Making Cats

by Morrhys Graysmark

       “It’s not like Second Life is heaven or anything; it’s full of airheads trying to have virtual sex and make money. But SL’s virtual world is better than the real world. In SL, no one expects me to waste time taking useless college classes, like Society and the Individual. I can get a job where I don’t have to spend time and money driving miles away from home to sweat for some guy who doesn’t have a clue about how to do my job and pays me next to nothing for doing it. I can own a house without having to prove to an idiot loan officer I’m going to pay off the loan I need to buy the place. I can have all the privacy I want. I can’t get those things in real life. That’s why I did what I did when my sister Kathie tracked me down in SL. I just want to be left alone.”
       I’m talking to a dolt. I wish he’d stop nodding his head and looking at me like he’s concerned. He’s just like the rest of them: educated to the point where he’s got no independent thoughts of his own, moronically following every asinine social rule like a sheep. If my mom didn’t pay him to listen to me, he wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence.
       “Look, here’s how it went. I signed into SL that Tuesday, and found an Instant Message waiting for me. Stupid invention. IMing makes it so easy for people to talk at one another that they don’t bother to think about what they say, they just blurt out whatever’s on their minds. Anyway, I signed in and found an IM waiting for me. That is, the IM was waiting for my avatar, Swami Loon, from the avatar Morrhys Graysmark. The avatar, you know, the virtual person in SL controlled by a real person in real life.
       “’Hello. I’m looking for a real life friend of mine