San Francisco--The Bulgarians standing before me are nothing but skin and bones. Strike that: they are nothing but bones, arranged in the form of skeletal avatars who are loitering in a gazebo that rises bizarrely from the middle of a mountain lake. "Hello, we're Bulgarians," one says, or rather types. "Where are you from?"

"I'm from the Planet Newbie," I type back, in a lame attempt at chat-room humor. The skeletons are unimpressed. One turns to the other and mutters into the scrolling chat window, "toia mi miri6e [sic]," which I imagine is what a virtual Bulgarian says when he can't raise his hand to make the shape of an L on his bony forehead. A moment later the figures disintegrate with a zap.

This article was originally published with the title A Wide Web of Worlds.

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