The Far Away

Written 31 October, 2007

The Far Away

I don’t remember if I saw it in The Avastar or The Metaverse Messenger, but I must have seen it somewhere, for I found myself there, in The Far Away.

In Christina’s world. I seemed to be in an Andrew Wyeth painting. I was in a wheat field.

I wasn’t alone, either. There was a huge, rusting (if wood can rust) 2-8-0 steam locomotive lying on the ground, and a windmill, and a shaker-style dining room set for a meal, and a pair of moldering gravity-feed gas pumps (which have since disappeared). And an avatar named AM Radio.

I had to look twice to be sure AM was for real and not a bot of some kind.

He was for real. When I expressed amazement that he wasn’t AM1072 or AM419 Radio, he wistfully lamented not having grabbed FM also.

“It was available,” he said.

AM and I chatted for a while, showing each other our builds. I pulled out my rusty, leaky, water tower and my steampunk ski lift car and my turquoise belt, and he showed me The Far Away. There’s a top hat—and not just ANY top hat, the mad hatter’s hat from Alice—inside the boiler of the locomotive. Touching it caused a new, shining locomotive to appear, temp-on-rez, pointing toward the sky. And touching a ball hidden inside the windmill caused me to float and turn blissfully at ground level, as if I were rolling in the wheat.

I took Sweetie to The Far Away the next night, and we were joined by Bill and Pam Havercamp, and we talked to AM, who is an engineer at IBM. He showed us his cool prim car, which featured a straight 8 with two four-barrel carburetors and an Edelbrock aluminum manifold, and a picture of his real life 1957 Edsel and a link to it in which he had videotaped a drive in the Edsel through the real wheat fields of Illinois.

I countered by showing AM my 1964 Polara, a car I drove from 1993 until 1996, when its 318 V-8 died. If I had had money enough to have the engine rebuilt, I would have that car today. I loved the Polara, with its push-button automatic and cold air conditioning. Driving it on Atlanta’s freeways was difficult, as the lanes have over the decades been reduced from 14 feet to 12 feet to 11 feet in width, which made me feel as if I were driving a slot car, but it was otherwise a joy

We had a good time chatting, and all the while, both Sweetie and I were happily snapping photos.

The Far Away is a perfect place for photos. I’m including my shots of a Bonnie and Clyde couple who had come to do a shoot.

Photo shoot, that is.

I hope.

LOL.

The Far Away (Dreamworld North, 224, 131, 22)