Location: Unknown, but Scary

Remember the Twilight Zone episode called “It’s a Good Life,” in which a six-year-old Billy Mumy (later to be Will Robinson, of Lost in Space fame) acquired godlike powers and decided to punish adults? He sealed off his small town in a sort of “pocket universe” where he ruled.  If anyone displeased him, the six-year-old godling would banish him or her into “The Cornfield,” never to be heard from again.

This is a legend about Linden Lab®…they made a Cornfield for the worst of griefers and malcontents. Their avatars would be sent there, and the owners could not make them leave. They’d be able to chat with each other in a place that had a stand of corn and a rusty tractor.  But that was it.  They were in the virtual afterlife.

Until recently, I thought this all an invention.  But Justin, one of my students, got stuck in a terrible place; in trying to rescue him, I nearly followed.  He had been shopping at a store that sold Star Wars avatars.  When he logged back on, all he could see was a bleak horizon, half gray and half brown, stretching into infinity.  He could communicate with no one.  He was online but not: when I logged on, I could not detect him or bring him to safety with a teleport.

So we met, in person, in my office to untangle this. Justin logged in on my laptop using the Second Life® fake world, and using the Onrez client I logged in on the same machine and went to his location. The store was gone.  In its place was a typically banal SL™ home, and when I walked up, it got a message along the lines of “you have 60 second to leave this property or you will be ejected!”  As I scurried away I wondered—between Justin’s log-ins had the property changed hands, and his last location become a sort of limbo?

Moving out of range of the grim warning, I look the controls from Justin and began to use SL’s™ camera settings to view the confines of his prison.  Soon I saw what looked like a hole in the roof of his prison and the SL™ full moon. But his avatar could not move toward it.  For just a second, however, Justin showed on Iggy’s screen as “Online.”

I lunged for the “teleport” button as Justin yelled “get me the hell out of there!”  The story ended with Justin reaching the safe-haven of Richmond Island….and we both wondered, as we lounged by the university’s virtual gazebo, if we hadn’t both had a close enounter with….The Cornfield.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

We didn’t—it was actually VERY tough to fish Justin out!

Pappy Enoch wants to “investermergate” it for two reasons—

1) Shine comes from corn
2) He can leave his sister Jezzabel there and be rid of her

Talking of Afterlife always reminds me of that one TNG Episode I love most. The dialogue between Q and Picard is worth a million:

Q:“Welcome to the afterlife, Jean-Luc. You’re dead.“
P:“Q, what is going on?“
Q:“I told you. You’re dead, this is the afterlife, and I’m God.“
P:“You are not God!“
Q:“Blasphemy! You’re lucky I don’t cast you out or smite you or something.“
P:“I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you; the universe is not so badly designed.“
P:“My only regret is dying and finding you here.“

The funny thing is that it has an involuntary hint on SL hidden in it *G*

Nevertheless I find it interesting that such a place exsist and if it has an effect one the ones who are the “clients” of this place.
Did you two have the time to investigate if this really was a LL place and not a very bad joke by some resident which would be worth an abuse report?

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