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

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“Dear Halloween” Romero de la Luna reporting

Dear Halloween,

I think I need to break up with you.  The reasons are complicated, and it may seem cliché, but please believe me. It’s not you…it is most definitely me.  Bear with me and I will try to explain…

I think I am under the influence of some sort of gypsy curse, which has undermined the magic of our secret yearly rendezvous in the woods.  In recent memory, our illicit meetings have turned from hot role-playing shenanigans into a funhouse mirror of distorted and disappointed expectations.  The long and short of it is this:  In my recent adult costuming life, no matter how I try to dress up, I always end up looking like a slutty pirate. Don’t believe me?  Here’s an example of me attempting to dress up as Harry Potter in 2011.

Imagine my preparations each year. Everything looks like it is going well; this time a green face, excellent latex scarring…glued bolts to the neck and then eventually… I just can’t help it, I’m compelled to break into the rouge and it’s all “Yarrr..hello sailarrrr!” from there on.

I know that my giving up on our time together will either disappoint or even enrage my Celtic ancestors, from where they celebrated some of your earliest festivals. Harvest time has come and gone.  It is the time when people say farewell to the earth’s fertility and welcome the approach of Persephone’s cold desolation. The darker portion of the world begins to emerge.  It is said that the membrane between this world and the Underworld begins to thin, becoming more of an opaque curtain.

It is the time of year that, for ages, the Aossi… faeries and spirits- are most active throughout the world. And from our earliest celebrations until now, we have left offerings of food and drink to appease them so they will move on.  But if they were not appeased, they would grow unruly and create all sorts of chaos, much like the little snot gobblers of today; those little monsters hopped up on Kit Kats and Blow Pops, chanting their unholy ruminations echoing throughout neighborhoods across the world, “Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat-“ Yeeaasshh. It’s a damn freak show out there!

I am truly worried that my recent misanthropy toward our holiday will indeed insult the spirits of my Celtic ancestors. After all, do you remember how they used to fight their enemies?  They would paint themselves up, strip naked and then stimulate themselves to full erection (true story) before stampeding down the hill toward their foes. Don’t mess with the Celts, am I right?  How about THAT for a Halloween costume? Nah, never mind. That’s been overdone by pixel newbs on nearly every seedy sim on the grid.  You might get banned from your favorite places.

Granted, even though a herd of screaming hairy men with hard-ons charging down a mossy hillock would seem intimidating to most- (unless of course you’re like Helen of Troy, then you’re probably all clasping your hands to your chest and squealing, “For me? All for me!?” Not judging btw, after all I am Slutty McBlackbeard)-ultimately, these stampeding nudists bounced off the wall of Roman shields, got speared in the junk and died soon after. So there’s that. Now that I think about it, maybe I don’t have much to worry about regarding my ancestors.

But I digress.

As of Sunday our Hunter’s Moon will have disappeared. Today is the dawn of the new moon: the Beaver Moon… or also called the Frosty Moon. All I have to say is keep that frigid beaver away from me, knowwha’msayin’?

You can probably tell, Halloween, that I still love you, I’m just upset that I’m not keeping up my end of the bargain.  Maybe we should be ‘non-exclusive’ for awhile, instead of breaking up altogether. We should try new things; new people.  Maybe I will date a make-up artist and she will help me deal with my rouge addiction. Maybe I can actually be Harry Potter next year. Some will think that costume to be tragically outdated for 2016.  All I can say is at least it won’t be Harley Quinn. “Omigawd, I’m like soooo original?”

So where do we go from here? 

Well, here are some places we can start…The folks at Elysium (especially the owner Syn Beresford) always knows how to party. And one of my favorite burlesque badasses, ElizaRose Gloom, spins some always killer tunes at The Rabbit Hole (though space is super cozy there, so go early and be cool to the regulars.(They had their official bash on the 28th)  Who knows?  Maybe soon we will be able to snatch back some of that pumpkin spice in our relationship again, my Halloweenhella-hottie.

Just no Celtic Warrior costumes, okay? Promise me. I REALLY like those places and I don’t want to get banned from them.

Love and Kisses,

Your Slutty Pirate, Romero

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“A Pilgrimage of Pixels: Furillen” Romero de la Luna reporting

EXPLORING A SIM THAT CELEBRATES “ A LOVE OF (A MINIMALIST) LIFE

Fade in from the black- breathe in and slow yourself. Opening before you, a world; bleak, yet lovely. Desolate, yet full of feeling.  Furillen is the depiction of a world beyond pixels, residing in the island of the real; up north, off the coast of Sweden. Rendered by pixels, yet hauntingly real.

Close your eyes and tilt your head upward.  Do you feel that?  Snowflakes the size of an infant’s fist floating down in a windless sky, or maybe they are the ashes of a recent love’s apocalypse. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. For now, for the sake of our hearts, let us imagine they are baby-fist snowflakes.  Open your eyes, your mouth.  Catch one on your tongue. Let it sizzle-melt with the heat of your body. Swallow. This is our communion.

Look back to the skyline and to the world around you. The camper, the pier.  The light is fading, the coppery peach that lives just past the edges of sunset. Beyond the nearby outbuildings stand the outcrop of abandoned and eroding walls. Walk up to the base.  Take your time. After all, we are on a pilgrimage, and pilgrims are seldom in a hurry. Stand at the foot of these walls and allow yourself to feel small.  Look up again.  Regard the slowly-eroding stillness that inevitably comes after the fever of Spring, after the smoulder of Summer. Only echoes now- the sounds of Autumn like lost spirits, singing their song toward Winter.

It is okay if you feel lost and a little bit lonely.  Listen to the loneliness inside of you. In this place, It will sing back to you. Listen. Closer. The mouths of that song are making sounds like words-  a language that eludes the grasp of the ear. It hums deeper inside- a tuning fork vibrating inside us beyond the territory of words. We will understand it if we are slow and close our eyes and prepare for the kinds of winter that always must come for a season; a season of slumber, a season of silence, of goodbye.

* * *

If you are anything like me, you may wonder after dwelling somewhere beautiful, how such a place came to be- whether it be by chance or by some artist’s hand, and where did this place come from, how was it made, and by whom?   I imagine a profile name scrawled on the cornerstone of this wall. Serene Footman. I put my hand over this name, my palm against the stone wall-  and there, a flicker of an image, a picture of a man, hair long and thick, a tangled beard rivalling the lost Odysseus.

And have you ever wanted to knock on God’s door, just to see who it was who answered?  Hoping maybe she is like your lost grandmother, and that when she embraces you, she smells like lavender and cookies.  Or if you peer through the keyhole you see a strong man’s arms, forging the rudiments of another abandoned world-the steam and heat and smell of labour. His hair long and thick, his tangled beard like that of the long-lost contender. And just before knocking, have you ever turned around and walked away without knowing why?

Perhaps when you visit this place, you will feel much differently than me.  Perhaps your heart resides in another hemisphere- and life is just beginning to warm. Of course your heart is in a different place than mine!  After all, it thumps in your own chest. We are pilgrims of these worlds. It is inevitable that we bring more along with us than just our digital selves. Perhaps that is the point. When a world is born, a conversation is begun, with outstretched arms. A world that sings, Here I am… come and see… walk along the shores of my body. Climb upon me, and for now, even if it be just for a season, let me be your home.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: (visit Serene Footman’s extensive yet minimalist website at https://furillen.org/)

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