I hope you'll all forgive me, this thread is interesting from a psychological and a spiritual point of view.
The things you're all writing about here are not the tantrum of a child for a lost toy, or the pain of an addict in withdrawal. It seems to me the symbolic loss of characters we've all invested in reminds us all uncomfortably of our own mortality. One poster here called midnight the hour "reserved for executions." We know we all must die... someday. But this experience of "virtual death" has forced us to confront our mortality in a frightfully visceral way.
Moreover, we together experienced "the end of the world." A poster here mentioned "On the Beach," and I think we have together endured something that, at least emotionally, makes us feel very much like what the characters in that story must have experienced. I myself had no desire to remain for the final shutdown; is this so different from those in the book who, pointlessly, committed suicide rather than naturally perish?
What a dreadful trauma we have endured together! The catastrophe is virtual, but the grief is real.
But if I may... suppose we succeed in prying "the world" from the clutches of "the devil?" Suppose one day, the torches re-ignite in the now pitch-black Atlas Park. Will we not, together, have emotionally experienced the "resurrection" of our virtual selves and restoration of the world in something very like the visions and prophesies of the world's faiths? I expect more than one "hallelujah!" would be heard over the broadcast channels.
The eu-catastrophe would be virtual, but the joy would be real. That... oh, that would be something to experience, now wouldn't it?
"It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth...."