In memoriam and a month late.

Back in earlyish 2000, my friend Becky and I were bored. We were bored and online and sitting in a MUX, which is basically a text-based universe that can be used for chat, immersive roleplaying, or anything in between. We were bored in the MUX and I had this crazy little webcomic about a girl and her snail, so we decided to post a blurb on the comic site, asking readers to come in and play with us.

We got a few folks trickling in... not sure how many, but probably not more than six. Only a couple stayed around for very long, though, and over the years we all sort of vaguely stayed in the same circle of mutualish e-friends. One of those fellows was vxo, radio-obsessed urban-exploring human lightning rod extraordinaire. The other was chrisxk.

I have been informed tonight that Chris died early last month. There's an obit here, though you may have to use bugmenot.com to actually get at it; basically on November 7th he was found dead. His brother says that the doctor types couldn't find a reason, and so they chalked it up to Chris just dying in his sleep. At the age of 22. What the hell, universe.

Now, I knew that Chris had disappeared off the Internet, but I wasn't actually all that concerned for a while. People just sometimes lose connectivity... hell, mecha and I lost it for like a month and a half when we forgot to pay that Comcast bill, and if I hadn't been a paid LJ user and/or had access to mechamom's apartment with its crappy dialup, I would've been e-silent for all that time. So I figured he would show up again eventually, and that maybe in another few weeks I would investigate, but not yet. Then someone contacted me on his AIM name while I was asleep and left without saying anything useful. That sort of piqued my concern, so I got ahold of Ken, his best meatspace friend, who got ahold of his (Chris's) brother on DeviantArt, who delivered the bad news. And then there's that obit, which seems to seal the deal. Chris is dead.

It was all very low-key, but I know that a couple of you knew that Chris and I were involved. Dating. Something. Whatever you call it when for most of it you're separated by a timezone or three. He asked me once if I would marry him, and I said yes. This Christmas would have been our anniversary. There is a very snarky, very angry part of me that is basically saying "congratulations everyone who said that an online relationship would never last; turns out you were right". The rest of me just wishes it could have not-lasted in a way that resulted in his still being alive and happy somewhere in the world, whether or not I was still involved.

I've taken about three hours to write this post, mainly because it's hard to write so I keep going off and doing other things instead. After Ken pasted me what Chris's brother wrote, I was kind of calm and numb about the whole thing, but the numbness is starting to wear off, possibly in part because I'm extremely tired. Probably mainly because I'm going to have some grievin' to get on. There is a Chris-shaped hole inside me right about now, and it's never going to be filled; everything's just going to have to kind of be rerouted around it. So it goes.

Goodbye, Chris. Rest in peace; as much as I love you, I'll still be forced to headshot you if you come back as a zombie.