by Indra Sinha
Madoc
I am ill. Unable to walk more than twenty-five yards in a straight line without blowing like a porpoise. Eve is worried, but tries not to let me see. I think of the small children, how much they need their father, how Eve needs a husband. I can’t let them down, I must survive. But I have already let Eve down. When we took on the house, we were going to do things together, I was going to hew wood, plant trees, mow lawns, dig flowerbeds. Had I done these things, or done as much as I could, would I be in this state? All those hours in front of a computer day after day, month after month without exercise, have told on my health. How did I ever let things get so bad? I remain at home in Sussex. Friends at the agency send parcels of books inscribed with get well messages. The heart problem is serious. How serious may be judged by the fact that it is three months before I go back to Shades.
I step into the game to find that all hell has broken loose. A full-scale war is in progress.
Branwell tells me, ‘Barbarella and her mob are up in arms because Gawain wants to close the Bridal Suite.’
‘Why?’ I ask. The Bridal Suite is the room, upstairs in the inn, to which Morgan had whisked Dreamdancer after their nuptials.
‘Mara took his cousin in there and tried to seduce him.’
‘But Mara’s always trying to seduce people. Mostly they just tell her to bugger off.’
‘Yes,’ says Branwell, ‘but Gawain’s cousin happens to be ten years old.’
It’s a double-edged thing, the anonymity of a roleplaying game. It allows you to leave your real-life self behind and be in your imagination, all the things that in reality you are not. You can be witty, heroic, argumentative. You can discover what it feels like to be eighty-three, or Indonesian, or a flesh-eating dinosaur, or a sex siren. And since other players can also be whatever they choose, any form, shape, sex or size, you have no idea of who or what they are in real life. No way of knowing, for instance, that the person to whom you are making unsubtle sexual suggestions is a bewildered ten-year-old child.
The child, we will call him Madoc, had been spending the day at Gawain’s house. Gawain was busy, so to keep the lad amused he logged him into Shades. A little while later he heard Madoc call out with a note of anxiety in his voice, ‘Gawain, someone’s talking to me and I don’t know what they want.’
Gawain ran upstairs to find Madoc in the Bridal Suite with Mara.
‘He yanked the plug out of the wall,’ Branwell tells me. ‘He’s furious. He’d never thought, none of us had, that something like this would happen. Gawain’s asking that the Bridal Suite be shut until a solution is found. He complained to the Coder.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The Coder shut all the “unsnoopable” rooms straight away. But Barbarella and her lot are agitating for them to be reopened.’
‘But why? Surely Gawain’s right, and the Coder is right?’
‘Ah, but Barb and Co. say that Gawain had no business putting a child on the game in the first place. Bugsy is being particularly poisonous. He has apparently been saying that Gawain engineered the whole thing in order to cause trouble. That he stood over Madoc and watched it happen.’
‘That’s libellous, surely?’
‘Yes, Gawain thinks so,’ says Branwell. ‘Unfortunately, people remember the HAWK business. A lot of players think that this whole thing is a ploy to seize power in the game, to stage a coup d’état, dethrone the Coder.’
Lucifer’s crime
‘Have you ever tried making love in cyberspace?’ Lilith asks me, adding ‘I wouldn’t bother on here.’ (We are on Shades.) ‘Sex on the Vortex is a subtle art. On here it’s just coupling. Pity. I’ve always liked the room descriptions at the inn.’
The Travellers’ Rest in Shades is a traditional English inn that smells of polish and last night’s cooking. Guests go upstairs to a landing from which doors lead to private rooms. The largest door is to the east. Enter and it snicks closed of its own accord and locks itself behind you.
Bridal Suite
The single dominant feature of this room is a very old and very large brass four poster . . . there is little other furniture, but then, who needs it with such a magnificent bed?
Bridal Suite (in Bed)
You are lying on a soft, comfortable bed though somehow you don’t think sleep is the appropriate course of action . . . the bed itself is a wonderful brass four poster that creaks slightly each time you move, and fitted with white satin sheets that slither sensuously against you . . . All around the bed the fittings and fixtures on the room’s walls seem to indicate you are in a bridal suite . . . a paler patch on the ceiling reveals there was once a mirror there.
In this bed Morgan and Dreamdancer had consummated their Shades marriage. Hundreds of virtual copulations have taken place within its creaking frame. To this same bed Mara had tried to lure Madoc. Why had nobody considered the possibility that children might be brought here?
As people talk about the Mara affair more stuff comes to light, some of it disturbing, some funny. It transpires that a macho male character is being played by two fifteen-year-old schoolboys. The pair, who are known on Telecom Gold as the Gruesome Twosome, manage to get a bashful girl called Starlight into the Bridal Suite. Under their tutelage she rapidly blossoms into an accomplished houri. Gradually the lads realise that Starlight knows a great deal more about sex than they do. They confess their true identities. Starlight does likewise and they are mortified to discover that ‘she’ is in reality a forty-five year old gay man. According to Starlight, who relates the story with relish, the lads beg her/him to continue their education because, as one of them puts it, ‘It’s the first time either of us has been with a woman’.
Less amusing are the continuing activities of Mara. Since ‘she’ is known to like young females, Jarly creates a character called Jael (‘Well she’s bait, in’t she?’) who tells Mara she is fifteen years old. Mara asks Jael if she has ever ‘been’ with a woman. She tells her that sex between women is wonderful and asks Jael to meet her in real life. Jarly gives Mara his address. A few days later Dimitri’s wife asks Jarly if he knows a girl called Jael. A thickset middle-aged man has been calling at the house, saying he has a message for her.
The anti-Gawain brigade step up their campaign to have the Bridal Suite reopened. Barb fires one of her ‘barbs’: she writes for an online magazine a fable in which a certain ‘Gay Hussar’ does his best to ruin the game by demanding the closure of the ‘private booths’ above the ‘Fighting Cock Inn’. The homophobic jibes are ironic considering that Micronet was liberal enough to have opened the first ‘Gay CUG’ (closed user group) in UK cyberspace. Barb’s friends take bets on how long the article will survive. Micronet’s managers, sensitive to revelations about a child being exposed to sexual suggestions on a British Telecom network, and also fearful of offending their large group of gay customers, are bound to can it. The magazine is run by an Archwizard and an Archwitch whose duties include policing the game and quashing unsavoury behaviour. Amazingly, they decide to support the fable. Events spin rapidly out of control. Gawain mutters about libel. His enemies brand him a pompous twit. He protests that all he has done is voice concern for the well-being of children on Shades, a valid worry, since Shades runs not just on Micronet but also on Telecom Gold, which is actively trying to recruit schools. But this is forgotten as Barb and her friends transmute Gawain’s complaint into Lucifer’s crime, the unforgivable sin of disloyalty to the Coder and his creation.
To me, returning to Shades after months away, with friends in both camps, it seems that the players are behaving like members of a paranoid cult. A closed self-referential culture, with shared experience of addiction, shared conventions of behaviour, thought and expression, the use of purpose-made clichés to stop thought, a jargon incomprehensible to outsiders, a revered leader whose word cannot be questioned, the bitter hatred of renegades: these are hallmarks of religious cults. Cult punishments can include being locked in a cellar, or having your head forced
down a toilet. The punishment demanded for Gawain by his enemies is ‘the banishment of the Evil One who has appointed himself custodian of public behaviour’. Gawain angrily wonders out loud whether British Telecom would want the newspapers to learn about what sort of things are happening on its networks. Thus, for the first time, a threat is uttered against the life of Shades itself.
At this point the surreality of the cyberworld finally overwhelms reason. The ‘Gay Hussar’ article is spiked on orders from above and the Archwizard and Archwitch resign in protest. Messages supporting them flood the Micronet chatlines. On all sides fools are yelling about freedom and censorship. BT’s managers, corporation men, not cybergypsies, can’t understand why passions are so aroused. They sit tight and hope things will go quiet. But things get worse. The Coder is criticised for his responsible action of closing the Bridal Suite. The Barb brigade demand evidence that the room has ever been used for anything other than private chatting. No-one, it appears, has ever dreamed that it might be used for online sex. Online sex, what is that? Gawain, angry that his word should be questioned, alarmed by the backlash, starts to collect evidence.
One of the first players Gawain talks to is Starlight, who reveals that he has had many torrid sexual sessions in the Bridal Suite with a Micronet manager. ‘He was brilliant with words,’ said Starlight. ‘He’d describe the whole thing in intimate detail, right from foreplay through to the climax. In the two years I’ve been playing Shades I must have regularly gone into the Bridal Suite with at least twenty people. There were no comments, no warnings from anyone in all that time.’
Within days the evidence fills a file. Being a methodical chap, Gawain types it up, indexes it and binds it in sections complete with a detailed contents page, appendices and glossary for non-cybergypsies. Meanwhile the murmurings against Gawain turn into a full blown hate campaign. Nasty attacks increase on the game’s chatlines. We, his friends, begin helping him log messages, dates, times. All go into the file, which grows to a hefty dossier. It ends up containing one hundred and twenty-two pages. Gawain makes copies and gives one to me.
The lament of Gawain
When his complaints drew no response from Micronet’s officials, Gawain sank into a mythopoeic gloom. The injustice grew in his mind until it overshadowed all else. He sat on Shades, as Morgan had done before him, and complained to anyone who would listen, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m a good player. Fair. Generous with newcomers, an honorable fighter. I was a responsible immortal. I was popular. Other players listened to my advice. Now the lowest mortals sneer at me.’
One of his friends, Elefizz the Jumbubble, advised, ‘Go to the Coder. Only he can sort this out.’
Sofarsogood the Cautious said, ‘The Coder sees more than the rest of us. If he does criticise you, you can be sure he has reason.’
Another friend, Billdaddy the Deadbeat said, ‘The Coder don’t punish but players who blow bad jazz. Look again. You’re gonna find something ungroovy in the woodshed. But when you do, just slap the Man an apology and all will be copacetic.’
Gawain replied, ‘Two things are sure, Hobo-daddy. You are a rotten roleplayer, and nobody wins an argument with the Coder.’
Then another player, Ellie the Jellydancing, came forward and said: ‘You’re all missing the point. Gawain, let’s say you really are being unfairly treated. The point is, so what? Who are you – any of you – to question the Coder or what he does?’
Ellie said, ‘Ask yourself, who are you? Your immortality is his work. Your eternal life is in his hand. He made you and he can unmake you. Just look at the wonderful things he has done. Out of nothing he conjured this creation. How marvellous, how intricate it is. Open your eyes, see how the mist is lifting off the river. Could you have made it happen? Look at how the dust devils are stirring and whirling leaves into the air. Whose imagination brought these to life? Do you feel the first damp gusts, as clouds unpile above? See how the light goes green and the trees shine like thunder. My heart throbs like a tom-tom for – hear how the forest roars – he is coming. Gawain, prepare to meet your Coder. Now that the time has come, Gawain, with what words will you speak to him? Do you know his language, the secret code that causes rain to fall at his command “Rain!”? Lightning flashes and bangs the clouds like drums. Open your ears and listen to how the fat raindrops are beginning to hit: one, a spatter, hundreds. Notice the goodly smell of rain on dry ground. All this, he makes. He tells the rain “Rain!” and it sheets down, already a waterfall hangs from the mouth of this cave and out in the game people and animals lit by eerie flashes are running for shelter. How the wind climbs in the leaves, moans in hollow trees and shrieks in crevices of rock; all the instruments of the world are tuned to welcome him; the storm approaches; trees, rocks, mountains shout at his approach; the earth roars like a beaten drum; see, Gawain, how the rain spears flash, shining, lit by jags of lightning; the loud air is howling, the hairs of my body stand on end, and up on us bursts the hurricane.’
As Ellie spoke these last words it grew utterly dark, then the wind held its breath and a golden glow grew in the north and rushed towards them. White fire erupted silently in the cave called Lost in Darkness and out of the storm, the Coder spoke to Gawain:
‘Whose ignorant words question my creation?
Stand up and be a man.
I will ask the questions and you shall answer.
Where were you, when I laid this world’s foundations?
Explain to me, if you understand,
who measured its dimensionless space?
Pillared on nothingness, how do its foundations stand?
The myriad creatures that roam the land,
do you know who made them? Who gave life to them,
mouse and deer, gumby, bat and baragoon?
The bear that snuffles in the forest,
clawing for tubers, did you teach him how also
to crouch on the riverbank
and scoop out the flashing salmon with his paw?
Did you give the Morloch his strength,
or fashion his googling eye?’
Gawain said, ‘I have said my piece, I’ll say no more.’
Then the Coder said to Gawain: ‘Stand up and be a man.
I will ask the questions and you shall answer.
Consider that most powerful of creatures,
the mighty leech in his stagnant lair,
how he lashes the deep pools with his tail
stirring up foam like lather in a shaving cup;
how his dark and slithering form
turns the river to white hair in his wake
and leaves a shining trail on the rocks all around.
Can you set a hook in his jaw,
thread a cord through his nostril or lasso his tongue?
Even great wizards armed with weapons of power like
the deadly ninja throwing cabbage, or mild unassuming rat,
cannot dent this worm’s hide nor scaly skull,
his eyes of adamantine pierce them coldly,
his breath overcomes them and they fall,
and so does even the greatest of immortals taste death.’
The death of Micronet
Finally Gawain uses the dossier. He sends one copy to Sir Iain Vallance, Chairman of British Telecom, and another to his Member of Parliament, but two weeks later, the chatline is still clogged with violent messages, getting nastier. The Shades players are gripped by a collective madness, obsessed with revenge on Gawain. They talk of nothing else. The Archwizards are cheered whenever they appear. Barbarella and her friends strut like heroes. I am amazed at the success of their propaganda. Shades has become an evil soap opera. People want trouble, and trouble, in the form of the next Shades meet, is looming.
Late at night, on the Saturday before the meet, messages start appearing on the chatline, speculating about what will happen if Gawain dares to show his face at the Goat and Compass.
‘Probably be a real life bloodbath . . .’ writes one.
‘Bloodbath??? Naaaa,’ replies another. ‘We just explain a few points to a few people who’ll then join us as we pull on the white pointed hoods, get in our motors and go out for a quiet night’s firebombing.’
‘If I get hold of the gutless wonders who keep on runnin’ (the Archwitch) down, writes a third, ‘I’m gonna firebomb em and I don’t care if my subscription is cancelled (sic). If anyone fancies giving me Gawain’s address I will make sure he never walks again let alone write or use a computer!!!’
Two hours later comes the reply: ‘Anyone wanna send Gawain a letter. His address is 36, Paradise Avenue, London SW14.’
Immortality is much overrated in cyberspace. People think that cyber-realms will last forever, that we may all one day be discarnate intelligences inhabiting a net without end, forever and ever. But cyber-realms die and even Coders are not omnipotent. I write a fax and send it to the office of Sir Iain Vallance. It quotes the firebomb posts and airs one of the weirder aspects of the affair.