Black Betrayal, Part II

by Ming Zhou

 
        Kip and I ran into each other on a large expanse of unrezzed gray pixels. Somewhere in the middle of the endless stretch of mainland, both of us lost trying to find something else. But, both of us finding each other—and lag, instead.
        “Damn the horrible lag!” Kip air-typed.
        I nodded, my taciturn self. The world was largely a single shade of gray, with a few shreds of textures slowly rezzing. Vague, blurry images started clearing up on towering land beacons. Giant floating boxes textured with red and white “FOR SALE” signs spun mesmerizing in the air.
        I gazed at a particular box that had a violet-and-black-clad female avatar next to the words, “Sarah Nerd Buys Land.” My eyes moved onto several other floating spinning boxes, as they seem to be the only rezzed prims. I grew dizzy and my RL finger gravitated towards the left arrow key. Blindly, my avatar stumbled and ran against an invisible unrezzed wall, the thump sound effect going off several times before the lag would allow the wall to rez.
        I decided to play trapped-fly-against-the-invisible-screen. I slid across unrezzed walls that would suddenly materialize into TRU-textured surfaces a few seconds after my avatar’s collision. Kip followed, lag-walking next to my sliding.
        The steady series of thumps gave way to a sudden silence as my avatar fell through the invisible un-rezzed walls. Kip followed.
I passed an array of sitballs, and kept on falling, pulled by a gravity-induced lag. I couldn’t stop moving; my avatar kept falling horizontally, lag trying to push me off the grid. Kip IM’ed me, telling me to sit-hack: to camera-zoom over to the sitballs, and click sit. It took a long moment before the sitball pulled my avatar back onto the grid.
        A blue dialog box appeared on the top right-hand corner of my screen, asking for permission to animate my avatar. I was about to click, ‘no,’ but the dusty trackball of my ancient mouse swerved to the, ‘yes’ button.
        I landed against a gray rectangular prim that spontaneously materialized, textures rezzing into a pink surface with two small white pillow-like torus-prims at one end of it.         Kip landed next to me.
        Even before his blue and silver armored avatar hit the surface,