Muted whisper

Once upon a time, I met a whisper and fell in love with him.

It is difficult to describe what we had then. But I know for certain that it is one of those unnamed things that are the best that virtual worlds can offer.

It's like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. It was a fantasy, a roleplay, that has become so emotionally intense and has taken root deep into our psyches that it has become real. Not real as to be part of the "real world", but real nonetheless.

I spoke with him in Skype today. As we would in real life. He said that he deleted the account. And I cried. I cried as though a real lover had died.

I wanted to tell him that I love him, but those words in the context of "real life" feels disrespectful of his real life. All I could do was thank him, but even those words aren't enough for the tremendous impact his presence made in my life. And when I tried to give homage to what we had, every word I said merely trivialized the experience.

What we have of this virtual world is so flimsy, so fragile, so transient. And places and people are gone with one click. Places and people that mean so much to us. Places and people who have been significant in our virtual lives.

And it seems so unfair that they could easily be gone just like that. With no warning, no preamble.

The whisper turned into silence.

And I grieve.

Transformation of the cricket

One lover pulled me back into the real world and, thereby, showed me how one reality enhances the other. But the real world has responsibilities and commitments and vows, and the cricket chirped.

Then another lover brought me into a deeper fantasy and, thereby, reminded me how imagination enhances our lives. And in a world of fantasy, there are no responsibilities, no commitments, no vows, and the cricket was muffled.

That's where I've been. Deep inside my imagination, deep in tales and myths and metaphors and archetypes.

But the emotions are still real. No matter how deep into fantasy you get. At a time when I thought he was rejecting me, he thought I was rejecting him. And I realized that perhaps I was as important to him as he is to me.

In the middle of that argument, he mentioned the cricket. He feels that I'm still hearing it, and he said I had to either shoot it or follow it. He advised following it.

The day after the argument, I sent him a roleplay scenario just for the two of us. A few days prior, he had told me the story of Eos, the goddess of the dawn, who had asked Zeus to make her lover Tithonos immortal, but she forgot to ask for his youth to be preserved. So Tithonos aged and shrunk, until he became a cricket. The roleplay scenario extends that myth. The fantasy continues.

I did take his advice. I followed the cricket. I followed Tithonos... my darling Tithonos.

The fly

I've been a fly for almost a month now. I was able to replicate the invisible avie trick with the Shadow's help. (I'll call him "the Shadow" here, because his foot shadows and his name tag were all I could see when I met him.) He wore each component of the avie one at a time so I could see what's going on.

But instead of a doll, I use a particle-generating prim using a texture for a fly that I used when I made a pile of poop as a trick on Blue. (If you look in the picture he made of me in my 1st Life tab in my profile, you'll see a little brown blob in the lower right hand corner with dots flying around it. That's a poop with flies.) I've pulled too many tricks on Blue, that he had learned to expect the unexpected. I think I've made him paranoid.

Well, it turns out that there are a lot of advantages to being invisible. You don't get distracted by random passersby. They see a dot on the minimap but they don't see anyone, so they figure the dot is high up in the air. Or, they see a dot on the minimap, their radar says there's someone nearby, but by the time they (a) recover from being frustrated from lagging so badly that my avie is not downloading or (b) give up looking for my avie, I've usually tp'd away already.

Anyway, here, I thought I was just having fun. Then last week, Gear asked, "Can I ask what you are hiding from?"

I laughed and said, "Myself?" and didn't think twice about it. Until today. I guess I'm in a pensive mood today.

I am well aware that other people act as mirrors to us in many ways. In this case, Gear was probably seeing something I'm not admitting to myself. There was a time when I changed Opal's look almost every week, sometimes twice a week. It was the fun side of SL.

Then, I changed her look after every heartbreak. Many a time, the changes were a rebellion against a beloved who was bothered by seeing a strange woman every week. (Yes, Opal can be passive-aggressive at times.) He'd break my heart, I'd forgive him, but I'd change my look... drastically. Those were the times when I didn't like being me.

At times when I was hurting too much, I'd see him as my testing alt HiHo, who is a little white mare. But Opal has always been human (or at least half-human). Until now. Which brings me back to Gear's question.

The thing is, I don't know the answer. Maybe I have to hide in one world in order to explore another. Just as I hid from the real world in order to explore this virtual world, I am now hiding from Opal's world in order to explore a roleplaying world....

A whisper (the paradox of invisibility)

He caught my eye, precisely because I couldn't see him.

I was feeling off-kilter that night, so I decided to find a live event to distract me. Edward Lowell was performing at Sailor's Cove. A few people were already there, but more continued to arrive. I was seated on the side closer to the landing point so latecomers had to walk, fly, or swim in front of me.

About twenty minutes into the hour, I saw a female avie walk across my screen, but she had two nametags. Then she paused in the middle of the open area, but the other nametag -- and a shadow -- kept moving until it got to the grassy area on the other side. Then it stopped.

I smiled to myself. Here's an avie I've never seen before.

Well, I did Ctrl-Alt-T to show objects with alpha. No red highlights around this avie.

And I already knew how to create an invisiprim. I've chopped off my head that way once and Emi took pictures with my head on a silver tray that she held. But invisiprims distort the objects behind them and this avie created no distortion at all. (Btw, a transparent texture with transparency set to zero will not show any red highlights with Ctrl-Alt-T.)

About a week prior, Gear and I were talking about animations and I was asking him to explain the "root" prim in his U-Poser mannequin. As an aside, he told a story about how he was able to "disappear" by wearing an animation with the root set four meters underground. And he demoed the animation to me. So I moved my camera underground to see if I could find this mysterious avie. Nothing underground. I was getting more and more intrigued.

I remembered another conversation with Gear where he said that if a prim is small enough, it doesn't get rezzed at all. I wondered if that was what was going on here, but how? I've seen avies that were shrunk as small as possible then folded up using an animation pose. But none this tiny that it's practically invisible.

So I sent the invisible man an IM and complimented him on his avie. I said that I couldn't see transparent prims and I couldn't see him underground. I was hoping for an explanation.

He said he's very tiny and naked. I thought he was giving a clue as to how the avie was done. He wasn't. He was giving me a clue that he was roleplaying.

But it's a charming RP. He's a Tom Thumb type of character, supposedly two to three inches tall as he described. A "tiny pet" says his profile. And the way he does it is so disarming. I found myself giggling a lot and playing along. I mean, isn't that exactly the Lilliputian childhood fantasy that draws us to the Greenies sim?

Well, to make a long story short, the childhood fantasy quickly transformed into an adult fantasy. And that night turned out to be the most incredible night I've had in SL.

I broke a number of records. I did my first RP (I still haven't found the time to RP as a mermaid so this *was* my first RP), an RP with a very strange and unique creature, and a sexual RP at that. I slept with him less than an hour after meeting him. We cuddled and talked for almost *five hours* afterwards. I got to know a bit about the man behind the avatar and fell in love with him in that short timespan. (I know, I know, it's probably the oxytocin working.)

But I'm uncomfortable with certain aspects of his RP, which he needs. And he's uncomfortable with being a full-sized avie, which I prefer. So, no, he won't be my lover. Besides, he is happily married irl, which I found out too late. No, he won't be my pet either, although he claimed he'd be a better pet than Jimmie.

And, since that night, I've been remembering other childhood fantasies and the sense of wonder that accompanied them. Maybe I've just discovered what would make SL feel fresh and new again. And all this time, I've been ignoring RPs in favor of building and scripting. There's actually a lot of creativity involved in an RP. It's storytelling, after all, except it's on-the-fly and with two or more authors, which makes it more challenging and dynamic.

Isn't it ironic? He probably thought he'd avoid attention by being practically invisible. But, as they say, if you want to be heard, whisper. His avie was a whisper.


* The avie was combination of the different "tricks". That is, a scrunched up animation with the avie underground hidden inside invisiprims. It comes with a prim doll that is the only thing visible to others, but he didn't wear the prim doll to the concert. I forgot to write down the creator, but the avie was very well done.
** And to remove the shadow, simply uncheck Client > Rendering > Features > Foot Shadows. I need to confirm if that applies to everybody's view so that nobody can see your shadow, or if that applies to just your view so that you can't see anybody's shadow.