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…”
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