I first discovered FurryMUCK about a year ago. I was trying to program a computer game in which the player could interact with different characters, and while researching this, I found references to virtual reality sites on the Internet. I examined some, but didn't like the gloomy themes of most sites.
I finally found FurryMUCK. Its theme is ``furries''-anthropomorphic animals. Players choose an animal for their character, and are known as ``furs'' within the MUCK. I became BrownBandit, the friendly, outgoing raccoon, and made a number of friends.
After being on FurryMUCK for some time-several weeks, a month, I'm not sure-I met Denise. I had begun frequenting the Fenris Bar and Grill, described in its WhereAre1 listing as ``Hugspam/Chat/General Insanity,'' and she was often there as well. She was a friendly, quiet wolf, pretty and personable.
Denise and I became relatively casual friends, as the Fenris was one of my regular haunts. In the meantime, I tinkered around with my programming skills and began exploring the option of relocating my home. Its current location dissatisfied me, since it was reached by traveling to an obscure forest that couldn't even be reached by paw and then selecting a numbered exit, apartment-style.
After several weeks of searching, I finally located the perfect place. By traveling west from the West Corner of the Park on Cougar Boulevard, then north by an access road, one could easily reach Tzoq's Welsh Farm. At the east end of Terra Nova Road, an exit to the north was unclaimed. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was perfect. The road ran through a forest, the perfect place for a raccoon, and it had an incredible sense of location.
The first thing I built was my tree home, much more elaborate than my previous one-room house. This tree had three levels of branches, plus an underground room at the base of the tree. I slept on the top branch, and the branch immediately below it was a great place if one wanted to sit quietly. It could support no more than two furs at a time, and if somefur came early enough in the morning, he, she, or it could view the sunrise.
Once I was satisfied with my home, I expanded the reaches of my forest. I built paths and trails leading through the trees, and at one point, rocks formed a bridge across a stream. Upstream, fish and insects inhabited a small pool, and a waterfall hid a cavity in the rock where one could sit unobserved. I thought of it as a very peaceful place.
That Friday I threw a party to celebrate the completion of my home and to make the forest open to visitors.2 I had created several fun objects for the occasion, including a plastic paw that could be ``shook,'' as well as a catapult, which would launch furs into random areas of the MUCK. Its implementation required several days' work and MUCKER level 2 privileges.3
I invited all the furs I knew to the party, promising refreshments and surprises. Friday night, as the party was winding down, I noticed that Denise seemed unhappy. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn't want to talk about it, so I invited her up to the Quiet Peaceful Branch, so she could get away from the crowd. She told me she didn't really feel like it, but that she would like to do so some other time. She went home and went to sleep.
The next afternoon, she asked me if the offer still stood. After I told her that it did, I showed her around some of the different areas of my forest, then sat with her on the branch. She explained that her life wasn't very happy, that she had physical handicaps that made life difficult, and that her home life was miserable. I felt that what she needed most was just a friend, so we just had a conversation, and I listened to her and tried to encourage her.
Several days later, when I was in the Fenris with a number of other furs, we all greeted a guest and were surprised when she identified herself as Denise. She told us that she had been in the West Corner of the Park when a guest entered and loudly insulted her. Another fur confirmed that, and told me that the guest in question had called her ugly, used various unprintable adjectives, and stated that she did not deserve to live. When one of the wizards4 checked, he discovered that the guest had connected from her computer at the same time she was connected, so he decided that Denise was the guest and removed her ability to log onto her character.
Given the recent release of one program that allowed the secret use of another's computer,5 we assumed that some enemy of hers had used her connection to publicly trash her. We went to complain to the wizard in question, and when he refused to reconsider his position, a number of us became angry, myself included. The discussion became heated, but no progress was made.
The next day, I connected and discovered that my catapult was no longer working. I checked, and found that my MUCKER 2 privileges had been revoked by the same wizard who had disabled Denise's character. When I mentioned this, the group became convinced that this was either some sort of bizarre conspiracy, or that it was simply retaliation for taking her side.
Denise was given back her ability to log in shortly thereafter, and she repeatedly told me how sorry she was that I had gotten in trouble due to her. I argued the revocation of my MUCKER bit on purely technical grounds, since it was based on an extremely technical interpretation of a rule I didn't know about, and I had received no warning. I won my appeal, and was placed on probation, which didn't bother me in the least.
The event seemed to have affected Denise deeply. She didn't appear in public as much, and when I talked to her, she seemed to dwell on sadness, almost despair. One day, her virtual-reality husband came to me and told me she was talking suicide-real-life. Since I was her friend, he said, he wanted me to talk to her, which I was more than happy to do.
Denise was hiding at home, and wouldn't even speak with me at first, but I managed to convince her to talk. Without mentioning what I had heard, I asked her how she was feeling. Despairingly, she said she was ready to kill herself, since no one really liked her. I was surprised that she could think that-everyone I knew loved her-but told her it wasn't true. I, for one, was her friend.
Inwardly, I was panicking, especially since she didn't seem convinced. But, praying rapidly, I repeatedly urged her not to do anything violent. I told her that she was special, that there was a reason for her life, and that destroying it wouldn't accomplish anything. We talked-I listened, mostly-for a long time, and then I prayed with her. I invited her to watch the sunset the next morning, and she said she would try.
The next morning, before school, I logged on and waited for her, but she didn't show up. I went to class, not knowing what was happening. I wanted to do something, but I didn't know anything about where she lived or who to contact, so I worried and prayed. Late that night, she showed up. She explained that she had just been too busy that morning to come, but thanked me for talking with her. She wasn't busy the next morning, so we both showed up then. She seemed to have recovered, and was smiling again, occasionally.
Some time later-a week, probably-Denise's husband told me that she wanted him to give me a message. She had been lying all along, and she had actually been the guest in the park. Now, she was convinced that I wouldn't want to have anything to do with her.
I was surprised that I wasn't really angry. Mostly, I was saddened. I, and many other people, had believed her, and at least I had gotten in trouble because of it, although it worked out. Still, she seemed to be trying to mend things. I told her the truth and said that I was still her friend.
Shortly thereafter, I began spending less time on FurryMUCK. The reasons I would have given, had anyone asked, were that I had become too busy, that school was requiring more of my attention, that some areas had become too boring. At some point, I stopped entirely. Recently, I checked and found that my character had been deleted due to inactivity. My forest is gone, as are the tree, the stream, the waterfall, and everything else of mine.
Some people claim that virtual reality isn't real: that because the objects and places in it are formed by the arrangement of charged electrons, they are somehow of less value than the clustering of atoms. I disagree. Virtual reality is reality-a subset of this one, but no less real, and often separate.
This also implies that our actions have consequences in a virtual reality, a concept which I agree with entirely. When we take action, we are responsible, whether it involves electrons or atoms. Ultimately, the actions we take are formed not by the reality we find ourselves in, but by our individual personalities and values. It's our soul that matters, really.
1WhereAre is a command that lists the most crowded locations, sorted by the number of players in them.
2My mom viewed this as an indication that I needed more ``real'' friends. ``Why can't you have a real party?'' she asked.
3A player's MUCKER level indicates the type of programs he or she is allowed to write. MUCKER 1 is generally easy to get, but MUCKER 2 requires a special request and indicates that the player is considered responsible enough to write programs which interact with players on a more involved (and dangerous, if misused) level.
4The administrators of FurryMUCK, and many similar online sites, are termed wizards due to their seemingly magical abilities, including being able to access much more information than a normal player can.
5BackOrifice, a pun on Microsoft's BackOffice product, allows complete and unrestricted remote access to someone else's machine, including modifying their configuration files and executing programs.