Day zero.

Hi.

Day before yesterday, I was reading about this concert the Pet shop Boys had around 30th June this year.

Yesterday.

There was something unique about their concert.

They played in cyberspace.

They played in the Second Life world, a concert created in a land which doesn't actually exist. The geography, the buildings, the land, the shops, the rent, the money.

Small bits of information passed on from one server to the other.

You log on to Second Life, and it's actually like living in your own world. You work. You get paid, in Linden money. If you are an artist, and you know the right software, you can create buildings. You can code a door to open when you want.

You can code yourself to play any other opponent, anywhere in Second Life.

There's a map. There's even parking space.

Two years ago, I wrote a short film called Nyquist (latin for 'this land doesn't exist'), in which people in an unnamed communist government, under the threshold of civil war, get trapped in their own homes. Nowhere to get out. No jobs to do. No songs to sing.

You get out, and you are threaded with a bullet the size of your middle finger, straight into your temporal lobes, the weakest section of your head.

It takes thirty five seconds to die, if you are hit in the temporal lobe.

It takes seven hours to die if you get burnt. Seven agonizing hours.

Your body, each cell of you letting out whatever it had to fill up your body's fluids till that last moment when you are no more.

So these people, the youth, they start a server, the only way they can escape. They build a virtual land where everyone can meet. They can build another home, without civil war, without the danger of them dying out. They can work there. They can earn their virtual living.

While war rages outside, these people start living their lives inside. Safe from the real world.Safe from the bombings.

Safe from a bullet hitting your temporal lobe.

Cancer?

AIDS?

Epidemics?

Dictatorial policies?

They exist only in the real world.

In the world they created out of their own subconsciousness trying to break free, they party. They play. They have sex. They marry. They divorce. They pay their respects. They fight.

Just like any normal human beings would.

For once again, life is pure, safe and beautiful.

No one gets out of their homes anymore. The government, safe and happy with these poor dumb fucks logging onto a server twenty fours a day, as long as it isn't anything offensive.

Streets, empty.

Cities, empty.

Roads, as if no one has walked them for years.

Except old people, the military and children, no one really gets out .

Imagine.

A country fighting itself, now every inhabitant of it living in his own hyperreality, escaping the real world so they can at least live the life they wanted to.

So what if that life actually doesnt exist.

So what if their names in the world they created are their fantasies playing out in a universal field.


My film, it ends, as every film has to, eventually.

One day, someone in that country, a guy who has logged himself in for the last ten days, without break, says:

'I am hungry'.

It's beautiful to watch a country die because everyone living in it doesnt want to eat any longer.

Tear us apart. Save our souls. Give us a Second Life.

I couldn't make that film anymore.

My worst fears are already true.

There is no civil war going on, but Second Life has the biggest following ever seen in internet fandom.

If you are reading this, hope you don't forget your First Life one day.


Hope you realize you are real.


Hope you eat some food.

Hope you take care of your loved ones.

Hope you go out and smell some fresh air, kiss someone on the cheek, eat scrambled eggs on toast.

Bread on silent butter.

Sometimes, the little things in the world matter more than anything.

I love my planet. I am afraid we are killing ourselves.


Thank you for reading .



Sincerely,

Shomu.