Kudos Page 2

and fifty-four kudos.

  Sol – a gold star and twenty-one kudos.

  Mellow – a gold star and seventeen kudos.

  Lady Sorrow – a gold star and twelve kudos.

  Clarion – sixty-two kudos.

  Eternal – forty kudos.

  Underneath there were another dozen names of less regular visitors, whose kudos was between zero and twenty. Curiously, the girls were doing better than the boys and the indeterminate felines.

  The house was clean and tidy. The gardens were mowed. Long-lost equipment was properly inventoried. A play had been half written. And they had been star-surfing twice in the last ten days, with Sol making a metacast of the second trip. This cast had proved to be rather popular viewing, to judge by the several thousands who had accessed it and given positive feedback messages in praise of their daring moves.

  It could be deduced from the state of the chart that this transformation from lethargy to energy owed least to Eternal and he smiled to see that of all the regulars he was demonstrably the biggest slacker. Slowly, oh so slowly, his creative powers were scheming with regard to a plan to host a new party. But he knew it would be a mistake to push himself too far too quickly. No, let the ideas spin around each other, let them evolve after checking out the parties that some of his friends were organising. He wanted his next party to be so fabulous that a delighted Bent Street gang rushed home to shower him with their gold stars. There was no hurry though, in fact the longer he waited, the more the total kudos that would come his way.

  Arms behind his head, Eternal drifted in to a reverie. The event should not be too demanding, not everyone wants to create new costumes for a party. Nor too gimmicky. Lots of nooks and crannies for flirting. Great music, of course. There was a lot to consider, but the idea that was uniting his conception was that of a giant ship, an enormous version of the legendary Titanic, sinking deep below the surface of a vast ocean. The eerie groaning of the hull as the pressure mounted would remind all the partygoers that their time was limited. Strange whale song could echo through the corridors. It had a lot of potential. Most avatars would teleport out before the very end, when the dark water surged in through broken port holes, to bring the party to a dramatic conclusion, but some, including EV would have backed themselves up so that they could stay and feel the weight of the ocean taking them into its cold embrace. Fun, fun.

  ‘Hey sweetheart.’ A momentary flash of golden light interrupted his daydream as Angel teleported into the room.

  ‘Angel. Long time. What brings you to this den of indolence and fantastic musings.’

  ‘You, of course.’

  ‘Thanks Angel.’

  ‘Plus, I wanted to see the original kudos chart.’

  ‘The original? There’s more?’

  ‘Oh hundreds more. They are very popular, springing up everywhere. You’ve created another fashion my dear.’

  ‘Ahh. Much as I’d like to take the credit, it was Glitter’s idea.’

  ‘Oh, Glitter.’ Angel came closer to the chart, shrinking her wings into her torso so as to avoid knocking in to hookah pipes or the games and magazines that were strewn around the room. ‘I see you have the lowest score.’ Her voice was amused.

  ‘Indeed. But that might change rather dramatically, after my next party.’

  Angel smiled and raised one delicate eyebrow. ‘A new party?’

  ‘A new party.’ Eternal smiled back, but teased her by saying no more about it.

  ‘So, not even a gold star. Tut tut. I have five on the chart at the Blue Lagoon and eight at Grimwald Castle.’

  ‘Eight? How did you get eight gold stars already?’

  With a light skip, Angel floated above Eternal, then tipped herself, so that her scarlet lips met his. They kissed for a long time.

  ‘Eight? Only eight?’ Eternal whispered, when, at last, they broke apart. Peals of affectionate celestial laughter filled the room.

  ‘Come, playmate, do you not think it is time to get out more? Let us take a journey through the new dark forest realms of vampyres; listen to the music of the Celestial Choir of Guilty Pleasure; attend the parties of the Metaverse Liberation Front or fight wars with the Generals of Sword and Bow. You grow stale and I miss you.’

  ‘Tempting, tempting. Perhaps in another year or so. But I have to correct you with regard to staleness. The Bent Street Gang are actually pushing star-surfing to new heights.’

  ‘True, I saw the last cast. I liked your sunglasses.’

  ‘Score! I put a lot of work into getting the right sheen off those, thank you Angel.’ Eternal looked across at his oldest friend and lover as a surge of warmth coursed through his chest. ‘And there are the discussions here too. I feel we have begun to get close to a solution to the fundamental questions of epistemology.’

  ‘And that interests you?’

  ‘Well, it entertains me.’

  ‘Then I shall pursue you no further. For a year and a day at least.’

  ‘By then Angel, my idea for a party should be ready. I will need a lot of assistance to get it right and I was hoping that you would be willing to involve yourself in it.’

  ‘Of course.’ With a surge of bright light, causing her avatar to shimmer in silver outline, Angel gave a wave and left, a pale afterglow of her form lingering in Eternal’s eyes. It was a nice touch and he considered getting up from the couch to chase after her and take up those tempting diversions.

  A moment later, though, the hookah gave deep gurgle.

  3. The Metaversal Kudos Chart

  Obtaining truly deep philosophical insights is very difficult. Not only because the concepts themselves avoid being verbalised, like sinuous fish eluding a flailing net, but also because finding the right combination of people with whom you can explore the depths is even more elusive.

  You speak. You come close to saying something important and it feels like the inside of your mind is being tickled. An image; a metaphor; a truth; something beautiful is close to being revealed. But like a sneeze that does not happen, you are deflated when the next person speaks. They have failed to understand you, or in understanding, have turned your thought into a tram line; one that inevitably leads on to a station that is well known and not to the new realms that you feel your statement had the potential to arrive at.

  The Bent Street gang were used to each other and, for the most part, had grown used to each other’s ways of thinking. Certainly Eternal Voyager was delighted with Clarion, with whom he had formed a strong bond, one based on the simple fact that Clarion listened and thought before s/he spoke. By contrast, the least successful participant in their discussions was Glitter, who tended to speak without thinking. That is, she believed she was thinking, but the fact that her observations were entirely predictable and centred on themes to which she regularly returned, meant that she was probably not so much thinking as regurgitating. It was a common failing among all conscious entities and not just those with human ancestors. Not that anyone minded particularly, and in any case, Glitter was away a lot these days, giving presentations or recording casts about kudos.

  It had been several years, but the group had recently reached accord that the Metaverse was materially rooted in a physical universe but that it was nevertheless unbounded. This contention had several important corollaries, not least that there should be no limit to the metaversal space any entity should be entitled to use. If someone wanted, for some reason, to play in a space as vast as an entire universe, they were perfectly welcome to do so, there was infinitely more space to go around.

  Right now though, Eternal was thinking about the other half of their conclusion.

  ‘Does it mean that the Metaverse will end one day?’

  They pondered on this for a while.

  ‘Stormrider II thinks it will,’ noted Sol and they all accessed a cast by the techie: Some Thoughts On Metaversal Non-Existence. It was easy, while under the influence of IWT-3, to absorb the ideas of the presentation and they were helped by the fact that Stormrider illustrated
his talk with simple and persuasive diagrams. The Metaverse, he argued, would cease to exist under two conditions: if its material foundations became completely and utterly homogenous, in other words, frozen; or if, for whatever reason, the material itself disappeared.

  ‘Pertinent to our subject, most definitely,’ said Mellow at length, ‘but he is approaching the question from science, rather than philosophy. His argument is based on a study of slow waves.’

  ‘We are all going to die.’ Lady Sorrow shivered with delight. ‘Every single one of us. First the colour will drain from the Metaverse, then sound, then motion. All gone. All doomed. We will be running around as grey cubes wailing at the cruelty of our fate.’

  ‘Well, sort of wobbling from side to side you mean,’ Eternal pointed out helpfully.

  ‘Yeah. Trapped. And imagine the agony. You might be millennia as a cube before it all ends, and that might be a relief, when finally darkness comes.’

  ‘Especially if you were stuck next to Glitter,’ muttered Sol and there were several snickers as well as a sudden increase in the volume of merry gurgles from the hookah.

  ‘Eeeven if you acceept Ssssormrider’s argumen, whish I donnn’t, thass doesnnn’t mean the Messaverse will end. It jusss means thass thiss is hypothessically possible.’ It was Clarion who resumed the discussion and because his comment was both precise and logical, s/he also ended it.

  ‘My friends, contemplate for a moment, if you don’t mind my