Everything is lagging.
I turn my head. In slow-motion, it blurs across the screen. My cat dashes through the room;
you see: cat, empty space, cat;
you hear: some kind of loud noise, like thundering hooves,
then silence.
This is your brain on
drugs
dial-up.
This is what becomes of the real world when you have been living at a 16,043 latency for hours. Suddenly, you’re dead and wondering if maybe you lag-kited one of those crazy dragons into your living room.
Curled up in an over-sized chair, laptop balanced on my knee, I blink.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s snowing?’” I think, staring at a friend’s message. “Didn’t it just do that? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it just did that.”
I shake my head and return to trying to get across Honor Hold.
“Gryphon master…so…close…” Disconnect. “NOOOO!” I have been attempting this journey for ten minutes.
“I’m just trying to get back to an AH!” I type furiously to another friend. The text doesn’t even appear on my screen before -
Disconnect.
When I log back on, my buddy is still standing by the inn mailbox. He waves at me. I start to type a “c’ya when I have a better connection” -
Disconnect.
DENIED!! You have attempted an unauthorized disconnect! Die, bitch, die!
…
The power goes out.
My mother walks in and says, “It’s snowing.”