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Posted on March 20, 2007
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Sameera knew she could control it. She was confident about her own ability to stop at any time. It wasn’t like she was going to be trading sexual favours for her fix like that girl in Requiem for a Dream…hell the only reason she was even trying it was because of how well adjusted she was and how quickly she could stop if she wanted to. She had a life, she had friends who loved and supported her and compared to most other people her age her family didn’t suck as much. She was cool. She was better than cool, she was an iceberg.

Her buddy Rohan got her involved in the scene. He had been into it for so long he couldn’t tell her exactly when he stopped being one of the unplugged. He had it all, the look, the language, the rhythm and the gear. She wasn’t sure at first, about him or the whole scene. When he had just been inducted, in the very beginning, she thought he had turned into a narcissistic pain in the ass who could no longer speak without condescension for those that weren’t ‘plugged into the global consciousness.’ It sounded pretentious and she wanted nothing to do with it. She liked to think that she had spent a great deal of time and special effort to get to the social level she had managed in her life. It was a delicate balance, that required managing people’s needs, massaging egos and making oneself inaccessible enough that one’s value never dropped to the point where people thought it useless to hang out with her.

That was then.

She had missed the first wave. Friendster, Facebook, Myspace, Second Life were just funny words that meant little to her. They might have been spawning off-shoot industries and self-made billionaires but she didn’t care. She was living in the real world and the virtual space had little to no appeal for her. If Rohan hadn’t worked so hard to capture her attention, if he hadn’t gone to great pains to recreate her likeness on Virtual You, Alice would never have ‘popped her head down the rabbit hole’.

She hadn’t heard from Rohan in weeks when her phone twittered for her attention and flashed his name on the screen. She was happy to hear from him, he had been one of her best friends and frequent confidante until he disappeared into whatever netherworld he had inhabited recently.

“Hey Ro, what’s up?”

“I’ve got something to show you.”

“Okay, let’s catch up.”

“No I need you to come over.”

“Dude you’re being all mysterious, what’s up?”

“You need to see to believe.”

“You’re not trying to get me into one of your chat groups again are you?”

His voice sounded very strained when he responded but he was managing a semi-cheerful tone as he spoke, “it’s called a social network and I just want to show you something.”

She turned up over an hour later even though they lived barely ten minutes apart. She had needed to change and figure out which sunglasses went with her Bebe tracksuit and she knew her friends were aware of the effort she put into her appearance so she didn’t even bother to apologize. She knew Rohan was into some weird shit but she was still not prepared for the way he looked. His skin looked oily and colourless, he had dark circles around his eyes and his lids were rimmed red. He looked very agitated but still managed a smile when the maid servant escorted her to his room. He closed and locked the door and paid no heed to her raised eyebrow. He dragged a chair over for her and pointed to it. He waited for her to sit down and then he introduced her to Virtual Sameera. She was surprised, to say the least. He explained the way Virtual You worked. He allowed her to see her virtual avatar from every angle. He handed her the mouse and allowed her to examine her virtual self for herself. She looked at it for a long time without saying anything and then she said, “is that really what my boobs look like to others?”

He couldn’t read her expression so his response was tentative, “yes…”

“Wow. I didn’t realise. My boobs are awesome.”

He nodded, “The ass is not right though.”

“Are you kidding? I was just about to say her ass looks fabulous.”

“Yeah I know, it does…”

She looked at him, “are you saying it doesn’t look so good in real life?”

“No! no! No, no! It was…I was going to say…it looks much better. See I was building this from photos and I didn’t have enough pictures of your ass.”

“Wow Rohan, I had no idea! I thought…”

“What?”

“I thought you were gay. Sorry.”

“What, no! It’s okay. I am.”

“But…”

“Yeah, I just wanted you to see the world you’re missing out on.”

“You went to all this trouble to show me about the online world?”

“I mean, yeah! You have no idea Sam, it’s a whole new world out there. In the virtual world I’m like a sex god, people want to meet me and do things to me that my mama would never approve off…in the real world I can’t talk to a single person without wanting to either rip their head off or blow my own away…”

“Aww Ro, it can’t be that bad.”

“No you don’t understand, I feel like an international brain stuck in an Indian body. Doesn’t help that our currency is worth fuck all! I can’t travel to all these places and meet all these people. And it’s not about sex either! In five minutes I can have more intelligent conversation than I could in five months in the real world. Have you ever been to a gay bar here? Fuck it.”

“Come on, I’ve met some nice…gay people…”

“Sure. Nice! Who the fuck wants nice? When you get dumped by a nice person you go through a nice period of soul searching and the real depression sets in when you realise that you couldn’t do better than nice. I want exciting, I want danger and drama. Fuck nice! Nice is for the ladies and gentlemen in old people’s homes. In fact I’ll bet even they don’t want ‘nice’”

“Okay, okay, calm down. What is that flashing thing on the screen?”

“Yeah that’s your rating.”

“My what?”

“These many people find you totally fuckable. These guys want to threesome with you and these chicks want to try and get you over to their side”

“Wait, what does that mean?”

“I listed you as straight but these chicks think you might like a bit of girl-on-girl action. In fact these girls think you might like it so much you’ll give up dick altogether.”

“So this is a sex thing?”

“No! Though I mostly use it that way. This lot want you to join their book club. This group want to discuss French cinema with you. These clowns think you might like to go snowboarding with them…whatever. And these fools think you might be interested in their Boggle tournament.”

“What, I like Boggle…”

“Okay…but see if you try and play with the people you hang out with here they’ll either make it Strip Boggle or…I don’t know, ‘take a shot every time a word like shit or cunt or fuck turns up on the board.’ Not these guys, these guys are hardcore.”

Sameera took the mouse away from him and clicked on the screen, “Okay so what do I do now?”

“You can click on any of these people and start a conversation.”

Sameera pulled the keyboard towards herself and typed out her first few tentative words in the world of virtual interaction.

It was dark by the time Rohan remembered that he hadn’t offered her anything to eat or drink since she arrived. Sameera was surprised at how hungry she was. Over pizza Rohan offered to install the Virtual Life client on her computer. They went over after dinner and he sorted her out. She resumed conversations she had abandoned when hunger pangs came calling and she didn’t even notice when Rohan left. When sleep threatened to drag together her eyelids and glue them shut is when she pushed away from the computer table and dragged herself to bed.

Six weeks later Sameera experienced the first physical symptoms of having been sucked into the world of blogs, avatars, chat, instant messaging and cyber sex. Her wrist began to hurt for no real reason and the pain would shoot up her arm and snuggle up in the space behind her right shoulder. She ignored it because she was too engrossed in an argument with 4alldamarbils about the global position on Iraq and the response to African aid pleas. Whenever she took a moment’s rest, issues popped up all over her hyper-wired brain: political debate, sexual stirrings, the implications of 9/11, the magic of free software, chat clients that combined the functionalities of seven standalone players…it all came together and threatened to explode inside of her…

Sameera didn’t realise it but she was hooked. She hadn’t seen her real world friends in days. She only ever caught up with Rohan because he was always online. Nine months after her first encounter with Virtual Life it would have seemed like wish fulfillment if anyone of her online friends could see the real life Sameera as compared to her online avatar. Her skin was spotty, her belly was winning the race with her breasts and her imperfect online ass was a prize compared to the one she was sitting on.

She didn’t care. There were more important things in the world than physical beauty and shallow human interactions. She was part of the global consciousness and she’d be damned if she let go.

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