Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

She seemed to be in some kind of virtual garden, with brown autumnal trees swaying in a gentle wind. It was as if Maggie were operating a camera, lurking a few yards behind and several feet above the avatar, one that followed its-her-every move. Now, as she went through the trees, the leaves loomed larger, in sharp, clear focus, as if the lens of her camera were right up close. It was bizarre and strangely mesmerizing.

She turned left, yet the buxom girl on screen didn’t seem to move. Rather the whole frame swivelled, the picture rotating around her as if she had turned left. Now she could see houses, the grey slate of the roof tiles suddenly appearing in pin-sharp detail. And there was a sound, a repeated phrase of music, like a fairground jingle. Sure enough, Maggie could see in the distance a spinning carousel. As she walked towards it, the music got louder. She seemed to be approaching via a meadow: with each step that she took, flowers would sprout from the ground in brilliant shades of violet, yellow and scarlet.

Maggie looked down at the scribbled instructions taken from Liz’s email. To get to the room where she would find the virtual Maggie Costello, the venue for the peace simulation game, she had to hit the Map button, then find the My Landmarks pulldown menu and look for Harvard University, Middle East Studies. It was there, close to the top. Once selected, she hit Teleport and smiled as the computer gave off a suitably sci-fi whoosh sound, suggesting a Star Trek-style leap across the universe. The screen darkened, lit up with a message that said ‘Second Life, Arriving…’ and then, an instant later, she saw the girl in the skinny jeans and croptop standing somewhere else entirely, still in the foreground, as if in the lens of a camera hovering overhead.

Now she was surrounded on all sides by buildings, arranged as if on a university campus. Some were rendered in traditional brick, others constructed in more modish steel and glass. As the avatar walked ahead, the arms swinging metronomically, Maggie noticed the surface of the ground, cobbled just as a campus path should be.

In front of her was a ramp, with words printed on it which became legible only as you approached. Welcome to the Faculty for Middle East Studies . She moved upward, marvelling at the change in perspective as she did so. There were pictures in the lobby, which swivelled as she hit the arrow keys. There was a reception desk and, at shoulder level, a series of signposts. Maggie took the one marked Peace Simulation.

Suddenly she was inside a room laid out in classic negotiation style: a long, wide wooden table with space for more than twenty people around it. It seemed to be full, avatars sitting in each place, with namecards in front of each one. There was one for the American President, another for the Secretary General of the UN and several more for the leaders of assorted interested parties: the perennial ‘moderate’ Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, the European Union, Russia and others. Away from the table, ringing the room, were chairs laid out for officials, from the US Secretary of State on down. She moved her cursor over the American team, revealing Bruce Miller and Robert Sanchez, until she came across a female avatar, with long brown hair and a trim figure, wearing a dully vacant expression. A black information bubble appeared: Maggie Costello, US mediator .

‘At least I’m in the room,’ Maggie muttered to herself. She guessed these were dumb avatars, inert mannequins installed inside Second Life as props to add to the authenticity of the scene. You had to give it to the geek community: they certainly cared about detail.

It was then Maggie noticed that two of the figures around the table were not still, but wobbling. They were facing each other, identified by their on-screen bubbles as Yaakov Yariv and Khalil al-Shafi. They had the faces of the two men too, or a very close computer simulation of them. Only the bodies and clothes didn’t fit. They were computer-game generic, presumably allocated automatically by Second Life software. Either that or Israel’s aged Prime Minister still maintained an ostentatiously muscled chest, while the Fatah leader secretly liked to dress like an urban clubber, complete with tight-fitting T-shirt. Now that she was this near, her avatar standing halfway between the door and the head of the table, she could eavesdrop on their conversation. She checked her watch. Early evening on the East Coast: these were probably a couple of postgrads putting in some extra hours of role play.

A speech bubble appeared by the Yaakov Yariv avatar. A single line of yellow text. Hello? Can we help you? Are you taking part in the peace simulation?

Maggie was flummoxed. What on earth should she say? Should she pretend to be someone else? There was only one thing for it. She would have to stay in character. Valley girl, she decided. She hit the Chat key and typed. As the words appeared on the screen, she noticed her avatar change posture: its arms were now raised up, the hands flapping. Maggie realized her on-screen alter ego was miming typing.

hope i’m not crashing in here guys, but i’m doing my major in int rels and if i could listen in, it could really help.

Yariv came back a second or two later, the hands of his avatar now waggling in front of him, as if hitting the keys of an unseen keyboard.

Where do you study?

Maggie hesitated, looking again at Liz’s avatar.

burbank community college.

There was a pause.

OK .

Maggie waited, enjoying this strange little game. She wondered what kind of antics Liz got up to here. Did she have the boyfriend in Second Life that she lacked in the first one?

The al-Shafi character began. Have you seen the Silwan map, the latest one?

There was a delay of a second or two. Then a bubble popped up by the Yariv avatar. We saw it. It involves a bypass route for the water main.

Khalil al-Shafi: Yes .

Yaakov Yariv: Who would pay for that?

Khalil al-Shafi: We propose three years from the EU-UN fund, eventually to be self-sustaining .

Yaakov Yariv: With access to the Jordanian aquifer?

Khalil al-Shafi: We imagine so. But we would need your in-principle agreement before we would put that to the Jordanians .

Maggie nodded her head in professional admiration. You had to hand it to these kids: they were certainly taking their studies seriously, not trading platitudes but getting into the real detail of the negotiations. Water was one of those issues whose importance eluded most outsiders to the Middle East conflict: too busy thinking about oil.

Good for them, she thought. She went back to her keyboard, back to the busty Valley girl.

you guys are really smart! thanks a bunch but i think i’d better study some more before i’m ready for this stuff, wish me luck!

Having said her goodbyes, Maggie mis-hit the arrow keys, haphazardly staggering forward and back. Then, embarrassed, as if she really were in a room with two Harvard post-grads and was fumbling her exit, she hit the Fly button. Sure enough, the glamorous avatar rose from the ground and, with a little help from the forward arrow, took flight.

Immediately, she collided with a neighbouring building, smacking her virtual head on it, watching her virtual self flinch for no more than a second. But a few moments later she was soaring above the Harvard campus. The graphics were extraordinarily detailed, like architects’ three-dimensional projections, showing the white stucco cladding on the Dunster House clock-tower, even the newsstands and bicycle racks of Harvard Yard.

She carried on flying, her arms outstretched, her body horizontal, like a heavy-chested Superman. Occasionally she would swoop down to take a closer look. She saw hodge-podge buildings, as if constructed one extension at a time, surrounded by their own bumpy landscapes: private homes, she soon realized, with gardens. She flew over a stretch of water, spotting a palm-fringed island. Once she got lower, a notice popped up on her screen: a promotional ad for a concert to be performed there by some eighties rocker tomorrow night. Maggie shook her head in bemused awe.