Portraits

Note: Someone please rip this sucker apart so I can make it not stink. k thanks.

Portraits
Does anyone actually go to the Masterpiece Party anymore? Like, it exists, but every time I go, it’s almost completely barren.

Needless to say, if you want some privacy, it’s the place to go. But I don’t enter that party any more. I’d prefer to use my den. After last February, I’m never using that party again.

At that time, I was honestly kind of an edgy little prick. My friend Jamie and I liked to dress up our animals in dark spikes and worns, talk in complete sentences with impeccable grammar, and lurk in corners pretending we were cool.

Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, okay?

Anyway, our favorite pastime at that point was to find a deserted Masterpiece Party and go around griping at how ‘basic’ and ‘lame’ everyone’s art was. At the time, it made us feel oh-so-sophisticated and superior, and distracted us from how lackluster and unhappy our real lives were. Gods, we were agonizingly cringey.

The week of February the 7th, we were both playing Animal Jam at around 22:00 in the evening. Most of Jamaa was pretty deserted, since it was before the players from the other side of the planet really started going. We did the eagle adventure for a few rounds, harassed some roleplayers, and generally just screwed around, but eventually we got bored.

Jamie suggested we go do some ‘critiquing’, and I readily agreed. We joined the Kama server, which was supposed to be empty, and found ourselves a party. Strangely, though, there were a few people there. Three giraffes were in the corner by the store, dancing; two penguins were at the top of the stairs, trading; and a wolf was at the first landing, just sitting there with a Four Gem invite.

Okay, whatever. They were nonmembers; what were they going to do, tell us off? As if.

We went through the bottom floor of the gallery, actively mocking some of the less skillfully-done pieces. When we started on the second floor, however, something caught my eye.

It was a simple line-drawing with basic color of a generic wolf with a green star cape. The colors were really garish, to the point of being kind of nauseous. What was funny, though, was that the wolf we had seen at the other side of the party looked exactly the same as the one in the Masterpiece, Four Gem and all.

“Look here,” I typed to Jamie. “Someone made fanart.”

“By whom?”

I clicked the Masterpiece to see the username of its creator, but the name tag just loaded.

And loaded.

And loaded.

Finally, after a good forty seconds of this, I exited. “Sorry,” I said. “My computer is being absolutely awful.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Lol. Mine too. WhidbeyTel, am I right?” Jamie responded.

<p class="MsoNormal">We moved on to the next pieces of art, but something wasn’t quite right. The next two were in the same art style as the wolf, and depicted similar characters; three pink giraffes doing the dance in one, and two monkeys wearing glasses in the other.

<p class="MsoNormal">That was weird. How did a bunch of nonmembers pay to commission art – and get it into the Masterpiece party? That’s no mean feat.

<p class="MsoNormal">We went over to the players. They were doing the same things as before. The monkeys kept trading, and I realized they were trading their glasses back and forth, blue to green and back again. The giraffes danced – not even in synchrony, but a few beats behind each other.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Hey,” I said, standing by the wolf. “I have a question.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Let’s play Four Gem!”

<p class="MsoNormal">Okay, sure, why not. It’s not like I have anything better to do. It turns out, this guy is pretty bad, and I win in about seven moves.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Good game!” said the wolf, not moving. The Four Gem invite reappeared above its head.

<p class="MsoNormal">Jamie cut in. “Who made the Masterpiece with you in it?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Let’s play Four Gem!”

<p class="MsoNormal">“…”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Let’s play Four Gem!”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Okay, dude, whatever.” Jamie used the :think: emote, and sent me a jam-a-gram.

<p class="MsoNormal">''“People these days. Wanna go?”''

<p class="MsoNormal">''“Nah. I wanna see what’s up, lol.”''

<p class="MsoNormal">We went over to the giraffes, since the monkeys were still trading. “Who made your art?” I asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">They said nothing, and continued.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It looks just like you. Did you use a token?” I clicked their player tags to check the usernames, but nothing happened. Lordie, my game was slow. Jamie went back upstairs to check if he could see the artist’s username this time. When he returned, my game was so laggy that the animals seemed to just teleport bit-by-bit instead of animate. His penguin straight-up was frozen on my screen. “Hey, Wheat,” he typed. “Come check this out.”

<p class="MsoNormal">I tried to type a response, but the chatbox was so broken I gave up and just made my arduous way upstairs. Next to the Masterpiece of the two monkeys, there was a new one – simple black lines on a white background. But that wasn’t what was weird.

<p class="MsoNormal">The Masterpiece depicted us- well, not exactly. It showed a penguin with a spiked collar, Jamie’s signature character, and my similarly-decorated arctic wolf. My mouth went dry. That painting wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I looked back at the group of nonmembers. Not a single one of them had moved. “Hey, Jamie, I think we should go,” I typed. The words formed agonizingly slow.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Dude, let’s just do the rest of the paintings,” he began.

<p class="MsoNormal">But something else was happening. Every few seconds, our Masterpiece would re-load for a short time, and each cycle would appear a little more filled-in than the last. We our animals were being painted as we sat there.

<p class="MsoNormal">Screw that. I was done. “My den.” I clicked the appropriate icon and my screen went grey, the little loading arrow appearing in the center. As I waited, each of the nonmembers moved towards our player characters. The wolf, still frozen, slid rapidly towards mine. Panicking, I slammed my laptop shut.

<p class="MsoNormal">I sat there for the count of ten, holding the lid down; like I was afraid it would open against my will. After some time had passed, I opened the computer again, gingerly, and logged back into Animal jam. As far as I could tell, everything was online, but he wasn’t online. Without anything else to do, or anyone to talk to about this, I simply went to bed.

<p class="MsoNormal">The next day, we met at the library. I asked him if he’d just gone to bed after our little scare. He told me no, not right away. He’d been logged out, sure, but hadn’t been able to log back in. He didn’t know why. We used one of the library PCs to search up his username on my account, but it seemed to no longer exist.

<p class="MsoNormal">He’s sent four e-mails to AJHQ’s Help Center. Each response has been an auto-reply.

<p class="MsoNormal">I haven’t talked to Jamie lately. He was pretty rattled by what happened, and quit sometime in March. I don’t blame him, honestly.

<p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes, late at night, when my computer lags out, I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It’s stupid, I know. I shouldn’t be scared of a party. It was probably just a weird hack.

<p class="MsoNormal">I hope it was a hack.

<p class="MsoNormal">Please, god, let it be a hack.

-

''Based vaguely and poorly on the Snap "Lost in Time" from an episode of Snap Judgement's "Spooked!" series, produced by WNYC. Go check it out. It's way better.''