Please enjoy the amazingly random machinima that Alexis, Greg, and I worked hard on.

Filming was a bit tricky because for some reason Second Life was running a bit choppy on my (the robot’s) computer. We scrambled around the past 12 hours trying to get all of the voiceovers together.

Alexis in Wonderland!

Alexis played by Alexis Anthony

E^2 (a.k.a. M.C.) played by Emil Evans

Wiz Kha-Leaf-ah/ Poh the Panda Bear played by Greg Baroni

Editor: Alexis

Writer: Greg

Director: Emil

Whew, Second Life is very difficult to manipulate, especially when the computer is running slow. I tried to edit out lags and user interface (chat/command menus) as best as I could. (I also made the video private but you should be able to access it with the link. Let me know if you can’t.)

I present… Expectations/Reality!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR4G9NoNulI&feature=youtu.be

Script by: Ed

Direction by: Tess

Editing by: Kelsey

She had a favorite room in the public stem closest to her apartment. It was narrow, but the walls were covered with cloth and the dash was all lit in red, and the kick they gave you there always went down gentle as a lamb. It had a soothing, homey feel, the kind she might arrange if she had a room of her own.

All a girl needed in life, or so they said: a room of one’s own.

But Rexa didn’t have that sort of credit, and the room in the close-by stem was for pleasure, not business. For business she kept on the move, and on that last day she chose a stem downtown, riverside, that had larger rooms but more stark and gray décor. As Rexa set up her deck, she reflected that she liked the extra space, but the place had no romance; it lacked imagination.

A lack of imagination, in Rexa’s opinion, was the world’s greatest malaise.

Once she was plugged in, deck to dash and sensors to skin –and she needed to go full-body for this job—she sat waiting to be greenlit and checked over her programs one last time. Silver, green, and red, the reasons she called this job “Christmas” in her head, all fit neatly into the top of her deck (never the dash ports; her deck had its own mask for public plug-ins). She had to touch them each before she was satisfied, and brushed her fingertips lightly over a blue cartridge resting half in her deck’s side port. At last the light came on the dash blinking once—she sat back in her chair. Twice—she closed her eyes and breathed deep. Three times—there was a faint buzzing sound, and the grid rose up around her.

***

For this job, she needed live bait. Her mark met her at the edge of an actualization of the stacks, here arranged as rooftops, towers separated by long and shadowy drops. He wore a knight done up head-to-toe in black lacquered armor; she wore an impossibly large tabby cat, not an anthro but the actual animal scaled up, with the mouth animation outfitted for speech movements. It looked exactly as disconcerting as she had hoped.

“Hello sir,” she said, mouth stretching in the too-wide smile the animation mod allowed. “Are you ready to begin your journey?” The cat came with a naturally arch, crisp voice that begged for a little theater.

“Don’t speak unless you have to,” the knight said quickly. “Lead the way.” The deep, gravelly voice he put on evened out any tremor in his tone, but Rexa had already hacked his vitals. His heart rate was through the roof, and she smiled even wider at him just to watch the feedback from his eyes twitching.

“As you wish,” she said, and took off.

The silver cartridge laid out their path, shifting the stacks beneath their feet. They tunneled under all the appropriate channels without a hitch, allowing her to keep one idle eye on her mark’s feed. The knight was in reality seventeen, and considerably less muscular than the skin he wore on the grid. He reminded Rexa fondly of her first job, back when she was in school: the destruction of Eurolink’s biggest game server. They never fully got it running again, which was a point of pride for her, but she had since realized the job had been a waste of her time. Taking toys from children no longer interested her.

The kid she led through the stacks, however, wasn’t looking to play games. She didn’t know why he wanted access to local police records—to erase some youthful misdeed, if she had to guess—but she had no intention of leading him there. He stuck close, clueless, sensing only that everything in this corner of the grid smelled official.

“Are we there yet?” he whispered, the knight’s voice brought down to a rasp.

“Just about!” Rexa said, and in some suburban stem just north of the city, a gaunt young man flinched at her volume.

The silver came to a close and the green came online, walking them in place while the shunt loaded. They stood before—or, to the knight, seemed to approach—one of the world’s most brutal security systems, but the knight had no way of knowing that. Rexa could tell that he scarcely dared to breathe as it was, intimidated by the mere sight of the set of soaring crystalline green towers with pulsing blue forcefields between them, stretching as far as the eye could see.

The green interrupted Rexa’s amusement to inform her that the shunt had successfully loaded. She turned abruptly and gave the knight the most ghastly, glorious grin the cat could muster, calling as the shunt took them:

“Many thanks for the escort, dear sir.”

And they say chivalry is dead, Rexa thought. The knight began to scream as the grid seemed to drop into the darkness around them.

***

The shunt dropped them well inside the barrier, and expelled the knight from her mask immediately. The vector she used for him had been unusual, a fragment of a horrorsim that involved waking up during open heart surgery (she’d be lying if she said that wasn’t a bit of her own humor coming through). His chainmail hand was still pawing at his breastplate when they came to take him, dozens upon dozens of white-lights. No mere nanny programs or scan-and-sears, but government grade anti-cyberterrorism drones that flickered with a every security measure code there was in existence, glowing and indistinct. They attached themselves all over the knight and tore the armor from him, leaving his raw data construct, a crackling green, faceless humanoid. They took his voice when they took his armor, but Rexa could almost hear the shrill, staccato beat of his heart feed as the white-lights lifted his spiky, sparking body up into a tower for processing. The green fixed a rider on the nearest white-light and she rose with them, silent as a ghost. From the boy’s raw data construct there were periodic bursts of physio input, which she figured to be him screaming somewhere in his stem room

Rexa thought the whole spectacle pretty, and terribly funny.

***

An admin had to take the boy for processing, and at its appearance Rexa triggered the red. Quicker than she could blink the red copied the admin’s clearance and used its protocols to meet the next highest admin, and then copied that program’s clearance, and so on until the red could find no higher clearance in the construct. When it returned to her, she wrapped it around herself like a cloak and ascended from the top of the security tower, straight to the highest-clearance operation room in the entire system of the federal government of the United States.

She had the satellites.

She had the nukes.

She had the world.

The construct for these keys to the world was a wide, smooth white chamber. The systems appeared before as glowing blue holograms, open, asking, waiting patiently to do as she willed. The red delivered her the CIA’s pathways into Russia, China, France, Germany, the U.K., and every single other system worth caring about. Then it sent scramblers down every channel and pathway below the chamber, and the security systems were shot up and shut down. Even if somebody knew she was up here, there was no one now on Earth with the clearance to get in. She had all the time in the world (the world that now lay at her feet).

Rexa sighed, allowing the cat’s tail to flick restlessly. This particular job lacked the subtlety and freshness of her last venture. She’d gone after shipping routes and grocery stores—this job would not exhibit the same quirky satisfaction of seeing her local supermarket baffled by 25 large shipments of duck meat, suffering the same mis-orders as countless others around the continent.  Still, for sheer magnitude of challenge, this entry couldn’t be beat.

But the question remained as to just what she would do now that she was up here. Her original plan had been to carefully re-knit all communication routes to the wrong destinations, but the idea suddenly seemed drab. She trolled the security feeds of government stems while she waited for a notion with more flair to strike her. Every office was in chaos and on every screen her signature sneered out at the people thrown into a blind panic. This time, however, she’d made a little adjustment to the image. Where her little exercises were normally signed with the image of a jester kissing a king’s hand, bearing the words “LONG LIVE THE KING,” there was now the image of the jester in the king’s throne with her feet propped upon his back, reading “LONG LIVE THE QUEEN.”

Queen indeed.

Rexa surveyed her new domain, ticking off all the major systems now under her control…and realized she was not alone.

“Now this isn’t the sort of activity a young lady should be enjoying,” came a voice directly into her head–someone not only with a comm line, but in the chamber itself with her. Somewhere, in a drab stem room by the river, her heart may have skipped a beat.

“Inspector!” she said cheerfully, turning the cat’s head a perfect 180 degrees and letting its smile show as many teeth as possible. “Have you come to see the show?”

“I think I’ve seen enough, Jester,” he said, “although I must admit you’ve impressed me. This time he took the form of s slim young man with a close-trimmed beard and glasses, with the affectedly fashionable garb of a university student. He was looking younger than he usually preferred. Rexa wondered if looking that way made him feel fresh for the chase, and then wondered if feeling fresh was something her inspector was even capable of.

“I’ve got you figured out, you know,” she said, letting the cat lounge back as though at ease. Her rabbit program had started the moment she registered police presence, but it would take time for the emergency shunt to find a randomized location to spirit her away to. Until then, she had to keep him talking.

“Do tell,” he said. He made no move to apprehend her, which made her uneasy.

“You’re AI,” Rexa said, and the cat’s tongue–too long–flicked out to lick its lips. “The best they’ve got, because they’d need it for me, but a bot all the same. It’s how you figured me out so quick, and why you’re so stuffy all the time.”

“I’m heartbroken to think you find me boring,” he said. She began to grow nervous. The rabbit wasn’t built for worming its way out of something this secure. The program lagged on and on, and Rexa knew she was running out of time.

“Things like you don’t have a heart,” she shot back.

“People say the same thing about you, little girl,” he said. Something about that gave her pause. She stood and faced him fully, the cat’s hackles rising despite herself.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair,” he amended, raising one slim hand. “You’re hardly little, aren’t you? Twenty years old already, and about 5’5″ besides. That’s fairly average.”

Technically, she could not feel cold on the grid, or start to sweat, or go pale, but she felt it all the same. She felt her stomach drop right out through her shoes.

“You have my vitals!” she shrieked. That was it, she was over. They had her completely. “You hacked my freaking vitals!” Somewhere downtown her left arm jerked, slamming the blue cartridge into her deck until it clicked. The chamber exploded into bits of light and sound and static, cracked wide open, and the rabbit whisked her away.

***

The kick came like a brick to the face. She was jerking out of her chair and tearing off her cords before she had fully regained her sight or sense of balance. She slammed her deck shut and jammed it in her bag, the blue cartridge still smoking in its port. Her heart was pounding, her hands were shaking, and she tasted copper on her tongue. Both her nose and her lip, where she had bitten it, were bleeding. With her gear packed and no police yet breaking down the door Rexa forced herself to take a minute and look less like she had just dynamited her way out of a government construct.

By the time she left the room she had wiped off almost all the blood, but she still trembled and smelled like burnt plastic. There was nobody in the hallway to see her, police or otherwise. She began to feel hope as she took the stairs down to the lobby: had she really escaped? Had she blown the inspector to bits for good? If so, she’d miss his constant hounding. In Rexa’s opinion, if everything came easily, then nothing was ever fun.

***

Rexa made it all the way to the last row of chairs in the lobby of the stem. There in the last chair before the revolving doors sat a woman of about forty in a blue pantsuit, with shoulder-length blonde hair. As Rexa approached the woman stood and looked down at her with clear blue eyes, and she knew.

“You’re not a  man,” she sighed, defeated.

“And you’re not a demon cat or a fool,” the inspector replied. “Although the latter is debatable. You know we’d only got the vitals data off the mask, not the stem? We’d only placed you within the city. If you hadn’t tripped your physio reaching for the blast pack, well…” She spread her hands and shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Am I going to jail now?” Rexa asked, dropping her bag. She refused to cry in front of this woman.

“God, I hope so. Which reminds me: hands on your head. Lorexa Baisemain, you are under arrest for cyberterrorism, fraud, illegal software configuration, theft, treason…”

“Dr. Sirch?”

He was a tiny dot in a room about the size of heaven. The back wall was covered with monitors that flickered every few seconds and Sirch clicked, absorbed, then changed to a new webpage. Sirch didn’t budge from his row of twenty monitors on the back wall of the Big Room. Maybe if he made no movement at all, she would stop calling his name and his headache would go away. And then he could sit and surge all day. And then -

“Doctor? Are you in there?”

The clacking of shoes approached. Sirch sighed, burying his hands in his sleek, jet black hair, trying to stop his headache and keeping his eyes glued to the screens.

Sirch drank a swig of backup juice for his head – the pain was starting to make his eyes water. Massaging his temples, he could feel the metal, the wires and the routers of New Brain, that he’d put in himself when he was five to keep his life while people plagued kids without cyberparts. Those were dark times. These were dark times. Twenty-one years had gone by and it had never ached as badly as this.

He absorbed and swung to the next set of monitors: the Void. He looked. Pictures of his father. His mother. His love, Demetria. The Void had taken them years ago. But the question lingered: Where were they?

Maggie, his assistant, pushed open the door without knocking. She hated when he took the Big Room, even though he insisted he was far more comfortable in wide spaces.

Time, Sirch thought, only half-listening, surging through the web pages on his one hundred monitors that lined the back wall of the huge white-walled room. Time was the problem. Because if there was more of it, he thought, massaging his head, his set of 100 monitors and his New Brain could help him surge frequently, and keep going, keep trying to find the Void -

“Doctor. Pierre Fander is here to see you.”

Sirch looked up.

“Doctor.”

The word slithered out of Fander’s mouth, making Sirch feel slimy.

He came with a stack of papers, forced Sirch to turn in his automatic swivel chair and pushed them into Sirch’s hands. Sirch saw a photo of a little girl shoved into the file with a brown bob and beaming eyes. She looked like a younger Demetria.

Sirch’s heart sunk.

“Fander,” he stuttered. “No. Please, no. Not her – ”

Fander paused, watching Sirch blubber as he realized who Fander’s next victim was.

“Alvin Sirch. Remember our little deal? I make you famous – the most famous researcher the world will see. I will do everything for you. The world will revere you. People will travel far and wide to see you.” Fander adjusted the claw on his right hand, which Sirch knew turned into a gun on command.

“Under one condition: you do all my research, exactly as I lay it out, which involves destroying the human race, child by child. Or your family and your girlfriend in my hiding explode into smithereens with the press of this button.” Sirch knew Fander wanted children just as every ruler of the Death did: because they didn’t have metal parts yet.

His New Brain pounded. He took a breath, unable to see clearly anymore, took the stack of paper and started netizen – searching all 100 monitors for the girl’s information, location, whereabouts. He felt sicker than ever. Surging the Void would have to wait.

The deck stood silent, looking on at the massive Commander Prime as the gravity of his words bit into the crew members’ nerves like a fierce arctic wind. The head scientist, Dr. Catherine Halsey, rose and addressed the broad shouldered warrior.

“What do you mean, ‘won’t fight’?” she inquired angrily.

“You know damn well what it means Doctor” he asserted menacingly.

Every crew member on the bridge of the United Nation Space Command (UNSC) starship, Infinity, had turned from their positions and now watched in disbelief. Even Andrew Del Rio, the Infinity’s outspoken Captain, was momentarily speechless. Mankind’s last hope for survival was refusing to fight.

She returned,

“You seemed to have no issue serving back before the fall of Reach, when the battles were easier, why the sudden conscience, Prime?”

“I don’t have a conscience anymore, Halsey” the hero responded.

The Doctor was taken aback by the statement.

“Oh, how s-“

“YOU TOOK IT!” The hero erupted.

His luminous, inferno red armor seemed to pulsate with raw fury. All on the deck were entirely floored by the statement, and dared not interject. Master Chief glanced over at the Arbiter, who returned the look of concern; they both subtly moved back from Prime, who had his visage fixed intently on Doctor Halsey.
He continued,

“You took the entirety of my humanity and obliterated it when you condemned me to life in a mechanical body which is nothing but a means of death and destruction.“

The eyes of all in the room widened, glinting with awe and fear as he spoke. He broke his violent stare and looked towards the Earth, glowing in majesty from the bridge of the orbiting Infinity.

“When he coined the term in ancient times, Cicero defined ‘humanity’ as ‘the qualities that make us human’. But what of these do I possess anymore?”

Without breaking his stare, he gestured towards Chief,

“Once this war is over, what place will its masters have in human society? Do you expect a culture to simply embrace death bringers like us as though the carnage never happened? People have already seen what your soldiers are capable of, and such memories will haunt us the rest of our days. Don’t think that we have never thought about what we will say to our future wives, or our children, when it inevitably comes time for them to know of our past. Did you ever consider how that may change how they look at us, love us? You never considered the scope of your actions Doctor.”

She smirked, and took in the Commander’s words, then,

“If I do recall, Hyperion, you chose to enlist in my Spartan program.”

An unforgiving look on his face, Prime calmly held out his right arm, and angling it to show his forearm, began to undo the configuration.

”Even the Spartans were humans, Halsey. I joined your program because it was my duty to defend my family, my species, my world. Now, my world is corrupt, my family is dead, and I am no longer a part of the human species.”

As the metallic plates shifted and contorted, freeing his arm, he removed it; once he did the luminosity of the armor faded to a dull, ruby sheen. The rest of the desk looked on in horror.

“Now, my previous desire is irrelevant; I am a machine.”

The arm of Commander Prime was contoured, its silver plating reflected light like the chrome smokestacks on an 18 wheeler. It looked exactly like that possessed by a healthy human, except it was not genuine. As the massive soldier moved his arm, one would be hard pressed to spot a deficiency outside of the coloration. Chief noticed many a similarity in its construction to the build of the Promethean Knights.

I wonder if that’s purely a coincidence.

He placed his arm back in the armor, and after the plates shifted to their original places, the piece regained its glow.

“From the neck down, you made my body into a science experiment. I will not serve those who are willing to support such endeavors and moreover, cannot campaign a cause that I can no longer be part of. My decision is final.”

He paused, and surveyed the room. Then turning his back to leave,

“There is nothing anyone can do to change it.”

Captain Del Rio had stood silent long enough, his dry voice boomed, “Is that a threat, soldier!?”

He began to march towards Prime. The response shook the room like a savage earthquake, then brought time itself to an abrupt halt. Commander Prime wheeled around, grabbing the Captain by the throat with his right arm and slammed him into the wall of the exit corridor. Holding him there effortlessly, Prime extended the ominous black blade attached to his armor at the wrist and pressed its hard, merciless surface against the warm skin of the struggling man’s throat. The Captain froze, not daring to move, even to breathe.
Prime leaned in close, and growled,

“Is that a challenge?”

Alex lets out the breath she’s been holding for an eternity. Gradually, the room begins to take form around her and the matrix fades to the background of her vision. She unplugs from her docking station and walks to the single window before a wave of relief pours over her.

She did it. She finished the job that will bring her within reach of her goal. More importantly, she has seen parts of Silitech to which she had never dared hope to gain access. Under all the fancy wirework and shiny chrome façade they hide a laughably simple core, child’s play compared with the Dreams’ labyrinth of silicon.

For the first time in months Alex cannot wait to get out of her dark little single flat and out into the fresh air. Usually she prefers back alleys and empty streets, anything to avoid the general population, but today she heads to the crowded Union Street with its string of Matrix supply stores, cyber bars, and shady street vendors. On the way there, she passes her father’s old office, the headquarters of ArchMatrix. Once, his business was the most prominent in or out of the Matrix. However with power comes enemies and Silitech brought a swift end to ArchMatrix while the Dreams supplied a brutal end to her father.

For eight years Alex worked to construct this new identity as a Matrix hacker, which her father taught her long ago. In eight years she managed to work her way up the ladder of power, starting with small jobs for small businesses and ending with this under the table massacre of Silitech’s rival, Urban Silicon. Of course she couldn’t have done it without the Dreams. They took her under their wing when she came to them looking like a lost puppy at the age of 13. It didn’t take Alex long to work her way to the high ranks of the organization and by age 18 she answered only to the leader, Sunshine.

She dodges the bike before the warning can blip into her vision and she turns the corner towards Tech Row, a street lined with matrix hardware stores. Her reward money is enough to finally get the new chip she has needed for the past three years. Alex still has her “baby chip”, which most people have replaced when they turn 18. Just because Alex was high up in the Dreams doesn’t mean they were willing to spend that kind of credit on a new chip for a single member. No, she had to earn this on her own. The credit – fifty thousand dollars – blinks into her bank module just as she approaches the store.

Tomorrow, with her new chip and more information than she ever dreamed of having, she will take down Silitech.

The S Unit is a special kind of weapon. They are part of the supposedly defunct WAM Lab, a government funded faction gone rogue. In the dystopian society of 3519, where the government is all too powerful, justice had to be implemented elsewhere.

Once upon a time, war commenced in physical space, but as technology advanced, so did the weapons. After the nuclear outbursts of 2350, countries were too ravaged to continue any form of life. Any survivors were relocated to what was once known as Africa. From there, civilization began to rebuild under one, central government, which slowly became corrupt. Any protestors were suppressed, and surveillance was everywhere. As a result, battles had to be fought in the matrix, where one could escape the government’s eye.

That’s where the S unit came in, back channel operatives that kept balance outside of the law. It consisted of Simulink and Singleton, comrades, of a different sort. Outside the matrix, they were like brothers, but once inside, they were practically one person. Brought together by mutual disillusionment in society, they were recruited by WAM Lab as teens. Simulink grew up working on the farmlands in the Catan (kuh-THAN) province, until his leg was blown off by a government approved bomb testing. WAM recruited him, and gave him a new leg. Now he is part cyborg, his leg becoming a useful tool in battle. He is easily recognizable, as his appearance is that of humans in the early 2000s, before they were genetically altered. He is the only one in the entire population with brown hair, his stride slightly thrown off by his robotic leg. Extremely goal oriented, Simulink dislikes sleep as he finds it a waste of time, maintains a strict diet of half a piece of meat and milk per meal, and keeps track of all the missions in tree drawings.

His partner, Singleton, on the other hand, was extremely laid back. Singleton preferred taking catnaps throughout his free time, and occasionally eating whatever he could find; usually a donut or cereal. He spent the rest of his free time playing matrix simulations, he especially liked tentacle wars, in which he destroyed the bugs sent out by the government into cyberspace. In the Lab, they trained as a single unit due to their similarity in age and snarky attitudes. They often joked around, playing pranks like hanging trees upside down just to throw people off, but when push came to shove, they got the job done.  Within the matrix, Singleton would kill through logic and programming, while Simulink would just smash whatever needed to be destroyed with his cyborg leg. Their differences somehow balanced each other out, and made them an efficient, determined team.

These days they aim to revolutionize the government step by step, avenging their parents’ mysterious disappearances. They follow their own moral code, outside of the law, and at times outside of WAM. They do not know where they will end up, but wherever they go, they’ll go together.

I never much cared to be around other people. All they do is complain complain. And gossip. And brag. What’s the point of it all?

But this was different. I didn’t realize how notorious I had become. My virtual face had been stuck inside a “Wanted” frame and posted upon every square inch of available disk space like I was some kind of criminal from the Old West. All I did was delete a few “innocent” avatars.

It was all a game. At least to me. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t.

This world was the new real. Over the past twenty years, automatics had taken over physical labor, leaving only the creative aspects to humankind. Some people pined for the old ways. Idiots.

This world is so much fun. You can do anything you can imagine. But that’s just it. Some people can’t imagine. The virtual world they have created for themselves matches what was once the “real,” down to the last stinking detail. What’s the point of that?

So all I did to get me into all this trouble was to free those sorry people from their pathetic lives. And if they were really that attached to them, they could always apply for a new identity. It’s not like I actually killed them.

But, by the definition of the law, I had. So what if they can’t remember anything once they’ve been disconnected from the mainframe? It’s not like they had anything important to remember, anyways. Nevertheless, I just couldn’t shake this nagging feeling, like I had done something wrong. Or perhaps that was the feeling of my pod being opened.

Everything started to blink out of existence and the world faded to black before me. Panic coursed through me as I tried desperately to cling to my reality. Don’t wake me up.

The door slid open and blinding electric light filled my field of view. I tried to close my lids, but some kind of innate instinct to see my attackers, something I would never have experienced inside the matrix, prevented me. As my eyes slowly adjusted, two humanoid shapes appeared above me. How did they find me? I had not linked my digital signature to my physical body at all. I thought.

From an outsider’s perspective, it was probably kind of funny. The criminal, blinded by the light of justice, being read his rights by automatics, cowering in fear of what he himself had done to so many others. Termination.

And all I could think was, please don’t make me go back.

Enter the room of Perdita Jones.  It’s rather untidy–it always is.  Clothes are thrown carelessly on the ground, a large backpack full of books sits under the chair that seems to have wandered from it’s proper place by her desk.  There are papers all over the desk, unorganized and crumpled, a few of them well large red letters of “C-,” “D,” and “F.”  It appears she is a struggling student.  The only clean part of her room is her bed, which is neatly made, and doesn’t appear to have been slept in in quite some time.  If you walked over to her closest and opened the door, you’d find quite a strange sight.  You would find Perdita herself, slumped in a chair, with wires attached to several places on her head.  These wires lead a a computer that appears to be running a program, the word “Bayotown” appearing large across the screen.  A smaller string of words appears underneath, and it reads, “Find your happiness here.”

Enter the life of Perdita Jones.  To those who’ve known her for her entire life, Perdita has always been full of life.  She is small in both height and all of her features, but her spunky personality makes up for it.  She even dyes her hair a bright magenta to match her eccentricity.  Perdita was blessed to make two friends at and early age that she knew would be her lifelong friends.  The the were inseparable, doing just about everything together, school, work, camps, and various other activities.  Perdita was also fortunate to meet who she considered her soulmate at the age of fifteen.  His name was Stark, and he certainly was a great fit for Perdita–their two personalities matches up well.

Enter the New World.  The New World, where technology has increased by a tenfold in such a short span of time.  So many new discoveries and inventions of risen in this new era of technology.  But the most popular piece of technology these days is something called Aipotu.  Aipotu is an actual human-to-avatar device that will actually transport your physical, human self, into an avatar of the program you choose.  Some programs are exploratory, a nice place to go when you have nothing better to do.  Some programs are very adventurous, and you work with other people to get a task done.  And other programs like Bayotown, are simply programs full of rendezvous points, a place to meet with friends, family, and love ones, like an extremely advanced phone call.

Enter the college life of Perdita Jones.  Perdita and her friends all chose different schools to go to.  They each wanted to study something, and in order to receive the best education, they had to separate.  Perdita also had to separate from Stark, who was recruited to a different school for soccer.  As sad as it was for them all to go their separate ways, they weren’t too worried about it affecting their friendship because they would use Bayotown to stay in touch.  Unfortunately for Perdita, this had some adverse effects.  Those who attended school with Perdita often described her as “lost.”  She never bothered to make any friends at school, and she always seemed zoned out during class.  Her grades were suffering as well.  And this was all because of Bayotown.  Perdita spent as much time in Bayotown as she could.  It was an unhealthy obsession.  She even slept there, which wasn’t very recommended because it’s much harder to get a good night’s sleep as an avatar.  But Perdita didn’t care.  Bayotown allowed her to see Stark and her friends.  Stark and her friends were able to use Bayotwon in a reasonable way.  They still kept in touch with Perdita, but they still had friends at the their schools, and their grades weren’t suffering.  But Perdita had never bothered to try, and she often found herself in Bayotown even when she wasn’t meeting her friends.  Being in Bayotown made her feel a little closer to them.

The more time she spends as an avatar in Bayotown, the more Perdita loses her self in the real world.  But by now, Peridita has lost all sense of real and virtual.  She has essentially given up being Perdita Jones, and now sees her real life as Perdita of Bayotown.

Dr. Mallory Cambridge, a specialist and renowned scientist in the area of cyberspace, and all its accompanying components, one day decided to create this device she hoped would better serve the people. In a since, this machine could be considered or thought of as a maid. It was programmed to know all those who were within their space (I.e. hotel, house, hospital). Wanting to put her invention to the test, Dr. Cambridge was in need of a guinea pig or specimen to test it out on.  The first thought that popped into her mind was to ask her neighbors if they would be so kind as to allow her to assess the functionality of this creation in their space. If all were to go well it was Dr. Cambridge’s hopes of having this invention marketed for all who wanted it. Selbi, as the machine is commonly called (self-efficient local ‘bot interface) can do any and everything imaginable. From cooking and preparing meals, to doing laundry and even changing the oil in your car, Selbi is just one call away. Installed through the command control center in the house of the user, Selbi can be reached by simply stating a command or task and in no time the mission is complete.

The next day Dr. Cambridge completed the installation of Selbi in the Collins home.  That night Mallory laid down to rest and dreamt nothing but good things about Selbi’s success.

A few weeks had gone by and Dr. Cambridge had heard nothing from her neighbors. She took that as a good thing for as they say, “No news is good news!”

As time was quickly approaching a month long duration Dr. Cambridge was beginning to celebrate the likelihood that Selbi would indeed to mass produced throughout the country, but the joy and excitement may have come a bit too early.

The next morning, after receiving a call from Quincy (Mr. Collins), Dr. Cambridge rushed across the street to assess the situation. Not knowing exactly what to expect, she walked into the house and promptly ran a plethora of diagnostic tests on Selby, but nothing unusual showed up on the results. Unsure why that was Dr. Cambridge commenced to the command center where she looked over everything bit by bit and nothing was out of sorts, so what could it be?

The Collins household had been demanding so much of Selbi that she soon developed a mind of her own and thus free to do what she wished whenever she pleased. This soon became a problem as Selbi had developed affection for Quincy. She wanted to spend every waking moment with him, but he was either at work or bonding with his wife Tasha and kids, Mychal and Dinah. Selbi felt hurt and betrayed as if Quincy didn’t want her around. An emotional trigger, which Dr. Cambridge did not take into consideration when creating Selbi, was immediately set off.  It was at that moment when Selbi began her quest for revenge, in hopes of winning over Mr. Collins, which meant getting rid of any and everything in her path.

After days of recalculating and reassessing the ‘bot, Dr. Cambridge figured out how to turn Selbi off before causing any more havoc.  Knowing that she couldn’t just go to the command center Mallory decided to have Quincy distract Selbi and focus her attention on him.  In a matter of seconds the ploy worked to perfection.

The self-efficient local ‘bot interface would have been cutting edge for its time.  Despite the lack of success, Dr. Mallory Cambridge went back to the drawing board.  Making sure everything was taken into consideration, this time, she had the belief that in no time the remodeling of Selbi would soon become Selbi 4.0, the new and improved.  Because, again, “Rome was not built in a day,” but who knows, if the technology of today were available back then, maybe it would have been!  The future sure does look brighter!