CHAPTER 30 - LAND USE

Sindy Blazer stepped from the pedi-cab and onto the sidewalk facing the Art Décolleté Times Tower which housed her office on the 19th floor. Sindy stood for a moment and took a deep breath and savored the smells, sounds, and energy of Capital City. An omnibus rattled past, Sindy began coughing from the fumes of the city. She wiped the tears from her eyes. Then as she prepared to mount the grand stair leading to the enormous zinc doors emblazoned with the famous ‘double cross’ symbol of the Murdstone publishing empire. She carefully read the motto to which all employees at The Times had dedicated their lives. Chiseled in Capibara Marble above the door in Times Roman Type read “if it’s printed, it must be true.”

A tall doorman stood in a green tunic with a black bearskin hat, looking like a tall evergreen tree with a burned top. The doorman had two purposes at The Times. One was to greet Ruprecht Murdstone, Executive Editor of The Times and head of the Lupine News Corporation each day as he arrived in his long gold toned limousine with avarice laced curtains and ruthless side walls. As Ruprecht would exit his limousine, the doorman would roll out a small red carpet and bow to Ruprecht telling his what a fine human being he had become and how he was first among the most honored of the journalistic profession. He would greet Ruprecht with phrases such as, ‘Ah Mr. Murdstone your tie is so much more elegant than Mr. Hurst’s,’ or ‘I see you have lost weight faster than Mrs. Graham,’ or the always popular ‘You are so much more intelligent than your worthless son and banshee daughter.’

The doorman’s other role was to make the employees and visitors to The Times tower feel small and insignificant in the face of the mighty Lupine News Corporation, owner of The Times, The Walled Street Drag, Feeble Magazine, and the always popular Screaming and Yelling Television Network. ‘Fear and banal,’ was the motto of the network and Murdstone was always telling the staff that fear sold newspapers and banal kept the costs down. The efforts of the doorman kept both the riff raff away, as well as any thought of employees asking for a raise or a new benefit from Lupine News. Once the doorman had been nice to Sindy and that was the time when Murdstone had gone missing and was temporarily replaced by Sindy as acting executive editor by the board of directors. He had been nice then remembered Sindy, but now he simply glared at Sindy from under his bear skin hat.

Sindy entered The Times Tower and walked into a waiting elevator.

Mr. Bubbs, the last elevator operator in all of Second Life, nodded to Sindy and asked “19th floor Ms. Blazer?”

Sindy nodded affirmatively in reply.

Mr. Bubbs grasped the enormous leaver, grunted, released the braking latches, pulled the lever forward, and called out in a very loud voice “Start ‘em up boys!” Far above on the 34th floor the whine of ferrets chasing a small white mouse could be heard as the elevator lurched into action. “Hard day?” asked the kind and knowing Mr. Bubbs.

“Not hard,” replied Sindy, “but really odd.” Sindy watched as the elevator avatar wrote down the floor numbers on a slate board in chalk as they passed by.

At floor ten, the archive and library floor, the elevator paused and copy boy Jimmy Whatshisname, entered, his arms laden with back issues, post it notes, yellow copy paper, and a cheap Mont Blanc knock-off pen in his white crumpled shirt pocket. There was a new stain at the bottom of his pocket protector. This time it was in green ink. The ink color only allowed to be used by Murdstone himself. Sindy guessed that the rumors must be true and that Murdstone had actually attempted to turn Jimmy into a journalist. The results must have been humorous thought Sindy. Or perhaps Jimmy had simply stolen the ink from Murdstone’s office. The ugly green ink stain was still fresh and wet at the bottom of his pocket protector.

“golly gee. hi miss sindy,” he said in lower case, always averting his eyes from direct eye contact as a sign of submission and respect. Sindy kind of liked the kid, he reminded her of herself when she had been without sleep for two days and recovering from the flu. In other words really slow and stupid.

“19th Floor,” announced Mr. Bubbs thrusting forward the great lever, smashing down the dog latches, and barking out “Shut ‘em down boys.” The whine from above slowly died as the ferrets caught the mouse and began tearing it apart tail to nose. The door swooshed open and the tiny space was filled with the cacophony screaming editors, me-phones ringing, and reporters shouting epithets at their slow re-booting Macs.

Sindy proceeded to her office followed by Jimmy. Jimmy had an uncanny ability to know when Sindy arrived or left from work. The uncanny ability was based in part on Jimmy’s lurking in Sindys office doorway all day long. This helped him detect where Sindy was at any given time.

“Jimmy,” yelled Sindy.

Jimmy thought for a moment. Sindy only yelled at him when giving him an assignment. That was the newspaper way. Yell at the copy boy so that everyone would know you were more important than him.

“yes ms. sindy,” replied Jimmy.

“Jimmy.” yelled Sindy again, “Go to the archive and get me every thing you can find on cycle stealing, temporal distortions, and the meta-virtualized pseudo-reality simplicity-complex paradigm.”

“sure,” said Jimmy. “you want creamer with that?”

“Sheesh, Jimmy,” said Sindy. “I’ll write it down for you and you can give it to the librarian Ms. Tarttle. Then wait till she is finished and has the information for you then get back here pronto.”
“yes,” replied Jimmy reaching for the slip of paper Sindy had written her search terms upon. He started breathing heavily. Hyperventilating actually, so that no one could interrupt his critical mission for something unimportant like getting Pastrami on White with double mayo from Khrons across the street. In a moment he was gone, racing for the elevator and on to the tenth floor and the librarian. That horrible Ms Tartle thought Jimmy.

As he handed the paper slip to Ms. Tartle, she frowned at Jimmy. Adjusting her glasses she read the search terms carefully. “This will take several hours Jimmy, I will have it ready at 3 o’clock.”

“ok,” said Jimmy, “ill be back then.”

Jimmy raced for the elevator and was soon safely ensconced in his secret office in the sub basement of The Times Tower. He lit a candle stub, reached for a cyan crayola, found the big book of words, and began to look up each term on Sindy’s list. Journalism is not easy he had learned. His muse had told him so. But now the muse was not around to coach him in the journalistic arts and mysteries. He was on his own Jimmy knew, but he still believed that the Muse would someday return and would want to see his draft articles perhaps for inclusion in Jimmy’s biography, ‘My Life in Times’ or in a retrospective collection of his works entitled ‘Crayola Scribbling of a Journalist.’

Sindy looked out the window at the vast metropolitan landscape of Capital City. Capital City was laid out in a neat geometric pattern. Some sims were chaotic, given the unplanned nature of subdivision within Second Life, and the complete lack of zoning rules other than immature, mature, and disgusting. Her home town of Heart of the Ocean, in the Sim of Sonogno, had an escort service building on a tiny sliver of land the village elders were unable to purchase at the time of the founding of the town. The owners wanted a huge amount of money for the property, far, far more that it was worth. This was Sindy’s first introduction to extortion in land sales within Second Life. The extortion got worse when the Casinos tried moving in to adjacent lands, causing horrible sim lag, and demanding huge payoffs to go away. Land use was a mess in Second Life.

Then she had an idea and grabbed her Baffles Computer me-Comp, righted her overturned desk, and sat down to do some research. She logged on and looked at the Second Life Map. The big map appeared and she looked carefully about the edges of the known universe. The Linden provided mapping system was very detailed. Then Sindy switched over to Googoo streets, the new controversial mapping system that successfully eliminated all respect for privacy and concerns for common decency. Focusing on the edges of virtual life she examined the streets and lanes of the edge sims carefully. Sindy was amazed at the amount of mooning, snogging, and prevaricating, that Googoo had captured in its cinematic efforts. Grist for the society pages she thought as Sindy saw Sissy Plumblossom slipping out a second story window in the sim of Gigolo.

Sindy spotted Governor Linden twice. Once with that Paris girl in the Sim of Cookie at the Literary Conference of ‘Authorship of Self Help Monologues and Feel Good Scams,’ and another glimpse of the Governor is dark glasses and a bad wig standing out front of a Dilbert concert in the sim of Meolo.

After hours of endless false starts, and even worse false ends, she found an anomaly she suspected might be found. Peering from the edge of the sim of East Egg to the south, she could see another sim, perhaps two, that were not present on the Lindens mapping system.