Episode 55 – When Good Sims Go Bad

Beth was back in the Da Vinci Island sim. Beth loves the Da Vinci sim. It has gadgets. It has multiple transportation systems. It has treehouses. This time she was showing a friend around. They took the helicopter ride around the sights.
P “Look! Pirates!”
B “Look! Castle!”
P “Look! Volcano!”
B “Look! Ubiquitous bleedin’ shopping mall!”

They flew a bat to the batcave and splashed around in the water. They teleported to the undersea tunnels and clambered about stalking Nemo
P “Look! Turtle!”
B “Look! Shark!”
P “Look! Neptune in his watery kingdom”
B “Look! What’s he doing with his trident?”



And of course they scampered off to the Rocket and took the trip to Mars. They looked good – piloting that mighty, thrusting beast and bending it to their will
P “I’nt we intrepid, sis?”
B “We intrepid as, cuz!”
And that was when things started going wrong. First off, Beth’s point of view started wandering around the capsule of its own accord, and the whole rocket appeared to be shaking violently. Beth clung onto her seat. The shaking got worse. Then everything froze and a nasty little message came up saying she had been booted out of SL. Bugger! Bloody grumpy sim…

Beth logged back in. Of course – it wouldn’t be back into her seat in the rocket, would it? Of course not. Beth rezzed in to find herself plummeting through the atmosphere and into (inevitably) the sea. She picked herself up off the seabed and flew out (it’s just routine now, Beth doesn’t even think about it) She hovered about and toweled herself off while she waited for P to arrive on Mars. She accepted her tp and the two gallivanters happily donned their space helmets and took a Mars Rover for a spin. Then they popped into the Control Centre and made themselves at home. For a sweet girl, P looked distinctly evil sitting behind the big control desk. All she needed was a big furry cat and a couple of henchpeople.

P “Let’s go to Inner Space”!”
B “Sure!”
They tp-ed over and Beth found herself buried up to her waist in the floor. No amount of wriggling or “Stop animating my avatar” helped at all. She was stuck. “This sim really is in a bad mood today,” thought Beth. So she did the ol’ mini-map trick – double-clicked a couple of pixels over to the side of her yellow dot – and hey presto! She’s dangling from a gantry above a pit of doom. Switching to ‘Fly’ she did a neat maneuver that had her flipping, James Bond-like, up onto the gantry and with a quick click she was sitting inside the Blood Buggy. P tp-ed in next to her – and they were good to go
Now, a couple of people had recommended this ride – “Just like that ‘The Fantastic Voyage’ movie, with Raquel Welch” they’d said. “Are you sure it’s not gross?” Beth had enquired. “Oh no!” they’d assured her. “It’s great!”
They’d lied.
It was completely revolting.
Beth had clicked into the front seat of the Blood Buggy, so had a magnificent view of platelets, anti-bodies, frothing plasma, blood clots and other capillarity wonders. This was not Beth’s idea of a good time. She closed her eyes for most of it and waited for the ride to be over.

P “Hey Beth. Why have you stopped?”
B “Huh? I didn’t do anything!”
Beth opened her eyes to find the Blood Buggy slumped over on its side against the vein wall. Clicking every menu she could find did absolutely nothing. If this was part of the ride – it was rubbish, thought Beth. But more likely, the sim was knackered and this was a glitch. Perhaps the sim had PMT? Eventually, Beth gave in to the inevitable – they had to hit ‘Stand Up’ and walk out of there.

Wading through gore and dodging viruses was more than Beth could stand. She decided to try the mini-map trick again – but this time with her cursor poised over the ‘Fly’ button. Hovering outside the sim was a revelation. The cardio-vascular system was laid out like a big, liver-coloured subway map – but suspended in mid-air and miles above the ground. Shown in all its naked, backstage rawness, it may even have looked worse from the outside than from within. This is the side of a sim a SL resident shouldn’t see, thought Beth. It’s like seeing Jonny Depp on the toilet. Beth shut her eyes again and waited for P to get somewhere solid and send her a tp.

Eventually Beth and P ended up on a sofa on a beach, listening to birdsong and being accosted by cats. The sim didn’t appear to be in ‘hate mode’ and was leaving them be. Perhaps the sim was chagrinned, having been caught with its pants down. Perhaps if it stopped slapping her around, Beth wouldn’t feel compelled to go off and complain to others about its behavior. Perhaps the sim thought “Maybe I’ll be a bit nicer to her. I wouldn’t want her to go off and write about this in a blog or anything…”

Episode 54 - Dating Dangers

Beth has a terrific crush on someone in her Contacts List

Beth is discovering that the road to SL love (of any imaginable description) is replete with technological potholes and communication stumbling-blocks that, unfortunately, RL has left her entirely ill-prepared for. Alas, Beth is seriously considering worship-from-afar to be the only sane option for the foreseeable future. Here is the sorry tale to date:

Much to her amazement, despite the walking anomalies and the tendency to bond intimately with any nearby body of water, Beth somehow managed to coax the object of her affections into spending a little time alone with her. Something that she hoped might be broadly interpreted as a ‘date’ of some sort, should he perchance choose to incline in that direction.

Beth tried to impress him by taking him to the beautiful Sagrada Familia sim in the Hermetic Palaces region. “Come on” she thought, “Barcelona, posey architect, balloon ride – gotta beat a nudist beach into a cocked hat. I can show off my stunning intellect as well as my astonishing good taste. Surely he’ll go for that?” Beth had thought ahead and planned meticulously. She practiced teleporting in. She worked out the straightest and least embarrassing route to the balloon ride. And best of all – she discovered that there was no water in the vicinity - except the sea at the very edges of the island. Beth felt prepared and confident.

Why didn’t she share her plans with her SL friends? Perhaps one of them would have pointed out the glaringly obvious pitfalls that awaited her.



Poor Beth. Why did she imagine that piloting a balloon would be any easier than walking or flying around? Did she even stop to consider it? And what about the lag? This is a sim of the most elaborate cathedral in RL, picked out in miniscule detail. There are more colours, swirls, curlicues and fiddly bits than a Drag Queen Frock-Off in the middle of Mardi Gras. So not only did Beth’s balloon lurch around the middle-distance like a drunk on a trampoline, her pc had nowhere near the speed necessary to rez the sim in time for her to see the oncoming architecture – causing her to crash into spires and take the noses off gargoyles right, left and centre. Beth’s ‘date’ was not looking particularly impressed. In fact he looked decidedly queasy. And he laughed rather a lot. But not in a good way, she feared.

When they eventually landed (Beth spotting the sea rezzing below them seconds before they hit, and executing a heroic but bone-jarring sideways landing with about as much dignity as a skier ploughing into a snow drift) her companion proposed a drink and a nice sit down might be the next order of the day. Thanking the techno gods profusely that her companion was not, at this moment, reaching for a towel and his emergency tp Landmark, Beth readily agreed to anything he might care to suggest.

He took her to a Steampunk Music Night. The party was in full swing when they arrived. Thankful for the mercifully short and straight walk into the building and over to an empty table, Beth sat and determined to make the very best of this Alternative History opportunity. If the mechanical aesthetic of the Age of Steam really had perpetuated for another century, Beth tried to imagine if this is really how she would have been spending her evenings in RL. The venue was small and ‘intimate’ (ie no room to swing a neko). It was crowded and the atmosphere manic. The tightly-packed participants – genteel ladies, gentlemen adventurers, cats, foxes, mercenaries, steelmill owners and engineers – were all dancing wildly and joining in with songs about zombies, train wrecks and Tom Cruise. People were swinging from the chandeliers, burlesque dancing on the bar, and on stage a DJ in a kilt danced like a frenzied Pogue on speed. The patter in local chat was rabid, riddled with in-jokes, baffling and mainly downright incomprehensible. Trying to hide the fact that she was clearly out of her depth, Beth attempted witty banter and wry observation on her companion and tried to calculate a dignified exit route through the tumult for the moment it would be needed.



Just as she was starting to relax, to her horror, Beth’s companion (very politely and with knee-melting grace and charm) asked her to dance. Beth blanched visibly and her bowels turned to water. Steampunk dance balls? Beth had barely got her training wheels wet on the nice, conservative couple’s dances at Bella Vida. How many ways to embarrass herself might lurk in that innocent-looking intan? Beth stumbled out an apology. Her ‘date’ looked a little miffed. Beth babbled something about ‘all the people’ and ‘how hot it was getting in here’, and prayed for an SL-wide crash to bring her salvation. Her gracious companion must have taken this as a hint and suggested taking her to a different sim – outside and in the sunshine. He also mentioned that there was a device there he thought she might enjoy. Beth blinked and gulped but knew he was too much of a gentleman to be suggesting anything untoward. A gadget, perhaps? Beth loves gadgets. A new ride? Beth is having a peculiar love-affair with any and all of the many and varied modes of transportation in SL, so if her date was suggesting a new way to float, zoom or skedaddle around a sim, Beth would be thrilled to bits.

Her gentleman friend poofed off and sent her a tp. ‘Mexico 2’. Beth was intrigued. She took a deep breath and clicked on the teleport. After the whoosh, Beth found herself dappled with sunlight, surrounded by green, and inches away from the broadly smiling face of her erstwhile companion. Her first thought was “Yay! No water!” Then she plummeted 60 ft through the forest canopy and hit the dirt with a thud. She received a concerned and apologetic IM
He “Oh Beth, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise the platform was so small. The tp I sent you must have made you miss the edge. I really am very sorry”
She “Um, no worries. I’m fine. Er, where are you. Exactly?”
He “Stay there. I’ll move right to the middle of the platform and send you another tp. Then you should be able to land…”
But unfortunately, it transpired that there is a gap between the tree and the middle of the platform. Beth’s ‘date’ plummeted 60 ft through the forest canopy and hit the dirt with a thud. Both of them cast about sheepishly and Beth found her mind filling with comforting thoughts of tidying her inventory and deleting old notecards. Surely the evening couldn’t get any worse…



About 10 minutes later - after flying up the wrong tree trunk, getting wedged underneath the platform, overshooting, narrowly missing a ziggurat and various other dismal failures to reach the platform – Beth finally found herself standing next to her companion and a bright green Flying Fox. “Oh yes! This is more like it!” thought Beth. She jumped aboard and plummeted earthwards (but in a far more dignified and interesting manner than previously) However, moments later she had landed. “Hmmm” thought Beth. “It takes me all evening to get here, I think I’m in for a wild ride, and in a few seconds it’s all over. Story of my bloody life, or what…”



The object of Beth’s fondness decided (quite sensibly, in her opinion) that now might be a good time to call it a night. As nothing had gone disastrously wrong and no technological challenge had flummoxed her for several minutes, Beth found herself agreeing that this would be an appropriate high-point to end on. Their closing farewell IMs at least confirmed in Beth’s mind that the two of them were still friends, much to her relief. She decided to continue harbouring deep, unrequited affections for this avatar, but considered it safest to leave it at that. Nursing a bruised heart, a tattered dignity and a badly twisted knee, Beth limped back to the safety of the Botanical Gardens and a night on her own, out of harm’s way. She might not be going on any more ‘dates’ with her paramour. But she might very well be sneaking back to Mexico 2 in the very near future to play on the hang glider…

Episode 53 - Beth comes to terms with her disabilities

Since the moment she hatched into SL, Beth discovered she was saddled with not one, but two, physical handicaps. She can’t walk very well. No, let’s be honest – she is total crap at walking. Faced with a curved path, Beth’s heart sinks. She tries to walk as slowly as she can and asks her Operator to vibrate the l or r direction key maniacally. But still she drifts gracelessly over into the road, or the hillside or the wall. Holding the direction key for more than a fraction of a second results in her whirling dramatically and shooting off at an angle. Her Operator is developing RSI to go with her growing addiction to SL-ing.

Beth also suffers dramatically from morbid hydrophilia – an unholy affinity with water. Perhaps her avatar is constructed from wetons or dripsels. But if there is so much as a glass of water in a room – Beth will dive headlong into it. Imagine the problems she has near rivers and seas? She curses the SL sim-builders with their positively unnatural obsession with gorgeous beaches, babbling brooks and all those thousands of tumbling waterfalls. Perhaps it works the other way – perhaps all the water in SL has Bethophilia – but either way, the attraction is as fatal as any Bunny Boiler scenario.



So in spite of her sparkling wit, her devilish repartee and her unusual Victorian Librarian Transvestite look – Beth consistently destroys any possibility that new friends on SL will take her in the slightest bit seriously the moment she attempts locomotion in any way, shape or form. You can just imagine how far down her estimation has plummeted with regards to getting an actual date on SL. Helpful people have offered her new walk AOs, tips and advice on changing the graphics and general pointers in abundance on achieving the simple joy of wandering around aimlessly without falling off the sim. Or they have just laughed themselves stupid as she ploughs over a cliff or into the river. Sadly, all to no avail. Beth blames her equipment. But this is generally scoffed at (“a bad workman blames his tools” attitude abounds) – and she knows that, secretly, everyone thinks she is a total dork. Beth has resigned herself to living in a cruel and discriminating world (or at least to the fact that she has chosen a very bad crowd of friends – but who are probably no more than she deserves anyway)

Beth’s Operator, however, fails consistently to ‘take the shame’. She cannot tolerate her avatar’s relentless inability to walk down a corridor in a sensible manner or stay away from riverbeds. Fully recognising her decision as one more sign of an addiction flourishing like a fungus within her rapidly composting brain, Beth’s Operator determined to attempt a technical solution for Beth’s maladies. On the advice of a trusted tech supporter, she actually took herself to a RL consumer electronics suppliers to buy her first (and probably only, ever) gaming joystick.

Now, Beth describes her Operator as an obese, alcoholic sad-sack, well-travelled down the road to mental and physical decrepidity. So you can imagine the trauma to be faced by one of such advanced age and obvious technical ineptitude, who would venture thus into a typical retail outlet populated by pimply children high on Gen Y. The contempt, as Beth’s Operator bumbled through the transaction, was palpable. But she did it – and Beth is delighted. OK, she only falls in the water about a third less often than she used to. And she still has to take four steps in any one direction before stopping to make a course correction – but she can do it a heck of a lot faster and with distinctly more accuracy than before. But the main reason behind Beth’s child-like joystick joy is that her most-used commands are available at the touch of a button and her Inventory is right there on the trigger! Beth’s Operator can now safely save her wrists for other applications in RL (ie - cooking food, putting on clothes, washing up a cup now and again - that sort of thing) And she will just have to learn to live with pulling Beth’s face out of a wall every so often, and those endless offers to pass her a towel…

Episode 52 - First Contact with the Lag Monster

Beth has been happily trudging around SL for a few weeks and has been picking up the local lingo. She now understands that things ‘rez’ into view (i.e. when she teleports into a new sim she is surrounded by amorphous brown and grey blobs which she can spend the next 10 minutes guessing about - will they will turn into trees, buildings, spaceships or a naked couple going at it like knives? Unfortunately, Beth's Operator does not have a gaming PC…) She also knows that things are made of ‘prims’, that dances come from pose balls and pose balls come from intans, and that it is often better to get a 'male casual walk' (or AO) unless you want your female avatar to move around like an oversexed prostitute on heat. She has also come to understand that just about any mistake is forgivable if you blame it on things being ‘laggy’.

So, Beth had heard about lag but was not sure if she had ever experienced it. Lag is a bit like ‘flu in that respect, lots of people say they have it and take a day off work. It is only after you have been laid up in bed for three days, so desperately ill you think your face is going to fall off and you’re crying for your “mummy” - that you realise EXACTLY what flu is all about. And so it wasn’t until the day the Lag Monster grabbed Beth by the derriere and dragged her into the torpid, stinking pit of Lag Hell did she comprehend just how torturously embarrassing the experience can be. This is what happened:

Beth had met up with a lovely woman who wanted to introduce her lovely friend who owned a lovely jewellery shop. The friend was indeed lovely, and so was his jewellery shop. In fact, the whole area was lovely and they were a lovely couple. When they invited her over to see the apartment Beth was delighted. She was not worried by any ‘dodgy’ thoughts as they were both so lovely. She simply determined to be on her best behaviour and have a lovely time.

Things started to go wrong on the short trip to the apartment. Beth's strange walk was proving stranger than usual. Sometimes she couldn't seem to move, and then she’d shoot forward moments later at great speed. Sometimes she would appear to have walked several yards, only to find herself in some sort of ‘instant replay’ mode with the distance she thought she had covered still to be traversed. Hoping for the best, Beth ignored the signs and ploughed on gamely. The next challenge was the security fence. To get to the apartment the three of them had to fly over an invisible barrier. Beth found her flying to be as seriously impaired as her walking. After a period of flashing around the middle distance like a bumble bee in need of an anger management course, the lovely couple took pity on her and sent her a teleport. The whoosh seemed to last an inordinate amount of time and when she arrived, Beth found she had real difficulties even turning from left to right. The lovely couple proceeded to show her around the lovely apartment. Beth was beginning to suspect some sort of a trick. She would aim for a door and it would move before she got there. She would enter a room only to discover she was actually still outside it. She would walk up a corridor to find herself trapped inside a pot plant that she swore had not been there moments ago. She apologised profusely to the lovely couple, who blamed it on lag.

So now Beth knew the nature of the technological crisis but, as usual, had no real idea of what to do about it. Much later she would learn tricks like ‘logoffandonagain’, reduce your screen size and turn off every single, little tiny application on your desktop. But for now Beth thought she must be trapped in an old episode of ‘The Avengers’. In some sort of perverse, twisting house of mirrors – unable even to communicate with the other two as local chat was only allowing her to type about one character a minute. The house continued to turn against her, mocking her feeble attempts to seek help and find a way out. She heard the words "Watch out for the hot tub" but had no concept of the vicinity of the object until she was splashing around and soaking the carpet. Finding herself at a complete loss as to how to clamber out of said hot tub, Beth tried to levitate with the fly button. She really should have known better. The next thing she knew she was careening about the apartment at head height, narrowly missing the christmas tree and ending up – somehow - halfway through a window pane wriggling like an insect trapped on a pin. Beth had reached terminal embarrassment. She can't remember how, but she got a message to the lovely couple and she tp-ed herself out. The whoosh took so long, she feared she had completely pixilated. But she made it back to her secret changing room in the sky, apparently in one piece. She logged out and Beth's Operator put her head between her knees and took some long, deep breaths. With great trepidation Beth logged back on again and spent long minutes apologising lamely to each member of the lovely couple. They seemed to understand. But Beth seriously doubted that she would be invited in for a cup of tea again.



Beth quickly genned up on anti-lagging tips until she felt she had sufficiently inoculated herself against future bouts. She was determined not to let the Lag Monster spoil her SL fun. After all, who knew what the *next* lovely couple might have in mind for her when inviting her back to their apartment? If Beth found herself wriggling like an insect on some future occasion, she certainly hopes it will be down to something far more interesting than the Lag Monster!