The sometimes webjournal of Nate Green

This is the beginning to a story I wrote (and didn’t even come close to finishing) for National Novel Writing Month in November, 2011. I liked the idea of starting off with an interview, like you’re reading a magazine article. I jumped into the rest of the story after I finished the fake interview, but I didn’t get very far so this is just the interview part. The story takes place in the not-too-distant future and it’s basically the story of the internet as it becomes a virtual world.

By Monica Quintero

He sits in the chair across from me, not looking anxious but not relaxed either. Just sort of mildly uncomfortable. A mug sits on the table before him, steam pulsing up and away from his face. He is young. He is thin. His skin is a pale color. He doesn’t stand out, really. Not in any particular way. Not extremely attractive or unattractive. His face is sort of mushy. No hard lines. His eyes are the one exception to the otherwise uninterestingness of his appearance. They are greyish blue and have a certain sparkle that catches you off guard, reminds you of wild old fishermen. Except they, the fisherman, are bronzed and he is so very pale, like a ghost.

Like a ghost.

‘Let’s start at the very beginning,’ I say. ‘For anyone who’s been living in a cave for the last couple decades, what is the ghost layer?’

He leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath. ‘The internet took shape at the beginning of the century. It changed the world, but it was restrictive. It was limited. The only way to access it or use it was through one of the old computers, with a screen and a keyboard and this thing called a mouse.

‘It wasn’t long before you could interact with the internet through smaller, more intuitive and user-friendly devices. Phones and tabs. Everyone began using them to use the internet.

‘At the same time that technology was making everything smaller and faster and user interfaces were becoming simpler and more a part of everyday life, the games were evolving. The software companies back then were working hard at making digital worlds look and act more and more like our own.

‘People would play these games together. The internet was like a spider’s web that connected them to servers and to each other. In fact, they used to call the internet the World Wide Web. Anyways, these players would get completely lost in the games, immersed in a second reality. They found it more compelling than their own reality.

‘That was when companies began to experiment with a fully immersive internet experience. Mesh together the second reality of the games, whole and complete, with the limitless potential of the internet. Billions of people sharing a digital world.

‘Again, people got lost in their made up worlds. Many elements of the games blended into the immersive experiences of the internet. Those experiences, those portals, became lenses through which you saw the raw information. The information was the same, but the lenses shaped it into a digital reality. And those digital realities could be created any way the shapers wanted.

‘All of those different lenses, at first separate and strictly controlled and guarded, began to mesh together into one giant mish-mash of internet immersion, which came to be known as the game layer. Later people started calling it the ghost layer.’