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 from wireframe 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 buildings loom around the Tiananmen-sized central square. Like a NASCAR driver’s uniform, every square inch of real estate is drafted to serve commerce, which is denominated in “Noodles” (NOD dollars). Blinking animated advertisements offer to satisfy unbelievably specialized fetishes:
Victorian Firefighters for your discreet pleasure.
Fraggle Bed-wetter?
Cum 2 Hershel’s Hate Hotel. U WILL Regret It.
Throngs of ersatz Wookies, zombies, and anatomically enhanced Pokémon stand around chatting.
Immediately I’m besieged by avs teleporting to my location to make lewd pitches in Viagra-spam patois. The first in line are a woolly mammoth, a female Napoleon, and a little Oliver Twist clone.
DeeDee_Pea:
Caveman Enema??? Don’t wait!
Jessica_A_Belle:
Hottt Machinima Man-Sluts ONLY N$399.99 / min. Yes!!! HAVE SOME!
Raymond_Richard_Euliss:
Hello, fine sir! Might I be of some assistance?
Their appeals are unsurprising. I’d first rezzed into NOD a couple months ago, in an attempt to add some variety to my diet of online smut. “Cybering,” slang for in-game sexual activity, is a favorite MMO pastime, and NOD is notorious among the major social worlds for having the best cybering tools by a long shot. NODlings like to flaunt this fact by making huge libraries of 3D animation, called machinima, that document their skills in the v-rotic arts. Recently, an anonymous developer produced LibIA (Library of Intercourse Applications), an extremely swanky tool set for neterosexuals that has the population of NOD acting like bonobos on crystal meth.
I dispel the first two avs as obvious NoBots (NOD robots are avatars controlled by programs rather than people). Raymond might be worth talking to. Right-clicking him shows me his profile data:
Name:
Jonathan Gurwicsz
RL Location:
Boca Raton, FL, USA
Rez Date:
03/16/2008
Interests:
. . .
Only the elderly and fraudulent chat-bot operators trying to make their automata more convincing use actual information in their profiles. I decide to give little Raymond a Turing test—queries meant to determine whether a fellow av is an actual person.
Jacques_Ynne:
What does NOD stand for?
A trick question. The world’s denizens love debating what its name signifies. The obvious answer comes from the Bible. The Land of Nod is the place to which Cain fled after killing Abel. Scholars observed that the Hebrew root of the word means “wandering,” so the verse could refer less to an actual place than to the act of fleeing. Nod later came to be known as the “land of dreams,” primarily through the popular children’s poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. So most people see the name as derived from the idea of “wandering through a dreamscape.”
Raymond_Richard_Euliss:
Nerds Only Dungeon
Network Often Down
No Obscenity Denied
Take your pick. I’ve got others.
Jacques_Ynne:
Thanks.
Raymond_Richard_Euliss:
You’re welcome . . . So does the noob want to spank me, or what?
Before I can evaluate his proposal, my screen goes black. Eventually I determine that some asshole griefer has affixed a giant black starfish to my face, and I can’t see any obvious way to remove it.
Such is life in NOD.
Which raises the question of why Billy would choose this world as the place to receive his final reward. It’s only to be expected that a game-focused artist would take an interest in MMOs. Though taking an interest in one and faking your death to send some kind of message to your brother are very different things. Not to mention the meaning conveyed by flipping the switch wearing nothing but a gilded lizard dangling from your urethra.
And if Billy’s motivations are opaque, I’m also uneasy about the twins’. Why are they so concerned about his virtualization video? If there’s so little love lost with their obnoxious sibling, why do they want to find him so badly?
What is it they’re afraid of?
7
That evening I start getting some answers.
I’m at my desk, still starfish encumbered, when I feel a sudden twinge of apprehension. I turn off my music and listen. A soft ticking sound comes from my entryway. It stops for a second, and I’m halfway to convincing myself I’m imagining things, but then I hear my door’s dead bolt slide against its strike plate. Someone is breaking into my apartment.
Given my professional propensity for making enemies within the criminal element, I try to keep two pistols around for ready access. From my file cabinet I grab the one that wasn’t stolen by my recent house guests. I flick the gun’s custom-installed external safety and ease past the corner to take a bead on the intruder.
There’s a man in my entryway with his back to me quietly shutting the door. He wears a plain gray suit and stands about five foot ten with a triathlete’s build. He hears me come around the corner and turns fluidly.
The man actually smiles and says, “Nice Glock, bud.”
Embarrassingly, I yell, “Freeze!”
He takes no notice of the “nice Glock” aimed at him and starts pulling open his jacket with his left hand. I can’t believe he’s doing this and can only come up with, “Hands up, motherfucker. I will fucking—”
“Let’s just take it easy, killer.”
Before I can track what’s happening, he’s retrieved a black object from his coat pocket, like he’s performing a magic trick. I almost fire but am just able to restrain myself. He simply doesn’t seem overtly threatening.
The object in his hand is a leather tri-fold he flips open and holds out for my inspection. He says, “John McClaren. IMP security. I thought you’d be expecting me.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “I wasn’t expecting you to break into my apartment.”
“Oh, I didn’t break anything. But if you want to work with the Imp, we got to talk about hardening your perimeter.”
He snickers, reviving my urge to pull the trigger. I just shake my head and lower the pistol.
He looks around brightly and says, “Got any scotch?”
I decide to just relax and go to the kitchen for some ice. He makes himself comfortable on my couch while I pour us each a slug.
Still a little suspicious, I use my phone to pull up his online bio. West Point class of ’89. Fought with Special Forces in th
e first Gulf War. He spent the next decade with KBR and DynCorp. Then there’s a dead space in his CV starting right around our invasion of Afghanistan. In ’04 he set up his own modest security firm, McClaren Partners, which an IMP acquisition vehicle purchased four years ago. His picture matches the guy lounging in my living room.
I hand him his lowball and say, “Now that we’ve got whiskey, I guess the laws of hospitality say I can’t shoot you.”
“Well, I’m glad that’s settled.” McClaren speaks with a sunny Georgia twang. He doesn’t use it to apologize. “I been looking forward to meeting you. Did some recon, and I must say I’m impressed.” He rattles the ice in his glass. “I’ve got some former spooks sitting on Billy’s last knowns. A couple ex-Bureau agents doing the normal shoe-leather inquiries. We’ve got plenty of tech people, but none with your shop’s particular, ah, offensive posture. And you, an honest-to-God covert operative too. Just the guy to help us find our Billy.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Boy’s been nothing but trouble since I joined the enterprise. Nothing too serious. Has a fiery temperament, you know? But now he’s got his loving family real worried. Haven’t seen head nor tail of him in over a month.”
“So I hear.”
“But you’re on the case now, so I’m sure we’ll find him in no time. ’Course his safety is our top priority. We just want to take care of him. And plus, he’s one of the Imp’s biggest shareholders.” He nods thoughtfully at his drink.
“What makes you think his safety’s at risk?”
“Ah, well, I’d say he’s exhibiting what his brother calls ‘a crescendo of aberrant behavior.’ Let me run you through the timeline.” McClaren settles deeper into my sofa. “So after his dust-up with Blake over his trust, Billy moves to New York and a few years later enrolls himself in this techy art program called PiMP. NYU’s Pervasive Media Program. He gets sued again over some project he did there, but with his new name, none of it bothers the twins all that much. After that stuff in college, he doesn’t want to advertise who he is. Distracts from the work, I guess. Anyway, he graduates last spring and gets himself a fellowship at this GAME place, where you’re going to be. Right?”
McClaren pulls from his jacket a folded set of eight-by-ten photos. He places one on the table between us. It shows Billy walking into an indistinct building.
“Wait a minute, you had Billy under surveillance?”
“Yeah, the twins just wanted to check up on him when that first Jackanapes guy kicked off—they showed you that article?”
I nod.
“Right, so Trevor Rothstein injects an unhealthy amount of hero-wine. There’s this video of him shooting up and going on about how much everything sucks. Which the cops take as a suicide note.”
“Was Billy close with him?”
“We don’t think so. If anything, they didn’t care for each other. But the next one to go was a big deal. Gina Delaney. A good friend of Billy’s from grad school. She offed herself two months ago. Videotaped it, too. And what a mess that was.”
“Blythe said she almost decapitated herself?”
McClaren winces. “Yeah, best you hear about that from the horse’s mouth. I’ll hook you up with the detective who investigated, and he’ll give you all the gory details. We don’t think they had an actual romantic relationship, but suffice it to say, Billy’s a little more broken up about this one. After the funeral, he gets arrested for disorderly conduct outside some bar in Boston.”
“What did he do?”
“From what the officers say, he got in a fight. By the time they arrived, the other party had taken off, and they ended up letting him go. Said he looked like he got the worst of it. A couple weeks later, he gets arrested again. Another disorderly-conduct citation from the NYPD. Late night, up around Forty-sixth and the West Side Highway.”
“What was that about?”
“We don’t really know. We got hold of the ticket, but it doesn’t say much beyond the charge. Talked to the guy who busted him, but he was uncooperative.”
“So all this is acting out because his friend killed herself. And you’re worried that the end point is him following her? That these suicides are contagious?”
“You don’t watch out, you wind up with an epidemic. Recent rash in Wales finally petered out at twenty-five corpses. So yeah, that kind of stuff worries us. Just on its face. But with Billy it gets worse.”
“Worse than him dying?”
He smiles. “No, our worry gets worse. When he disappeared, some of these extreme-gaming blogs wondered if he’d gone the way of his friends. The curse of the Jackanapes, they called it. So we took the liberty of checking his apartment and found this.” He hands me a series of photos taken in a sparsely furnished luxury apartment. The element that jumps out is that all the appliances have been disassembled. “So that just don’t seem right. Like maybe he’s gone paranoid. Hearing voices from the TV and all that. We get ahold of his bank and credit card statements.”
McClaren places some papers in front of me. The statement for Billy’s private bank, which begins with a seven-figure cash balance, shows normal activity and then a large wire transfer to another bank in Lichtenstein.
“So from this we concluded Billy was planning to go incognito. Probably had lawyers set up an offshore corporation to get new accounts and credit cards through. We’re afraid he’s trying to put himself beyond help. Then the twins get that electrocution video. All in all, not the behavior of a sane person, is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he spotted your surveillance. That could explain the disassembled electronics. Could be the main thing he’s doing is hiding from his siblings. The video is just an artistic ‘fuck you.’” I shrug. “Maybe he’s protecting himself.”
“Protecting himself?”
“Yeah. I know I’m the new guy here. But I wouldn’t call him crazy for believing his big brother is trying to put him in a place where the people with electrodes strapped to their heads aren’t performance artists.”
McClaren takes a moment to ponder this. A little of the cornball friendliness departs from his voice. “It’s always good to try to think like your quarry, bud. I just hope you remember that your job is to help find him. What happens after that ain’t your concern.”
He knocks back his drink and stands, glancing at his watch. “Well, no rest for the wicked, right?”
On his way out, he’s kind enough to lock the door behind him.
Curious now about the gears grinding in Billy’s head, I find online a copy of the video he created with his friend Gina Delaney. Blythe had mentioned it with sincere distaste, and its title indicates why: the clip opens with the words “Getting Wet.”
A profile shot of a delicate girl seated in a high-backed wooden chair. Attached to its central post is a wide band of rusted iron that encircles the girl’s neck. She struggles against the leather restraining straps and whimpers. I recognize the contraption from a James Bond film. It’s a vile garrote, beloved as an execution device by the Spanish up to the end of General Franco’s reign. These machines employed a dowel, or if the executioner was merciful, a spike that was screwed into the back of one’s neck, creating the pressure necessary for strangulation. In this case, Billy has replaced the spike with an oversized male Ethernet plug pressing insistently against the nape of her neck. Her breathing is labored, and as the thing presses harder, she starts to moan with progressively more erotic energy. Her body arches forward against the metal collar, throwing her small breasts into relief against the white silk of her robe. This goes on for a few beats until the network cable rears back like a snake and drives itself into her spine with a small spurt of blood. A close-up of her face as she inhales sharply in a sudden apex of ecstasy. The camera zooms in on her left eye, where, via some nifty special effects work, the spiderweb of broken veins slowly morphs into hexadecimal code.
The screen cuts to black.
Getting Wet isn’t the first video I’ve seen that sexualizes the now classic sci-fi concept of the “w
et interface.” To create a direct connection between one’s nervous system and a computer, you must penetrate the skin. So the idea really doesn’t need a lot more sexualizing. Billy’s video takes a dim view of the prospect in suggesting that Gina is actually being strangled in her moment of networked transcendence. Making such a video might well get a woman interested in sexual asphyxia. And certainly there are a lot of both suicides and accidental deaths that stem from this sort of fantasy.
But I’d like to know how this girl went from risqué playacting to almost decapitating herself.
8
Suffocating images from Gina’s video invade my dreams, and I wake the next morning with a drained and uneasy feeling, like a family of affectionate pythons has shared my bed. But better rest will have to wait. I have an early orientation meeting with a woman named Alexandra Xiao.
The GAME facility stands just on the edge of New York’s Lower East Side nightlife mecca. The building is a seven-story neo-Gothic that takes up half the block. Ringed by intricate iron railings, fronted with mullioned windows, and embellished with irate gargoyles, it looks more like a place to house impenitent nuns than a modern interactive arts facility.
I find Ms. Xiao in the large front hall that serves as one of their public event spaces. Her online bio says that she’s an ’11 alumna of PiMP and already an adjunct professor there as well as a senior GAME fellow. An accomplished 3D artist, she’s best known for a series of female characters from a hit martial arts title whose images now decorate the walls of fan-boys the world over.
She’s supervising the installation of a large aquarium, pointing with one hand and holding an iPhone in the other. “And you’re absolutely sure we don’t need any kind of permits for transgenic piranhas?” She sees me and says, “Look, I have to call you back.”
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