The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans (3 page)

EVERY TIME I encounter Igloo Iceman in VL the appearance of his emulation shocks me. Why? Because he’s head and shoulders taller than anyone else I’ve ever encountered. He’s a bona fide Viking, if I ever saw one. His yellow hair is long and unkempt, his beard is woolly, and his moustache nearly covers his lips. His physique ripples with muscles, like a caveman or a wrestler, his feet and hands are gargantuan, and the glazed over look in his eyes would surely send Bigfoot running in the opposite direction. Not many seedlings take the time to get to know Igloo, but being a VL greeter, I met him the same day he dropped into Virtual Life. Igloo offered me friendship, which I accepted, and during the past year we’ve had some very informative chats (I’d never met anyone from Greenland before). From Igloo Iceman I have learned many things I did not previously know about NL (Natural Life). So every time I see Igloo’s imposing figure sitting at an outdoor table on the patio at Dirty Nellie’s Pub, I ask immediately if I might join him, and his EM always motions for me to take a seat.

“What’s up, Iggy?”

“I’ve dropped in to promote an event,” he tells me.

“You don’t say? What event?”

“A lecture on global warming. The immanent scientist and researcher, Dr. Conrad Adler is the featured speaker, and Jack Straw Huckleberry from NPR is the host.”

“Cool, Igloo!”

“We’ll see,” he says a little skeptically. “It might be nothing but a big snow job.”

“Very funny, Iceman.”

“From where I sit in PL, Fizzy, there’s nothing funny about it.”

Igloo Iceman lives in the Tsiarngagai Mountains in Greenland. For as long as anyone there can remember, he’s told me, glaciers have covered the peaks of those mountains, but not anymore. The temperature is warming. The ice is melting. Lakes are forming in the gorges. As we speak here in Virtual Life, Igloo Iceman is lying on a lounge chair in PL, a tequila sunrise at arm’s length, dressed down to his BVDs and getting the tan of his life!

“I guess Kyoto came a bit too late for Greenland,” I comment.

“Kyoto-schmoto! I’m building myself a boat,” says Iggy.

“A modern-day Noah and his Ark?”

“Minus the animals this time.”

“Where and when is the discussion to take place?” I ask.

“Tonight at 8:00 VLT,” he tells me, “at the Virtual Broadcast Venue.”

“I think I’ll come and bring a couple of friends. Thanks for the tip, Iceman.”

“Stay cool, Fizzy.”

Whether or not Igloo Iceman is portraying his PL situation literally (not to mention honestly, as it has been rumored from time to time that Igloo Iceman is really Dr. Conrad Adler, a climate researcher from the University of Colorado who has spent considerable time during the past twenty-five years in Greenland studying the receding glaciers) is quite beside the point. What matters is that he is a self-proclaimed sentry sitting at the top of the earth tracking climate changes that might well mean the end of not only Physical Life, but also Natural Life, as we now know it. Even in light of the environmental catastrophe that Iggy’s message augers (Greenland is losing one hundred billion tons of ice per year), he manages somehow to keep his sense of humor, as well as a balanced perspective. As long as I’ve known him, Iggy has never been one to cast blame, nor is he one to delegate responsibility for intervention. Maybe he’s not particularly interested in whether or not the polar icecaps melt into the ocean, or whether water levels rise and take out large coastal cities like Kuala Lampur, Bangkok, Istanbul and New Orleans. Maybe Igloo Iceman simply embraces a more evolutionary perspective. He’s obviously accustomed to living a solitary existence, so what’s it to him if humanity goes the way of the dinosaur? Meanwhile, he’s enjoying mini Miami North—at least for as long as it lasts. Greenland’s newly made mountain reservoirs must be stunning indeed on the evening of the summer solstice. And then there’s Iggy, prone on his lakeside lounge chair with his laptop open and logged on to the Internet via satellite… Iggy, watching the eternal orange sun never rising and never setting, always at eye level, burning away the ice day by day and whispering the future in his ear: “It was
ice
while it lasted, Igloo, but time is up. Get ready for the Flood!”

Which is why I suppose Iggy is building a boat. I have a vision of his half-made Ark balanced precariously upon the pinnacle of one of southeast Greenland’s more prestigious peaks, poised in anticipation of the gorge below filling with water to launch it on its voyage of preservation. Or maybe it won’t happen that way at all. Maybe we’ll all simply be engulfed one night while we’re asleep in our beds.

Whoosh
!

The Virtual Broadcast Venue is an outdoor amphitheatre in Virtual Life where events that promise to draw a large audience are held. The last time I was there was for what turned out to be author Kurt Vonnegut’s final interview. That discussion, too, was conducted by NPR’s Jack Straw Huckleberry for a series of interviews called
The Unlimited Mind
; and either ironically or not so ironically, Mr. Vonnegut (who was half-heartedly hawking his latest and what turned out to be his last book,
Man Without A Country
) made a reference to the same environmental issue on which Igloo Iceman and so many others are presently concentrated. Vonnegut lamented that the environmental damage was already well advanced and that in all probability nothing would be done to repair it, and that civilization was, in his estimation, kaput.

Just before eight o’clock, Virtual Life Time, I transfer into the VBV. The scheduled time for this event is quite convenient for me since in PL I live in Seattle. Neither Crystal nor Kiz has answered my IM, but I’m hoping they will both show up for the lecture. Making my way through the large crowd that has already gathered (the lecture has been advertised all over the VL network) I search for my friend Igloo, but I do not see him.

As I claim a seat close to the stage, I see Kizmet Aurora rezzing into the VBV, so I get up to greet her. Opening another window on my computer, I also check to see if Crystal has answered my original IM. As it turns out, she has, telling me that she will not be able to join us at the lecture, and that she will have to catch the broadcast later on YouTube. I lead Kiz to where I am sitting and make a place for her to sit as well.

A moment later, the emulation of Jack Straw Huckleberry rezzes onto the stage. He lands precariously, as if he is unaccustomed to traveling in such a fashion. Of course transference is not a foreign means of transportation to Mr. Huckleberry, as he has been logging on to VL for some time now in order to host events similar to this one. Nevertheless, his arrival is full of clumsy slapstick, and it brings laughter from those gathered in the VBV. Huckleberry smiles and says, “Sooner or later I’m going to get the hang of this…”

Of course the arrival of Mr. Huckleberry’s EM has piqued the crowd’s interest, and the chatter between those gathered to hear the presentation creates chaos on our conversation bars, so Kiz and I are forced to turn on our filters in order to talk privately. I tell Kiz that I’ve been doing a bit of research on global warming, and Kiz offers that where she lives on the high desert of northern Arizona temperatures are definitely on the rise. “During the summer of 2005,” she tells me, “Flagstaff had sixteen days over a hundred degrees.” Engaging in a game of one-upmanship, I relate Iggy’s story of how the lower floor of his house is no longer habitable because it is permanently flooded due to snow melt, and that he now has to live exclusively on the upper floor. Soon, he says, even that will not be possible, and he’ll have to abandon his house and find another place to live, which will make him, I suppose, one of the first refugees of global warming.

Kizmet Aurora types: Is he serious?

I type: In PL, Igloo lives in Greenland.

Kizmet Aurora types: Oh, I see.

“We’re just waiting now for our distinguished guest to log on and transfer to the VBV,” Huckleberry tells the audience over the microphone. His is now the only sound enabled voice in the REP.

As the featured speaker rezzes onto the VBV stage, he is greeted by scattered applause from those in the auditorium. The emulation of the respected Dr. Adler looks youthful and vital. In fact, his EM looks fifteen years younger than he does in photos I’ve seen in magazines and on the Internet, but who can fault him for that, as we all tend to cheat the calendar a bit when creating our emulations. (With Dr. Adler’s entrance to the VBV it becomes obvious to me that Igloo Iceman is nowhere to be found in the arena, but perhaps that is not so unusual as some VL citizens are known to manifest not as a single EM but two, or three, or even multiple emulations, and Igloo’s absence at an event with which he was not only concerned but actively involved only feeds the speculation that Igloo Iceman is indeed the EM of the esteemed and famous Arctic researcher, Dr. Conrad Adler. Who really knows? And who cares? Igloo Iceman or Conrad Adler, we’re all here to learn something about the catastrophe that is taking place above the Arctic Circle.) Dressed in casual clothes, and looking as if he’s about to go for a hike in the Sierras, Dr. Adler waves to the crowd in acknowledgement then greets Jack Straw Huckleberry. Once Dr. Adler’s EM is settled, Huckleberry begins to speak.

“What a fantastic crowd we have here tonight at the Virtual Broadcast Venue in Virtual Life to hear the remarks of our very special guest…

“Of course our guest does not need an introduction full of accomplishments and accolades, but I know you will join me in thanking him for being here in Virtual Life, and also for his concern for the earth, and for his courage to speak out at a time when far too many remain silent about what is obviously the most crucial issue of our time…

“Dr. Conrad Adler is well known for creating the Ki Principle—an ecological hypothesis that proposes that both living and nonliving parts of the earth must be viewed as a complex and interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Named after the Sumerian earth goddess, this hypothesis postulates that all life has a regulatory effect on Earth’s environment.

“Dr. Adler, who holds numerous degrees, and who continues to lecture at some of the world’s most prestigious universities, and to consult for some of the world’s largest and most influential corporations, is a scientist, a researcher, an author, an environmentalist, and a futurologist who, after twenty-five years’ research above the Arctic Circle, continues to document the recession of the polar icecaps, monitor species migration and document climatic changes.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm Virtual Life welcome to Dr. Conrad Adler.”

The crowd gathered on the bleachers at the VBV applauds loudly for Dr. Adler. At least a dozen conversation bars light up.

Standing before the podium, Dr. Adler first blows into his microphone and then poses the essential rhetorical question: “WHAT IS GLOBAL WARMING?” Without waiting for an answer he continues, “Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, and temperatures are rising. The vast majority of scientists, as well as a recent United Nations decree, acknowledges that global warming is a real phenomenon, that it is already well underway and that it is not a cyclical occurrence, but rather it is largely caused by human activities. If you had spent as much time as I have above the Arctic Circle, you would know that the changes are obvious. Glaciers are melting and plants and animals are being forced from their habitats. But the effects of Global warming are not visible only above the Arctic Circle. At lower latitudes, the number and frequency of severe storms, aberrant temperature fluctuations and droughts is increasing…

“To make matters even worse,” Dr. Adler laments, “companies—mostly big oil, but not exclusively—are actively funding research to challenge the scientific consensus as part of a strategy to mislead the public,” he reiterates. “This campaign is presently financed—about ten million dollars—by the largest carbon polluters on earth, and meant to create the impression that there is disagreement within the scientific community. The truth is that there is virtually no disagreement. But because we now live in a world where the dispersion of propaganda has been elevated to an art form, the deception persists and is accepted by the uninformed.”

A smattering of applause is heard throughout the audience in the VBV, and Adler waits until it is again quiet before continuing his speech.

“After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report that determined the cause of global warming to be man-made, the corporate denizens offered ten thousand dollars to the writer of each article published (and it didn’t seem to matter
where
it was published) that disputed the consensus of the Panel and scientific opinion. In short, they are happy to make us—each and every one of us—the unwitting victims of their corporate agenda!”

Again, applause is heard throughout the audience.

Dr. Adler continues: “The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade. I know this to be true not only from my research, but also from on-the-scene observation. At least two hundred species of plants and animals are already in retreat as a response to climate change. If the warming continues, we can expect disasterous consequences. The Arctic Ocean will be ice-free by the summer by 2050, or perhaps even sooner. Global sea levels will rise by as much as twenty-five feet, which will devastate coastal areas worldwide. But that’s not all… Intense heat waves will begin to scorch the more temperate areas of our planet. Droughts will deplete aquifers, and wildfires will claim our forests and grasslands. By the year 2050, more than a million species worldwide could be extinct. Yet, as dire as these predictions might seem, we can solve these problems with only the smallest changes to our daily routine. The time has come to wake up and get our heads out of the sand…”