New Year’s Eve 1999. An ordinary day in the Metaverse.
This is a science-fiction short story I wrote in 1996, published at the conference komm96 „new media is the message“ in German and English (in print). 25 years later and some parts are still sci-fi, but we’re slowly getting there.
“You always have to do everything at the last minute!” grumbled Tom in the background. “Just go all in blue and wear orange contact lenses — that will look very fiberoptic!” She shook her head, slightly annoyed — only a man could come up with an idea like that! It was warm outside for the time of year, but even in Amsterdam the temperature would drop below 12° by evening and then it would be best for a lady to have something to put on over the oh-so-chic, but alas! insufficiently warm, new skin colour. Slightly absent-mindedly she said aloud “no — I need something new, I’ve gone right off the whole outfit I tried on before. I need something more suitable for this evening!”
As she spoke to him she waved both hands through the air in a hectic gesture close to the left-hand wall of her bedroom in order to make space.
She felt she was under attack from colourful balloons — those damned advertising bots no longer stayed up on top of buildings or at the edge of well-worn virtual paths.
It hadn’t taken long for the colourful advertising banners from the old HTML days to transform into blaring, rotating cubes, constantly announcing their attractive offers from some corner or other. Only when clever advertising strategists took account of the fact that traditional habits from the real world — such as carefully pasting ads on walls — had no place here in cyberspace did the advertising messages mutate into bouncy shapes jumping up and down in front of avatars. From then onwards the suggestive, tipsy forms seemed to appear in every colour and shape right in front of one’s face, and it became difficult to avoid them.
That then was the result of her having ventured into the high citadel of cyber commerce — in the Mega Mall, alongside the gaudiest logos and most insistent bots, there were simply the newest, most fashionable and up-to-date stores, often exclusive ones.
She roughly pushed aside yet another of the jittery ad bots in an effort to progress faster. But, she thought, after all, everything here was free, that was a big advantage.
Ah, now she could see the shiny new logo of the clothing factory — just accelerate a little more and she would be there. Impatiently she made a dynamic movement with her pointed right-hand index finger, seemingly at the middle of her bedroom wall. She had already been shopping here three times, not until the fifth time would she become a loyal customer with a private key to provide direct access to the dressing room. Without the nerve-racking process of flying there!
She glanced at the top right-hand corner of her screen wall where Tom’s head should have been visible. Strangely, she saw a sort of video image of a house front, which appeared to be moving downwards, and she heard strange noises as if from a winch. “Hey, what are doing there? Have you left your mobile in an elevator, or what??” she asked, bewildered.
Tom just sniggered and the image in the corner became blurred for a moment. Then his grinning face filled the entire comm window and panned slowly to one side to give a view of the landscape behind him. He appeared to be waving with his mobile -actually a “wrist com”, but no-one used that name for the little communicators with their pop-up, colourful LCDs and miniature cameras — in a random horizontal line, because she could now see down, a little lop-sided, on the swaying roofs of Berlin.
He was hovering in mid-air — she could only see the watery-blue sky now, and suddenly realized where he was. He was in the small cabin of the bungee crane at Potsdamer Platz, which was just winching him up to the jump platform. His voice emanated indistinctly from the loudspeaker in her wall: “I just wanted to give myself a little shot of adrenalin, so that I’m really fit for the next 24 hours — after all, it’s the party of the millennium!”
She grinned too and spoke in a slightly admonishing tone to him: “My goodness, don’t go making a habit of it! But perhaps I will manage it too before we fly off. Keep your arm in front, won’t you? I at least want to experience your jump from here!” She wouldn’t be able to send off her order in time to make it to the nearest bungee crane before leaving, she thought, a little bad-tempered.
Knitting her brows she turned away from the wall display with Tom’s picture and with this sudden move of her head returned to her 3D glasses. She hadn’t moved an inch in the Mega Mall during the conversation with Tom.
During her “absence” her avatar was indicated by a red coil for the other data-travel shoppers and ad hots. That way everyone could see that she was involved in something else and that contact would be pointless.
Now she was “there” again, however, with a full attention span, and immediately the next sparkling personality approached her. Wow, she thought to herself, a creative will be getting a fabulous commission for this.
A naked alabaster male body made straight for her and gave her a truly languishing look. If only it hadn’t been for the give-away Pepsi logo tattoos which covered his whole body …
He was just an avatar ad bot. She really had to pull herself together so as not to try taking the entire object in her hand after all and look at it from all angles. But she really didn’t have time to allow herself to be catapulted into the noisy Pepsi World — a direct encounter was enough and she would be in the network of the soft drink which was now the world’s favourite beverage. And undoubtedly not without spending a few easy Cyberbucks for useless little items.
With a small sigh, she turned away from the good-looking advertising dummy and knocked on the main door of the clothing factory, though she could hardly feel the door through her ancient feedback glove.
The stupid sensors were slowly giving up, she thought morosely.
The enormous company sign swayed in front of her: “Dress-in-time”. Yes. That was exactly what she needed right now.
“Watch — now!!” Tom shouted loud in the middle of her room. In an instant, she made a jerking movement with her head in order to eliminate the colourful 3D world which had just been present in her glasses so that she could take in the breathtaking camera pictures in the right-hand corner of her screen. Amazing — 180 metres is quite something compared with the laughable 90 which most of the bungee towers in the open-air shopping centres were still offering. She could still hear the liberating cry of her friend as the transmission window of her screen went black. Damn, she thought, now he hasn’t managed to close the LCD cap before the bungee rope stopped his fall -these silly new mobiles really aren’t up to much! But what does it matter, it will have given him the kick he needs for the party -it’s time I got going here. She returned to the other colourful scene taking place on the inside of her glasses and enveloping her. She was now in the middle of the lobby of “Dress-in-time” and said, in a loud voice, “Party dress, female” only to find herself alone a moment later in an attractive, large dressing room where party dresses of all kinds floated in every direction. Great — that one over there made of wool … rubbish, she still hadn’t got used to the spring-like temperatures in December. She would only perspire in plastic so — cotton. “Cotton!” she said curtly into the seeming emptiness. In a trice, about 50% of the dresses disappeared and she had a much better view. There! That one was to her liking. It sort of worked like an orange, because it seemed she could “peel” herself out of half of the trouser suit. She wanted to try it on — that way she would be dressed for any temperature.
“We can particularly recommend the >Millennium< model today, available in all materials…” sang the really quite pleasant voice of the female salesperson avatar which had suddenly appeared in the middle of the dressing-room.
“Quiet!” she called, slightly on edge, and the business-hungry programme fell silent at once. At least one didn’t have to be polite to this sort of salesperson, she thought, relieved.
She took the “orange” in her hands and said, “try on”. Straight away the pleasant voice asked in a questioning tone “your own dummy?” She simply murmured “yes” and was immediately aware of the transmission window for her dummy projected on the inside of her 3D glasses. Mmmm… she ought to take another look at her three-dimensional luxury body before sending it through the net for trying on clothes. After all, these express tailor-made jobs are damned expensive, so everything should fit like a glove.
She sighed briefly as she viewed the simplified model of her own body in the pop-up window of the 3D module from all angles.
That isn’t quite right anymore… over Christmas she had put on her usual 3 kilograms of flab around her otherwise bony hips. It was time to update again. “Update, scan!” she whispered resignedly into the emptiness of the room and stood on a platform for the purpose.
Tom called in again suddenly from far away and asked in an excited tone: “Did you find anything? Let me see!” “No, I have to adjust my dummy to the current sad state of affairs first, so that everything will fit! Are you acquainted with these new dress factories?” He thought for a moment and said “Aren’t they the ones which virtually sew your order the moment you place it? But that normally takes at least 24 hours before it arrives here!” She nodded. “They have just opened one of those dress-in-time factories in Siemensstadt, it’s really great. They deliver everything in Greater Berlin within 2 hours.” “Well even then you will have to get your skates on…” he remarked, amused. “The longer I chat to you, the less time I have. I’ll call you as soon as I’m finished, ok?” He just nodded and waved goodbye. Then she closed the link window and the whole wall screen disappeared.
She quickly sent the 3D dummy to the database of her temporary dressing room and the orange-peel suit wrapped itself around her virtual contours.
After choosing the colour and recovering from the shock of the price, she concluded her shopping with a clear “purchase!” and left the boring process of paying to her personal helper (which she had trained perfectly in the past three years) — her agent programme always knew much better than she from which accounts she should allocate money.
Great. In two hours at the latest, she would be holding her tailor-made, freshly sewn party outfit in her hands and then it would ‘be time to leave for the airport — to her first New Year’s Eve on this historic date.
Still a little high, tired and damaged, she returned home just before 8 o’clock the next morning. Well, by Gates, that was one real disadvantage of such a crowd — “outside”, you couldn’t just switch off the sensors!
So many bruises. Oh well. That was some party though! 150,000 people (IRL!).
And then there were those funny touch tables with the long, sensor-operated gloves which allowed all sorts of silly goings-on with party guests from the net. The tables were a sort of bridge between participants of the open-air event “outside” and those who had joined in via the net.
A short bath, coffee and then on to the next New Year’s Eve party — this time with friends on the West Coast, where they would be starting the count-down in less than an hour. And all in a homemade party dress of a special kind: as a flower with exactly 2000 petals. Her future partners at the touch table would be hard put to find her ticklish points! This time she was on the safe side…
She giggled contentedly and stepped carefully into the brand-new full-duplex data suit which her girlfriend in San Francisco had given her. “Fiberop, this one,” she murmured and jumped into the metaverse.
