About two hours into my visit, I wanted to catch up on some school work in a quiet setting, two gangs of kids starting hooting and hollering. At first I paid them no attention and continued on my work. Several other people, some couples, were also in the park and paid them no attention. I’m sure they all thought the same thing as me, if they get out of hand, start messing with me, I’ll throw up a priv screen, or punch out, or even call a cop. None of us were expecting to happen what happened.

A large pop went off. My head swung round fast enough to give me a virtual whiplash. I saw the shiney metal object grow out of the hand of one of the kids. A rather impressive cloud of smoke danced up from the barrell. They love to make the effects of their guns to be spectacular.

Next thing you know, 20 gun barrels are exposed and firing. A regular shoot-em-up right in the middle of public vSpace. The guns of course are not harmful, that rumor that went around a few years ago about getting brain fried in a vNet is just false, but they can disrupt your plug-in signal and boot you. Only the hacked ones of course. And even then you use them with the potential of getting caught.

So there I was, watching kids get booted, guns blazing, myself ducking, I hadn’t saved any work and if I got booted from a stray shot I may loose my work. I found a nice quiet tree to duck behind. From there I saw an innocent girl get shot. She dropped out with a look of frustration on her face.

After about 20 minutes, most had been booted. Those that left congratulated each other then quickly jumped out before the automations came online and began recording ID’s and kicking people. All in all it was very frustrating. If you’re one of these kids that loves to go shoot-em-up in public spaces, grow up. They have entire nets devoted to this, must you bug the old guys?