? Or would it be one more, ultimately transient experience. The response inside him was of something hopeful, optimistic but still cautious. Maybe there would be something to this other world… something wonderful, something mind-changing, game-changing that would lead him towards his own success, to wield greater power over his own life. Maybe he'd find something that he could bring back to it, a new skill or a new insight, even back into his dull job and somehow... make it better. Maybe it would be an ultimate game to free himself from all games and... change him. Maybe it wasn't too late for him...

He’d already done some tests, so there was only one location on his mind and he spoke it aloud to the voice processors listening within his device:

“Take me back to The Spiral. Firecube Academy, in the Know-Zones.”

He adjusted the brand new, close-fitting headset component one more time just as the visions consumed his eyes with their representations. It was considerably more comfortable than his older hardware.

The next word he uttered into the interface was “Record”, but a message appeared and informed him that although the feature would work, it was restricted, until the game was fully live and captures could be released. He was expecting this. So... it was just him then for now. Ok…

He’d record himself just from outside, in the Source. People might still get some kicks out of watching him ‘under the influence’ of this rare device, flailing around like a fish in a bowl without water.

“Batty: record the room ok?”

“No problem, Dan.”

It would be the first time he’d go into The Spiral with the actual Spiral Interface. He felt a little anxious at what it might do to him; what was expected of him. But it was preferable to feeling how he had that morning, after the dream. The riot on an empty street.

“Bye for now Gory,” he said to his cat, curled into one corner of the sofa, watching from a sleepy daze; from far away. Its eyes, as usual seemed already so contented. At the sight of him they just narrowed a little more… as he lowered the interface down, fully across his vision.

It was time to report for the world on its next big, virtual ‘dream’… 

Tread softly...

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +12 XP : MAJOR BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Entry by Loxley2
Virtual Order of Cyber-Knights & Foresters.

I dip my cyber-quill and write these words with a delicate flow. I stain the squares of virtual parchment, to begin a blog that aims to provide some chronicle of the forces and events that now exist across the realms.

Having broken as a renowned Clan, we used our skills to build this place, a platform for the security of our fellowship. For it is here that the real meaning to our connected secondary lives began to overtake us…

We started out as a Game Clan in the gaming sectors, battling it out as a group of rogue woodlanders, planning attacks on a challenging AI boss called the Sheriff of Nottingham in Merrie England Online. We were demonstrators for the emergent gameplay possibilities in open world games. We’ve come far since those fighting times. As we matured, we realised that what we begun to love most was the sharing of art, music, laughter and our adventures in the Web-worlds. We followed the Lore of Being and its gaming code. We learned new signs and sign-sharing and sung a dream of belonging, control, unity and power, and so settled here in the advanced Neuroceans.

I’ve logged into my virtual residence; a tree house in New Sherwood. I can look out the window to survey the scene. Down below, a comrade sits beside the campfire, strumming an old gaming lilt. I think his real world is Iceland but perhaps his real home is here. It wasn’t easy maintaining New Sherwood, and filling it with kindred spirits, and keeping the Fellowship Fire burning. But it was a question of a need: to regain some spirit of goodness, chivalry, and freedom within a time where the darker places have emerged onto the V-web. I will not speak of them just yet...

I will say that we fought for this space online, and its protection. Now, new comrades are monitored and approached to join, though the fellowship is kept small and secretive. Their skills are those of coding, balance, high ratings in the Game and imagination. A variety of specialist knowledge can here be learnt and practiced. They are proving more useful than we could have dared to think of…

These small extracts that I inscribe here are to chronicle its origins. But just as the Order is truly beginning, summoned into unexpected battles and inspired by the myths of old, so too is it dying. I can foresee it. For like the Grail Knights of old, it can only last so long, to inspire again sufficiently through a short-lived, resonating fame, and through the making of new stories. They will tell of our quiet, crucial struggle that must survive us. Those about a war against corruptions just us old as the myths, and those far worse – those magnified, amplified - within a system that has enabled them to flourish.

Yes… scripture ; the controlled art of writing. These days it is a virtual reality that is less used. Even these very letters and words are being captured in-world so cannot be deemed true writing. But it must show to you something of my deliberate intentions to promote the need for some quiet amidst all the advanced technological noise.

The new powers standing in the place of scripture and the old time? They are those of control and organisation – via the arts of coding and scripting - within these online realms. Those who wield them in best configurations and with the close, effective support from one’s fellows (may they be knights or foresters) can emerge true and with their avatar untarnished.

However, a subsidiary purpose of our Order is to place value once more back onto these old arts, the slow time, of thought and learning, where activities and the lore can be transferred again to the Real World.

This sanctuary, this place of spells and code and camouflage in New Sherwood, conceals a deep, strong bond of fellowship. Yes, this is the best place to begin.


I will speak now of our enemies, those real and those imagined, and how it seems in this connected age they are capable of combining so strangely, somewhere in the middle. Maybe we should just call them the Blind Ones; for they will not see what is around them and where they are all going… and possibly pulling us along with them.

The Falling are the most coherent of the anti-virtual campaigners who have introduced the most viruses across the Neuroceans. They summon rogue agents, poison interfaces and PIPs and generally impact on the stable operation of the whole system; the undermining of user confidence.  It has begun to spiral. Recently, we even learned that one of their hacker members jacked-in here as a guard of Nottingham and launched an attack on our hideout. Let’s say that his avatar is no longer a bold site. 

Some of these campaigners are worried about corruption; some of them of course are all about religion. It is true that the nature of the Neuroceans has suffered from more than a fair share of teething issues, yet it is the same old story: any corruption is brought in within the mind of the user and is very rarely created here. Yet it will be blamed as it is so new. People must adapt to new technology. 

Instead of precious time building we have been having now to assist Salvagers find lost users for worried families. We suspect The Falling are to blame in some of these cases. Lately, some of the top-ranking Game of Being players have had their game data stolen. Some have been hassled and kidnapped in the Source; forced to deny their involvement and confess to addictions (most likely implanted or setups). 

…And so… I must inscribe a few, secreted lines about our new project: to migrate the whole of New Sherwood into its new realm faster than we’d thought necessary, as these servers and interfaces begin to feel the vibrations through our bright fires and trees and inhibit growth. There is talk in the village of a new land, a new kingdom where we may once more take to the trees and continue our fight that has become now a very real game. It is being called The Spiral. There will be new kings. You can be sure that the Knights will assist us and lend their finely honed shaping skills to our encampment there. We will lose no time to the adjustment. The Virtual Worlds have never been so real thanks to the pressure from the unstoppable tide of technological change and the negative currents it always brings. But they can - as ever - only be changed by art and by revelation.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Their worlds combined.

Many hours of development had been spent in the construction of the intricate mix of maths and art within which the highly respected Knowledge Zones of the V-Web were founded and could grow. It was maths that allowed for art; a matrix for a spiritual rising that would shine forth out from that matrix. Inspiration and fast, easy learning could finally walk hand in hand.

The evolution of the virtual continued to blossom and now the 3D world-space of Dreameld in the Spiral were where interests and particular inclinations could intermingle in vibrant and often passionate flavours of harnessed light and energy. It was a magical, virtual, instant form of communication for couples who had been together for over a month. It allowed for personal memories and dreams to be fasted or shared. And it was here that their two worlds met with as little amount of compatibility issues as was required to ensure a long-term bonding, rich with magic, signs, fragility and yet overriding resilience and dedication to the spirit of the other.

Their communication shared their mutual knowledge and respect for the Lore, the evolving code within them with all its darkness and light. Sensibilities and inclinations were exchanged to the extent that their natures allowed, so that together they could recognise something within themselves within the other, and strive with it together for a mutual strength but also a focused project; a combined force; a confluence. And this focus was green; Source-related; a project to ensure the safe-keeping of bird species threatened by latest developments in industry. Together they identified their central talents and major enthusiasms and began to describe through vivid expression, the possibilities for the future, born from the past, and the protections required in the present.

In this endeavor would they feel the nature flow within them, combined with a great awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the other; a fierce love and an expectation of the fulfilment attained at its completion.

And that night, did the fires of their digital incarnations crackle with the fierce conference of wonder and desire unfolding between them and as it had done in the millions of years previously, since life started on Earth. However, it occurred here, online, in Dreameld, on a new level of god-like understanding of the evolving system of life within them and beneath them, as they attempted again to direct the glinting flow of their blood into the burning blood of life weeping back up at the sun.

Indeed, their dream-sharing session had gone well. They were both happy. Their future together beckoned with bright promise for the complete fulfilment of their work, their interests, inclinations and their natures to flow harmoniously for a lifetime.

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

FROM: Spiral Development Division

At last, an email she might actually enjoy reading: a status update from the New Sherwood Game World, where she had spent too many hours of the last week jacked-in. It was because of her beloved interface and the worlds it had shown her in The Spiral Tower, especially the elaborate game worlds that had started to appear there. 

The realm of Merrie England Online and the Forest of New Sherwood. She was just in awe of the migrated upgrades it had received, making the world a more vivid and exciting experience like never before. And there were rumours of greater worlds like this to come…

She didn’t need any more. She was making all kinds of friends and contacts from fellow players locked into the battle between the Foresters and the Sheriff’s men. No-one had yet defeated the Sheriff but her camp would need a new leader if they were going to succeed. 

Some nights the realm filled her dreams: from the feeling of letting loose an arrow to the detail of the forest rivers and undergrowth. She felt so free in the forest; so whole. Since the arrival of the interface everything was just so fluid there.  Truly, like the times of old must have been. She had learned much. She never thought she would find such a love of folk music. Her friends had been through many conflicts, many thrilling moments in the battle for freedom. The forest teemed with resources, wildlife and surprises they had confronted together and plundered. In the last session they had stocked up many of the resources the camp would need for the attack. They had sung songs from previous exploits. They would need to find a new bard though, as Jenner certainly wasn’t up to that task.

She clicked open the email. It was decorated with bright, enticing images from the game, snapshots of places yet unexplored, weapons and tools not yet unlocked:

YOUR STATS at 46hrs 36mins

CHARACTER: Lena Harper
Story-teller and arrow maker

XP earned: 77414
Skills learned: 8
Attacks planned: 16
Foes killed: 168
Weapon skill level: 40%
Friends in your clan: 7
Game progression level: 30%

THE BATTLES ARE NOT OVER YET!
The Battle for the Castle begins soon… Will Prince John be at attending the Tournaments? Make pacts with rival bands across the realm in order to unite and plan an offensive. Release allied characters still locked in the dungeons.

EVENT NEWS:
The Sheriff of Nottingham has recently learned that your leader is planning an attack on the castle and has sent soldiers forth into the Forest to search for hideouts.
If your character or camp is located without any defence it may be captured! Ensure your traps and tree homes are well positioned and defended! Boost your XP and progression by finding the soldiers before they attack. 

Access the CLAN FORUMS for more !

That was it. She must go back. Her character could be in trouble. If she was captured it would cost them dearly. As soon as she’d finished her work course in the Know-Zones, she’d teleport deep into the forest and her previous Spawn Point. Before anything else though, she unlinked from the V-web and went to grab a quick break; a hot drink.

Once the tea had brewed she clasped it in her hands. It wasn’t cold but it felt like it from the view out of her apartment. From the window she gazed at the grey, winter rain, the cars silently passing below behind the glass. The occasional, louder city sound penetrated this other world around and beyond her.

She knew she’d have to leave the Game Zones behind her, and soon. If her character died well next time she may not revive it. There were just too many things she had to tidy up here in the Source. Too many things needed money spent on them. She looked around her at the modest furniture, the pot plant dying in the corner. She wished sometimes that she could fire an arrow at the avatar of her boss. 

What would become of her comrades in the forest, her clan, her progression? She’d have to let them know in a good way and meet up with them beyond The Spiral. Down the street maybe, at a city bar or something. They would celebrate her ‘passing’.

One day she would return, once she had conquered the Source. Once she had earned more money working on the V-web to upgrade her technology; her life; her resources. For now, both her lives depended on the power of new technology. There was just no room for New Sherwood. It was moments like this where she still felt like the victim of such technology, rather than its ‘empowered user’. It would only be her fault if she didn’t disconnect for a while; or the fault of being distracted for too long a time period.  

Perhaps, even, there would come a day in some future when she had the power to turn it all off. First, she would have to wrestle her character - Lena - back into the real world, before it consumed her. So for now, some of that future still lived in the present key of New Sherwood. For now, she needed its power of friendship, inspiration, enthrallment… and escape. 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

A zombie game called Necropalypse threatens to become far too real...overlapping into the Source...

DARK GAME MEMORIES

There are dark worlds within The Spiral, the growing web of Virtual Worlds that spins its sticky mind-webs within the great Tower. No-one will now admit to its first appearance, but somehow it had appeared. Possibly, it had slipped under the eye of the ‘curators’. 

I was in the Tower myself… before I was changed. Before I have gone through many… changes. 

These words that I arrange shall be my testament, shall be my small voice that I will leave with the Mage here who has been so kind and given to me a new purpose.

For I write them here from within the Monastery in Fountellion. My haven now. My refuge. 

When they have finished flowing from my fractured soul onto this virtual parchment,  I will read the lines to linger for the sake of any future visitors lucky enough to stay here.

But let me think back to the Tower... I had jacked-into its enticing secrets and was in one of the game sectors, looking for something that would challenge my senses, inspire my wonder… My mind was hungry, seeking some rich kind of distraction.

Nature is strange and it is stony. This I can tell you. Its bedrock is a harsh one; a harsh system but it works to grow something out of it. Perhaps. It grows us forth, but, by God ! ... how we have been fighting our eyes! Battling our own souls for some purity against madness; instinct... and where this may blindly run to. Where this would bleed to, I should say.

These are all words. But it is not a time of words, measured out and all laid down for gentle consideration. It is a time of experience and worlds, of deed and action, where words are only quick roads to deeds and to doing, and pleasuring our senses. Any words like these are just old thought; divorced...Their wisdom is dried.

But… so also it is that we are the creatures of words, dwelling in the places they have made; the places of the mind. And it is here where, at last, our bodies roam in the random and shall overthrow us… I speak of demons...

They come from the inner reaches of the system, and we are glued to them. There is no stopping them. They have come to plague us and to terrorise us. They have come to implicate us in their crimes only too familiar to mankind. There is no stopping them.

As for this. It is merely my own desperate account to record experience. I doubt it shall be read. I should think it could lie around in the Source for aeons or stay unexploded in some tiny file in the vast universe of files that now constitute the flowing web, vulnerable to instant, total deletion. It is my thin, silent yet quivering voice and if there is any God or Goddess at all then perhaps there lies my hope that it shall shine through some brave person's mind unto their kindred soul.

This world of worlds is fallen. We fight for it.....But it was always fallen, only before, it was disguised. It has taken the Virtual worlds to wake us up, to bring out our truth. We did well for awhile, I'll grant you. But it is better this way. It is better to know chaos and much older forms of pain.


No one could have foreseen that through those screens and wires and chips we were connecting ourselves so seamlessly to Death. Wiring ourselves up to war....

I have tried to stop it… even before it spilled out over into the Source.

You can always close your eyes, they once said. But not if they refuse to. Not if they remain fastened upon what they see....And I have seen so much already.....

For myself, I have had many names, but now I am only Blade. For I cut like grass and am loose in the wild winds of the world, but tethered to being and a frail breathing, either to a small belief in a presence of goodness or just a fading need to understand it all....to correlate....

Where can I start...

I had opened this game door in the Spiral and entered a hell that I shall never completely leave…

It started with a game… and, indeed, I can remember some of the scenes...

....but mostly a voice, old and battered and with a surprising understatement that made you all the more attentive....The music was rich and unsettling….


We all had our theories....but nobody really knew.

That the Devil and his demons had found a way to enter the world, that by use of a black stone something had forged a gate, that it was the end of all life on Earth; just theories.

But what we really did know was that we were alone, we would fight to the death, and that we would make certain that none of us became like them. What interests me now, looking back, was how the everyday life of the 2040's was so spectacularly changed. I see it now, as nothing more than a hideous test, that brought us to our limits, to the edge, to the point of unreality. The chaos, the screams, the breakdown; there was no time for the panic most people never overcame. 'Kill or be killed' was the rule we would live by, the rush we would die for; the banner under which we fell upon the horror without and within ourselves. We would hang there, from the crumbling cliff's edge, from the depths of our souls, and stare down so many fathoms into the dark, as to hear the sea roar from beneath us. It was in that moment when I realised, above all else, how alive we were, confronting death, in all the madness of its forms.

Text had accompanied the graphics too, and it had pulled him in, speaking to his lost soul inside. Another young man in need of a quest.

The winter evening is ending with the blood of the sun soaking the sky. It is cold and, watching the cratered white orb of the moon, you wrap your great coat closer against your body. The lane on which you travel weaves within its hedges through the fields of the English countryside. Your breath breaks the crisp air again as you begin to long for the warmth of the Fingest village tavern that lies about a mile and a half ahead.

Something makes you stop for a moment. There is a subtle sense of foreboding in that dusk, the darkening crimson spreading its rich depth onto the clouds. Closing your eyes, you feel the wisdom in the chill wind around you, creaking gently in the leafless trees, escaping something uninvited, unwanted. Everything fades into a peace, vast and complete, and you stand inside the evening. It's only seconds before the moment falls away and you blink, blind and unworthy to some unearthly significance. The evening returns and scares you on, but your mind moves over a foreseen dawn, a deadly imminence in the world and the darkness of this night, this time; it has prepared you....'

The letters on the HUD rise slowly and formed in blood: 

‘N E C R O P A L Y P S E’

TO SALVAGE THE OTHERS

Yes, this had been the beginning.....the game....

We had been swallowed up by its totality, by the way its demons would emerge from woods and come to seek our minds and souls… under siege by experiences terrifying for new or young players to behold. 

How had it ended? It had ended in the Source, when he had been running for his life, escaping the clan he had joined and who wanted him back in the game, who still believed that zombies existed there too. As had he, almost. 

They had found him, but not the clan, or the zombies. It was a salvager. A guy called Leaven. He’d wrestled him to the ground before he’d been rigged up and ‘re-ordered’ as they called their process. It was all vague now but he had a good memory of the guy’s firm hands, holding him like he was a frightened child. This is what time in Bedlam4 could do to a man.

Now? Now as I sit trying to re-adjust to the light of the clinic that is the Monastery? My hand trembles and I clutch it with the other. It is when I think of the comrades of my clan, falling to one of those... things…

This fantasy was just a fantasy, and yet...

They were feeding on our minds! These demons in the game… and I must go back and rescue my comrades. 

Let them know that to live through this game should not be their obsession…

So I have this new, clear mission… But they will not listen to words. They will only be tempted by other fantasies; other worlds. So this will be my tactic. 

I must tell them about a new Game that is still only whispered in the Castle Throne Rooms in Ariella2 or in the trees of New Sherwood… It is a Game that may save us… all of us. It may bring us back to the Source, back from the Virtual prisons that are locking us into our rooms and taking away our light, our optimism; our sense of reality…

“Fountellion.”

A realm without demons, a realm without a struggle against the Undead, which has become all too real.

A way back to the Source… 

I will not tell them what it has done to me. I will tell them it is something else, and this will draw them in. 

I will no longer be running at least, from zombies real and imagined. I will be hunting again on mission to rescue and salvage all that remains of my player comrades. 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

He hadn't had to access the old, linear web for some time, but everything had changed since he’d seen... and felt… something new… Not just another super world... more like a hyper-world...

Whatever project it was, he would have to find some way to get involved. 

Leaning back in his brown leather desk chair, he let the memory of it come back. 

It had felt so… alive. A coastline of sorts. No… more like an estuary. A shining blue sea running into a wide beach and he was looking down upon it, from a higher place; a breezy field of ripe barley. The detail and realism were just superb.  He could look across the stalks and see them move in the light wind. He had moved a little – so naturally - through the field, towards a hedge that marked the field boundary. The grass had parted in his avatar’s hands and he had briefly made out the individual grains. For a moment he thought he had heard… whispers… murmurings...from within the rustling that were... haunting...

He was not sure how he'd landed in there. He had been trying to study something in a Know-Zone, a super-library for inspiration and learning. It was for his new v-book. He had just been researching in his subject of ‘artificial life inside the virtual’, studying a text (on Natural Selection) in the Great Library of Alexandria space, when he’d turned a page on something - or else triggered it – and had suddenly fallen through the floor and out of the sky, clouds parting around his avatar. The sensation had been surprising, obviously, but also… exhilarating; liberating. The landing he feared would destroy his avatar but he’d lifted his hands out and landed softly and with some brief element of control. More evidence of just how powerful these interfaces had become. He wanted to know what this world was all about. 

Then… what had the voices spoken of... Foundellion? Fountellion? He sipped some hot coffee and tried to remember exactly. He was sure it was something like this... Soft, whispered voices had come as though from the fields around him in the wind that blew and sighed resonantly around the landscape. It was more real than real; super-real.

Speaking the words into his console numerous times, something finally came up. He scanned the results that emerged on his ageing terminal. 

A mysterious game world created by a brilliant interface pioneer is allegedly nearing completion but mystery still surrounds the project and its development. Fountellion (?) / ‘Green Garden’ could possibly be titles for the updated ‘Game of Being’ and so is believed likely to form a fundamental part of The Spiral sales drive. [RedzGaming Magazine]

@SpiralWritings: Natter comment from Moderator: Reports of an actual realm outside the Spiral Tower? What we find most strange is that unlike most sims there has so far been no hype or promotion involved regarding ‘Foundellion’(?) We are trying to bring you more information on this story and this title…

This... might be it? The references originated from fairly decent sources but they were the only ones he could find… for now.

Damn it though; it wasn’t much. He just wanted to get back... To see more... Explore... Go down to that shadowy, sandy estuary below…

Maybe there was a glitch in the the Spiral fabric? Maybe someone had pushed him there... Or pulled him in? Why? And what would they want from him?

But what he had seen… Well, it was so different from many other games and worlds. The sensation was so real... natural... before it had begun to fade and he’d re-appeared back in the library again, looking bewildered.  Some of the other avatars researching in deep study had looked up. He saw a few expressions change to ‘slight irritation mode’. But he had been more interested in the presence of barley, the little grains, still present in places on his virtual attire. 

One thing only was certain... He would find it, if it didn't find him again.

And, in fact, it was only shortly afterwards, as he was still sitting and planning a chapter about one of his projects for a major game company, when a notification flashed up on his AR lenses: 

NEW EMAIL
Subject: ‘A Personal Invitation…’

He thought...WTF ?!

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Entry by Loxley2
Virtual Order of Cyber-Knights & Foresters, the keepers and scripters in Fountellion.



One day I shall plant a tree in the web-world of our dreams - Fountellion - and its moving leaves shall be the entries of this chronicle; a chronicle of a clan and the perfect realm it envisaged. And yet even there the great, dark ivy shall curl about its golden trunk...

For a Clan is not an easy thing to keep breathing pure air. And a leader is not an easy thing to be in this new, fragmented world of worlds - even those embedded in The Spiral. However, oaths are what bind us, and, underneath, a shared belief in a great need for our Clan in these threatened, powerful, promising times.

Out of the Games that we played and that play out, the will to power sets in and soon led myself and many of my comrades into scripting and mastering the higher virtual arts, and through this power is born a pride in technology and in oneself. For the time for games is replaced by the Game and Struggle of Life, the real deal, played out both in the Source and in the Virtual. But all along our binding path and its pathways has slept the ever-present menace of desire, a pull towards independence and thus a neglect of the true elements of balance and of being. For the signs online are great and bright and they misguide with great suddenness and ease. But the Lore of Being and our Order speak of the true elements, and we stand by their telling...

So, in a time where attention is brief and magnified and where disguised versions of desire and greed lurk in glaring and subtle places, we seek to teach and promote the vision of a strong, connected individual. Each of us has stumbled, but the fellowship formed through our first gaming times; it has held fast. And so to our dedication to a true and seamless ideal of technology has kept us fighting.

The Arthurian legends tell of an Isle of Avalon, a realm of inspiration and faery where came the magic people such as the Druids and the Priestesses. It could be that this Isle was once Iona or Anglesea in the British Isles, but today it lies in our hearts and in the way that each of us uses these virtual worlds. It lies before me in the beautiful illusion that is New Sherwood.

For, as we have sought to guide the misguided, to delete and evict the lore-less and destroy the destructive, so we have been protecting our own plans. In truth, even by writing these words do I endanger these plans ...but it must be so! The chronicle of our times and our intentions must live on to serve the future age...

And I fear this chronicle might become, in time, a chronicle for the web-world of Fountellion; a gameworld which our fellowship is attempting to help build and to script here, online, around the hearth of our bright fires in New Sherwood. It is not the first Nature-world to be attempted, but it will be our own attempt at a place of inspiration and wonder. Its presence will serve the Source as much as it serves the Virtual.

It will be a webworld of our dreams, as much as it a tribute to our mother-world…

And there are those who even now seek and will strive hard to corrupt it...

These enemies have ranged from the desperate, the random and lore-less, to the Falling, a potent sect that seeks now to undo the virtual and all its creations. In lesser degrees they seek only to test themselves on systems. They are very akin to gamers. Some of them have great misconceptions about the world and its worlds.

Why? It is a question I have thought much upon. I have discussed it at length with the Demiurge of our project. But the answer lies within me also... and partially in my days of youth. It is a love of chaos, a love of freedom. It is their unspoken belief in transience, easy carelessness and in a nature unbridled and never satisfied. Or it is a belief in something complete, for their lives, that lies… beyond.

It is not wholly meaningless...

... But the truth is there is no system that can cater for such a love of too much order or too much nothingness... Nature itself is a system. Their bodies are systems. The solar system and our world are systems. All have chaos within them. They are inescapable. They function through our own reconciliation with them, through maturity and wisdom... and so Fountellion must be a system also.

And so we will fight them, and there is much good that will come from the fighting. And much wisdom. This is the truth and the irony of life's cycle.

The truth is that we need them and they need us. The world is not in peace for long but is always in flux, and often in discord... And maybe we can hope only to build something that contains them for a time, that reflects this truth back at them and keeps them... fulfilled…

However, the light we make shines ultimately brighter for all, and any small gem-like periods of peace keep the world burning through the stages it must endure...

Ours will be a fierce light to remember!

So I bid ye be mindful of this blog, should you behold its hand-written virtual words…  For it means it has not been for nothing, and whatever the outcome it has forged a great union of proud and dedicated friends that came together for a time. Their work was to forge a future in tune with that nature which first created it, as our wisdom of ourselves grew, and I’ve little doubt that such wisdom will finally prevail… if, that is, the real world grants us the time. 

May we possess the Focus to complete the work, and meanwhile protect it enough to see that it is completed… There may be more entries to come… 

I bid thee farewell comrades. 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

@spiraltimes @spiralnews : Deliberate bug or game world glitch? Spiral Users and Gamers finding their way into strange web world filled with nature. WTF?!? #fountellion

‘Fountellion’ : new #VR #Spiral gameworld now in development reported to be an ‘ultimate game’, deeply-rooted to nature / ‘the source’... disruptive?! What would YOU want from it? Let us know… 

ZACK COLLINS, Division Developer on ‘Green Garden’ Project
@Immerverse by Taze Walker

I’d waited over half an hour, when a geeky-looking, male avatar in a brown leather jacket, a friendly face and faded jeans ‘materialises’ artfully into the plush, supertech-infested virtual building and ‘shakes’ [IDs] my hand without an explanation. He later apologises [a phone call he had to take] but the problems lie elsewhere, and in the tone now set for the meeting. It's going to be all open, informal – and briskly rehearsed. As a specialist VR reporter I’d really been hoping for the opposite; i.e. someone more willing to divulge, elaborate - and let slip a whole lot more answers.

For there is much talk surrounding the mystery - or lack of hype - and presence of a ‘new’ game-world that exists here in the Spiral and is accessed - ‘wonderfully’ - by its advanced interface. Was I able to extract any fresh news or info? Maybe a little. I did what I could anyway, diving straight to it with my first question...

TW: So what makes Green Garden (‘Fountellion’) different from all the other worlds we’ve seen appear inside The Spiral?

“Ok, well... firstly... there are going to be differences...[We 'sit’ and a quiet forest scene calmly renders around us.]  Primarily, with the degree of immersion - the in-world movement and control. This has perhaps been our largest, most challenging (and most dangerous) area in development because it’s a central part of the whole plan for ‘Green Garden’. We’re pushing the Spiral Interface; using its full, previously dormant capabilities, but we’re also pushing the necessity to reach an ‘ultimate’ balance of 'attunement’ to the fabric; one without consequences; without side-effects. And yet reaching to new levels of involvement.”

TW: It still sounds… riskier than before? Are you sure that’s what users want next from The Spiral - at this time?

“Sure, it’s a perfect time… I mean...I’ll tell you what,.. [A glass renders in his hand and he drinks but the drink could be anything in reality.] ...Why don’t I ask you something… “

TW: Ok…?

“Have you ever - as a kid - had a dream where you were... flying?”

TW: Ok yes, I reply. I have.

“And when you woke up... were you...disappointed?”

TW: [After a moment]....Yes…?

“Well, let’s just say… we don’t think players will feel... too disappointed here. We’re trying to raise the level of games ‘as games’, to games as dreams, maybe. Is that risky? It may always be, to an extent. But people do want dreams... and these come in all fantastical shapes and sizes...[Zack’s voice sounds older than his avatar looks, because he seems so able to choose words without haste. Why would he be hiding his age? To present a more energetic image?]

...and on the subject of risk, I should be clear that such a balance is nothing final, nothing specific. But it has been fine-tuned... And it goes as far as any actual ‘balance’ is... possible with a ‘virtual reality’; with, effectively, dimension-making hardware that attempts to replace or simulate an existing one - our Source reality evolved in us over vast lengths of time.”

[He pauses to drink again. So far, his manner has convinced me he’s not an avabot at least. But it’s still early.]

“I mean, just talk to spacemen about gravity, I suppose. How do you prepare for weightlessness? How do you make a super-reality 'perfectly’ super? People must be prepared, and prepared to adapt…”

TW: Is that something you’d say to the latest ‘victims’ of the Spiral?

“I can’t completely enter into that now. For one thing, each victim has been quite unique….”

TW: And yet similar? In that most of them were found using brainwave harnessing or Spiral Interfaces….?

“Well ok...so there’s a point in the middle somewhere...I mean, we keep stressing how this is all pretty new stuff here...state-of-the-art...And I think, personally - I would keep stressing this to some users who just aren't prepared enough maybe...but (coughs) …the differences will concern the whole fluidity of the user’s experience of it; their level of connection.... and... Fountellion will include first-time acclimatisation features; i.e. it will help them to prepare...“

TW: Right...so it’s a major update? And an attempt to stop future… incidents? 

“Hang on though. I didn’t say it was an attempt...”  

TW: ...And if this ‘balance’ you mentioned... works out...will all Spiral worlds be switched to these new settings?

“It’s too dismissive to say that… too simple. I wouldn’t say the current situation is at all bad. But..(coughs again) I will confirm for you that this new project has been a testbed of sorts. But the truth; it’s often a mix of things. ‘Green Garden’ has been part of a long-term dream itself; a direction we’ve been bound for, for some time. It’s about better confluence, while these negative cases contribute to our momentum to implement this even more…

As for your other question… I’ve no idea if it will be applied to other worlds. It may not work - or be necessary - for other worlds. In fact, instead of comparing our new world to other virtual worlds and experiences – and there are similarities, such as access via the same interface - you have to come back to our whole ideal for ‘Green Garden’. It’s supposed to exist alongside the Source, so it’s persistent, and yet it’s about entering into nature; its creatures and finding a relationship with nature. Its purpose is to reveal nature…So… the experience as a whole is perhaps more the ‘attempt’ we are hoping to provide. It’s more intrinsic - than just a matter of tweaking hardware.”

TW: What other differences can we expect to find on the island world?

“Ok...the world is alive and breathing in ways similar to real islands which were used heavily for simulation. Our other big focus has been on this ‘persistence’. Weather patterns have been modelled, night and day will correspond to the Source and each time you go back, there will be things that have changed, however minutely. Where other worlds – especially games – focus on story, action etc...we have gone for the experience and freedom of ‘living’ in a tangible, meaningful, living environment, which many people crave or have forgotten...  

This will surround some other big aspects you’ll see: fast action and decision-making while exploring a world, surviving and ‘progressing’ through both the open and prepared experiences (which relate). Just as in the Game of Being… and then there will be other, more central elements. A human, spiritual side… with one basic, major message running through.

The overall combination... should be... resonant… and would keep a player – potentially – progressing for many years. Most of us on the project agreed that this theme of connection and harmony is what people most need to feel through Fountellion and in our world today. Especially, if they are to get on well in the virtual future.”

TW: Ah, so it is a response to the recent cases of ‘darker’ worlds returning - the Blacksims - reappearing even in the Spiral and causing reports of user-exposure to hellish visions and magnified desires?

“I think because those desires exist in people you will always have trouble keeping them locked up completely. Having said that, you could say it’s partly a response, sure, because we all have it in our minds. But I can’t add anything more. We’re just deep into an exciting new project. And meanwhile, the Spiral is growing daily, and this means the security gets more and more tested, though not necessarily weaker.”

TW: So there are security issues?

“I’m saying we do everything we can and you’d have to interview our security team to have that discussion.”

TW: Can you outline briefly some, or any, of the other features we can expect to experience?

“Well, you will play as ‘nature’, in many ways, or a force of nature. So you can expect... survival. Wildlife. Animals and Artificial Life. Other players; the decision about when to collaborate with them...and...the finding of… wonders…[he initiates a smile plus eyebrow jiggles].”

TW: It sounds intriguing. Care to elaborate?

“No.” [Then laughs lightly]. 

TW: Has there been a lot of involvement from Firecube graduates?

“I can’t respond to that I’m afraid. Firecube are still quite a secretive bunch.” 

TW: Why does Dr. Fielding, your boss effectively, fail to comment on - or take responsibility for -  what are essentially his creations? Especially when they are so eagerly awaited by so many...

“Well, the responsible thing, in some cases, might be just to remain quiet - or to act. And as to ‘his creations’, maybe it goes the same way; because it’s all his baby! You know... now he has the money to do what he likes... I’d say that it’s enough to know he’s still... attempting to get it right. This is the guy who knows first-hand about such dangers. He’s not giving up, after so much success. Partly for himself, I think, for the whole vision and technology, and for those who share it like John Leaven and many here… 

It’s an exciting and powerful one too – but like any creation no one knows what it is - really - until it’s out there...live. And I think, going back to what you asked, if problems do emerge from the Spiral and its interface, yes... he would want to have something which can explain it all; address it... through maybe a more subtle, more powerfully influential way; a positive answer that is the defence for – well, everything.  That’s why we’ve not spent a lot of time on hype and promotion. It should provide its own statement. It has - also - allowed us a greater testing cycle and scope - which, before you ask - is why there’s been no timescale on when it’ll be ready...[He glances towards a light notification sound that is invisible to my POV]. And I just can’t say anything more for now…I’ve really just got to get back to it!”

TW: Last question, has anyone been allowed access so far, outside of the Division?

“I can confirm that, yes...which means the Private Beta is... beginning... so you might get to know a lot more soon - and see for yourself. In fact, if I were you, you might consider only writing more once you’ve… had a go first… Oh.. and…[his tone changes] ...if you don’t mind me asking: do you own a cat?”

TW: I replied that yes I used to and then…“Why?”

“Just... asking…”

He stands up as he finishes this enticement and departs warmly and then briskly down a softly-lit corridor, avatar thinning gradually until fading out into the super-fabric. 

So...at the end of the meeting I’m left without being able to blame anyone. Certainly not Zack for his deft, confident manner, and not anyone conspicuously absent who might have told him to keep secrets, behind the delay and mysterious phone call which started the meeting. There seems to be enough genuine intentions. But my concerns remain, along with many of my colleagues, about a few big questions I didn’t want to ask: Will this new ‘balance’, or ‘super-acclimatisation’ be enough to dampen the fears and reinforce the very foundations of The Spiral Tower? And the avoidance of hype could be a dangerous game for these super-developers, because their ‘white unicorn’ - the one they’ve all been riding here, too casually, at the Development Division, with its sparkling Spiral-horn – may very soon be – briskly - kicking them all off. More so, if this ‘Fountellion’ doesn’t provide...

But I can’t help looking forward to a new, major world and experience, or, if I’m right in thinking, some kind of super-real version of a very old, ongoing one… That might just work; it might do us some good, if it is relevant, fun and... safe… enough...

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

THE SPIRAL GAMER : BLOGPOST : Pretty Much The Last…
views: 22,000,345

‘Ok dear readers and followers, it seems my success with the Revel/Fountellion key-finding has gone viral. Big-time. For once, people are appreciating something about myself and yes; it feels good, but just as it feels good I’m also... worrying.

Why worry? Well, maybe I wasn’t always me, this person I am today. Maybe I had opinions I no longer hold and represented things I no longer believe in…’

...and for once, at last, he was to be known for something ‘proper’, away from lesser, technology-driven realities, their shadows and magnifications and closer to something… more relevant... something that made all his previous history online seem… so pathetic. He would come to all of that, but first he took a long sip from a cold, strong blonde ale. It seemed to be helping.

What was their tagline again?

ERASE YOUR PAST AND REDEEM YOUR FUTURE!

Yes, that was it. He needed to edit his past in order to protect his future… his great ‘legacy’, of being the first to progress so far inside the game. 

And that meant tracking down all his cyber-demons and ghosts, his PIPs, agents and avatars, still roaming about the virtual spaces - and linear web. 

It meant - literally these days - confronting his memories, his bad recordings, old opinions and… Nicola. What if one of them came back to haunt him, in the real world? Maybe they weren’t really so bad. But they felt bad - to him. And so he was sure that somewhere they were. The problem, especially, lay with his avatars, PIPs and search agents. He just didn’t represent them anymore. There might still be remnants even of his gaming history, his Bedlam addictions; his young, bestial side he’d now (mostly) left behind…

He thought for a moment, about when it was all finished. When they were finished. How tidy it would feel! He would feel more at peace. 

And that was why he would go ahead and meet with this Decker guy, from the specialist agency. Apparently they were the best at killing off people’s pasts, their VP’s - Virtual Presences - and ghost P.I.Ps… He just wasn’t sure if by using them he wasn’t somehow going to ‘expose’ himself further, by adding to the manipulation of the connected world. 

Thank God for Fountellion!

Another sip. He’d tried to specify all the places where they could look but - just maybe - they would end up killing too much of himself than he liked.

But it still had to be done. He wanted to protect things from the public. He had to protect his new self, his forward-thinking one.  He must leave no virtual stone unturned. The time to clean and be redeemed was now. The time to evolve - beyond what he was and had been - had come…

And he had begun to find love for things in the real world again; the Source. Already through his contact with the nature of Fountellion and love for the world itself; its guiding light back to reality. It had shown him so much already, visions that unveiled the narrow-mindedness and pride in all his former lives. And if he was to stay on course to becoming a Mage, he owed it. It had to be protected, so people would respect him. 

He finished the ale, and felt relaxed. Fully resolved.

And they would respect him, if they ever came to find him. For his loyalty.

He continued typing the entry...

‘Thus, good readers, viewers and gaming buddies... let me ask you: if you do happen to run into - encounter - any ‘little ole me’s’, floating around out there, in forgotten cyber-spaces… please be sure to report them directly to myself... OK? And send them packing. Or just go ahead and ‘override’ those young, stupid, self-obsessed, attention-seeking imitations of my present, quieter self!

It’s pretty simple... I have moved on. I’ve… changed. And am moving away from technological transience, other men’s puppet-strings and frustration-making systems... towards a bigger one; a much deeper one, that is... reawakening... a sense of connection to our world… 

Thank-you for your ‘awareness’ of what I have represented in the past. And in the future, at least, you’ll know where to find me - if you really know me - fully edited and renewed!…

Some folk are calling it ‘the green garden’; this new world where all virtual paths seem to be leading….I have been there. I have played it. Outside of the tower... beyond the bottom of this ale glass, darkly, and shortly I will be bound for its shores once more…

YOU too, can come along - within me - on my full avalog ‘walkthrough’ adventures...witness my thoughts, coming soon to my humble channel (when the Private Beta ends and recording restrictions are lifted!)... Stay tuned!’

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

From Spiral Writings Blog:
Give Me A (Green) Light: Thoughts of a Loiterer (and Gatekeeper?) at the Possible Doorway to Fountellion

Since its appearance I’ve met many an avatar who - like me - likes just to linger outside the doorway to Fountellion - if this is what it is - and wonder at what awaits on the other side... 

Yes, I’ve read some of the reports, heard the rumours and followed the ‘Fielding testers’ but they say anticipation is nine tenths of delight and I actually enjoy just visiting the doorway and gazing across at it. I was one of the first who came across its appearance in the tower, and was able to bookmark the virtual location. What strikes me is how authentic it appears to be; how unelaborate; how non-glitzy it seems in comparison with the growing hype. 

I gaze at the images of animals that appear in the stone carvings around the rusted gate, overgrown with ivy. I put my hand into the mass of leaves and try and use haptics to detect a latch or a keyhole. 

Yes, there is a small chance that if I loiter long enough I may be one of the first to witness its opening, but in truth it's not so much this which keeps me coming back. 

I actually enjoy just ‘being’ opposite, under the pergola that forms part of the design, sitting on the stone bench beneath it and discussing its potential with other users and ‘floaters by’. 

Also, I’m fascinated by the doorway less for what it may actually deliver and more by what it promises to deliver. It’s like loving a trailer for some old, linear movie, more than ever seeing the movie itself and without ever feeling the need to see it. 

I have seen a cat, a wolf and many a bird appear in the carvings. What role will they play in the game and how will they feature? Will we be able to embody them, to see through their eyes? I have seen a human face too. 

Sure, I have played games. I have been both a designer and shaper in my time and my PIP reveals many progressions and Know-Zone XP. But mostly these days I write and reflect. My Spiral avatar is ‘SourceMage8’ and you can look me up and leave me a message. Or join me on my next visit to the doorway, after you’ve managed to find it yourself that is. It won’t allow me to share the bookmark. 

They are calling me the ‘gatekeeper’ now. Some people believe I form part of the world, for publicity, and will appear inside the world, or game…

Perhaps I will be! Perhaps just by finding myself intrigued by this new world, my destiny is now set and lies within it… 

I think it’s wonderful. The mystery I mean. That it retains such a mystery in all this age of information. A new creation captures the imagination with its promise of change and power… involvement… new meaning.

And it makes me think about what it might mean to be a ‘gatekeeper’. What might I want from such a role, and what would the world provide for me? What would I like to see beyond its leafy design, the long grass and wildflowers I have seen changing on its step? Will they entangle me?

I am trying to answer the question. I think over many of the experiences and games I have seen and played which have been simply fun and those that have helped me or moved me. You may come and discuss this with me as we wait. You know, I meet some interesting and influential people. I think I may have met Fielding himself, wearing an old, brown cloak. He sat beside me for a time. And I like that I still don’t know if it was him - and  that I might find out yet. The talk we shared was memorable. 

Why do we keep following the latest games? Why do I sit here and expect more? Few games have ever satisfied me enough, even the latest, ambitious, big budget titles, vast in scope.

I think the answer lies in the Source, in nature, and in a form of control we all would like over it. I think I would like to see something as vast and changing and which reveals something about myself and lets me feel more connected to both worlds. A truly satisfying game. Will it have a core quest that will help players survive in their real lives once we undertake it? If Fielding and his team have captured just a little of this they may have something potent. It will need to occupy a careful balance between the two worlds: the Source and the super, if one is not to overpower the other...

Anyway, my gaming days may almost be past. I would be content almost not to enter and just to read all about it, watch feeds and view the avalog walkthroughs. Or just to linger there. Unless, of course, it is a world that proves somehow… ultimate. That fills me with life again. Or like in the Know-Zones, when one sees things in a new light. And understands.

Where I sit and ponder on the spiralling stairs it is a little dark so I have shaped a virtual lantern myself. It casts a glowing green light and I will take it with me as far as the fabric allows, through the doorway, when it opens. 

It’s a symbol you see, of the light I feel we need from these worlds just now. The heavens and the hells we would create. Somehow, a green light just feels... right.

What would YOU find in Fountellion, or an ‘ultimate game’? Natter us now!

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

FRAGMENT 398: EXTRACTED FROM ‘THE GAMEBOOK OF FOUNTELLION IN THE SPIRAL’
A Development Journal by Prof. Ben Fielding


This project has virtually killed me. For I am not active on social media or across the V-web; all those channels that today make us real to one another and ourselves. So I'm a ghost, more so than my vacant PIP. It keeps trying to contact me from across the v-divide to notify me of too many notifications. I respond to only to Spiral items and just keep it from wandering off - contained - from collecting anything more. It must be this way, for I don't want people to know about me. I’m done with sharing, for now at least. My views, my status, my whereabouts or immediate temperament, my photos of my pets and of the sunsets I see on holiday. They can wait.

I'm getting on with things, with business, with my future, that's all. For I want people to see, to seek out, my world - our world - hidden within the new worlds that now feed and fire and fuel our reality.

Friends and family must contact me directly by phone and they must tell me things, ask me things, persuade me of things… Occasionally they will cross the chasm of physical distance and spend time with me.

But every day I see the faces of my many colleagues and we are united like any ancient clan by purpose and technology. I could fill v-books, grid spaces and internet sites with our expertise, our struggles with one another, our camaraderie and commitment to a shared vision... But all that can wait too. We are building new worlds. And their success is already proven. Our Spiral worlds grow daily and we have growing teams to manage and direct the course of their growth, each section pruning and watering in detailed and expansive, often flamboyant fashion. Soon they will not be ours any longer but mature, living and breathing, evolving realms. And the interface we have engineered for their access is used also as a beautiful multi-tool to climb, to harness and direct their flow.

This current success gives us a great sense of excitement and power. Some days I'm sure we are like the Gods of Olympus in our unique abilities that we wield and administer upon the vivid forces in such realms that feed into the various needs within other people. Music, knowledge, art, gaming, social spaces, realms of desire and pleasure,  spirituality, transcendence...

And as this success grows with our own powers we can now look beyond - to the tower and the jewel we hope to place there. The world within - or without - the worlds. Our world. My world. With all its stranger and more wondrous things ‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.  Our eyes are alive with our experience of it even at this early stage.

And in between it all I start to write these entries, slowly. Occasionally I record something. Occasionally I draw something. As everything else is moving towards this world that will live and breathe and re-open even our own, creating eyes to the truth of The Source.

People will learn what it is that I and my team represent. We are bound by words and written agreements but also by an unbreakable bond of survival; the shared bond of secret hope, for one’s dreams over inner demons and the demons of daily technical issues. We are fellow ghosts for a time. We are a true clan of old, seeking a new paradise. To redeem us all at once.

Fellow players will find us...when they find our world. And perhaps then they will spend some time. Perhaps they will start to live again.

So often do I think of Blake and Rosa… The contributions they could have made! Our experience with the Neuroceans has taught me many things about the danger of what we make. And it's this I bring to the table; some days more than anything else I have to fight to limit the vision we will make.

So I will try and leave something of my hopes and thoughts for our struggle - with ourselves in this endeavour; this commitment; this vision - in my team. 

And so it is that through that very vision itself do I feel myself dying further, becoming less and less willing to submit to anything else. Obsession? You bet we’re obsessed. As Nature is obsessed by us.

So… while The Spiral grows and feeds our dreams this other ball is rolling. Fountellion. It has been rolling for a long time. It could change everything again...

Will people be ready to play? I think so. If it comes to anything, it’s because they have always been ready. 

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +7 XP : PROJECT ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]

Where a young Virtual Designer is shown some inspirational Virtual Visions from a secretive order of Virtual World Artists…

The coffee he drank had a rich, nutty flavor before the cream began to take over. He watched it swirl into a spiral shape as it merged with the black, unfathomable liquid. This should work…

Closing his eyes Ben Fielding remembered a time before the Spiral, before even the advanced cyber-worlds of the Neuroceans. He reflected on how it had begun, and how things had changed, so suddenly…

For he had known nothing then, had wanted to learn everything… until one night when a black bird, a rook, found him… How did she find me? It was because his art had always held meaning for him, but it would become the key that would unlock his future…

As a young student, seeking some connection, or a revolution, he had walked out into the darkening remains of a winter evening and climbed old steps onto older city walls. They were Roman in origin, and encircled most of the small, hardy English city of Chester. A fine layer of frost made the stones glisten with icing under the moon and the streetlights. There was a biting breeze too.

There had been no need for revolution here, outside, where real life flowed as it always did, and always would, subjecting human imagination and freedom to its stark, suppressing, competing nature. In those younger, slower days of the Virtual Web, there was only the revolution within; a fiery chaos of latent thoughts and undirected expressions. Impatiently it sought a new age and slicker, more lucid systems where people could more easily be known and be more at peace in the great, incessant trend of life towards belonging and balance, for however short a time.

The streets and rooftops glinted in the pure air. He’d inhaled deeply, trying to reach reconciliation with his soul; a contentment that would know its purpose, feel free in himself and with the friends he’d soon return to. For they were huddled back in the house they shared, gathered round a fiery television and laughing at the absurdities generated by themselves and in the worlds shown to them. He wished only for a way to join them with some inner peace and not with all this fire, burning for the ways and means to reach his dreams, with the meaning enough to focus on them; to spend sufficient time required for their absolute fruition… For their time was brief and their dreams would rise soon and stand between them when their studies ended.

However, in his dreams, on that chilly night, patrolling the well-worn city that now, his distracted generation had inherited, his hope also lived: that they would be more fully united, when the web-worlds had grown enough to cater for their beings, their laughter and their freedoms, and through his own art, withdrawn more from this vast, smothering, immediacy of life…

They’d known little of the web then, but through it - somehow - he might find them again, and be better known…

With all our joys before us like a land of dreams…

But… deeper within, he feared the cost of all this; he knew it, as he knew the wind through fields of barley back in his home-lands. Chaos; the illusions of control that was living and breathing. If only the technology was ready now. Without it, the cost would be their time and their youth and, potentially, their tenuous friendship itself, dependent as it was on the present - in this real city inside these walls - and less on any shared future together…


He’d walked on. Dreaming forwards. How he’d dreamed for some configuration to focus it away; to surrender his complexity now. But it lay locked and urgent in his introverted character, outlines seeking the long task of colouring to come.

Time… enough… 

Grant us one more hour…

His restless passion and its need for glory stirred within; his need to achieve, mixing with his fear and inexperience, of what he was and what he would be able to do here, amidst the distractions of reality. It was a vicious, discontented circle of powerless, powerful youth.

Now is the winter of our discontent…

He’d dug his hands into deep pockets of his thick coat. On that night in a northerly part of England he’d completed a half tour along the crumbling stone, before turning back. The walls had once been raised in fortification against attack, and just as it provided such protection for the city inhabitants, so it held four gateways, permitting exit from its sanctuary.

A stranger huddled past him, and they exchanged a fleeting assessment of one other – she, a mirror of his own furtive youth - before they hurriedly looked away. Who are you behind your eyes? Do you and I share similar dreams? He descended near the North gate and made his way down the empty road.

For so long have we been confined by space… and distance…

Just to be known in a tribe again and with power in a normal life, a simple life… in this strange, western civilization…

Such were the nature of his thoughts then, before the faster Virtual web-worlds arrived, the Super-worlds… and before, two years later, he would be forced to face himself, and his great connection to the real-world, the Source. It had all been unveiled to him, one night, connected deep into New London, where his destiny would find him and change him, immeasurably. For he would ‘meet’ someone, a person to help him break the circle; to breach the walls of his nature in a transcendence of the cold reality that had constructed them.

The New London ‘sim’ existed on one of the early Neuroceans servers, accessed through virtual reality technology, and with elaborate graphics and sound. He’d then been twenty-two and jacked into a scene modelled directly from an area in Hammersmith. It was an escape into an alternative version of London, but an ironic one, because he lived in the exact same area, in reality. It was quite stunning, to see with how much detail they had replicated his home turf. He could just stand and stare at the trees that lined the street, swaying gently in the simulated wind. It was getting harder to believe it wasn't real.

That night he’d argued with his family over his continued use - 'abuse' - of the virtual. It was his own emotional fault; but drifting now along the pavement he still felt drained from the effort at defending his dreams. This dream.

At least it was snowing. Fluffy flakes descended around him. Weather was modelled on real-life forecasts, so it was meant to be snowing outside his realworld house, but he knew it wasn’t. A white Christmas? Ha! Only in the very early morning was it even fresh anymore. But what was it about snow? Something so simple that offered involvement with the world, a sense of freedom. He still loved the Dickensian houses, the early darkness and the warm glow from the big city houses.

Big intentions burned in him for the future and for web-worlds and he’d been working sporadically on his designs and in-world animations. It was always in here that he felt freer… But also restless, cut off somehow, from a sense of true meaning in what he was trying to achieve. For it was true what the sceptics said... it wasn't real; it could seem useless and distant from a more direct, a more honest existence. Sometimes he was unable to progress because he was pulled into the Gamezones or he would just lose the meaning in persevering with anything. Where was the belief? He had wanted something to happen. He had hoped to meet someone that night. We all do. But even in-world, it often seemed there were few interesting people with the high technology and the time to spend in his zone. This new world had come but it was a ghost world few had yet discovered. Or it's just my mood talking...

The black shape of a bird appeared from behind a parked vehicle ahead and hopped onto the shadowy pavement in front of him. A crow… or a rook. It seemed unusually large and ragged-looking for a simulated one. It was also looking right at him as though it had been searching for him. It moved no further; just cocked his head on one side and viewed him with black eyes. Next he heard something take off in the tree and flap its wings. Another one? Yes, he heard a squawk from above; it moved off into the sky. They could be owned by someone very close by, or they might just be a part of this world. Artificial life. This was London after all. Maybe they were supposed to be ravens?

Then the moment came, right out of an old, passive movie…

A figure in a long cloak, dark as the virtual night sky, descended stylishly and with a unique avatar control, down from a nearby tree of the row lining the old-style street. He remembered the graceful, powerful fall and how it paused for a moment on its knees, just a few yards ahead. Then, the figure rose to match his height, but slim and graceful; it was female. A voice passed through him, feminine, but not like many role-players, badly seductive or blandly mysterious. Quite simple.

“Hello Ben Fielding.” She sounded quite mature. It matched the figure. He guessed maybe 30 years old.

He spoke back into his headset. “Hello there.”

“You’re not a stranger to me… in fact; we’re kindred, in a sense.” Her face lay still in the shadows under a rakish mountain cap, also black; the effect was fantasy-like, what he could make out. “I’ve met your PIP (Personal Interactive Profile) already, and had a close look at your artwork… and, basically… I like what I see.” A thrill went through him. He hoped his profile had made a good impression. Was there a playful tone in her voice though, or some kind of mischief? 

“Oh.” he said, curious. “So you’re an artist too?”

It was still too dark to see her face very well, but curly strands of her hair glowed with a subdued, gingery fire. Nice touches.

“Let me say that your images have… relevant themes… You’re trying to control, but are being controlled.” It was his work she referred to. Another leap inside of him. She knows. “And it’s expressive. I think you’re coming to terms with nature, with your nature… a strong reconciliation isn’t it? This is one foundation we seek.”

"We?" He asked. The birds? Or was she from an obsessive Clan? They were so numerous now. But nothing about her was too flashy. Despite her slight tone of amusement, he didn't think she was putting it on. It was like an artist complementing a fellow artist; she knew the deep affect her words would have on him, so she’d spoken clearly; carefully. He hoped that she was creative. Actually, that she was like him in many ways... kindred.

He couldn't think what else to say as she remained silent. To mention his work anymore would seem boastful after the sensitive statements she’d made. And whatever impression she’d aimed for, she’d certainly achieved a good one. The virtual breeze variables blew her coat across her figure. He saw a metallic item flash around her neck for an instant. The scene was all quite gothic. Especially so, when one of the rooks returned, landing roughly on the pavement again. They might be more than A-life, perhaps Ibs - Interface Bots – enabling wider vision for her interface, or just graphics for show.

“My name is Syla. Syla Rooker.” That saved him opening her profile; a good thing, because something about her told him it wouldn’t go unregistered. Back then, etiquette was not well-defined online. One of her ears was elven-shaped, where it emerged from her long hair. So… she could be a role-player come to test her character out or something. It was possible. He still hadn’t spent a great deal of time in-world in comparison with many of these types; the form he assumed wore only a vague impression of his real appearance plus some vampire fangs. But the vibe he was getting off her person was that she was someone with a good deal of knowledge; she had power.

He made a bow gesture, feeling virtually shy. But he always was with talk of creativity; its effect on others.

In response, she took a pale hand from her cloak and opened her palm towards him. Fingernail colouring was a vibrant red, and it went with the small, rising red flame that appeared within the enclosure of her fingers, in the centre of her palm. The flame burned quickly and brilliantly, and it began to illuminate the outline of a silvery three-dimensional cube surrounding it, before the whole vision disappeared in a purple to white flash.

Clarity came at once. “You’re… Firecube” he managed.

“Yes, that’s right,” she replied, and then calmly, “of the Innervators.” Her hand withdrew into her cloak and she moved a little closer.

He was intimidated, but entranced too. A virtual artist. A weblord. More than a rumour then. And he was meeting one; he’d just been praised by one. What did he know of them? That they were elite builders and moderators; masters of form and design. Some of them were sim-shapers; demiurges. Some of them used their unique system affinities to work in the Virtual Police. And they were highly paid.

“Your art is your own. It’s yours to nurture, so I hope you find time to...” A pause. “As you know, its spirit and its relevance comes from the world. And we need new mediums, now Ben…”

Mediums.

“We need you.” She approached further. Her face caught more light and of course, she was beautifully refined from what he could see. Most women were, here, but her beauty seemed more restrained; more natural, if that was possible in the super.

“If you have the time, and so wish it, I have more to say.”

He felt vulnerable, but it was a safer, better kind. Seduction not just of the body, but of my whole being - my purpose, despite distance broken between them by advanced technologies. He tried vaguely to discern if it was the voice she was using, melting like honey through his ears and down into his soul, or the words that had been intoxicating. Yes, the strange use of words that this woman - Syla - was employing to describe art gave it a weight he hadn't known before. And he needed such certainty. The bird form at their feet was moving behind her now, further up the street; patrolling?

“Well… You know, I’m not busy.” he said with a shrug gesture.

There was a pause and he thought he could see a smile break out on her avatar (it wouldn’t have broken out if she hadn’t wanted him to notice). She continued to stand before him, less restlessly now. The snow still fell magically around them. What a start.

She said, “I’ve seen your status with the clans and your character in the GOB: it’s another measure we go by.” The Game of Being… It was becoming an extensive litmus test for personality and aptitude, and to prove a user was ready for Virtual Immersion. But he wouldn't have described his performance there as exactly compliant. She continued. “Don’t think I don’t know how the gamezones bring kinship, the joy of connection, excitement and affinity with one system for a short time. I expect you’re relishing this… But Ben, there is a greater cause I have come to offer you that, if you agree to be bound to it, will bring rewards beyond the smaller skills of a closed game. It brings an elevated living, a focus from the calling of many skills and a deep commitment for your spirit. You may be ready, or you may not be suited, but the time to try is here before you.”

“What does it involve? Are you offering me software training?”

“Mastering the tools is just a small part of it. Before everything comes the concept and… the dedication… I can show you only a feel for the flame, now, if you’ll allow me. But then you should decide.” She was referring to Insights. He’d heard they were like virtual presentations, only… immersive; all-encompassing… visions.

“Decide on what?”

She smiled again, both warmly and shyly, but raised her head and looked at him squarely, “If you’ll be my student.”

She had very intricately modelled eyes. They blazed for a moment, and he glimpsed what might have been slow-motion sun-flares, licking the black space of her pupils. At last, he was being known and needed, and by someone like her. And… Firecube…

“It’s an agreement that commits you - seriously - to a bond of learning… something we feel you could be ready for, as it’s aligned with your work and your profile. But… Ben… the choice is yours and our door will not be closed to you if you decide it’s too much.”

He was feeling overwhelmed. What of his projects? His ideas? Did he have the confidence to apply them so soon? But most of them were connected to the virtual anyway, directly or indirectly. He was sure this is where he was and where all paths were leading. Was there ever a choice? He was… aligned.

“I do feel,” he uttered, “I am ready.”

‘... I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries.’
(Shelley)



“Have you had many students before?” he asked. He thought it might give him a clue about her status in the secretive group.

“Some, yes.” Her tone was final, so it left him wondering who they had been.

The head of Syla’s avatar was lowered. Either thinking, or interfacing.

After a pause she spoke squarely again. “There are things I’ll hope to impress upon you, here at the outset … so you may recall them in times to come… they are… the Introductions.” He was struck by the fresh, formal tone in her voice, sensing it probably wasn’t a big part of her character. Still, the softness of her voice made it easy to listen and understand. 

“…Perhaps you’ll recall them in times and in environments that confuse and convince through imaginings that possess no understanding of beauty and truth… or of confluence with the world, our Source.”

He thought she must have been referring to the infamous Blacksims, such as Bedlam, officially banned from any grid, or the latest fiery imaginings of virtual Hades. For men make hells for themselves these days, literally. Some even to punish themselves and feel absolved of their sins… As a weblord, how much she must have seen!

“These are things you must learn… We are at a dawn for art, where many paths are possible through the woods… and there are many ways of seeing… light and dark. We have our Insights, and these are unbound; they may change as we learn more about the world. Some of those following Ben, you may know already through the Lore of Being. We heed the guidance of its flexible tenets, open to revision and informed as they are by science… as we heed the forces of life within us. “ 

He nodded his avatar. The Game of Being was almost a VR ‘nature education’ sim, teaching vividly about seeing and living in accordance with nature; it had been immensely influential. But you had to appreciate the Lore of Being to progress.

“As artists of the Firecube we must heed them more than others, for we deal closely with the forms, the signs, and the flow….” She made a deft gesture and conjured the sign of the elements, like a wave turning in upon itself over and over. It became a spiral and broke apart into the light mist that hung in the air. He wished he could conjure such graphics with such style.

“All people are artists, when they can afford to be. They make choices, selecting where they can what suits their natures, expressing themselves where they are able. We are not special, for all are bound by selection; the priority of an action… But it is here, at this time where all the rich medias – the tools you’ve been using - are uniting in this New Age for art: an online Convergence. Text, images, video and sound in reckless configurations for exposure to the senses; new worlds for immersion by the mind.” He thought of a friend he had known - Jernau - who he had he lost online – he’d killed himself, elaborately, in a sim apparently designed for that purpose. “And you, Ben, are an inheritor of this, while we feel more and more the need for cleaner paths to lead to these new realms of wonders; of imagination and information. Not to escape too greatly either, but to feed the flux of Reality they have sprung from… For there is great potential… And it will be up to us to herald it, to keep the flame alight and not to burn men’s souls with the wrong signs… and to fight fire with our own kind of fire… for as art is the way so too is it a weapon. There are dangers…”

She held in her palm the bright animation of the Firecube again, like a well-cleaned lantern from Victorian times, and the small flame licked the transparent frame containing it.

“This sign – the Firecube - was chosen for the meanings in the relationship – the balance - of the living flame and the cube it creates within us.”

As she spoke, the flame turned a fierce dark blue and flared up, curling against the expanding, blackening edges of the cube. In the next instant it had broken out. There was the sound of fractured glass and the effect of tiny silver shards tinkling to the pavement. The blue flame was left battling wildly with the breeze.

Watching the moving flame was a strange, hypnotic effect, blending with Syla’s voice. But it was doomed.

“Without a suitable cube - our created aid; our shelter; our definition – we are exposed. We are a reckless freedom and weapon in the world. And we are like the darker cubes, wrongly aligned; those that fan the flame too greatly and will not last but will burn themselves out...”

He could see in the flame a glittering of particles that looked like mini solar systems as they rose and then fell in a fountain. But a gust of wind soon came through the street and extinguished it, leaving their faces darkened in shadow again.

Her voice was more hushed as the trees about them creaked slightly. “However, new cubes will rise around the flame again… for it is embedded in us. We need… systems to function.” Once again the flame grew back in her palm and consequently a new, much smaller cube grew slowly out of it; they nurtured each other in a mutual exchange and it was clear to him.

“The flame is the drive and the cube is the mind.”

The animation dissolved as her small fingers closed together around it, snuffing it out. “I’m going to show you more… Get ready for a teleport.”  Her other hand moved out from her cloak and made a brief motion, beginning from him and ending towards her. The red fingernails left trails of amber glow in the smoky air. Then her arms parted decisively and quietly the dark, snowy London scene around them vanished with a slow grace and was replaced by a new one, equally dark. But bleak… and noisy…

…They stood now on a cliff’s edge in a great storm with rain and thunder. Their coats flapped in far stronger variables as their appearances got rapidly wet. Syla’s hair strands glowed even brighter in the darkness, and were tossed randomly about under her cap like a crazed web-witch she seemed to be. Her arm raised, pointing and where his gaze followed the sharp edge of the cliff fell away to a deep abyss where an ocean raged with its waves far below.

“I think I preferred New London,” he said lightly, but the words struggled through the realistic impression of strong weather.

She smiled, only the second time she had done so, and he noticed brilliant white fangs in the gloom. Was she Fallen, like him? Maybe she’d also acquired them from one of those beautiful worlds of the undead, as he had. What was she really like? He considered their compatibility level high although she was older, and wiser.

“Remember this scene….” she spoke loudly through the noise and the deep crashing below them. Then her hand opened onto the ground as if dropping something. A small flower sprung up and opened in a dash of bright blue. Immediately it began to battle with the wind. It looked very small and vulnerable, but it clung to the soil and glowed determinedly.

“All this together is Life, and Love, and Death…”

A huge wave battered into the rock far beneath and spray washed upwards and over them, watering the soil and their forms; their dripping, virtual attire. This time – suddenly - the ground actually shook and he was thrown to the grassy earth and left to gaze over the edge; down into the darkly rendered foam and the inky motion of water. He felt dizzy and not free from fear at the realism. This place must have been made with acute skills to compel and convince.

Then, a clear voice; rich; hoarse; recited lines from a play. It was Shakespeare, Hamlet… The words actually appeared next to him and tumbled down into the breakers. He watched as the letters were spread about; cast into the wind and the waves; an incarnation of language torn up in a maelstrom.

The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar b e n e A T H !

And indeed, the churning mass roared in its deep darkness. Her voice spoke again with a sharp edge. “Down there Ben, is desire, energy; the drive of the world. Heat that is hot and heat that is cold.” She pulled his avatar back up to its feet, her hands lightly on his arms and she looked closely at him. It helped to steady his senses, focus them on her. She still had to speak over the deep booming in his ears.

“The waves are the flames, the flower and the tree of life.
The cube is the cliff… the land…”

He was shaken by the quality of the revelations she had so far shown him. These visions were so clear and so powerful. Turning him away from the sharp drop there was now a large tree springing up where the blue flower had been. What next?  

“Hold steady… the next vision is coming…” Soon  the tree towered above them and they stood beneath it where a dim fire enveloped its limbs, but where the flames didn’t appear to be burning up the wood, but burning through it. The effect on the texture of the tree was slimy; like treacle. She pointed towards it.

“In the tree there is Life and all species. Man is merely a branch at the reaches, connected to all living things. Without wood there is nothing for life to keep burning … without us... For it burns through us to spread, to grow larger, to diversify… And everything we create are leaves, assisting life’s struggle on a burning planet...”

She swept her arm upwards with an open hand and a whole spread of golden leaves broke out on the tree… The shining light from them was very bright. The flames grew large with the wind and the leaves and at the top, a whole crinkling and crackling sound could be heard and seen, like tiny creatures lived there, swarming.

“It’s always changing Ben… And you must know what you are… Connected to life… and the vicinity to a chaos where all these interactions come together in a fragile, beautiful balance…”

The first part of this reached him through the volume of sound, but her hand moved again and the visions faded so it was quiet again. Her voice was still hypnotic and it was only when she’d finished speaking that he saw that the ground had fallen away. He had to reach out into the realworld to steady himself. Everything was now gone and replaced by… nothingness… void. And then stars, appearing. They were suddenly in open, inky space and his stomach turned as planet Earth beneath his feet, zoomed outwards slowly; hugely. Syla was surrounded by a haze of faintly pulsing stars… Their avatars were floating. And it was an awesome sight, to see how vibrant the earth glowed, from within almost; brilliant against the black. Using both hands, she moved their position so that the burning sun appeared over its rim, and both were seen together.

He looked down at the vibrant planet; the blueness and the swirling cloud structures that were luxuriously detailed. Home. It was so calm now. He had felt so… displaced.

She continued. “This simulation moves in approximation of Earth’s actual, current position in space.” He noticed that her cap was gone; her ginger hair flowed freely; superbly around her face in the black space backdrop. She smiled in a casual flash of exhilaration that was mutual. For the stars were so clear and so myriad.

“Systems within systems,” she said in the silence. Silence except for a faint sound, the frequency of celestial bodies; the filtered music of the spheres, he assumed. Her red fingernails glowed again as they spread down at their source; their blue and white homeworld.

What are we? Her voice was a projected whisper, close in his earphones. In relation to all this? They looked down together and around at the scatterings of constellations. In the ball of the sun, he could see random slow-motion explosions of fire, like the tiny ones he’d glimpsed in her eyes. Had she made this? She resumed her normal, lucid tone.

“Again I will say what science reveals for us… All those at Firecube know of these findings. That we are a balance of interactions within a balance of chaos through which, a life force takes hold and feels out for the sun. We are a slowly evolving code containing imperfections and tendencies, so that we are forced to work with and through our environments.  We are our environment and upbringing. We are brain chemistry. We are new aspects of life’s ongoing evolution and somewhere in this we are ourselves, selecting for some connection, some separate power, worship and autonomy… We belong to an economy expanding itself, running itself, and where no one has complete control. So what we do is what we can or must, as a group organism of individuals struggling to co-operate with each other for survival. We process information and store knowledge to adapt and evolve as much as our resources allow. We are fluid to what is in flux around us, expanding and contracting, as our certain, living, ape-based clay - through selection - moulds to the surface of the cliff face. What is our function? Merely to serve and to ride the storm, to tinker and wrestle for some peace and order until we slip this universe and our energy is pulled into another… or into nothingness… This we have learned about ourselves… It has taken the work of many to reveal it; this simplicity. The beautiful simplicity in all this complexity. That our lives no matter what they give, serve only the function of living or to live! Any other form of value we attribute it is merely our own.”

As the words came fast visions of many types of lifeforms changing and merging on the planet’s different landscapes appeared and disappeared. His mind reeled at the truth of these words; the systems configured before him to generate and sustain the magic of existence. He realized something too and he couldn’t stop himself uttering, “Then I’m… so… free!” To live without ideals and without guilt… Just to live simply like any animal in harmony and quiet economy with his resources.

“But what of… good… and evil?” He asked.

“Yes? What of them? Easy terms. What do you know of them from the Lore?”

“Well,” he said. “It shows that good and evil are both part of nature… but that there is no good or evil that has much consequence to nature. Both are just human terms with great subtleties when applied to reality, action and consequence. That goodness is more something like wisdom about desire and need; collaboration and an ability to correctly align ourselves to our natures.” He hadn’t realized he remembered so much.

He remembered the situations he’d faced in the Game of Being, and the ways they’d demonstrated to him the purpose of the Lore of Being. He’d made many mistakes in it, as he learned of the value of living and depending on others. It taught by scenario; and he saw the sense of it; it had proven to help people understand themselves better.

Syla nodded. “The earth below requires only our presence and reproduction, but it benefits more from our happiness. It’s true; light and darkness are part of the imperfect system we live in. And it is this imperfection that enables adaptation. It allows for change, where good feelings are those that co-operate and live with better chances. Because it is the co-operation between each of us, working well or working poorly: the needs of the group, or the needs of the individual… It could be said that evil is… poor co-operation or communication breakdown… where an individual places himself above others, without the understanding of the organism he is part of and depends on. Such individual concentrations of power are still co-operative in some ways, but they also have nearly been our undoing as a species.”

Syla gestured again and triggered a deep, resonant music; strange and haunting. With her hair flaming and her black cloak billowing, she turned her head towards the flaming ball of sun, just an average star in an ocean of stars.

Her eyes glittered. “Here we must hold ourselves up against the light Ben…” She moved their positions closer to the magnificence of the sun and her voice echoed in a new tone, husky with a controlled passion.

To grow through our thoughts to the reaches…
For we shall be cast from the limbs where our minds document the activity of their own documenting; their struggling in the grasp of the shell of their bodies and in the flow, blueprinting cold marvels in the fresh leaves that grow further and in flight from the life-giving fire; the slow, pure rising in the one trunk of this world’s source and all its shapes and their dark breathing…

As the words flowed, Syla moved the universe further to reveal its more spectacular features such as nebulae and supernovae manifesting in clouds all about them.

We are the blind mediums peering more clearly at their mystery but struggling still onwards up its stark face. The fluidity of the world that seeks in our race to flow free. And with the sign of the cube of all knowledge to enclose this vast and functioning chaos, the world is more ours to interpret, to marvel at, and to carry on through us. Everything is temporary, all our art and all our constructions but only through them will the flame burn through and brightly on beyond us in its beating balance.

The planet Earth re-appeared and they drifted again in a slow orbit.

The rush of words increased a feeling that his mind was opening to fresh connections and meanings of the sign. And it was inspiring, for the moment where they floated and he knew more of where his feelings had come from and where they might flow.

Know your code within, so your chutes grow strong and intertwined.
For here, as new worlds of light and darkness unfold online, there is much work to be done to protect the Source from our own misconceptions, and to reveal this reality to ourselves.

She turned to face him, and he was aware of how good it felt to partake alongside her in the ageless spirit of united purpose. That he could contribute through a greater awareness and understanding. “Knowledge is power, do you see? Knowledge of this system and our roles within it.”

“Yes, I see.” he said. He had been more narrow in his own perspectives. His individuality.

“Then you can accept yourself as an organism, inside humanity’s collective consciousness – our culture - that we feed directly or indirectly, with our art? All these systems to contain our delight, our connections, our discoveries, growing onwards… each one of these suns blinking on and off, on and off, our codes re-writing, evolving, and always… a music, a health, a happiness and a power to feel for power. It’s a great processing. But the cubes must flow with the flame.”

He was not sure if she was talking or if the words were coming from the pre-created vision, because she seemed to be mouthing something different -  a command or spell - that might conclude the scene. Together they looked down at the elucidated globe of the earth. “The new union of art and science grants us the power… to discover, master and accept for ourselves a good place in the universe. While with Firecube we can always keep open to new ways of scientific seeing; new theories about the mystery of our being. For the specifics of a system either work and are suited, or they will not shelter us….

“This is some meaning we think of, in our present Age. Some meaning of our being. My task as your teacher will be to show this to you. For to harness the forms of life, you must first know life.”

Her cap re-appeared as the Earth and the sun and the stars faded in a sudden reversal of a silent Big Bang.

Everything for a moment was dark...

THE INNERVATING WAY

…A voice spoke the words of a quotation in the blackness:

'We have constructed pyramids in honour of our awakening.' 

... And then the scene surrounding him opened up again; was re-filled with sound and colour and form... The next sim was green with nature. A jungle, thick but where ruins and old stone carvings lay scattered or embedded in them. He knew it as Mexican, Aztec or Mayan… possibly a reconstruction of the ancient ruins at Tecal.

“I know those words. That was Jim Morrison, of the 1960’s band The Doors.”

“That’s right.” Syla stood nearby with her black birds again. They took flight and flew up towards trees on the edges of the wide clearing they stood in. He thought she would shed some light on the quote, but perhaps this place was the light. He could see ominous shapes of pyramid-like sacrificial temples rising through the fine mist that lay all around. Syla seemed more familiar now, but this place made her look a tidy figure again, standing quite still in the setting. Controlled. Her head turned towards him and the impression was spooky, reminding him that she was also still a mystery, despite the charm of her voice.

“The last stage is just to show and tell you a little of the Innervating Way; it is the feeling of forms and their powers. What do you see around you?”

“I see jungle and ruins of an ancient culture. Mayan I think.”

“The Mayan signs are faded now, where once they stood as a single style that aided the cohesion and unity of the people.”

She pointed to where Hieroglyphs appeared before them, glowing in a silent, powerful mysticism from long ago.

“This is art as it once was; a spiritual guide, a chronicle, a comfort, a marvel of power where now their meanings have faded and evolved with change and with new knowledge. Perhaps the artists were not flexible enough to serve to meet those changes. But they passed away. Though they knew something of Time.”

The inscriptions broke up and faded to become part of the white mist that drifted as though breathed out from the jungle surrounding them.

“You’ve already seen how today we – humanity - are some of the latest ‘assumed forms’ of the living clay of a life at work in the world. New branches from the old, seeking an easy, surviving harmony with the spaces of the earth. This process continues within the artistic urge within us; to adapt and to tinker with our given settings and those around us. It is diversity; it is colour. And in every moment our minds are processing or searching for signs relevant to our purposes. And it is up to us to find them, to manifest them and to serve the present age with care; a careful but effective selection and manifestation... in a greenwise harmony…

“We do this through Innervation, that is the concentration of desire towards a vision. It comes with balance but also with pressure; when a need is pressing. It feeds the group consciousness of our race. It binds and inspires men to one another through their crafts. For it is we who must make the leaves that are shed in the seasons and renewed.

“To be part of Firecube is to become a medium, through potent use of the medias. Image, shape, sound, text, you will harness these and learn also how they can be interwoven to form seamless interfaces to experience. In the Academy we teach the techniques of these tools to manifest the realms of our thoughts, the signs that guide and that aid the information flow between people. The forms that make the signs - and the flow itself - are eternal. So too are their effects; both positive and negative.”

Her cloak broke open for a moment and a slender arm cast itself over the scene. “A whole sim like this one may be deemed a sign, containing many forms, but it can lose its meaning; its pertinence, try as we might to recapture it.” Her hand cast a ball of light that swept around the clearing, parting the mist and illuminating the texture of the old stone ruins. “The signs made here were dominated by fear and mystery; too much mystery perhaps; the mystery of life and death. Men grew powerful through their theories about it. But they are all gone…”

He could see the sacrificial stone at the top of a nearby temple, where, he’d heard, captives were killed to keep the sun’s heart beating through the sky. “Today, many of the signs are of scientific knowledge, wherein our faith is placed to maintain our certainty, our sense  of progress… but… mysticism, superstitions still remain, alongside a growing reverence for nature and our functional mystery.”

“But there will be more time for this…” She turned towards him. The music around them was ambient, spiritual, deeply chilled and bewitching…

“You must know something of the feeling of forms and their powers. Though they bind and inspire they can blind and misguide and be abused… Our eyes have adapted to see only what the world’s flow would have us see, immediately, where the mind must learn to filter or interpret."

"Do you desire me Ben? My appearance?”

For a moment he was too surprised to form a reply, so immersed in the trail of her words had he been. He still felt so impressionable it took him a moment to react.

She approached him slowly, walking stealthily, like a cat. “Say what you feel.” Her finely modelled face loomed closer into his viewing space.

“I’m sorry, but …I do …yes.”

She smiled slowly, beautifully; revealing clear white teeth again, in a radiant female face. “This is because I’ve assumed a form of power, that of a healthy female figure. Such a figure is a form that controls men… I chose this because I knew it would give me an advantage over you, and more of your attention.” Her fiery eyes burned magically at him. “Health, beauty, perfection. It’s what we strive towards and are attracted by.”

He was feeling vulnerable now. And maybe deceived. “Are you… not a healthy female figure in reality? Who are you… really?”

Her expression resumed its seriousness and she backed off slowly. “It may be that I am not so unlike this. But I show you something of who I am and this must be enough. For you can judge me by my voice can’t you? And the content of my words?”

“I try to.” He felt he was in love with her voice, and her manner. He was sure that he wouldn’t mind the form that matched the voice.

“Then, you have a power and a strength. To see through one of the forms of power to the real nature of it. Others – believe me - are less able. She smiled more normally. “I’m glad you do.”

He felt he could say the truth to her, even after such a short time. “I think I’m in love with your voice,” he said, not looking at her.

She laughed softly. “I’m ok with that too. But it will keep at this if you are to be my student.”

She paused and when he looked at her it seemed she’d been waiting for him to meet her gaze. Her eyes and expression – even virtually – were able to soften. “I am not the one who can show to you love and desire, for to distinguish one from the other is not simple, even here. Both can lead to a pair-bond that is the confining contract of our species, built on trust and to withstand much hardship in the Source. I cannot wish for such a bond in my life… at present. When your training is over there may be one who would be proud and happy to enter into such a one. But this must all be left for some future. And you should be ready."

“Yes… I think.” But he did; he remembered this was also in the Lore.

She turned away with a swirl of black cloak – magnificently - towards a nearby stone carving. 

“Where was I? The Forms. Yes, let me say only a little more for now…

“...All art starts as a signal unleashed into a system; to evolve into a full sign that lights a way for mankind, or darkens it. Science is the functioning law of the Universe. Art serves science, in the way the fire does the cube. Art may serve religion, but all at Firecube agree to abide by no religion and regard it only with a great wariness. "

“...Of the forms it is those closest to the flow - evolution – that are the most potent. Desire for… perfect food, love, strength, home, security, and the freedom to organize or survey these. Tranquil, idyllic landscapes that are visions of freedom and health. Visions of belonging and of power and expertise; the thrill of the hunt… And of course, desire of the body. All these tempt people into experiences or purchases they may or may not benefit from.

“You will learn to subvert these forms, to aid the appreciation of reality, science and our real selves… and to always be wary of the forms; their harmful magnifications and distortions. This is the darkness we face above many. No, it’s not always a simple task. And for there to be light there must be some darkness also.”

As she spoke a small, white horse appeared on the dusty looking earth at their feet – a statue - but it shone with a subdued radiance. Suddenly a horn appeared in front of it, brighter than the horse and moved through the air to fasten itself to the crown of the horse’s head. It burst into life and reared violently backwards neighing loudly, violently. But then it grew magnificent wings, galloping upwards to fly off with a power and a freedom.

“The time is here where we, as secret artists must herald the Convergence, refine the chaos further towards fresh dawns of knowing, to breathe greater platforms for their celebration; for more real seconds where we contemplate an aspect of our living selves, admire or recognise our own behaviour – the shy horror at our tragic beauty – its force and its vision within us – transcending the space out from which it has evolved. We must correlate the large quantity of knowledge to move towards a higher, global vision of ourselves, transcending all ideas irrelevant to the present age… through a new age of accessible education… focussed art… and understanding.”

He felt strange – extremely so – towards this woman stranger and her quick, amazing talk glinting with impressions of an intense wonder. And yet it felt natural that this should have happened; that someone should have come to him to define the direction for his dreams and his conception of his role within the world…His thoughts raced along with his passion that was crisp through the possibilities that had affected him with a power already.

“For today is a time of high communication and conservation, where everything is known through art, where there are no boundaries to the reflective experiences that will come, where minds reach out more completely to one another.”

How his mind was rushing, he suddenly realised… to be a designer… of worlds… a wizard in the virtual…

Rushing with new revelations like a great awareness and an imminent mastery to explore through one’s own powers and show to the world the glories and the joys to be found in inspiration that he alone or with colleagues could plunder for prestige and for mankind. He felt so young and yet could feel too the weight of living up to its light, the need to be so focussed in so many sessions in order to bring one’s hands up from the depths, cupped and brimming with the new light of medias. The new worlds that could be forged…

He pushed his passion away and brought himself back to the moment. The jungle and the temples from a lost world. And to the figure and her beautiful burning eyes, still glowing in her hair and hands, features being stolen by diminishing virtual light, the shape of her eyes amused and glinting.

She spoke again softly, casually. “To be of the Academy is to learn many things… personal and professional. It is to learn balance and confidence. For without these it is hard to proceed. It is to know solitude; to understand Time and patience, which only comes with an appreciation of Time. We are filters; we refine our impressions and our dreams until the time arrives where we must forge new and more suitable ones…”

“So…” she said. And these words she actually spoke again, in the moment, where he wasn’t sure if many things had been recordings, tied in with the revelatory virtual insights he’d witnessed. And her voice was still something he remembered… even today. “I will be your tutor and your friend, if you will be bound to me in learning. It is the ancient contract between apprentice and teacher.” The rooks left the trees nearby and landed roughly at her feet. “It is not often you get the chance to meet someone – in whatever experience you are sharing – who offers you their time to change you, beyond measure. Unlock you, might be more accurate. Even make you a Demiurge… one day…

...But I hope you feel that you have need of us… as likewise, we have need of you.”



Yes… how he’d changed. His mind had been opened to the world by the work of many previous lives, and now he could take part in its continued flow. How complex it all was, but how simple it seemed. He would serve a balance. He had wondered at the path before him, but trusted that it would open up.

“When do we begin?” He said.

“We already have, with these Introductions. I should leave now, but soon I will send you the location for the Academy. There is an Innervation Oath that we are bound to take. I will also mind-share with you then, if you’ll agree.” Mind-sharing was a virtual form of intimacy. It was also called melding and was a mutual avatar-exchange of personal dreams and memories and influences.

“I’d be proud to,” he said warmly. And he bowed a parting. “Thank you… for finding me.”

She nodded in response, but with a half-smile.

“My birds have recorded this whole session. Let me give you the recording, so you can play it back if you so wish, choosing your camera angles. It will only work for you, so spreading it would be useless.

A glowing card appeared before him, on his interface, requesting acceptance of the item. In his palm a small, shining Firecube appeared, and he supposed that opening it would play back their meeting, from a literal bird’s-eye perspective. It went into his inventory.

“For now Ben, I bid you a welcome… and… farewell…”

Her figure dissolved in a tranquil disintegration that blended into the mist, leaving him alone in the eerie, deserted jungle. A faint insignia of a black rook hung in the air after her.

What have I got myself into now? But he jacked-out of the system still feeling elated, and returned to the Source, where the real world, and his family awaited. He would tell them now how he would be a virtual artist and designer, for he had agreed to become a member of Firecube, the emerging ‘demiurges’ of the Virtual Web. 

Later that night, he would lay awake listening to ambient ‘Embient’ music, on his headphones, thinking over the Introductions she had shown him, that he would have to re-play to his avatar. Firecube Insights can only be experienced, and he didn’t know how different the existing ones in use today were. But for him they were the beginning - as they have been for many a lost, online wanderer – of knowing how connected to the Source he was, to nature and to the world. So much would he come to understand… 

And one day, long after Syla had virtually disappeared, (and he had given up looking), when he had left Firecube for the Division, the new, far more powerful, resonant insights would flow into the minds of many, deep in the heart of the Spiral, in Fountellion. They would affect billions of players. And it would be he who would envisage them.

Written in 2007.
with some Spiral revisions 2015

‘Desire as the Life-force flows where it runs free, through where it is diminished, or where it is magnified too greatly. Desire rises through its nurtured realms. As it is the path to freedom and the love-bond binding us to the world, so too does it hold the power to harm others, lose our true selves and deprive the life-force from flowing.’
- from The Game of Being

Aged thirty-nine he was, but it had happened again.

It was lucky he hadn’t been higher up the ladder. As soon as he was properly aware again, grounded, he felt the deeper bite of fear in his stomach, the one for the ultimate disconnection; death.

Losing Source control… Steady Ben… What did they say? That he could deteriorate. At any time. Until I’m really out of it.

He was stooped over with his hands on his knees.

Thank god for the birds, he thought. Rooks, not seagulls. Their coughed squawks gave him some bearings again as he beheld the green grass of France.

He did begin to feel more stable. Another gust of April wind blew clumps of his brown hair across his head, and he straightened up, slowly. Wooden wind chimes in the garden knocked softly together and were soothing.

This IS the world...

The memory then, it had been a sensation of the interface. He knew because he’d instinctively started to raise his arms, spread out wide behind him. It was the virtual gesture of surfacing that had come back to him. It had occurred before. Each time it had been triggered by the girl’s face, surfacing too into memory.

My God it’s hot. And a warm breeze too. When it hit midday it would be too hot to be outdoors. He walked carefully to the small entrance of the rustic cottage. One arm came out again as he felt another wave of sickness and his hand gripped the wooden frame.

Who was she? …A face full of joy, some blue flower in her hair… Surely it was real, he probed. Unembellished; a real memory, with a large greenwood tree behind her and long green grass. And her expression - of honest, trusting love - made his whole being ache for his youth; a simple man, with strength and passion. Before it was lost in dreams. Before he began to chase the glory from his own skill or mastery inside the Hyper-zones and the Super-worlds. And of course, the Neuroceans. How they had drained him of time and his life force. They were all transcendent realms of control, away from the honest influence of reality; away – you would think – from the restlessness of thought, from lonely desire and this presence of nature.

And now this haunting. He was paying the price he supposed, for ignoring a slowly evolving world; for turning his back on its levelling and certain timeframe.

Today, he had been going up to trim the creeper growing off the side of the old house, when the girl’s face and the confusion it brought set off the other, more life-threatening memory. It had re-awakened with one absolute wave of disorientation. But it wasn’t anything visual; it was the sheer, vivid sensation of the interface, coming back. The cutters had fallen from one of his hands and he had swung round on the ladder and fallen quickly and awkwardly to a heap on the grass. There had been a horrible moment when he was sure the grass was an illusion and that he would fall right through the earth. Just like he had once in some game.

Too many worlds, and too much time in them…

A simple answer, but he knew it was more than this. It must still be the side-effect of the Neuroceans and the Line he had faced and crossed, so many years ago. As one of the few who had become too immersed; too detached - had been chosen to get too immersed – and had agreed, so eagerly. The experience of it had never left him. 

In such ways are we seduced by power and by our peers…

A careful, rational decision might not have hurried things but nature, he supposed, must expand through such curiosity. And now he clenched the feel of the wood of the doorframe harder; pressed the tips of his fingers against it and gazed at the dark, solid floor of the cool interior.

Blake entered his mind now. Was it Blake? No, not the real one: his avatar. But there was not much difference, even then.

“I see Reality and Fantasy as being intertwined,” Blake had said. “Or more like the cogs of a system, working the wheel of life; in tandem. What did you call it? Confluence. They complement one another. Always have.”

He could recall the location too; large tongues of flame licking round the visibly damp logs in the Merrie England simulation, a brilliant web-world. New Sherwood. He remembered those flames, the way they appeared real. Would I have remembered they weren’t real? But that they had suddenly lengthened and changed into intricate hues like the effect of sun upon oil upon water-pools – iridescence - and they had all gasped at Blake’s creation. Or was this memory the one of the real trip, where they had actually gone camping. It was getting harder to distinguish his memories. It was getting harder to focus. He was becoming so confused.

And only thirty-nine.

He went inside where it was cool and found the bottle, pouring himself a glass and taking a thick, cleansing gulp. He felt those real flames rise up into his throat. The glass made a comforting knock; a familiar sound; back on the bar surface. But his hand shook slightly as he kept it on the rim. He tried to keep it steady. Control. Then he gave up, instead pressing the glass into the resistance of the wood beneath; to force stillness. Steady.

No, maybe it was some girl from before he had met Blake and Rosa? Before Rosa had found him, disenthralled from the system, blubbing like a baby. It was only through her help that he had re-acclimatised so quickly. She had saved him. Zack too. But Rosa had become a victim, and Blake had been comatose for too long and then turned off. Gone. How he wanted them to be here; now. 

The vision could have been a dream from this world in which he stood, within his body, propped against his kitchen bar. How unfamiliar I still am, he thought, with this body. He could not know if the girl had ever been real or not. She was familiar. But he just couldn’t place it; not in any context where he had spent time. Time. 

Where had it gone?

The interface had been two years in the developing, and as a well-known builder, gamer and artist of the Superworlds, he had been asked to assist in its development. It wasn’t just the seamlessness of it, the sensitivity of the mask and the sensations from the vest and suit; the peripherals. It was the breathing too, for even this was linked to various actions in-world. And then came the IBH; Intricate Brainwave Harnessing. 

Other superworlds would, one day, be built just for this. It had become known as ‘the Focus’.

Through these features, they were the few who had first been able to near the Neurocean Line, as it was sometimes still called. But - if my memory serves - they had surely crossed over it that time.

Just look at me still… even now.

The virtual ‘Neurocean’ had been a test environment or ‘sim’ to accompany the combination of interfaces created for it. The main hardware was the usual: a close face-mask with various connecting points and an advanced upper-body haptic feedback vest. However, this was linked with the hugely successful Virtual Reality ‘trainer’ which was still new then, and has seen a number of changes since. Once connected to its flexible harness system, it allowed for every movement, including some bounce freedom, if this was required of the ‘sim’ you were visiting (sims included the spectrum of environments: ocean, desert, jungle, space etc). Trainers were the ultimate VR interface because of their flexibility but they took training to master, because some of the movements varied from everyday realworld movements. They were at the top-end, but it was possible to access such elaborate worlds using lesser interfaces, or without a Trainer at all, and still have highly involving experiences. The biggest breakthrough however, for any user, had been in the ‘focussing’ ability, where the mask harnessed brainwave signatures and fed them into the system. Its controls gave final, comprehensive meaning to the word ‘connected’, or being ‘jacked in’, after so long in use in the computer world. It was magical transportation and transcendence for the mind and major senses. 

The whiskey went down again, igniting the fire again in his stomach. 

Alone… and tired, he thought, and rubbed his head, pulling hair lightly at the roots to elicit some sensual response within him. He needed it.

Too much thinking. Where our thoughts have power.

He surveyed himself in the large mirror on the opposite wall.

You, Ben Fielding, were younger once, and restless like our whole race. Running from your own will to power. Skiving off the Know-zones to conquer the dark, richer Gameworlds. Much later, you bled your mind for the Super; gave so much life and time in the scramble to regain that power. Then, you longed only to be free and young, free of it all, free of that which was only one form of living and experience. They had gone so far, and too quickly.

And now that memory. A dream?

"Music", he spoke. But mostly the pure sounds from the garden were all he needed these days. He spoke to his empty house: “Embertime.” Ambient guitar music floated out of the speakers in the corners of the rooms. The sound eased his mind as he thought harder, to clear unwanted thoughts and reconcile himself to what they formed; his unresolved, collective spirit underneath. But he wanted to be reconciled though, and therefore more crucially, resolved. So with some effort he forced his mind back to… two dark figures on the shore… no, further back… a starting point… digital water…

It started in darkness, with only vague impressions to the eyes, of the creatures that moved towards you to test the graphics and their effects. Touching them would induce a mild electric shock to the finger-tips through the material. Just one of many responses. Virtual sea creatures would become illuminated in a quick revelation of detail. The hues were far better than real. More real than real. These online days, nothing was less than this. But back then it was still breathtaking. Small earphones transcribed the highest sound quality. And the suit itself responded to the appearance of the water around one’s avatar. You could feel a form of heaviness from being very far down under the sea, and tightness in its contraction around the belly.

He remembered the shark. It was a creature he himself and spent many months on, with colleagues from the Firecube Academy, specialists in animated VR elements.

“Don’t get too close!” he had spoken to Blake’s avatar, drifting nearby. He saw his friend’s arms, outstretched too like a drowning man.

“Ok, I won’t!” Blake’s watery voice replied, older and gruffer, but it chuckled. There was edginess there too, so in reply he laughed in a louder, mock imitation.

They were coming up together. The process was like forming dance moves underwater, but you also had to keep trying to ease your body upwards like a fish. In this way your mind became accustomed to the interface. He remembered how fluid it all was though. How easy it became with every session that went by, floating upwards through the visual stimulation, but finally with a keen control. Working with the team, development had taken brain activity through the mask and effectively amplified it to become tuned-in to the motion. It was thought control. Focus. Towards the surface, the mind would be firmly within the system. This was the design.

But it was not at all perfect yet. Every now and then a quirk in the sync or a sudden lag or fragmentation would produce a flicker, endangering the senses. There were many different peripherals and interfaces emerging from development across the world and each system was different. They had been testing now for months, but every time there was still something so new about it, so real and physically more intense. Every time was different, following new sets of – sometimes minute - adjustments. This first time – and this last time - they had reached the surface without delay.

Knowing nothing about the island.

He saw it in his mind still, a landmark in his life. Far off, with sunlight illuminating strange leaves on the distant trees and shimmering. He had been up first, waiting for Blake and Rosa to emerge. He couldn’t really think about anything else. For in that moment though, he had made it. Had willed it. The blue of the bright sky was brilliant; exhilarating. They hadn’t accessed it before through this new configuration. The water around his neck was simulated by the suit, and tiny fluctuations in the mask gave him the breeze across the water, enveloping his face. His arms were still outstretched behind him beneath the surface, and when he moved them forwards, the sensation on his arms was slower with the lag of the water. The waves were perfect. Beautiful. Rosa had helped simulate them through a new algorithm that involved fractal equations: infinite variety from a simple rule. And here they were, manifest, gradually undulating all around him, as though the ocean were indeed huge. For a moment he just reveled in the results of their combined work.

When the other two surfaced, their virtual faces responded to expressions they were making within their masks. (This was because their avatar program was aimed at simulating themselves exactly as they were in the real world, but with all the benefits of the system). So Rosa was alluring as ever, because she really was. And always so quiet; always keeping some part of you separate and professional. How I admired you… and more…

And here they were happy; elated. They had achieved full progression, a complete test, after so much time spent on development. So much focussing. The others would come next but for now, this time was theirs. Special. They had brought themselves up through the power of their minds – on many levels - and the system was tuned so incredibly well. It was responsive and in sync to their presence.

”Avast ye olde sea dogs!” Blake had said, or something like it. “One small swim for a man… one giant high for mankind. Wooohooo !”

They had all laughed. Rosa’s small avatar face broke wide. He saw the fangs she had lengthened only slightly for herself, a throwback to her goth-girl days. She was looking towards him, but of course all avatar eyes – back then – were fixed. It was only the expressions that could change. Her head turned upwards at the sky and then it returned towards him and she laughed again as he smiled.

“I’m actually wary of that shark, Ben… so real.”

He laughed again. The sound was bright out of the water, a careful noise adjustment for wide spaces. He had said to Blake, “No way you get to be Armstrong!” Which was true.

For then they were quiet, and he knew the mood would change, and their expressions. They had seen the island too. 

Like him, they were confused and curious. He turned back to it himself. And they all heard the voice then, mild and not unfriendly. But it held a great weight of surety – control - reaching them secretively over the waves.

“Greetings to the brave, new people… We wondered when you’d surface at last.”

They searched about. The trees along the shore broke off and he could see the island had a clearing. At this point he saw the source of the voice - two dark figures – standing near the shore. It was ominous, and he remembered feeling a sudden dread for – unusually - something more than the immersion, the interface: for his own mind adrift in these worlds within the world.

“What the…?” spoke Blake.

“No island should exist on this Neurocean server,” he’d responded in a hushed voice, even though they were on ‘private’.

“It could only be a different region, hooked up via higher access.”

Blake now directed his voice to the island: “What is this?”

The figures were very small, but he could see that one was turned close to the other, conferring, before it turned back.

A dry chuckle drifted back. “It’s only your employers,” came the voice again. It was nearby, because it had been thrown by the person and projected around their location by the system. These figures could have been anyone in reality, women perhaps, with false, male voices. But it was unlikely; the company security was well protected against deception. It spoke again, “Don’t worry team. We’re only here because you’re here. All credit will be shared. We knew how far you’d come with the hardware, so we’ve been having a go ourselves, from our side.”

“Who are we exactly?” Blake threw back. But he’d also made a motion with his finger, triggering the HUD that displayed names of nearby avatars. It showed the strangers bearing fanciful names in the role-play tradition.

“We’ve been tapped into your work for a while now. My name here is Prosper, a director of funding for ImmerTech and my fellow executives and investors from the board are here, Caleb and… Miranda. We requested some spare equipment be developed for showcasing, but have since got rather immersed ourselves.”

They’d all known that the project was being monitored, but hadn’t guessed this directly. An island. He’d had to ask the main question. “Have you used the Neurocean process? Slow-surfacing?”

The man’s voice resonated again, a convincing executive impression, although it could be synthesised, or pre-recorded. “When you come ashore we’ll explain more. As primary investors, let’s just say we were concerned about our investment, and needed to know for ourselves we had something we could fully appreciate, as it were.”

Many of the top staff had been ardent web-heads in the past, and it was possible they could have arranged access to link up to their test-bed. They relaxed a bit. But Rosa and Blake were facing one another, looking as serious as he felt. Their earlier success seemed a lot less unique now but… Immertech was the leading edge in brainwave harnessing and it was now a large company. They’d been lucky to have been involved in the important testing phase. Maybe there was a lot more they didn’t know. Still, it was a shock to find bigwigs invading their territory and to learn they’d been kept in the dark as usual. But by then, they’d all known, since the ‘swimming’ tests began, how the interface was performing; and how big it would be. It couldn’t stay contained for long.

“We won’t spoil the fruits of your labours.” Prosper’s voice again. “Fly over and join us when you’re ready. Enjoy some freedom while you can!”

This should have been a warning, but still, they couldn’t have known. There was only Zack in the control room today, keeping an eye on their real selves, in the trainers, probably patched into his own rendering activities. If these unknowns really were company brass, and testing from their own room, they must have outside links too. Unless it was a very private setup, known only to them, perhaps for reasons of… espionage, virus security? Or even the military. All so optimistic.

“Well… that was unexpected.” Rosa’s voice. “What do you guys think? The company may not know about their presence. We could be colluding.” Her head looked small bobbing up and down in the huge, dazzling allure of the simulated waves. “But the quicker we can get back to testing the better.”

Blake replied “Well, hackers are normally less blatant. If they are who they seem to be, there’s no one we’re colluding against. How can they have rigged up without proper access? I think we should check it out.” He was always the risk-taker in development. They had come far with it. Partly too, there was still an eagerness in them all to continue testing, and an enthusiasm to share it with others. The sensation of surfacing had been... intense... perfect this time at last.

We were too eager… to attain that ultimate level of control we had been craving for so long.

Still intoxicated by their success, with the sea all around them and the intrigue that had greeted them; they’d agreed to go over to the island, but not before the next part had been achieved. Flying with Focus. “Well, it must be like the swimming,” he’d said. “We know the procedure, so it’s all in the execution.”

Taking a breath, he spread his suited fingers under the water. His mind tuned into an outside sensation of lifting and he imagined the signal being captured by the interface. His body rose quietly; fluidly.

Blake was already rising but slower. The detail was so good; he could see water droplets hanging from their suit while they continued to clear the ocean and suspend themselves above it. What was strange was the knowledge that he was not flying in the real-world, but suspended in the harness, but here he could see different, his virtual legs had the darkening blue of deep water beneath him. He was at one with this other place. Fully, in sync.

It was like freedom. They spent some time above the water, moving in the combination of continued thought and motion control; flying with their minds and with their hands. The vest simulated breeze effects across their upper bodies.

“How are you Blake?” he enquired of his grinning comrade.

“Still very nicely high… thank-you Ben... Rosa?”

She hadn’t responded but they could see she was concentrating. Achieving balance with these new settings. They all took a little longer familiarising with the sensation and reaching the states of floating and flying, purely through breathing, hands and brain signals. The interface adjustments they’d made were enabling it to be more responsive than ever, the same as it had been beneath the surface. They were all pleased, and finally enjoying the power and control of virtual fluid levitation and traversal. As they moved higher, seagulls hung wide in the louder wind cycles as they overtook them or else they weaved and cried in irritation, avoiding their intrusive presence. The possibilities to come. He looked towards the figures on the shore and could see them closer together again, talking, but still waiting.

And then, as they rose higher, the extent of the island became ever more clear.

Let’s just say it was as detailed and expensive-looking as any of the top web-worlds. 

Perhaps only partially accessible by an avatar, but its appearance was like a real one, with great cliffs, rock features and tiny, crashing waves at their base. The vegetation was as detailed and real and consequently as inviting as any helicopter ride to a tropical island. But it wasn’t so super-looking from where they approached. They couldn’t see the brighter colours of Virtual Worlds that are so apparent closer up. It was still more like an island from a dinosaur film he had loved as a child, the one from Jurassic Park, heralding a place of wonder, discovery; danger. They could have spent months just flying around its coast, in between the rocks and features. But for the mystery pulling them down to its open shoreline.

“I’m ready to hold hands now, please,” Rosa said. Her voice came into their ears. And they managed it, while again the focusing of their thoughts kept their avatars positioned next to one another. Their fingers remained straight for flying but they could touch hands. The waves beneath their feet moved in a rhythm beneath, and light sparkled on its texture from the simulated sun.

They’d still felt elated. “I think this could be the start of something wonderful”. She’d said, beaming. But it would be the end.

“The sense of control is very strong” Blake said. “I would never have imagined it could be so… flexible…so… connected.” They nodded in a quiet, thrilled agreement. “So… we’d better check out what it is these guys know that we don’t. I wonder how long they’ve been here. If they start showing off I’m leaving.”

There had been a slight ‘quirk in the sync’ when they crossed regions, indicating that this island was on a separate server. But he knew it had to be. As they willed themselves closer, he could see the figures in more detail; fairly standard avatars, but coloured in dark blue, as opposed to their own dark grey. We should never have gone. But the landing was a test. They managed it in varying degrees of clumsiness onto the shore, exhaling slowly and curling their gloved fingers into claws. 

The speaker Prosper was modelled tall and slim and stood assuredly, feet apart. His hands were behind his back, again commanding, and his face was much more defined up close. But it was very wizard-like with a thin, cinematic face and a white goatee. Caleb’s face seemed somehow rougher but they were both in smart blue against the glinting sand. He remembered how golden that sand was. And how, when a breeze came, all the nearby foliage responded in their convincing ways. Prosper stepped his avatar forwards slightly in a careful movement. It was all so hyper-real.

It had started off cordial, and for the next ten minutes or so it would remain so. It could have been alright. But for the presence of power.

“Welcome to our beta island. We call it Boston.” He made a bow gesture while his friend stood beside and further back; the henchman. Their faces were tanned a much darker shade than their own, and the expressions were more elusive as a result. How real were they?

“And you’re the founders?!” he’d answered.

A laugh again. “As are you, don’t worry Ben!” And then, turning slightly to Blake’s bearded form, “although perhaps more puritan than us? …But you’ll all be settlers here, in no time. It doesn’t take long. It’s Blake isn’t it? And of course Rosa.” 

“That should be what our tags read,” Rosa spoke out, clearly not wanting to hide the suspicion they still felt.

He’d gone straight ahead and asked Prosper again if they had adjusted carefully to the world after jacking-in. Correct acclimatization was fundamental to the effectiveness of the interface; previous known risks had induced nausea, claustrophobia and even mental problems in some rare cases after long sessions.

There was a pause. Their manner was patient and restrained; noticeably too much. “Yes, but we were a bit eager maybe at first. Still, it feels more than comfortable.” What had he said? “We seem to be bearing up rather well.” No trace of worry. Just casual. He wasn’t telling them anything yet. 

What else is coming? He’d remembered thinking. And where’s the other one? Still only two.

Blake had said, “I hope… you already know our testing reports. You guys always have to keep something from us, don’t you? Is this place somehow immune from the specified testing standards?”

It didn’t provoke them. 

“Not at all.” Prosper said. “We’re fully aware of the risks, and in fact, support your procedure. However, we just felt that we would undertake it, on a smaller timescale. I think you’ll find it won’t make much difference anyway.”

“What do you mean by that?” Blake asked. They were all intrigued, but there was no immediate response from the figures. The leaves on the island trees swayed with the virtual breeze again over their heads. He had looked at their lush, hypnotic graphical rendering and thought of the wind through fields of barley he’d walked through as a boy. The feeling of wanting to fly again was strong.

“Don’t mind him he’s just being over-philosophical again.” Caleb now said, for the voice was new, perhaps younger. “We’re all here now aren’t we, that’s the point… and at least there are more of us to look after one another if anything happens. Besides… it’s exciting stuff don’t you think? We didn’t want to feel too left out at this stage.” 

It confirmed a lot. They had no place here and he remembered feeling a surge of annoyance. They were money-men only here to exploit the moment. And they had endangered them all with their eagerness.

“Where’s your other colleague then, Miranda?” he asked. The avatar Caleb stood a little behind Prosper but the mini-map on his HUD still showed the presence of a third avatar on the island.

Prosper kept a neutral expression, of course, his eyes were gazing unnaturally, as they all did. “She came in with us as usual. I think she’s just somewhere further inland, isn’t she Caleb? Or on the shore on the other side.” He turned to look at Caleb for a response, but none was forthcoming.

After a moment he turned back, saying, “Look, there’s so much for you guys to get into here. Caleb, will you show them just how effective the focus is?” Show off time.

The taller form moved aside to make room for his colleague. Still facing them, but moving forwards, Caleb said, “I have to congratulate you guys on the development of… this…” He raised a stocky arm up above his head with his fingers spread wide. Turning slightly, he looked up at the leaves of the palm tree behind him. The leaves swayed as before, but then suddenly stopped and moved towards a centre point. His arm lowered and with it the whole tree bent down towards them. They heard the simulated creak of wood. Caleb’s avatar smiled, and when he opened his fingers again, the tree leaves were released also, and the tree bent back like a spring, away to resume its former position.

“Nice,” said Blake. “You know we have been testing environment control quite extensively. In the Sandbox sims.”

“Have you?” answered Caleb, sharply, with a gleeful, therefore unsettling laugh that followed. What’s coming… attacked by coconuts?

The next thing caught them off guard. The figure only raised one finger to his temple. He remained facing them, and while he stood, the palm tree did exactly the same motion, only it was quicker and more alarming. In fact, the whole tree bent again, down towards them with a swift motion, right at where they stood. He thought they would all be swatted like flies. Instinctively, he crouched down as the leaves rushed down on top of them, to engulf them. Turning to his left, Blake and Rosa had done the same, and they felt the leaves against them, bristling their vests and masks until just as suddenly, he saw the leaves rise again and be released once more. Or more correctly… flicked. They stayed motionless; quietly shaken. The creaking wood sound effect decreased gradually until there was just wind noise again, and the waves on the shore.

Prosper and Caleb were both smiling wider now, but it was Caleb who laughed again. “Whoops. Sorry guys!” Their grey virtual forms stood up and recovered. “Everyone ok? …By the way, it’s not real you know!” More mild chuckling between them.

The lack of any standard gesture - for what had just occurred - meant only one thing: that they could now fully control features of the landscape with their thoughts. And this could extend to other people? He had felt more vulnerable then.

“Ok. I’m impressed,” Blake spoke, his sandy hair rendered virtually unkempt by the leaves.

“You’ve managed to hook the Focus directly to the environment already?” And with such force. He was insistent. “Is this another side project we haven’t been told about?”

“It  must be…” said Rosa, “…is this a Mod?” A modification.

“No, not really,” came the reply: Prosper’s voice. “This is more a recent development, using the existing interface. And a little mental practice. I will say that the sensation is interesting too. Why not have a go? Our island is your island.”

For the next hour, they did experiment themselves, shaking trees and bending leaves by concentrating on them, projecting a focus, similar to the flying. But it was generally confused. There was nowhere near the ability that Caleb had showed. Either their units were modified, or it was really possible to increase concentration to such an intense degree? It had to be the former. So their avatars never really stood a chance.

They kept an eye on the two strangers, who seemed still happy to watch and wait. But none of them had forgotten the power Caleb had just flaunted, unnecessarily, even in here.

He remembered Rosa’s private voice reaching into their ears. “It’s interesting how no amount of imagining can prepare you for the first reality of an interface breakthrough. Until you familiarise with it, describing it is little use. There’s so much possibility here.” He felt glad she was happy. “But I’m wary too.”

“Everything is just so connected with this.” Blake said, concentrating on the base of a tree trunk and swaying it just slightly to shake the leaves at the top.

He could see Rosa had found a stream nearby and she drifted over to hang above it, trying to make splashes in the water by moving stones. In each case their hands helped them to move the island features, but their minds were assisting, and creating a very interesting sensation of power.

He turned back to find Prosper, but he and Caleb in their slim, blue figures had now moved. They’d flown swiftly towards the stream and closer to Rosa. So he followed to where they had landed effortlessly, but they now seemed edgy to notice him, their heads kept drawing back to the stream and Rosa, as if the area was sacred to them. It had been.

He had questions. “Have you been modifying the focussing capability yourselves? Any side-effects? And where’s Miranda? The map shows her to be around here.” His mind was buzzing slightly, even from the flying.

“No side effects. Just the feeling of wanting to try… more things...”

This sounded a little creepy, and he saw Rosa turn briefly in their direction, before turning back to the stream - splashing the virtual water now - without even gesturing.

Caleb said “Don’t worry, nothing is real here. It’s all an illusion ok? Remember this, because you might need to!”

The whole business of testing depended on healthy results. This was new stuff, and the future of the entire project was at stake. But he let a thought occur to him then. He remembered; it had come with a mix of awe and dread as he tried to gauge Caleb’s intentions. But faces were harder to read in-world.

They couldn’t leave.

The conversation carried on beside the stream. “We have been here a lot,” Prosper said, still in a casual tone, “it is possible our minds may be starting to enjoy the …power a little… to enable some higher kinship with the system. In fact, it’s why we’re glad you’ve surfaced… at last.”

Was it proving highly immersive. Addictive? He accused them of it too, provocatively. They hadn’t really told them anything.

“You must feel like you never want to leave, though?” 

Prosper seemed not to listen, and there was a pause. But Caleb answered. “When I do jack out, all the power is gone. So …we need to be here. We need to see how far it can go. Sure we can eat and sleep out there, but believe me, even after this first session, you guys are already now, hooked. Connected. Just like us.”

His own mind still felt a sheer excitement to continue flying and controlling the features of the environment. It had felt like he was hooked. Was he still?

Caleb’s head turned back to the stream, casually, and he remembered thinking it was a strange motion, after what had been said. Why was he wary of Rosa?

“Oh my god!” It was Rosa’s voice. But she was no longer around the stream. She must have followed it further into the island. It took a little while for them all to find her, beside a large pool where the stream was running to.

She was standing just beside its edge and had managed to move some water sufficiently - with the use of one hand raised downwards - to reveal something... humanoid. An avatar body. Female. Miranda.

She lay on her back with her head at a severe angle from her body; clearly damaged, at least virtually. It was a shame because she had very bright, shining hair. It was a strange sight, perhaps because the body was so well rendered and healthy, but also stained dark wet with the ‘water’. And she moved. That was a clear memory. One leg tried to rise onto the heal, but slipped and fell back down. But also, she was making a sound; a drugged, sluggish voice.

“What the…” Blake’s voice, as he flew down to join them in the clearing; the legs of his trousers flapped slightly with the speed of descent. For a moment he looked like a superhero, but he landed awkwardly.

“Meet Miranda everybody,” Caleb said, but it was less assured, slightly edgy now; defensive. “Don’t worry, she’s perfectly alright. It’s my joke. She’s been a… dummy. For testing. She’s not actually inhabited. She’s a ghost.”

The water would have dampened any sound, but now there were muffled words.

“Yes… I am.” She spoke, rolling slowly over.

Their heads turned at Prosper. But Prosper – strangely – said nothing. He was only watching Caleb. But it had seemed from the beginning like he was the older one; the one in charge.

“Ah.” Caleb said, and chuckled. And he did look at Prosper cautiously. “Well, she wasn’t before.”

“Can’t... get back...” It was – in fact - the last thing she would say.

They both seemed so calm at now being discovered. “We didn’t want to shock you with our tests. She seemed to be quite enjoying them.”

Prosper’s reply seemed darker since it had moved a little closer towards the afflicted Miranda. “Apparently… I wasn’t sure what exactly you’d done with her.” Accusingly: “I’ve been looking for her.”

Rosa had landed beside Miranda, moving her up into the vegetation. Then she knelt down to look more closely.

The men were silent, but the thought occurred. Rosa spoke it. “Either she’s drugged out there and you’ve pulled her in here, or else… she’s been badly affected in here... Either way, she needs help.”

Her hand had touched the top half of Miranda’s body where the vest would be. The form had stirred again, still trying to move. Pain sensations would have been minimal through the suit, but it was the mind they were concerned about, with the new IBH, the orientation; and the realism that any virtual abuse now held.

They would have confronted them a while longer before leaving at once, but, just as he turned, the blue-garbed figure of Caleb raised one hand and spread his fingers in quick, deft motion.

He had flown. His whole body and vision was punched away from the clearing until it hit a tree. The vest responded with a sharp vibration that was again, not painful, but it was enough to increase the awareness of being quite shaken. The front of it was pressed in too, indicating that pressure was holding his form against the tree.

“You stay there please Ben.” The voice from Caleb was changed, insisting.

It was now Blake’s turn. He managed to get his hand up first, but there was no resistance against Caleb who quickly dealt him the same move. He saw Blake hang like a pinned doll, as he must have looked too. They could do nothing but stare at each other from opposite trees, and look back at the casual-looking, blue avatars beside a lush, blue island pool. Another swift set of gestures from them and suddenly vines from the ground flew up and bound them.

The vines had been there already.

He struggled to think up some resistance and defence, but without their hands it was no contest, and besides, they were too unfocused, too unused to the system.

Every ‘sim’ world comes with its own settings and limitations on what an avatar can or cannot do, where there are other avatars involved. This could be whether or not flying or teleporting is allowed, or whether collision with other avatars is possible, as opposed to just ‘ghosting’ through them. They knew their Neuroceans servers had quite detailed ones, depending on what was being tested and what was right for the world. But here… well, they weren’t on their own territory.

It was likely that anything was possible. And that the big theme was combat. 

Rosa was on her feet now, backing away as Caleb and Prosper turned towards her. The broken girl was useless, unmoving now; passed out. No one will know what she’d been through. And had there been others like her, hidden in the wild, dark undergrowth?

“Look guys… this is wrong… None of this is an illusion… not here. You’ve got to stop now… the Focus… it’s still so untested…” Rosa was speaking as she started to levitate up to escape the clearing but it was taking too long. Again it was Caleb who stretched out arms and hands to pull her back like a spring to the earth. Prosper joined in and she was struggling but she was soon spun quickly and effectively against another tree. It took messy attempts because of their combined intentions, but they finally pinned her arms above her head and wrapped them with vines. A part of him couldn’t believe this was all happening. He wanted power - superhuman power - in here… to do something. This was forceful ‘griefing’ of a brand new, all-too realistic kind and they’d at least have to start talking their way out of this. The alternative was to jack-out with a voice command (terminating the whole interface), but at this stage, it could be risky. Wrenching the brain too quickly from where it was too involved was always unwise. It would be safest to get back to the ocean. He did try to teleport but of course it was disabled; this was a beta-grid. And meanwhile, these guys were loose cannons, manifesting so early in the project. Their ghosts would spoil everything. Haunt him.

Caleb opened one palm out towards the water, spread his fingers, and then made a sweeping motion at him. The water of the pond flew and washed over him; the haptics reacted accordingly. Theatrics. Meanwhile, they could make no gestures while they were tied. And I wanted that power. 

Next, Caleb’s hands came together as he moved over to the body of Miranda, but Prosper spoke commandingly again at last:

“Step away Charles, that’s going too far. And tell me how she got like this? Behind my back?”

Caleb paused and his head turned up towards Prosper, clearly taken by surprise. So Prosper hadn’t known either. And the real-name use implied that his colleague wanted out of the fantasy.

“What do you mean? Stop worrying… I’m going to release her from all this! And we’ve got them pinned just like the plan. We can finish the final tests ourselves…” Whatever this meant, they never would, at least. 

But they argued now over the body of someone still in a bad way. Someone who needed careful disconnection not release. Wasting time…

“Whoever you are. Let us take her back… our way!” Blake’s voice.

Meanwhile, from his own trapped position above, he remembered still feeling quite shaken. His mind got lost for a moment in the virtual sunlight mixing with simulated breeze. It was creating tiny patterns across the water of the pond below. He’d seen this before, in other sims, but now he was scared of it all. Trapped by it.

Caleb didn’t respond to Blake. He was still watching Prosper carefully who was almost scolding the shorter, stockier figure: 

“We will have to leave all that… now… because I’ve been waiting for you to show me where you hid her! Now that I know you can tell me what you’ve been doing... If you ever want to come back… you should start explaining.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I’ve already buried the codes for any hope of return here… I knew things were getting out of hand… for all of us. Now tell me…”

Simheads? he thought. Addicts. Powerful addicts.

“She was up for it Pete!... You know we’ve all had a lot of fun… maybe it has gone too far… but it’s also too late…”

“I just don’t trust you anymore…” and Prosper was looking down at the other, still motionless avatar. “Especially… now…” It seemed he was having trouble finding words.

Blake cut in again. “You’re all at risk. You’ve been in here longer and you’re modified. Why don’t you work with us, if you really are who you say you are.”

“Hey, you’re not in charge.” Caleb then said more loudly. “We were just doing your job; testing the capabilities of the system, if you like… and we’ve gone further than anyone! In fact, I should be showing you… this…” And then his hands parted ruthlessly, completely; a full gesture. The avatar of Miranda broke up, its limbs spreading out over the dry bank of the pond. The head rolled off but there was no sound from the female inhabitant. She might already have passed out in real-time and not witnessed this display on her own virtual person. But it was a shocking result. She faded out of the system.

“No,” whispered Prosper. Then, louder, “you idiot, it’s not just some game!” and the noise echoed in the island scene.

No action yet came from Prosper, who still seemed to be holding back. Caleb’s tone was unexpectedly resigned in the wake of the silence. “I think I am done here... It’s this place that’s to blame! So… why don’t I be the first to declare this project doomed for closure as a health risk… along with all of us!” and he started to lift upwards. 

“Prosper… stop him for God’s sake,” one of them said. What was he going to do?

“Don’t worry,” spoke the figure, his head following his colleague. “He’s not leaving yet…” and he tugged at the air and pulled – yanked – Caleb, who crashed back down again, onto his back, almost sliding into the pool.

Surely a battle was now inevitable, and if Prosper were to lose... well, he felt no fear for his own avatar, beyond the indignity. They could re-generate. He was afraid for their minds, embedded in this system. And for Rosa. They had to try and talk reason with them. How could this happen? But the system; their control over them was impressive. Part of him was amazed how they’d been victimised here. He had thought they could be hackers after all, connecting this island to their servers. 

He thought of Miranda too. But two men can’t stop a new technology, where there were always dangers. This place held too much promise. They had to get back to the Neurocean and begin the careful slip back into reality. At this rate there wasn’t going to be anything careful about it. And their hands were bound, with no virtual trickery to loosen the vines. 

He came back out of memory to the whiskey glass and the kitchen. He put another smart shot down, burning his dry throat. Why couldn’t he have concentrated better? Maybe the vines would have come away. He had wanted to see Caleb beaten. He was angry. We’re all so out of control. We’re just who we come to be. Through the things we’ve seen. But he had told himself many things, and he didn’t know what was truth now and what was an excuse. We’re all just products of our times, our cultures, striving to reconcile ourselves with ourselves, our natures; our needs. He felt the burning inside him. But nature must function well, and it must be healthy… un-magnified. He brought himself back to the tree; the super-memory.

They were all angry. And at the island itself. It could mean the end for the project. For all that proper testing.

Rosa spoke out, while Prosper was taking careful paces towards his fallen foe. “This is a place for control, but despite this you don’t have any control at all.”

Meanwhile he had tried to concentrate, to focus on the fallen figure of Caleb. He tried the water first. The pond’s surface stirred but there was nothing. Helpless. He could think only now of jacking-out, and then trying to disenthrall the others once he was back with Zack in the control room. Then facing the disconnect.

He closed his eyes to the scene. He knew his legs were in a harness, not stuck to a tree, and he moved one of them. His emotion didn’t seem to obey. Too involved. Powerless. What was the command to jack out?

Blake meanwhile sounded flustered, but he heard him voice another bid for reason. “Prosper,” he said. “You know we make sense. Stop him now and you can save our work and work with us. Come back with us through the ocean.”

Opening his eyes again he saw the two figures below had not moved, as though they were preparing themselves. Inventory-searching. Caleb seemed to be taking a long time getting to his feet after his foiled escape. They may have been very used to mock-fighting each other. But they weren’t playing anymore.

“It is time to stop Charles,” Prosper’s more careful voice now. “You have gone too far. But we can still get back. It might be the modification. Being disconnected for too long and we want to get back here… We need help.”

Caleb replied, “It’s all going to plan if you ask me, Pete.” He was inspecting the dust that had coated him, but was likely stalling to summon something, which would come soon. “For what it’s worth I’m sorry about Miranda, but when I’m finished testing you, I’ll move on to them.” His arm raised and his hand began to turn to make some gesture but Prosper was ready, and quickly raised his own.

It was dramatic. They were sliding away from one another with the exertion of the force they were summoning. Prosper had two hands with fingers spread in a certain configuration, while Caleb had his arm across his forehead. Like Cyberspace wizards. This image has stayed with me.

Within this there was an exchange. Prosper’s voice again, straining. “Miranda was drugged wasn’t she?”

“Only a mild mixture. She knew what to expect anyway... Besides, what difference does that make here? We’re not really doing… anything.”

Prosper broke off, flicking his other hand in a gesture, almost artistic, and a cage appeared suddenly all around Caleb, trapping him suddenly. It even bounced on the sand.

“You’ve forgotten why we got into all this Charles… Because everything you can imagine…is real… remember?” A quote by Picasso. It also featured in the Game of Being, a project which was supposed to prepare gamers for virtual worlds. Prosper flicked his arm next at Rosa and she fell backwards down onto the sand, released. “Let’s back down now, or we’ll jeopardise this whole place; our systems, the future. We can work with these guys. We can face the downer together. It’s not too late.” Blake’s vines broke at the same time and they were all free now apart from him. Prosper had surely shown he was the better man; the more powerful, and controlled. But it wasn’t over so fast.

Caleb answered simply and quickly. “No… Pete. I knew this island… was doomed…” He had his arms clutching the bars and they must all have been hoping it would prove the stronger. “But I want to know its limits while it’s still ours... Mine.”

The cage that held him burst apart at the corners. A bar came flying right at his own tree and he flinched as it struck his legs and bounced off, but without pain. It’s just a game. But he had closed his eyes, his whole body braced for impact.

A part of the cage had also struck Prosper, who stumbled back for a moment, still shielding himself. He saw re-bounding bars come quickly to rest in front of the tall avatar. At that range it must have been vivid. This move had cost Caleb though, who clutched his face while his head moved for a moment, awkwardly. It was the first weakness he had seen, visibly, besides the earlier desperation in the man’s voice.

Their straining began again and Prosper held it once more, digging his feet into the earth beside the pond. Their hands had adopted different gestures but it seemed they were just trying to force each other off balance. Water from the pool was spraying onto Caleb. But Rosa was free. She flew above the two wrestlers like some nymph, helping to release Blake and then pushing herself over at him. She went too fast and had to hug the tree above him to avoid crashing into it. As they struggled with the vines that held him, their heads gazed back at the action.

This was it, he thought now. The first battle between those who respect a world, and those who come here with their own problems, inflicting them on others.

“We should try and help him.” Blake said, rashly.

“We all want to, but we just can’t. Let’s get back.”

His arms came free from the tree. Then they took off together, pushing out from the trunk with their feet in different directions, but not before they saw, suddenly, the demise of Caleb, beside the water below.

Prosper’s hands went into fists and the added focus seemed to force Caleb to relax. Overmodified at Prosper’s end, may be. Caleb’s figure shot back hard onto the sandy ground and rolled once, strangely. It was all the other needed. He made another swift gesture that summoned a cage again, cementing Caleb from performing gestures. But… one of his hands had been raised, and was able to do something at Prosper… before Caleb’s form was dismembered and scattered, quickly fading from the system like Miranda’s. Disconnected. It was either self-triggered or an unseen power that Prosper seemed to have acquired. But he was weak now, falling back onto the earth himself, one hand back up, pressed against his head. Mental fatigue, or something else. It was all so fast.

And meanwhile they began to move away from the island over some trees to a marker, pointing to the original surface point. The water skimmed past lusciously beneath, but there was no time to be more concerned with anything but the threat of pursuit.

The marker grew larger, but it wasn’t to be their escape. Blake had fallen back, possibly pulled. They looked back at him, towards the shore where first they had seen the figures. Blake was no longer flying, just losing against an invisible force; being tugged back to the one, lone figure. How had they mastered the new equipment so deeply? The answer was easy: recklessly and through constant use.

“You go out, Rosa… I’ll go back. He might need help. And we can’t risk all of us.”

She flew close and put a hand out and a palm against his face. It was so quick, but it would be so memorable in the years afterwards. He’d felt her touch through the mask feedback.

He flew back down to the shore with some renewed concentration. But it was still tentative, taking him too long to build momentum. He was not sure if he was going to be any help at all to Blake. But another part of him needed to know more about... everything.

When he had landed unsteadily on the shore, closing his fingers a little too quickly, Blake was already in trouble. He had crashed on the sand, and his arms were gone. Like parting the seas, Prosper’s arms had opened, and they’d ripped them off and been thrown them in separate directions, leaving Blake helpless, trying to use the tree again with his mind to swipe at the still powerful blue figure.

So he had spoken straight at Prosper, to that thin wizard face of his. “Let me take him back…” He had started to say.

But there was no deviation. The rest of Blake scattered too and faded out of the system. Gone into the air. He hadn’t seen another gesture unless it was done with the mind. Or he hoped Blake had manually triggered it, to deprive Prosper of any pleasure. But they hadn’t known what the consequences would be.

“Ok, what’s your next move?” he’d challenged, landing boldly and walking towards the virtual man. “Are you going to stay here alone now?” He actually felt elated still by the fluidity of the interface, but so much anger too at this whole event. The intrusion. The violation of their program, their avatars.

Prosper’s tone was much diminished now. “I am…weak now…” His hand came up to his face again and his expression changed into one of contained distress. “It’s the system, I think the downer’s begun.” He slumped down on his knees onto the shore. Small, simulated dust spread out effectively. He realized how the light was changing to evening as orange light sparkled in the particles. 

“Then why thrust Blake out of the system..?”

There was a silence, apart from the virtual sound of the virtual waves. The changed man was looking out at the ocean.

“In... the... way… and I wanted… to speak to you, Ben…” A pause, as his hands ran over his face. “Look… it was my test. I wanted to see when Caleb would… turn. I thought I’d wait until you three arrived… to be sure… But by then I was too enthralled myself and I wasn’t able to help Miranda… And, you know… I did so want this project to succeed.”

More whiskey please, Ben. As more of Prosper’s last words came back to him.

“But we have this struggle for life… inside us… a heaven and hell… I think they’re formed by what we, or this potent world, those worlds to come… need or want of us… Too much beauty, desire… they’re terrible… ” His calm way of speaking and these words in particular would echo on into his future, through his dedication to his work for the Spiral, that was meant to be a harmonizing force, to bring cybernauts - lost like this one - back to the shore of the Source.

That Prosper or the interface had finally weakened was a relief. He seemed pretty broken at last. He was taking effort to summon the words.

So he felt pity now. “You showed a good fight back there… But you should have left it to us to complete the testing. For this island of yours… it is potent. And you’re brought the wrong people in here and it’s affected all of us now.”

“It hadn’t started that way... We just wanted to experience it… ourselves.”

The hand went to the temple, massaging the IBH equipment that existed in reality but wasn’t visible here.

“I couldn’t control Caleb… didn’t realise he’d been spending too much time in the wrong web-worlds. And there is one emerging… Bedlam.” He had heard of it, even then, and Prosper had been wise to warn him. But back then he was still annoyed.

“You should never have come here. You’re not ready like we... were. Now you’re unhinged and need help. But you should have sought it out as soon as you could.” He found that he could express a truth back too. “Our environment must be right for us, real or unreal. If places like these are too much for us…” He looked once more up at the rustling palm leaves. “Then they’ll be limited... locked down… or protected.” He turned away now and walked back down to the waves.

Turning once more he said, “You’d better not have harmed anyone through this…” But he had.

He heard a sudden inhalation. “Wait... If I don’t make it out… Try and re-sync Miranda… I’m too involved here…”

“Where is she jacked-in?”

The face was contorted beneath the two hands that covered most of it. “My house. On the company campus.”

“So you really are Peter Giger?” He was a tall figure. One of the top investors. He’d been in tons of interviews promoting the Virtual World Interfaces.

“My head… Ben you might feel this too, I’m afraid.” He referred to the Line. Like virtual bends. He’d be right.

“Well, at least try and use our procedure to leave. The one you’ve been funding.”

“It is too late for anyone. Caleb’s sabotaged the ocean somehow… I couldn’t stop that… I wanted to save her.” He was on all fours now, looking at the sand, scrunching it under his gloves. 

He felt a big pang of concern now for his own mind and soul. And for Rosa. They’d have to just take their chances. But this could be his last chance to get answers.

“Is it true? About the codes for all this?” The tide kept coming in perfectly onto the bewitching shore.

“Yes it’s buried… for now.”

“That’s for the best. But what about the Neuroceans?

“Not yet...But they won’t last, they can’t… not now.”

There was no time for more discussion, and no energy by the looks of it. Prosper’s magic was fading as he fell over onto his side. But Rosa was waiting. All he could manage was one last handful of words:

“Of course we’ll try and get to her… and the others to come.”

He opened his hands and lifted into the air, inhaling, leaving the troubled form to his own limited choices. He seemed so broken now compared to his presence on arrival, that it was a sorry sight. 

He tried to enjoy the freedom of the short flight over the water again, but he was still conscious of the figure on the shore of the uncertain cyberspace. It felt like he was running from a new world before it could be explored, because of… Indians… within. There was even a chance Caleb could re-connect and try and stop them leaving it. Maybe he has.

Soon, thankfully, he was looking down now onto Rosa’s puzzled face, bobbing up and down within her waves. She had waited. Rosa. She asked him what had happened, but he was too worried about what Giger had said about the ocean: “I’ll tell you on the way down, let’s just go. And if anything happens, we’ll have to take our chances and… disconnect.”

Her head went under, and next he followed, bound for the dark wonder of simulated water.

But just as he was about to go under again, he faced the distant shore one last time, and saw the lone figure there get back to his feet with a slow effort. A large wave stole his view and it washed over him. He looked back again for the figure but it was no longer there. He searched about and could see that Prosper/Giger’s avatar had fallen down again… to the sand… passed out?

He thought about going back. He hesitated. A simple choice, Ben. 

How long had Prosper been jacked-in? How much was their system responsible, and how much was already there? We’d never really know.

‘If people have no need for these places they will not exist.’ The words came to his ears, but he couldn’t place the voice, was it Blake, still adrift between two worlds? 

He dived. The blue brilliance surrounded him as he willed himself under. There were five or six waypoints to reach beneath him, each of them diminishing the brainwave control and by gradation, re-sensitising his mind to real-world physics. 

As he got towards the second base however, a bright cage appeared all around him. Oh just great. It prevented some of the gestures and movements he’d been learning for the process. He thought getting down might still be possible. He had sunk down further… but then… no… both he and the cage began to drift slowly up to the surface…and someone might have been up there again, reeling him back. I’m not going to get out of this unscathed… not enough time… It was the truth that had dawned on him. He could message to Rosa to come back up to help… but what could she do? We’re still out of our depth here.

He placed his hands out and clutched the cage bars. The glove responded to simulate the pressure. He rose slowly. A monkey caged in its dream world. Looking out was the shadowy blueness, but looking up was the clean surface of the ocean above him, as beautiful and as entrancing as in reality. Somehow more attractive, because it wasn’t reality, not dangerous. It was creative fabric, like looking at a painting very close up. But was there also a black shadow above it, the distorted figure of another predator in themselves, that had been waiting for them here?

The sounds of the water were muffled in his ears. Quiet. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay and fly and shape this world with his thoughts. To bend those trees again and start to build new creations. But then he thought of Rosa, her smile, and what she had just been through. The memory. It was then that he spoke carefully the phrase to jack out: “Rounded with a sleep!” Still watching the light and the surface, he let his arms go loose in the pseudo-water, and, as the cage disintegrated with the whole ocean he stretched them out behind him, with his palms upwards.

Everything faded quickly into the blackness of the facemask. There was silence as the underwater audio sounds were cut off. He’d lost the world and tried to get bearings but couldn’t and he could just remember scrambling to remember his limbs, and where he was, before it became too much and he lost consciousness.

He knew Rosa’s real warmth and her face were there when he woke, moving above him and it helped. A dizziness was there in his head and some nausea too; he’d sat up quickly to steady himself. The result increased the disorientation and any words became a sob. But she was there, he could feel an arm around him, and the mask off, and the gloves.

“I think I’m ok,” he’d managed to say, finally. Rosa was looking down into eyes, searching for me. It was good to see eyes again. Especially yours.

“I’m here,” she had whispered. She put a hand through his hair.

“Thank God.” His thoughts started up again. “We should get to the girl… Miranda,” he said. “Apparently, she’s at Immertech. Giger’s house.”

“Ok… but listen, Ben. We’re all bad. Blake is… bad. Zack took him off, but he wasn’t making any sense. He can’t get balance. I feel… awful. It was all too quick.”

They’d found Miranda Finch a drug-fueled wreck and Peter Giger still attached to his equipment but dead from a form of embolism. Charles ‘Caleb’ Rooney was on a floor, comatose after a failed struggle to reconnect again to his equipment.

They’d discovered that Rooney and Giger had spent an enormous quantity of time on the new system. They had modified their interface in increments and it had proved hugely addictive. Still, the project was quickly closed down.

It wouldn’t take long for them to fall apart too. Blake went comatose shortly afterwards, at the hospital, and instabilities grew worse in Rosa, despite her attempt at using the procedure. The following days she began to suffer from serious withdrawal and mental depression. They tried to reach her but she had disappeared. It was too much for her. I lost you. He couldn’t have known where she’d gone because he had been too bad himself at the time. It had been a change too strong for any of them.

Perhaps the only thing that had saved him was thanks to Zack, who managed to get him back into the system, and perform the ‘swimming’ procedure enough times to re-sync him. It was only the continued immersion and submersion that relieved the shock of the disconnection. The mind does not like to feel helpless. Even following this, many symptoms of disorientation still remained and recurred. His concentration suffered greatly also, but he had been lucky. He was a survivor.

The others had been murdered by the absorption, the interface, by our own project. Though not entirely.

....

Continued in PART 2....