A PILGRIMAGE OF PIXELS-Saying Farewell to InSilico Metro- Romero de la Luna Reporting...

 Data Stream Input- From Abeus:  Just a brief notice so everyone is up to speed:

The closure of the INSILICO and INSILICO SOUTH regions has been generously pushed back until November 15^th.  While this is good news, it is still bittersweet. Currently this will allow us to close all 4 regions at the same time.

FADE IN:

        EXT. INSILICO METRO – DUSK

We are hurtling toward Gemini Cybernetics over a neon labyrinth of steel towers, fog, and scattered flames; steam billowing from smokestacks of unsustainable production. The urban city in the sky trembles and tilts all along the blood grey horizon. You slow toward the steel landing platform, your feet hovering slowly then touching the ground. Gravitational stability falters… the twisting groans of metal above you. And you see dozens of small craft jettisoning the area like rats from a sinking ship. It won’t be long now.  InSilico Metro; the most celebrated Cyberpunk sim in all of Second Life- my own place of solace since 2008- is about to die.

Stumble walk down the platform corridor to large plate-glass window, wobbling from the gyration of opposing forces beneath them. You put your hand to the glass to feel the vibration, and you see an android man entering the room inside, sitting down at a pod.  He looks like he means business, paying little attention to either you are his disintegrating surroundings… This is ABEUS. He breathes deep. Exhales. Types on his holographic console which streams on all the neon marquee’s of the city:

ABEUS

This is a

This is a very hard choice for us, and not one that we’ve come to lightly. Even though it might be possible to survive—

A nearby tower groans louder and shattering glass makes its long rain down onto the surface. ABEUS continues typing.

ABEUS

We’ve had some good times, even some great times, 9 years’ worth of stories that will continue to transcend the sims on which they were told… I couldn’t ask for anything more than that as a legacy.

ABEUS THEN bolsters himself… looks up sadly then makes to exit in the opposite direction as you, disappearing around the corner. had some good times, even some great times. 9 years’ worth of stories that will

Many of us are saying goodbye to this home that- for many of us- was our digital country…  Nearly eight years ago, my favorite character was born and I feel like he was christened in Club Atonement. That upper sanguine sanctuary was my favorite place in all the grid for reflection and consolation…. I have been gone a long,long time… a prodigal in new avatar form, only to see my sanctuary from long ago slowly fading to black. It almost feels like the death of a nation.

So what happens now?  What walls will be built?  What bridges? What new worlds await us?  For now, we mourn, but mostly we remember.  Re- Member… the connotation that remembering what we love about this place will somehow and somewhere put it back together again.

As we at InSilico diminish into the darkness, I think of those like Abeus.  And those who have been there from InSilico’s conception.  I like to think that they would fare well, but more than that: I like to think that those like Abeus will make their grand escape toward a new and more fruitful territory… and perhaps one day, we may be able to follow them.  But for now…. We have until November 15^th to say good bye.

        In that time, I prefer to think that I can see ABEUS’S ship rocketing through the collapsing corridors of the city unscathed, as the music rises to something that would swell our hearts… and make us breathe faster. Where neon towers blur past us, as we rise and caterwaul in our craft then burst downward toward the planet’s surface below… as we watch and listen in awe… as gravity once again gives way to the rise the howl of that escape craft as the disintegrating world we love shrinks below us and we finally rise away into the uncharted distance.

THE CREDITS ARE ROLLING, God help us all!

                                                   FADE OUT.

MORE INFO: Introduction and conclusion inspired by the opening and closing scene descriptions of BLADE RUNNER: Screenplay by HAMPTON FANCHER and DAVID PEOPLES February, 1981

Italicized Dialogue FROM THE BLOG POST ‘FADE IT TO BLACK’ BY AEBUS, FOUND HERE:http://insilico.gemini-cybernetics.net/profiles/blogs/ooc-fade-it-to-black