An Icarus Night

 Doug

Dougette

Written 15 March, 2007

An Icarus Night

Sweetie likes to build high up, where the frames-per-second rate is higher and the air smells sweet.

To this end, she often rezzes a Mystitool platform at 600 meters or so.

Sometimes she forgets to take them down. But who’s counting prims?

I often join her, and we build quietly side-by-side—but sometimes it just turns into an Icarus night.

This happened recently, when we began experimenting with a trampoline script.

Sweetie, you see, has an idea of building a trampoline stairway that will bounce one all the way to Second Life heaven.

nb; I wonder if there IS a Second Life heaven.

To that end, we began playing with the effects of the trampoline scripts, seeing if the effect was directional, depending upon the rotation of the trampoline prim (it was; I was able, by rezzing two trampolines, placing one ten meters above the other, and rotating it so the bounce surface pointed downward, to ricochet myself half to death), if we could lower the force (we could, and were soon bouncing only ten meters or so high instead of 100M meters plus), and if the size and direction of the bounce were always the same (as yet undetermined). We also determined that you didn’t have to actually jump onto the trampoline; simply walking into it would launch you.

All of this let me to drag out a human cannon I had bought that morning.

It was a big sucker, capable of launching an av over any number of sims.

And wouldn’t you know it, the air of craziness we were fostering somehow let to a visit by the appearance of an acquaintance named Doug, someone Sweetie had met at a gathering place for dragons. Why she was there, I don't know; perhaps she is in need of dragon companionship.

At any rate, Doug showed up and we launched him out of the cannon, sending him to the boundary of the next sim.

I was trying to rotate the cannon so it would launch Doug directly toward Lion Sands when I made an oopsie and sent it (the cannon) to 135 meters.

No problem, though, for by then Sweetie was asking, “Doug, would you like to go high? Would you like to go really, really high?”

I knew what was coming, so I switched off “No Push” and she orbited him.

Then the night got really bizarre.

When Doug came back he was a woman.

I had no idea extreme height could do that! How could I? Sweetie and I were women before we flew, so the effect was nullified. But with Doug, it was different.

At first he thought it funny, but he was soon fascinated with the idea of being a woman, even lamenting his choice of first name.

Sweetie and I suggested she be called Douge (Doo-Jay; my PC can’t make an acute accent) and began giving her free outfits and telling her she needed to get some prim hair. And she ate it up.

We even devised a code phrase in case Doug ever shows up as a female alt.

I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s NOT “My ass is as big as a double-wide trailer.”

It was all great fun, especially when Doug started gender blending (male alt, female clothes).

Until another friend showed up and Doug immediately reverted to guy mode and made a crude comment about her physical appearance.

I was THIS close to banning him.

I think it would do Doug good to play a female alt for a while and see how the other half lives.

I mean, the female side of Doug was insecure about his breast size.

The male side was making sexist comments about my friend’s breast size.

Yep, it would do him good.