There are many invented scenes, places, char­ac­ters, and events I love in my friend and colleague’s novella Annabel Scheme, but my favorite inven­tion is prob­a­bly the fic­tional MMORPG “World of Jesus.” An online VR game set in Pales­tine at the time of Christ. 

Here’s why I’m writ­ing about it. Read Write Web has a short write-up of vir­tual ancient worlds, mostly cre­ated by libraries, muse­ums, and universities:

When the first immer­sive 3D games came out, I asked a pro­gram­mer if he knew of any­one who had used that tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate a Vir­tual Ancient Rome or Vir­tual Ancient Athens. I loved the idea of walk­ing around in a place whose cur­rent face was changed out of all recog­ni­tion from its golden age. He shook his head. Cre­at­ing vir­tual worlds was way too time con­sum­ing and required too much spe­cial­ist knowl­edge and so was too expen­sive. A vir­tual Rome wouldn’t cre­ate the profit that Doom did.

Fast for­ward a decade and the pro­gram­ming nec­es­sary becomes eas­ier to do and the num­ber of peo­ple who know how to do it have increased sub­stan­tially. The costs involved in cre­at­ing a vir­tual world have decreased at the same time that aca­d­e­mic and schol­arly insti­tu­tions have become much more will­ing to invest in it.

There are ter­rific set­tings here: Rome, Athens, Tenochti­t­lan, and Beijing’s For­bid­den City. But — and I think this is sur­pris­ing — no Jerusalem. No World of Jesus.

For those who haven’t read the book, on its face, the game’s name sounds like a clever zinger, like some­thing that would be the punch­line to a joke on Futu­rama or at a rel­a­tively hip Bible Camp. But what I think Annabel Scheme does par­tic­u­larly well is push­ing past sur­face details and cute ref­er­ences to dwell within its two worlds, the tech­no­log­i­cal and the spir­i­tual, tak­ing both of them seri­ously. I can’t think of any bet­ter man­i­fes­ta­tion of that than “World of Jesus.” The char­ac­ter who plays the game believes in this world and his place in it: his reli­gious faith and his tech­no­log­i­cal faith are one and the same, turn­ing a mechan­i­cal rit­ual into trea­sures in heaven. And so we believe in it, because it’s a reflex­ive, self-allegorizing move too: for the reader, the fic­tional San Fran­cisco of Scheme and Hu is just as much a vir­tual world, with its own entice­ments, traps, rules and ways to break them, as “World of Jesus” is for them. Dreams within dreams, vir­tu­al­ized virtuality.

It helps that Robin brings some of his most evoca­tive and affect­ing writ­ing in this chap­ter, too, as his AI nar­ra­tor Hu becomes “embod­ied” for the first time in the world of the game:

The first thing I noticed was the light. 

My eyes opened in a small, sim­ple house with wooden shut­ters, and the light was peek­ing in through the cracks, pick­ing up motes of dust in the air. I’d never seen any­thing like it. Are there motes in the real world? Scheme’s ear­rings didn’t show motes. 

In World of Jesus, you could choose between look­ing over your character’s shoul­der or through its eyes. I saw myself from behind, then spun around: I’d cho­sen the girl in silk. 

Then I switched to see through my own eyes. All I ever did was look over Scheme’s shoul­der. I wanted a new perspective. 

The door opened auto­mat­i­cally. Out­side, the sun beamed in blue-gold through a scrim of tall cedars and fell in wide bars on a dusty, stone-paved street. Every­thing looked… mildly medieval. I had a feel­ing that this Jerusalem was not his­tor­i­cally accurate. 

I lifted my eyes to the sky, and it felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. It was prob­a­bly just my eight proces­sors all seiz­ing up at once; I wasn’t built for this. Grail servers are opti­mized to process gobs of text, not 3D graph­ics, so the carefully-crafted World of Jesus was a new exertion.

I didn’t care. That sky. It was the most beau­ti­ful thing I had ever seen. White curls and wisps dot­ted the glow­ing blue bowl. I couldn’t do any­thing except stand and stare. 

A voice crack­led: “Hu, is that you?” 

I turned. It was a woman in a sim­ple gray tunic, with red hair just like Scheme’s. 

“Yes, it’s me,” I said—and real­ized that I spoke like every­one else. 

Let me tell you some­thing: I think that if a game com­pany were to make it, and do it well, “World of Jesus” would be a smash hit. If you wanted to get your War­craft on, you could play as a cen­tu­rion and slash-and-hack Per­sian armies and cru­cify dis­si­dents. Or you could be a Jew­ish rebel fight­ing to over­throw the Romans. Maybe you’re a female dis­ci­ple, fight­ing to retain women’s lead­er­ship roles after Christ’s death. Or you’re a reg­u­lar per­son: a tax col­lec­tor, a fish­er­man, a falafel mer­chant. An online RPG that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to be about how many peo­ple you can kill. (See: “A four-year-old plays Grand Theft Auto.”)

Many faiths, many ages, many games within games. Or if you wanted to play in story mode: what a story!