Epilogue: Returning to the Scene of the Crime
Discovering the "Corpse"
Epilogue: Returning to the Scene of the Crime
The first problem came when both Carla and Dean graduated from the Masters program and took jobs at the University. In their transition from faculty to staff, their student accounts were deleted. Links to images residing in these accounts were suddenly meaningless. Similarly, a change in network protocol ensured that although my student files still existed on a campus server, the existing links were invalid. Fortunately for us, the impact was minimal. While the images did not appear, the actual objects still existed on the LinguaMOO server and the text-based descriptions were still present. The objects weren't as "pretty" and visual, but they were functional... at least for a while.
After the conclusion of our Writing in Cyberspace course, I periodically returned to LinguaMOO to check on the virtual home where my player resided and to visit The Loft. But as other classes and life demanded more of my time, those visits became less and less frequent. Eventually, months would lapse between log-ins. But as graduation approached and I began to assemble my portfolio, I realized I needed to tour The Loft and review my analysis of the project. After an extended absence, I returned to the MOO and found a virtual "corpse." During the year I had been away, the fiction had atrophied. Neglect had finally begun to claim the life of our project.
I assume that because of our periodic log-ins to LinguaMOO, Dean's account and mine survived. The objects we had created still existed on the server. But as I noted earlier, many links were broken. After a search of my personal hard drive and various archive discs, I was able to locate many of the images that were no longer accessible. I used personal web space provided by my ISP to upload these files. Then I began the tedious process of recoding links. I logged on as CDV and corrected URLs to point to the files that I had in my possession. But The Loft was still crippled.
Two major losses were apparent and likely irreparable. First, Carla's account no longer existed on LinguaMOO. Her player and all the objects associated with it were gone. The layers of ambiance she added had vanished. The watering can with the head-shaped dent (a weapon of self defense in our mystery) was gone. It was as if the elusive heroine of our mystery, Lili, had returned to her former home and removed her belongings. Having experienced the space in its previous richness, I could feel the absence of these objects.
The second loss was another linchpin of the fiction. Adam's computer, an object that had been carefully constructed to dole out clues about the 12-Step Murders, no longer functioned. The HTML pages that drove the computer had been housed on a free web server used by Dean. But that account had expired and the code was lost. And Dean did not have an archive of the pages.
The damage could have been much worse. Had Dr. English "recycled" our avatar, the entire structure of The Loft would have vanished. Other objects would have been destroyed. The work of countless hours could have disappeared without a trace.
The emergency triage performed for my portfolio has stemmed the bleeding. But much reconstruction will be required if the space is ever to be whole again and function as a viable MOO fiction. For now, The Loft serves only as a reminder of the literary promise of the MOO... and as a symbol of the repercussions when collaboration "dies."