allow me the leisure. Judging from the welcome message I get from the director of Billy’s most recent “place of business,” my assignment has already begun.
They want me to infiltrate GAME, the Gnostic Atelier for Machined Experience. Founded as a colony for artists working in tech-heavy media, it’s become the forward operating base for the Jackanapes movement.
The abuse of the term “Gnostic” by so many New Age sects has drained it of precise meaning. I gather from reading their online manifesto that GAME uses its original definition: that certain esoteric knowledge allows one to transcend the corrupt material universe into the realm of mystical Truth. This idea has been repurposed by hard-core trans-humanists who believe that as mankind merges with machines, we’ll be able to remake reality into a Platonic wonder of pure data. Thus liberating ourselves from the scarcity, ugliness, and strife of physical existence. Unsurprisingly, obsessive gamers make up the bulk of adherents to that theory.
The twins have secured a position for me at GAME based on a large donation that eliminated whatever red tape might otherwise complicate the process of adding a new fellow. My cover is that I’m a “conceptual video artist” with a manufactured portfolio who wants to make a documentary about Coit S. D. Files and his cohort of avant-gamers.
My real objective is to integrate myself into the community by joiningwhatever backgammon tournaments or tantra workshops they might hold to keep themselves occupied while awaiting the digital rapture, with an eye toward finding out whether anyone might know where Billy is. There’s likely to be only some trivial hacking and casual surveillance. Best of all, GAME is reputed to throw fantastic parties. If you’re into strip Twister and prescription bingo.
Since I’m officially undercover as of now, I’m banned from the Red Rook offices. So I go home to my apartment, a spacious loft at Lafayette and Bond near NYU, to change out of my suit, pour myself a Kentucky coffee, and get up to speed on this online world called NOD. The Randalls hadn’t really touched on why their brother might want to symbolically electrocute himself into it, but I suppose that’s a question I’ll ask when I speak with IMP’s security chief about Billy’s recent corporeal whereabouts.
One of the biggest cultural trends of this century’s first decade was the rise of the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) world as a truly widespread phenomenon, consuming an ever-growing share of the public’s spare time. NOD is one of these digital environments that range from Tolkienian role playing like World of Warcraft to kiddie-crack mini-gaming like Club Penguin.
Akin to Second Life and IMVU, NOD appears on-screen as a 3D game, though there’s no actual objective other than to amuse yourself if you can. This pursuit of virtual happiness can inspire people to do curious things. They quit their real-life jobs to become pretend haberdashers and legally marry people whom they first met as lime-green panda bears. Once in NOD, you quickly find yourself reducing the whole concept of “real life” to mere initials: RL. And untold millions of people worldwide have taken on new identities in one of these microtopias.
To start, you sign up and create a character called an avatar, which could be anything from a busty milkmaid to a ham sandwich. I already have one: Jacques_Ynne (pronounced “Jack In”). NODlings harbor a passion for double entendres equaled only by professionals in the adult film industry. Sadly, I never really bonded with my av. Poor Jacques has been even more lonely than I have in the past weeks.
After I log in to my account, the default location resolves fromwireframe to lushly shaded volumes like a skeletal mummy coming back to life.
NOD Zero (NOD0), the center of the world, is a cross between an interplanetary Epcot Center and Bangkok’s Patpong red-light district. Giant garishly colored