My Bane Experience

In 2009, my alt wanted to have the experience of being a BANE.  This comes from a sci-fi story called Eudeamon, which you can download and read for yourself.

As a SL Mistress, she could not take herself out of commission and communication for the week or two that the Bane experience might take.  So, she created me to do it for her.

This page has a few photos from my 24 inworld hours in the AlterTech Bane program.  It was incredibly immersive and very powerful.  Banes are not able to talk, but for the first 9 hours of my sentence I was also deaf; that was actually an error (but I didn't know that) but  made that time even more powerful.  I was driven to find a way to communicate; at least to be able to acknowledge someone's presence.

I traveled a lot while I was a bane.  I wanted the experience of having people around but being unable to interact with them in a normal way.  In the first photo I'm at the entrance to Stepford, the SL version of the town in the movie The Stepford Wives; in the second one I'm at the big Mesmerize Dungeon store.

I wanted to be around people I know, too.  Here I stand mute as two close friend take a shower.  One important thing about this picture:  that warm colored cast over it is how I saw EVERYTHING as a bane.  I've adjusted the color on the others so you can see them better.

I had "required maintenance".  In the first picture, you see me with my Operator.  She could TP me to her anytime, anywhere.  And I was not able to tell whether she was online or not, so there really was no warning whatsoever.  In the second picture, you see me squatting in the Maintenance Station.  When a TP button popped up on my screen, I only had 1 minute to get to the station and SIT or I would get penalty time added to my sentence.  (In the Eudeamon story, this is how each bane was "fed" and excreted its waste material.)