I would often go for walks in the evenings around the town. I would stop at the edge of town and look at the spots where the mobs tended to spawn. Sometimes I would just take in whatever action was happening around town. That particular evening wasn't one to go out walking. I just laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of what had happened today. I kept seeing the message window popping up, even after Karla had vented her frustration and directed her anger at me.
"Friend request from Karla. Please confirm."
"I don't get it." I told myself "She's mad at me, that's a no brainer, and rightly so. I scolded her for something thousands of players are doing every day. Here's a girl I don't know an I get on her case, as she put it, "... like I was your little sister ...". I treated her badly and she should have ignored me, so why the request?"
"Friend request from Karla. Please confirm."
Outside the game I had friends: casual friends, university friends, even some gamer friends. But inside the game it was different; you could put your friends in real peril by your actions. When I realized that I was stuck in a game that could kill me and everyone else in it, I tried to isolate myself from people. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to get out. I wanted to find a way to end this without involving anything dangerous. I once spent a whole week attempting to break through the user interface, trying to find a flaw. That turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. The only thing I managed to do was to dump my entire inventory in front of me, right there on the street, including my armor, weapons and my clothes! I stood there in my underwear beside a pell-mell of the junk I was carrying. Now that was embarrassing.
When I finally accepted that I couldn't leave, I looked at my options. I took what information was available including what some of the beta-testers had supplied in a guidebook that was freely available in the shops. I also listened in to conversations of those who went hunting and came back alive. To stay alive you had to be more powerful than the forces confronting you. They also mentioned it was easier as a party, but on the flip-side, I considered it far more tragic. When a party member was killed the despair of the rest of the group became unbearable. I was not ready to deal with that level of grief, so I kept to myself. If I should die, no one else would have to suffer.
"Friend request from Karla. Please confirm."
Normally I would have refused. I'd been asked a couple of times to join a party or to "friend" someone, especially when returning from a day of hunting. Each time I turned them down. As a result I alienated a lot of people who considered my refusal as snobbish and condescending. Actually, I was scared.
So what made me say yes? It's as if I could not refuse, as if the cancel button had been disabled, as if I didn't control my own hand. "Un-friend-ing" her was always an option, but that could be considered rude, and I had been rude and inconsiderate enough as it was. I had no valid reason to remove her from my list. Even though I had convinced myself that I didn't want anyone on my list, I did not, not want her there. It seems I had been foiled by the double negative.
"Friend request from Karla. Please confirm."
Karla is a nice short name. With only 10 000 players it was easy to find a nice simple name that suited your personality and was pronounceable. In other MMOs that boasted millions of players, you could end up with a name like "boomboom23". In a full dive environment that could make conversation a little awkward. The name players picked was sometimes just that: a name. Other times it had a meaning or was a reference to the person's personality. "Maybe I'll ask Karla about her name and if there's a story behind it." I frowned at the thought.
"Would I even get a chance to do that?"