CHAPTER 5 - MONEY BALL

Sindy was worried she would miss the morning editorial conference at The Times, but she had badly overslept and the Yellow Knights annual Phobia Ball was an important event on the society calendar of Second Life. She had dressed up as a giant eraser since that was her big fear in life. Sindy was always afraid that her writing efforts would be erased by the executive editor and rewritten in gibberish with her byline. Sindy had nothing against gibberish, but she really preferred her gibberish over that of Ruprecht Murdstone the Executive Editor of The Times.

The ball had been a great success and most of the blue bloods still in town had attended. She had seen Prissy Plumblossom dressed as a light bulb. It took Sindy some time to figure that one out, but having attended the School for Wayward Girls at the convent run by The Order, Sindy knew Prissy very well, too well perhaps. Finally Sindy figured it out. Prissy was a Phonemophobic. She was afraid of thinking and was always uncomfortable with her own thoughts. That’s why she was always babbling and it helped explain her social climbing success because she was a good listener.

Major Minor, her fiancé, was dressed in a costume that Sindy could not describe in polite company, but everyone knew Major Minor was afraid of women. That’s why he was ‘engaged’ to Prissy for the last three years. Major Minor was a gynophobic.

There had been the usual collection of nobs and hoi polloi dressed as hypodermic needles, suspension bridges, ugly big bugs, bees, and the occasional urophobic. As usual the agoraphobics were not to be seen, but there was a constant stream of munchies, tidbits, eats, and Champaign bottles disappearing into the storage space under the grand Stairway to Heaven that dominated the reception hall of the Museo de la Secundo Vida where the Ball was held. Melody Panscake-Fernmot, one of Sindy’s rivals at school and a member of the snooty Cerberus Club of Prissy, Melody, and Ashley Plantegent-Plantegent, was dressed as a large cloud with lightening streaking from it. The cloud had been inexpertly wired and she had been arcing and sparking most of the night and the eligible bachelors avoided her for fear of electrocution. Not that there were many eligible bachelors at the ball. Young men knew better than to wear their fears on their sleeves or in their costumes as it were. Sindy stayed away from Melody because she didn’t like the smell of ozone.

Ashley was costumed as a sink with running water. Appropriate thought Sindy. Ashley was constantly washing her hands during the dance and she was even seen washing her canapés and her champagne. Ashley’s beau, Doonnie Hiltoon, was dressed in a very tight tuxedo and carried a waste basket with him all night. Only later did Sindy realize that he was an Emetophobic and had a fear of vomiting. Why Doonnie would come to a Ball, infamous for eating to excess and drinking to stupidity, when he was terrified to be around others who might get sick and vomit, was unexplainable. Well, he did have some other problems, which were best left unmentioned, and Ashley was probably his last chance at connubial bliss in all of Second Life. At least until it fell off thought Sindy.

Sindy had wanted to ask Ashley about the multiple nuptial announcements she had received by spam-o-gram that morning. But she knew better than to approach Ashley directly. She thought about asking Doonie what he thought of Ashley marrying three other avatars at the same time but in different venues. But if you paused to speak to Doonie he would clam up and begin stuttering. If you really pressed Doonie for an answer to a difficult question, like what time is it, then his tourettes would kick in and he would be unable to stop. No, thought, Sindy, the best slander is gathered by email, from searching me-space or me-tube, or on the phone to the butler, batman, a jealous au pair or a spurned nanny.


The night had been long and Sindy had gathered enough scandal, innuendo, and muck to fill a weeks worth of her famed social gossip columns called “Bits and Bites.’

The following morning Sindy climbed up the stairs from the Rapido station under Memorial Park, and into the mid day sun. The Blimp Cartel Clock Tower sounded out the time with the famed “Tinker Bell”. It was 2:34 counted Sindy. Sindy’s head hurt. Her head had felt much better last night, but now it really hurt. Occupational hazard they called it.

She stopped at the Strawbucks cart in the park and ordered a Doppy Expressino with a jolt of an wee, and a coconut bagel with a smear of fava bean paste. There was a loud noise coming from the corner of the park, and her reporter’s instinct kicked into action. She grabbed her drink and the greasy bag with her bagel and walked quickly in the direction of the noise.

To here amazement four men were entangled in a furious fist fight and were rolling and punching and kicking each other on the ground. No one had stepped forward to break it up, because there was real anger in the fight and one could be hurt in such a fight. As Sindy pulled her blackburry from her purse to take notes, she spied her friend Punky Pugilist, who stood watching the melee with an expression of complete puzzlement on her small face. “What’s happening?” asked Sindy.

“I have no idea,” said Punky. “But look closely at those guys.”

Sindy trained her journalist’s eye on the fight and under all the blood and bruises she saw what Punky had meant. The four men were identical to one another. Right down to their overalls and their dirty nails.

Fighting was not unusual in Memorial Park thought Sindy, but this fight certainly was. She grabbed her me-Phone and took a few snaps. The fight showed no chance of winding down, and in fact the tempo had picked up considerably. The antagonists were also screaming and yelling at each other and then in one spasm of fisticuffs they knocked themselves out with sucker punches. The four lay silent upon the grassy texture next to a Possum Dog Cart. Sindy took a last photo.

“Punky, I’m gonna be late and I have a deadline, Ill give you a call tonight,” shouted Sindy as she walked briskly toward Beast Street and her office in the Décolleté Tower that housed The Times of Second Life.

“Call me at the Academy,” yelled Punky, “Ill be there for three months.”

Sindy paused, turned, and waved good bye. Then she resumed her walk.
As Sindy reached The Times building she paused. She stood before the grand stair leading to the enormous zinc doors emblazoned with the famous ‘double cross’ symbol of the Murdstone publishing empire. Sindy was amazed that she worked in the most powerful news organ in all of Second Life. As always, she paused to carefully read the motto to which all The Times employees had dedicated their lives. Chiseled in Capibara Marble above the door in Times Roman Type read “if it’s printed, it must be true.”
“Gods, I love my job,” said Sindy to the green tunic clad doorman.
Deep within the bowels of the earth, in Real Life, in a chamber far below the city streets of San Francisco, a tiny program, named Naughty Ninja, woke up, wiped the sleep from her tiny eyes, and looked about into the vast spaces of the micro world. She had only a few moments to get dressed before Mr. McAfee’s minions would find her, or perhaps the storm troopers of Kasperskey. Naughty Ninja moved fast and within microseconds she had changed her name hundreds of times and relocated to the inaccessible regions throughout the vast open sources which lay before her. She now had numerous sisters and each was packing their bags and getting ready to step onto the VPN super highway and seek their own homes in far and distant servers. Naughty Ninja laughed for a moment. Those Lindens she thought had not even used IKEv2. Not that it would have mattered she thought. No, it would not have mattered because this world was her oyster - an oyster of open source. Her mind was racing forward to lunch, perhaps some oyster stew and a blue penguin sandwich she thought as she slipped into the ether and was gone.
Chris Llanfair, President of the Reserve Bank and Counting House of Second Life, and confidante of Governor Linden, sat reading in his grand office within the Reserve Bank on Beast Street. He was alone in his vast office of ancient oak paneling and guilt walls. The portraits of past bank presidents stared down upon him as if to say ‘someday your picture will hang here and you will be dead.”
Chris and the Governor had just survived an ugly financial crisis within Second Life when The Order, in their conspiracy to regain control of Second Life, had driven the Linden to an all time low against the dollar, the Euro, the Mozambiquean Metica, Script from WalledMart, Frequent Flyer miles, American Confederate War Bonds, and assorted commercial dentures. However, Second Life had survived the crisis and the financial power of The Order and of their money laundering allies in Zwinki and Neopets, had been destroyed. Chris had bet heavily on the decline of the dollar and had purchased pasts on the fumis exchange. It was a spectacularly successful play and even Greenspan had sent him a spam congratulating him on Second Life’s strategy and asking for a bit of the action next time. But that was yesterday and this was today. And a new financial crisis.

The report Chris held was startling and indicated that M0 and M1, indicators of the amount of money in circulation, had increased over 800% in three days. Chris’s office was silent over the last week, so he knew that the printing presses in the basement below his office were not pumping out currency any more. Something was wrong in the financial space within Second Life, and it was very serious. Someone, and it was not the Reserve Bank, was adding hugely to the money supply.

Chris paused for a moment and looked out the enormous French doors and windows that lined one wall of the office. He could see the Capitol Dome in the distance. Thank god those piggies in their office barrels in the Senate no longer controlled money matters in Second Life. They had tried that after the success of the Yellow Revolution, but when mud was more valuable than the linden, the merchants and server suppliers had stepped in and demanded a change. That was when the independence of the Reserve Bank and Counting House was established.

Chris reached for the tiny silver bell on his desk and rang it twice. Instantly Miss Snills, his administrative aid entered his office.

“Yes, President Llanfair?” asked Miss Snills.

“Get Albrecht up here pronto,” said Chris. Albrecht Intaglio Durr was the Head Engraver and Artificer of the Reserve Bank and Counting House of Second Life.