Virtuality
Jonathan Southall, age 17, was just your typical high-school kid- hated the school with its old-fashioned, dry curriculum that simply would not work on a generation of kids who wanted to see something dynamic in their history, English, and science classes that were both fun and dynamic, not the classes that had them all collectively staring at their wristwatches and waiting for the bell to mercifully ring. These children had been raised on all things lightning-quick, on multitasking, on everything faster than it needed to be, like fast music, fast cars, fast everything and there was nothing in fun in being told to rein things in and sit down for hours, finsihing homework. All of them had fantasies of leaving the stupid school for something more important, more interesting, more fun.
And for Jonathan Southall, his fantasy after leaving the gray and very drab walls of this boring prison- er school was an Internet game that his parents had brought him called "Virtuality." With state-of-the-art graphics, a wide variety of choices to be made, a detailed intricate world to explore, and action at the speed of life, "Virtuality" became the drug of choice for young Mr. Southall. And since he was a Furry (though he had never gone public with this), his choice of avatar in this game would be his favorite animal- a wolf.
The bell rang, he hopped on the bus home, not before receiving a few insults from the school jocks, and soon found himself at his house on 2112 Sycamore Street. And from there, he said hello to his mom, nonchalantly threw off his backpack, and turned on the computer, his beloved high-tech toy which could bring the world to him in a matter of seconds. It was time to become Johnny the Wolf.
"Johnny, there has been a shipwreck on the Cyber Sea, and if you save the people on the ship, you will get V-Dollars." Now those people were a large group of non-playable characters in "Virtuality" who needed to be rescued and brought back to the port town so that the avatars could be given money for their services to buy more clothes, a larger house, or any number of material in this world, yet also immaterial in the real world goods. From the virtual city of Kitsilano (named according to the site after a suburb of Vancouver, where the game was made) Johnny piloted his ferry boat- his purchase after a few months of playing for exploring the islands around this virtual world, based remarkably on the geography of Vancouver. The boat, about $20,000 V-Dollars used by another avatar, with room for about 50 passengers was brought to the wreckage site. Only 687 of the original 1,024 victims remained (the 'shipwreck' occurred during one of those pesky moments when Johnathan Southall was at school) and they would either be saved for a fee or drown and the game would go on without them.
From the bow of his ship, he could see the heads bobbing on the water with arms outstretched- and other boats wrangling them in. From Johnny's spot, the wolf maneuvered near a pod of survivors and started deploying life preservers waiting for the people to take them. Within minutes, the capacity of the ferry was filled with NPCs- Johnny himself treated them merely as cattle to be wrangeld and sold at a profit when they reached Kitsilano. Things were going fine until a vicious maelstrom appeared which swept the boat away and devoured it with everyone inside, including the poor wolf Johnny.
In the real world, Jonathan Southall wondered if there had been a bug in his game- his had never happened before. His fears were allayed when Johnny the wolf found himself on a beach. The game designers had programmed this to happen- or else there would not be a beach there. For a while, Jonathan looked to see his character leaving virtual pawprints in the virtul sand. But soon Jonathan's character would need food, water, and Johnathan himself would need companionship- someone to tell him what the hell just happened to an otherwise normal rescue peration. That's when Southall found it on the computer screen- golden artifacts, crowns and goblets and crucifixes all made of gold with many fine jewels. He had stumbled across a treasure trove- in Kitsilano, these things could be found but they would never be this plentiful or this visible.
"CONGRATULATIONS! OF THE 65,674 USERS OF THIS GAME, YOU ARE ONE OF ONLY TWO TO HAVE TRIGGERED THE MAELSTROM. YOU CAN KEEP ALL THIS TREASURE WITH YOU ON A BRAND-NEW BOAT BUT YOU MUST FIRST SAMPLE NEW THINGS THAT NO GAMER IN "VIRTUALITY" HAS EVER SEEN" the message loaded across his screen when he picked up the treasure, which was now in his inventory. "NETBOYS AND NETGIRLS WILL NEED TO SEE THIS BEFORE WE RELEASE IT TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND YOU ARE OUR LUCKY GUINEA PIGS". In no time, he was shown an attractive female avatar who was an anthropomorphic leopardess. She was playing the game, according to her vital statistics from a computer somewhere in Miami, Florida.
"What's your name?" Jonathan typed.
"Cocoa Fantasia" was the response
"No, your real-life name."
"Rebecca Martinez and yours is..."
"Jonathan Southall"
"Pleasure to meet you, then. I've been waiting to see you for about five minutes- the computer took some time loading up the other sweepstakes winner. Let's see what is on this island." The first thing they saw were botles and paper, which the computer explained was for communicating with random people on the other islands, a new feature. The next thing they saw looked like a missile silo. Upon touring the building, they found a group of NPCs developing a space travel application, another new feature.Outer space as they saw would be a little more pixilated than the other parts of the world so it looked really like a 1980's arcade game but that didn't bother them. Soon, the two Furry avatars discovered a dance club, and a way to earn virtual wings which replaced their cars and boats. The dance club worked by them tapping their fingers on the keys to create their own songs and the wings gave them a view of the enitre island and eventually all the game world when they flew high enough. A message warned them about taking the treasure and going back to Kitsilano, which they did.
Within a week, all these features would be added permanently and everyone who played "Virtuality" could enjoy them but during that week, Jonathan thought about what had happened. Here, he was just this kid who could at any time become a wolf and lead a life of fantastic adventure far removed from the boreodm of school. The keys on that computer became keys which opened doors to better worlds. And with those keys, he could send his heartbeat, his impulse around the world to people like Rebecca Martinez and others. He would put a message on the modem and throw it into the Cyber Sea.