They found his avatar standing motionless next to a pile of prims, slumped at the shoulders like a marionette whose strings had been cut. T1g3r bumped Daisy45 to get her attention, “Hey Daze, take a look at this guy.”
Daisy45 sidestepped T1g3r’s aggressive moves and zoomed her camera toward the motionless avatar, orbiting her view to examine it from all sides. It was a male avatar, shorter than average, with unfashionable, helmet-like mesh hair that hugged his skull like a lump of clay. He wore a tight-fitting charcoal flight jacket with the words, “Abbotts Aerodrome” printed in gold across the back, and on his feet, to Daisy45′s amusement, were default avatar shoes. Not even prim shoes: just textured feet.
“Phht, some noob,” she smirked. “Default hair and shoes. Let’s go.” And with that, Daisy45 turned to scout for more interesting material to scavenge, with T1g3r scampering ahead on all fours. Honestly, Daisy45 found T1g3r’s presence annoying, but useful. He had a way of sniffing out previously-undiscovered content.
For several hours, they had been combing the remains of this grid. It wasn’t glamorous work, but for every unique new texture or object they could scrape from this dead world and upload into the OpenGrid, they earned gridbux for new toys and an item of clothing or two. Maybe even an upgrade to their avatars so they could get into the popular sims. Enough, eventually, to leave behind the salvage business altogether and earn full grid citizenship. Daisy45 suppressed a sigh at such distant goals. Here in the decay of the first grid, all of that seemed infinitely far away. Continue reading →
