"Cute house, Dwight."
Dwight rolled his eyes. "This is not a house, Jim," he said, taking off his headphones. "This is the headquarters of my office."
"So you're building an office. With a bed."
He shook his head. "No, Jim. This is my personal headquarters in my office building."
"Oh, so it's like an apartment."
"Do you not understand what I am trying to tell you? It is my personal headquar-"
"Oh cool!" Michael peered over Dwight's shoulder, looking at the little room on the screen. "Is that The Sims? I tried downloading The Sims on my computer a few months ago but for I didn't have administrator privileges so it wouldn't let me." Which was stupid, he thought. He WAS the administrator, wasn't he?
Dwight scoffed. "The Sims? I'm not a 12 year old girl. This is Second Life, a highly realistic virtual world. Anything you can do in the real world you can do in Second Life. I for instance am the chief of police, the head warden at the prison and the owner of a chain of highly successful motels."
"I thought you said it was highly realistic," Jim said, looking over at Dwight's character.
It was wearing a cape. "How did you become chief of police?"
"It's not important how I got there. What matters is that I'm the chief of police in my reign as chief I am going to make sure no evils befall the citizens of this great city." With a final click Dwight added a wood burning fireplace to his headquarters.
Michael studied the screen. What an amazing game. It was like a whole other universe right on the internet. "Are all those other people on there real people too?"
"Of course they are," Dwight said. "Would you want to play a game that relied on artificial intelligence?"
"I might," Michael said seriously. "I love The Sims and they just do their own thing without anyone controlling them." All of the townie Sims had complicated backstories and relationships though. Michael's characters ended up getting slapped a lot because sometimes his guys would hit on girls that were married. Or lesbians. He always seemed to accidentally hit on the lesbians. "So they're really real? Can you talk to them and stuff?"
"Yeah, Dwight does it all the time," Jim said, pointing at the microphone clipped to the side of Dwight's monitor. "You can't hear that from your office?"
Michael usually had his door closed so he could watch videos on YouTube without bothering anyone with the sound. Who really wanted to listen to everyone's boring business calls, anyway? "No. So you can make your own little person and just walk around and build a house and talk to people?" This game was amazing. It was exactly like real life.
"You can also get a job and work your way up the career ladder and run meetings with your subordinates," Dwight said.
"And buy capes," Jim pointed out. Michael wasn't listening, though. Run meetings with your subordinates? Michael had a lot of those. And right now they were all on the phones or staring at their computer screens, barely talking to each other or even paying attention to anything going on in the office. He could've shouted fire and nothing would happen. They had no spirit! And the answer to all their boring problems was right here in front of them on Dwight's computer screen.
"Everyone in the conference room right now!" Michael walked over to Stanley and hung up his phone. "This is very important so please just hang up on whoever you're talking to and get in there!" Dwight was the only one who got up right away. Stanley just picked up his phone to call back whoever he was talking to. Was no one in this office dedicated to keeping the fun in the office? All Stanley did was crossword puzzles. He was almost as boring as Toby, but Michael would never tell Stanley that. He wasn't afraid of Stanley, but he really didn't want to get yelled at again.
"Michael, I put a lot of papers in your office that needed signing earlier. We have to send those tonight. Do you think maybe this can wait until you do that?"
"No, Pam, it can't. We haven't done anything fun since Meredith got hit by that car and that fun run was not even that fun because I had to go to the hospital. This office is the most boring place in the world and now I know how to fix it so will you please just get in the conference room and sign the papers for me later?" He was probably just going to end up signing them with fake names again anyway. It was so boring, signing thousands of things the same way over and over.
No one in this office understood how important this was. It was nearly twenty minutes before everyone was in the conference room and half of them weren't even paying attention. Well, they were about to be completely blown away.
"Everyone," Michael started, pulling down the projector screen. "I have found the answer to all of our problems. And it comes in the form of the internet."
"We already have the internet on our computers," Kelly pointed out. "I'm online like all the time. They don't even block Zappos here so I've ordered like three pairs of shoes this week already. Oh my god, I got the cutest pair of shoes from Gwen Stefani's line. They're all silvery and they have these really spiky heels and they're kind of high, but I think I'll be okay in them as long as –"
"No, it's not just the internet, Kelly. It's what's on the internet. May I present to you all – Second Life!" Michael waved grandly at the screen.
"It says the page cannot be displayed, Michael," Pam pointed out. "I think maybe you typed the address wrong."
"No, I –" Oh, he did. Second Life, not Second Lif. He fixed it, then pointed to the screen again. "Second Life! We are all going to make our own characters and then meet on the computer and have our meetings there! It's fun, it saves us time, it's interactive, it's efficient. It's the perfect thing!"
"Does it cost money?" Kelly asked. "Because my shoes were really expensive. I don't even think I can pay my Visa bill this month."
"No money! It does not cost a single thing." It was free, right? He should've checked beforehand. "It's not just a second life, it's a better life. It's everything you could want in this world but better and free!"
"Can you have pets in Second Life?" Angela asked.
"As many pets as you want! And they're all free! You can have a million cats if you want to and you can give them names and feed them and dress them up and make them have cute little babies." Dwight looked like he wanted to argue with that but Angela looked pleased. Angela didn't like anything and if she was on board then everyone was going to have a great time with this. This was going to be great!
"Michael…"
"What, Toby? Do you have a problem with this? You should be glad! You don't even have to make one and you can stop coming to the meetings so it all works out perfectly!" What would Toby even do on Second Life? Probably open a store that sold boring things and be all losery there too. "There are no problems with this! It's amazing! Now, everyone go home and work on your characters."
"Michael, it's only 3:30. And you really need to get those papers signed by 5."
"Don't bring everyone down, Pam! The papers can wait. This is important. Everyone go
home and set up your accounts and make your characters and be back here at 6 am tomorrow so we can get going!"
