Jeff wrote off the terminated relationship as a chance to take an appraisal of his life. At 36, he felt no rush to jump into another romance, so he settled into his work, organized the I-I group basketball team, and enjoyed his MLB On Demand. And played Sword Dynasty while he watched the innings and weeks roll by.

Jeff quickly figured that the computer game was challenging more from an endurance perspective than anything else. He decided to pick one of the skills that required the least concentration and train that skill to the maximum level the programmers allowed — level 100.

As the innings passed by, Jeff clicked away on the screen developing Igor's Enchantment ability while occasionally chatting with on-line friends like Hack-master. Every rare now and then, he would try some other aspect of the game besides working on the Enchantment skill. It was on just such an occasion (while the Cardinals plastered the Cubs) that Igor sauntered into the lair of the infamous Frost Giant.

Igor: Dude, are you sure I can get Lembly Bread here?

Hack-master: Yea m8. U have to kill frosty though, then search his trunk

Igor: How long after I kill him till he respawns?

Hack-master: About 30 secs. When he reappears, he'll be over by the fire pit

Hack-master: if U have to run, U can go toward the bone pile

Hack-master: He can't cross the bones

Igor: K

Jeff moused his character carefully into combat. Killing the Frost Giant once was not too bad, but Igor was not the best fighter around, so after one battle, he had very few hit points left. His goal was to collect a dozen or so Lembly Breads, so he had come prepared with a pack full of healing potions. Though he was ready for the recycling stream of Frost Giants, he was not ready for what actually happened.

Just as he got his first Lembly Bread from the trunk, another player entered the lair. It was a female character, so Jeff assumed the player was also female, though that was not necessarily the case. The programmers had devised the images for the females to be obviously female, barely half a notch past conservative in design.

Routinely, he moused over the newly arrived character to see her name and combat level.

Alilshy (87)

Not bad, Jeff thought. Ten levels higher than me.

He clicked away such that Igor drank a healing potion and made ready for the Frost Giant to appear once more.

Any place where monsters spawned regularly attracted numerous players — especially those that granted access to useful items like Lembly Bread. There were a few tactics that could be used when two players wanted to fight the same creature.

One was to whine something like, "I was here first. Go away."

Jeff attributed this tactic to be a sign of the most immature of the early teen players sharing the world of Sword Dynasty with a fair population of adults.

Another tactic was to say nothing and just try to be the first to attack.

There were other tactics as well, but then there was . . .

Alilshy: Take turns?

Igor: Sure. You go next

Alilshy: OK

Jeff half thought to strike up a conversation, but could think of nothing to say. He figured something would come up soon enough, so he waited. Looking at her name, Jeff tried to figure out how to say it.

Al-le Al-ilsh-ee Al-ilsh-eye . . . . He could make no sense of it. Just then, a third character entered the lair.

Boris: hey shy. found u

Alilshy: Hi Boris. Didn't know I was lost

Boris: LOL

Boris: igor friend?

Alilshy: Just met. He's cool. Taking turns

Boris: hi igor

Igor: Hi

Boris: I'll hop servers

Hopping servers was another option when more than one player wished to share the game resources. The programmers had made the game so that all the character information was stored on a single data server, but the game engine ran independently on one of many game servers. Thus, if too many people were in one location, someone could "hop" to another server.

About the time Boris hopped out, the giant appeared and Alilshy waded in. Jeff watched, scanning the conversation still pasted over the graphics on the game screen. He smiled at the part where she said he was cool. He laughed at her "didn't know I was lost" remark.

Obviously pretty witty and a fast thinker, Jeff thought.

Finally, his eyes played over Boris's first remarks.

He called her shy . . . hmm . . . Al-il-shy . . . A-lil- shy . . . .

Finally, it hit him. "A lil' shy!" he said out loud. "Very nice!"

Jeff was very pleased that he had deciphered the name, but more impressed that she had thought it up.

Igor: A little shy — nice name!

Alilshy: You figured it out pretty fast! Most have to ask

Igor: :-)

Though he wanted to chat on while taking turns with the frost giant, he couldn't think of anything else to say that wouldn't sound stupid. He knew that far too often, hormone-drunk teen boys tried all sorts of dumb things to win the favor of female characters. Jeff was not so much impressed with her for being depicted as a set of pixels with a vaguely female form as he was the wit she had displayed with Boris and in selecting her game name.

How he could communicate that to her further without it sounding like some lame pick-up line, he could not determine. It was his turn to fight the giant, anyway, so he attacked.

Alilshy: BRB Telephone in RL

After about a minute, her character blinked away, as the player directing it apparently left the game to talk on the phone in "real life" and failed to move the mouse before the server automatically timed out her account. Jeff acted on an impulse and added her to his buddy list so he could see the next time she logged in.

Maybe, he thought, I'll figure out something to say to her that doesn't sound stupid.

Long after Jeff had put a dozen Lembly Breads in Igor's pack and returned to the near-endlessly repetitive process of getting another Enchantment level, a blue system message appeared at the bottom of his screen.

SYSTEM: Your buddy, Alilshy, has logged in on server 5

Good, thought Jeff. She doesn't have Buddy Chat blocked.

Players who only wanted to receive Buddy Chat from players on their own lists could set a system preference to block anonymous messages.

Or . . . . He smiled. Maybe she added me to her list, too.