It wasn’t until I was doing some testing of our improved web site that I found out what Fisher had done. In these trial runs, I would register as a new user/worshipper, and try as objectively as I could to put myself in the head of someone experiencing our virtual world for the first time. On this occasion, I had signed up as a seventeen-year-old cheerleader from Idaho named Cindy, and was chatting with a couple of other like-minded online buddies who were complimenting me on my newly posted profile.
Even though I knew both of the people I was apparently exchanging messages with were really synthetic characters generated by Stan’s software (later, as our enrolment grew, there would mostly be real participants), I played along as best I could. And then one of the characters, who was supposed to be a high school senior named Todd from Tacoma, Washington, suddenly interrupted, acting all excited.
Hey wow!! Let’s go check out the special gathering in the Great Hall. The Chosen One’s going to be there himself!!! Todd typed.
Who’s The Chosen One? I replied, playing along.
He’s soooooo cool, my other new (and artificial) friend, Brittany from Texas, jumped in. When I broke up with my boyfriend he like totally helped make me feel better. Come on, let’s go see him.
So I clicked on the appropriate icon, and a new window appeared on my computer screen showing the Great Hall. Even though I’d seen it dozens of times before, the space never failed to impress me (which is a good thing considering how much we’d paid for its virtual architecture). The scene showed hundreds of happy, good-looking kids around my (i.e. Cindy’s) age gathered in front of a stage, where a rock band was playing. (If I’d been portraying a retiree from Florida, the crowd would have looked very different—more like the lawn bowling club from Sunset Acres, only happier and healthier.)
Make sure your sound’s turned on, Brittany advised me, and so I obliged. My speakers were flooded with a catchy pop ditty as the band strutted their stuff on stage. The real me knew the band was a talented, but unknown, bunch of musicians from New Jersey recruited by Fisher, but I tried to stay in Cindy’s naïve little mind and enjoy the experience, although also fully prepared to drop out the minute I felt we’d exceeded her short little teen attention span.
The song wrapped up, and the band simply faded away in a dancing whirl of smoke. (You’ve got to love virtual worlds, where the laws of physical reality can be suspended at will.) A resonating voice then came out of thin air, and my jaw dropped, because I recognized the speaker immediately.
“We can make life better,” the voice—Fisher’s voice—said, and despite my indignation and incredulity, I have to admit it was slick and soothing. “There is a great force all around us. The Universal Spirit of love and harmony.” A shimmering glow appeared in mid-air and then solidified into the figure of The Chosen One, in all his costumed splendor, as he glided down to the stage. He had a beatific smile on his face, and I recognized instantly that Fisher had modeled the face after his own.
I spun in my seat, ready to launch a verbal tirade at Fisher, who earlier had been sitting and scribbling notes in Stan’s armchair. But he was suddenly standing right there behind me. The smug sneer on his face was a far cry from the saintly smile of his virtual doppelganger.
He chuckled. “So, what do you think? Pretty fucking good, eh?” He leaned over me to turn up the volume on the speakers, so he could hear his own sermon better, and I had to resist the urge to grab him by the throat.
“Who the hell said you could be The Chosen One?”
“Hey, easy Brad,” Fisher said patronizingly, “you were the one who insisted we needed a spiritual leader. I just figured it was too important to entrust to an outside actor. And then imagine the extra cost. On top of a repertoire of sermons, we’re going to need thousands of hours of voice recordings to cover all the possible things The Chosen One can say to users one-on-one when he appears at appropriate times. If this thing catches on the way we hope, any actor we hire would have us over a barrel in the future.”
“But why you?”
“Who else? Stan? Or you?” He had a point. Stan was an insecure introvert who habitually stumbled over his words if he talked anything other than technospeak. Although he was born an American, Cantonese had been his first language, and there was an oddity to his speech—not quite an accent, but something that made his English sound imperfect. As for me, I’m fine when communicating via my keyboard, but I’m no public speaker. My voice can get a little high-pitched and I have a tendency to forget what I was about to say, especially when I get flustered. Back at Columbia, my professors had discouraged me from any career choice that would entail appearing on camera.
Fisher, on the other hand, was an accomplished pitchman who made a living out of persuading people. His voice was a mellow baritone, and he had an actor’s gift of controlling emphasis and cadence. I also recalled from his bio, which I’d once edited for the W&M corporate web site, that he was much in demand internationally as a speaker at conferences and symposia.
“Okay, I get it,” I said, my voice instantly getting squeaky to prove his point, “but why does he look like you?”
Fisher shrugged. “He had to look like somebody, and this way we’re covered in case we ever have to make the jump to the real world.”
In case we ever have to make the jump to the real world. Those simple words, said so nonchalantly at the time, now speak volumes in hindsight. And, in truth, Fisher wasn’t a bad-looking man. He had thick brown hair, a strong chin, piercing hazel eyes, and a dazzling smile that was a testament to the art and technology of cosmetic dentistry. He was a little on the short side, and that might explain his need to overachieve, but there is no shortage of successful height-challenged politicians and actors. I had no choice but to admit Fisher was perfect for the job.
Mind you, I should have heeded my own writing. I was, after all, the one that put down in The Sacred Text that we should not be deceived by the appearance of the vessel outside, for what’s truly important is the quality and quantity of spirit burning inside. Amen. In Fisher’s case, the glib tongue and photogenic smile hid a scheming, greedy, and power-hungry sociopath. And that, folks, is the bottom line on the top dog.
Article updated Tuesday 4 November 08:51
This is the first thing I’ve written in almost two days. The snow just kept falling and falling, and there’s a good two feet of it on the ground now. I think I must also have come down with the twenty-four-hour flu or something, because yesterday I couldn’t even find the strength to get out of bed to keep the wood stove burning. It’s a good thing the Shius left behind a quality down-filled sleeping bag to keep my aching bones warm, though, because it was cold as hell in here when I woke up this morning.
There’s an interesting phrase—cold as hell. The stereotypical Catholic hell is, of course, full of fire and brimstone, where damned souls burn in eternal agony. I purposely never chose to create a Phasmatian equivalent of hell. I figured that having your soul permanently extinguished at death should be enough of a deterrent for would-be sinners. If I had, though, and in keeping with our theme of the dark entropic menace pervading the universe, my hell would have been cold to your very miserable core.
But I’ve got it nice and toasty warm in here now, and the sun is shining brightly outside (even if that’s because a large high-pressure front from Canada has parked its frigid Arctic air over top of us). I’m going to go and stock up on firewood, and make myself a nice bowl of (canned) stew before settling down to continue this chronicle.
Article updated Tuesday 4 November 9:31
Oh my God. They may have found me. At least, someone walked by here yesterday while I was passed out, and checked the place out. When I stepped outside to fetch some more wood, I saw footprints in the snow, leading right up to the window, where it looks like my visitor peeked into the trailer before circling around once and walking out again to the road. It’s a good thing I’d thrown a tarp over my motorcycle when I first arrived, because it was well hidden under a mound of