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“Sleepy” visitors can spend the better part of their lifetimes in the Grids. Embodied as ghostly icons with synthetic voices,

these people drift throughout the Grids, acting out shadow-puppet reflections of the human experience. Their words tend to be clipped, slurred, or overly eloquent, depending on the typing speed and writing skill of the people on the other end of the icon. Quite often, they’re an obnoxious, self-centered reminder of how far we are from global Utopia. Years ago, many Virtual Adepts claimed that Reality 2.0 would uplift the human animal. If the Grids provide examples of that theory, though, it’s pretty hard to find. Although you can witness kindness and affection on the Grids, the SCREAMING ALL-CAPS STUPIDITY of many Grid-sheep makes for a disillusioning experience.

And yet, as in the mortal realm, there’s still hope for us there on the Grid. For every racist, homophobic Echo Chamber fuck, there are charities and sympathies, hugging icons and old friends reunited on the Web. You’ll find forgiveness and enlightenment and folks hooking up, sexually or otherwise, through shared interests and validations. The Grid Sectors provide cacophonous proof that humanity bounces between angels, apes, and assholes. We might be a long way from perfection, but it’s not time to give up on us quite yet.

Awakened visitors have vivid icons with voices and behaviors that seem almost human. Astral immersion provides the most flexible experience, whereas holistic immersion and Web-climbing provide the most solid icons. Sensory visitation creates a hazy icon that’s still more tangible than a Sleeper icon from the Grid. It sometimes takes a moment or two, but Awakened folks can often recognize each other’s nature, if not identity, in the Web.

Identity is an elusive concept in this space. As I mentioned earlier, folks project aspects of their Earthly selves here, but those aspects can be deceptive. An icon might look nothing whatsoever like that person’s physical self. Skilled netizens can appear in whatever form they choose. More often than not, you can guess a lot about a person in Meatspace by the way they behave. After all, appearances aren’t everything. In the Digital Web, however, identity is fluid and often unpredictable. For bleaters and Awakened netizens alike, this Zone provides potent lessons about the tricky nature of reality.

There’s a point of demarcation between what we know as reality and the vaster Reality beyond our world. And that point’s often called the Horizon. A metaphysical membrane around the many layers of our Earth, it presents a second, thicker Gauntlet that insulates our world from outer space… and probably protects space from us as well.

Unlike the Earthly Gauntlet, you can’t step through this wall unless you’re skilled

and powerful enough to try. Astral masters can project their consciousness beyond this point, and lucky travelers can fly through Anchorheads. Technologically inclined folks hop on rocket ships and blast through the planet’s atmosphere, and the fortunate (or unfortunate) others employ portals to reach the Horizon and beyond.

Metaphysically speaking, the Horizon is a titanic wall around the Otherworlds – a shadow of the edge of material Earth’s atmosphere. Whereas the air gets thin up there, however, the spirit barrier gets thicker. Appearing in the Middle Umbra

as a rain- or moon-bow and in the High Umbra as the clouds atop the Spires, the Horizon has been called the Dreamshell – enclosing the dreams of humanity while sheltering us, perhaps, from the dreaming Void.

Because, you see, the Void does dream. By “Void,” I don’t mean the inner Void where souls get recycled in the Underworld, although that probably dreams as well. I’m referring to the Great Void of outer space, the fathomless reaches that stagger comprehension. Throughout most of human history, this was the place we could not go – the Vault of Heaven, the Firmament. In recent years, however, human beings have not just observed and theorized about the mysteries of outer space – we have pierced them. And in our dreams and nightmares, it comes to visit us as well.