Before there was Second Life, before Fiona, before I met Kim, there was LambdaMOO. LambdaMOO is a text based virtual reality, a programmable chat room, Second Life with nothing but text. Over time people built other MOOs, connected them together, added web interfaces and so on, but LambdaMOO is the flagship.

I’ve been on LambdaMOO for about fourteen years now. Friends there helped me through my divorce. I celebrated New Years Eve with them, sometimes online, sometimes at bashes where they would gather. I’ve stayed in real life cabins with crowds of MOOers and on September 11th, I hung out in the MOOs to talk with friends about the events of the day.

On November 1, 2000 Kim and I celebrated our marriage in LambdaMOO. I have a log of the wedding ceremony which I’ll have to get back online soon.

One person who attended our wedding was Xaviera. Neither Kim nor I ever met Xaviera face to face, but we would often talk in the Living Room of Lambda.

In Lambda, people have entrance messages, a phrase that gets displayed when a person enters a room. Xaviera’s entrance message was

“Xaviera lights a cigarette and contemplates your mortality.”

Today, I contemplate her mortality. As I was hanging out in Second Life, an old LambdaMOO refugee got in touch with me. He asked if I had heard about Xaviera’s death. Several months ago, she had moved back to Worchester, MA and was living in an apartment by herself. Another friend told me she had a degenerative disease in her legs and hips. Whatever the reason, she slipped and fell in the shower. She hit her head and died of the head injuries.

I don’t know how old Xaviera was. I always thought of her as being younger than myself, and it is strange to be contemplating the death of a friend who you think of as younger than you, even if the friendship was only an online friendship.

So, as part of my homage to Xaviera, let me post her description as she appeared at our wedding:

Xaviera

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folks who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.

-Dorothy Parker

Xaviera is wearing her ghost dance shirt. She proudly displays Xaviera's
Official Helpful Person Badge.
She is awake and looks alert.
Carrying:
subpoena compact
Pumpkin Seeds Blue Topaz Ring
little blue dildo vanilla body oil
yoyo Xaviera's smile
toy gun

Just as people on LambdaMOO have entrance messages, they also have exit messages. Before Xaviera left the wedding she exclaimed, “"For 100 years!!!"” She left with the exit message, “Xaviera looks for other. . .amusements.” May she find those other amusements and never be forgotten.

Mine exit message is “you leave em laughing when you go”. It is from Both Sides now, by Joni Mitchell.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

I don’t know life at all, perhaps none of us do. Yet as we contemplate our mortality, it is important to leave people laughing as we look for other amusements.

Rest in Peace, Xaviera