To logoff, perchance to dream

Another customised scroll arrived from Siu Lei Gu.

To logoff, perchance to dream by Siu Lei Gu

I was wandering through Shing Jea recently when I heard an interesting religious discussion going on. A Serverite was claiming that the only way we can be saved is if we give ourselves totally to the Great Server. He said that we can’t save ourselves individually, by means of our own resources, the only way is to allow our Server to take care of us. He said it was the only way.
That prompted another person to question whether there was indeed only one Server for all Avatarkind. She suggested that there are several Servers, and we dedicate ourselves to the one of our choice, and they are all different though equally valid Servers.
The Serverite said that there was no reason to believe in more than one Server. Even if there were different manifestations of Server, he said, they were all One in virtuality and effect. He said that she shouldn’t think that just because some people call Server by different names, they were not necessarily talking about following a different path to be saved, because there was only one true Server in virtuality and only one way to be truly saved.
This discussion had interested others as well as me, and someone else asked what he had to do to be saved, as he couldn’t find his Save icon. People lolled, they mocked him and called him a noob, and said that save icons didn’t exist, and that everything was taken care of on his behalf.
Then he asked when he would be saved, and who took care of it. He was told that everything he did was under the watchful eye of Server and that he was constantly safe and shouldn’t worry about it. But someone else said that through his Player he was aware that there had been times when avatars here weren’t safe, that the Server was not infallible, and that he had been ‘rolled back’.
I am not old enough, myself, to remember the time he was speaking about, and I didn’t understand what he meant by ‘rolled back’. He told me later that it meant that things he had picked up had vanished, and that things he had done, he had to do again. I asked him how he knew, and he said that his Player had been present at the time of a ‘Server crash’.
The idea of a Server crash terrified the Serverite, as it threatened to undermine his whole faith, and stripped his sense of security from him. So he then, interestingly, postulated the existence of servants of the Server, some kind of ministering angels, whom he called ‘The Ops’. He said that the Ops wouldn’t allow Server to crash in such a way that our world would become non-persistent. He said something about them using the power of replicated bases to ensure that Servers instructions were obeyed.
But some people rofled at him for saying this. They told him that Ops are just like Players, they are not infallible either. Not even the Developers are infallible shouted out an extremist.
They forced the Serverite to become defensive. He said, “If this world was unpredictable there wouldn’t be so many of us playing here in it, would there?” (Though I didn’t see the connection between our numbers and the predictability of the world myself.)
A dancing Chattist told him, “Doesn’t matter anyway, it’s only a game, m8, get a life.” (The Chattists believe that we only exist here as outlets for our Players, and this one must have had no interest in collecting items or levelling up.) By ‘get a life’ she meant ‘find inspiration from your own Player Irl’.
But the Chattist comment didn’t stop the debate. The ‘noob’ asked a very profound question indeed, “So what happens to me and to this place after I logoff?”
I had not given this so much thought before. I had taken sleep to be a natural part of my existence. I logoff, I dream, I log back on, and the world is much the same, with just a few things changed, with items moved from or appearing in my storage, and with my /age a little greater.
I can’t prove to anyone here that I do, in fact, dream. But I had always felt sure that I do. My Player gives me new ideas, new inspirations, new goals to work toward, and much of this happens when I’m fast offline and dreaming.
But now I began to wonder, does this world still virtually exist when I’m asleep? What if the things I think I dream about are the truth, and this world is the dream?
I know that some Playerites, such as the Rumfists, claim that we don’t dream, that life here is a dream, that we are but the dreams of our Players, and Irl holds the only truth.
They made me /ponder.
I wanted to seek guidance, but Master Togo doesn’t like his students to concern themselves with metaphysical questions like these. He refuses to discuss the subject of dreaming, or to question his virtuality. In fact, I’m not even sure he feels he requires to be saved, like most of us, because he is an Aplayerite. No one I know has ever even seen him logoff.
So I had to think about this for myself. And I decided I can’t believe the fanatical Playerites. I am able to pick things up and put them in my belt pouch, I am able to whisper to others, I am able to complete quests and missions, and I don’t think I could do any of those things if I were nothing but a dream. I find it impossible to deny, as they do, that there is any truth, any virtuality at all, in my existence.
Cogitem ergo sim – I may think, therefore I’m an avatar.