e started jumping into an animation, as did I. Though at first jagged, the animation quickly turned into an oscillating motion that appeared almost fluid. The animation cycled through. Kip was on top of me, and then, in a quick flip, I was on top of him. And, back again. Sound effect moans echoed through the virtual air.
Only on SL can you accidentally click “yes” on a blue dialog box and find yourself engaged in surprise prefab sex the moment afterwards—we had collided against some InvisiPrim trigger for a series of sex animations.
We were probably both laughing in RL, as the script cycled us through missionary positions and odd floating-in-the-air positions and other ones where prim collision had our arms slicing through each other’s chests.
“LOL,” we both typed simultaneously. I pressed the “Stand Up” button, and so did Kip. In the awkward instant in suspended motion after the animation, his arms flailed around him in swooping circles, and then he landed on the checkered-floor of the scripted-bed furniture store chance-lag had landed us in. The lag had finally allowed all the beds and hundreds of pose balls around us to load.
“Well, I think that broke the ice,” Kip grinned.
I nodded, smiling, ROFL-ing in RL. It was a hilarious sexident, the rare byproduct of lag that ends in delight.
“You know what? I was just thinking about you, right there when we ran into each other. I wanted to show you the Straylight sim,” Kip said.
I laughed in RL. Kip really wasn’t your ordinary guy—he’s a romantic. A total romantic, even. Rather than clamoring for “more” after a bout of virtual sex, he’d see things as is: it’s just two avatars being controlled by scripted animations, the scripts like fate puppeteering us into motions reminiscent of sex but without the intimacy of autonomy. Although there are plenty of scripted sex machines on SL, the core of romance just wasn’t in them. Rather, they were elsewhere.
Smiling, I answered, “I’d love to see Straylight.”
“Then, let’s go!” He disappeared in a poof of particles, his teleportation AO.
I landed in a sanctuary of deep green softness. A glimmer of brightness rained onto me. Pale golden light streamed through fractal branches growing from ancient gnarled trunks, whose roots bore deep into the moss-lined forest floors. Off |
in the distance, bubblegum willow trees loomed, surreal and faded in the sunset. It was beautiful on first sight, lagless, magical. Blessed.
There was a crackle sound that came through my speakers in RL. The tiny white orb above Kip’s head. Cartoonish-green waves emanated from the nimbus, indicating that he was using the new SL voice chat feature. I plugged in my headset.
“… wherefore the two souls stray beneath His Light; their white presence illuminated by straylight.” Kip’s voice was deeper than I had imagined; he sounded innocent, yet there was a pain in his voice, “And he ordained that the world shall be Purged. And when the Great Flood dries, only the Pure shall remain in the Newfound Green World.”
As he finished, he walked towards a beam of light, which made light streaks on his armor, cast shadows on his face. “Belle—” His voice broke into a sob.
“Kip…” The nimbus above my avatar head glowed, as I heard my voice echo in cracked emotion of digital feedback, “Are you all right?”
He was silent for a long moment, and I could imagine his head in RL bending down, as his hands, the RL-equivalent of his SL knight’s mask, covered his eyes.
“Yes,” He said, breaking the silence, “I’m fine, Belle. Sorry… sorry about that.” With a sudden motion, his avatar started walking down the red-brick path at Straylight. I followed.
We walked silently through deep green hanging foliage, gradient lights that lit up the air, an odd circlet of bright colored techno-flowers. Kip’s name disappeared on the active voice list somewhere along the walk before we arrived at the bridge. The brick road was only a few meters in length before stopping at the bridge above the moat of water around the center island. But, the walk felt like an eternity.
I wondered about Kip. About what might be going on in his RL. I remember him saying that his job gave him a lot of think about, but that he believes in it, that “someone has to protect us.” I imagined him dressed in police uniform blue, riding a cop motorcycle, and then I tried visualizing his face in RL. It was a blur, and I couldn’t take the visor off his helmet.
I knew that he loved the color blue, and that he loved the view from his cloud-prim-heavy skybox |
