New World Notes

POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION

A battle-scarred commando returns home-- to Second Life.  (Originally published here.)

About this time last year, Jason Foo found himself face to face with a fedayeen and his bayonet-fixed AK-47. The man’s weapon had jammed, but setbacks like that are inconsequential to members of Uday Hussein’s elite cadre of suicidal commandos. (As an initiation blood rite, they were known to shred live dogs to pieces with their teeth and bare hands.) And so this fedayeen pointed the business end of his bayonet at Jason Foo, and came charging at him headlong.

When I first meet Jason in Second Life, however, the setting is a bit more placid. It’s late February, and he’s standing in an open-air disco with flashing lights and pounding techno, the nightclub he’s built with his rapidly accumulating earnings.

“I kinda turned into a realtor in here,” he tells me, proudly. “Made 7,000 [Linden Dollars, or “L$”] today, just selling land. I realized two days ago that the gray areas on the map are unclaimed land. I buy it up, and sell 512 [square meter] plots for L$1,800.” His enthusiasm pours across the screen; judging by his avatar birth date, he's only been a resident for less than three weeks. “I take it you have seen my signs in Green? They are my realty signs," he continues. "I have signs mainly all over Green, but I started branching to other sectors today. I sell property at decent prices, and I want people to know when they see one of my signs, that they are getting a good deal.”

Later on, he tells me how he was able to acquire so much land so quickly. It began with a Linden-sponsored land rush, and the “Land for the Landless” program, in which Linden Lab sells discounted real estate at one Linden Dollar per square meter.

“I got my first plot in Stinson on a land rush,” Jason explains, “248 square meters. Sold it that night for L$1,000. Then I was handed a 512 square meter plot in Green with Land for the Landless, for L$512. Sold it for L$1,800. Then I noticed five plots in Green went public. I bought them for L$1 per square meter, chopped them into 512 square meter plots, and sold each one for L$1,800.” So in a very short time, he’d become a mini-tycoon in the newly burgeoning enterprise of virtual land speculation.

While we talk, I notice that Foo has a picture of himself in full military dress uniform, in his resident profile. I ask him if he’s serving in the Marines.

“I just got out last week,” Foo says. “Trying to find a job [now]. I have massive amounts of computer experience, and no computer jobs [in my area]. I also work with UNIX, and networking, and all sorts of stuff.”

“Were you in Iraq?”

”Yep,” he says. “And Afghanistan. And the Philippines. Last year.”

WHERE TWO OR MORE ARE GATHERED...

Convening with the infinite in a virtual world (originally published here)...

"Thought you might find this newsworthy," someone named Etain Peregrine tells me yesterday, by Instant Message. "There's an 'authentic Catholic mass' happening right now, Sunday morning, on Second Life."

It's about 11:30AM, and though I don't often go in-world on the weekend-- or, to be frank, go to church-- I log in, and Etain teleports me into Indigo. Where there is, as it turns out, something very much like an authentic Catholic mass already in progress. A man named OmegaX Zapata is at the altar, and he's dressed in priestly garments, and he's reciting the liturgy:

"When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples and said: 'Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant...'"

Someone hands me a liturgical book, when I enter, and it's what Indigo's parishioners are using, to read along with the Mass.

Lord... remember our brothers and sisters who have gone to their rest in the hope of rising again; bring them all the departed into the light of your presence...

This actually isn't the first church in Second Life to offer services-- of course, the many weddings held in-world are usually performed in churches-- nor is it first to be used with a genuine intent to worship. A few weeks ago, for example, a church was evidently built by a Second Life resident who happened to be a retired Episcopalian priest. (His grandson, another resident, helped set up his account.) The church was removed, after another resident gave the church a negative rating, with a statement to the effect that she didn't care to see the promotion of religion, in Second Life. (Unlike previous churches, this one apparently involved a fair amount of proselytizing; for instance, one resident told me, the retired priest was handing out T-shirts that read, "Jesus had a Second Life, too.") In any case, the negative rating unleashed a flurry of controversy, in the Second Life forum, on the bounds of theology, free expression, and community. Did it constitute religion bashing? Should religious symbols and buildings enjoy some kind of social exemption from negative ratings, or should they be fair play for such criticism, just like political objects? The rhetoric raged back and forth, and somewhere in there, for whatever reason, the church was removed, and for whatever reason, the retired-clergy resident has not responded to an interview request.

Meanwhile, Rafin Grimm, the angel-winged owner of Indigo's church, is leading the faithful in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. "... thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread..." and beat for beat, nearly all of it matches the Catholic Masses I attended every Sunday, as a boy, at St. John Vianney in Kailua.

"The peace of the Lord be with you always," says Father Zapata. (And the title of his avatar designates him as "Father".) "And also with you," the churchgoers reply, and I already know the priest's next words, before they arrive on my screen. "Let us offer each other the sign of peace."

A dozen or so residents turn in their pews and give words of greeting to each other.

"Peace be with you, everybody," says Rafin, smiling. Hank Ramos offers peace to Zate Kojima, who offers peace to everyone, and to someone named wench Phaeton.

"Like all churches," my friend Fizik Baskerville whispers to me, "people are asleep in the back rows."  And so they are.

"Peace be with the two away-from-keyboard bodies in the back!" Zate adds, laughing.