“In Memory of Jesse Malthus, you will be fondly remembered by all who heard your voice.”

You can find this notice if you look now in “Help” on the user panel inworld, and select the last line “About Second Life,” then scroll past the Linden names.

I’ve been struggling with my own blog post on this for a good day or so, as, like many who knew him well, it just plain hurts with every keystroke.

Just a quick note re: the VT thing- its mention doesn’t bother me so much, as I’ve remembered the murder of one of my best friends around 15 years ago, the passing of old people, the passing of sick people, and also war deaths; and I’ve been thinking of all of those and how they affect us differently.

No death is better or worse than another. They all leave memories. He left a lot and we won’t forget.

You never forget.

A friendly and bright spirit, suddenly gone, and way too young. I was extremely rattled by this, but at the end of it, all you can do – is be sad.

My condolences to his family and all his many friends. And saying that is just pathetically inadequate, for this total, total tragedy. I will think of his family for the rest of my life; they will NEVER be out of my prayers.

coco

Jessie was a funny guy. In fact, my friend and I (Verbena) were teasing him just a couple of days ago.

I feel kind of sick now.

http://photos-600.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v75/128/20/1203120146/n1203120146_30056600_1139.jpg

He made a huge impact on the Second Life community, but he did it transparently. He programmed a good bit of the libsecondlife backend, which was used to find bugs in SL by other residents. He insipired me to start learning Ruby, and I bought 2 huge books on it last week. He helped me out so much, and he was a good friend.

You know, I don’t know where Jesse is, I just feel he is somewhere. Fortunately for people like Jesse, the Pope ruled recently that limbo doesn’t exist anymore. So that means, before long, they may deprecate Purgatory, and then who knows, hell could be not far behind. I’ve always believed that people’s spirits and intelligences are somewhere saved in some format, but we have nobody Twittering from there obviously to tell us if it is true. Let me say this: I don’t feel my land is entirely safe from the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man even now!

It was like there was this ubiquitous, omnipresent being, typing like a madman, clicking away, doing everything xe could to be to Second Life what Mikey was to Life Cereal. I’d had enough experience with people to recognize the enthusiasm of youth was there, and had my suspicions that this individual was, quite literally, the kid in the candy store.

And each and every day I would go to these “places”, and toss out my own bizarre and twisted ideas of how the technology of libsecondlife could be used, for good or evil, and it was an intensive lulz-a-thon just to hear what Jesse would have to say about it, how xe thought it would or wouldn’t work this way or that way. There’d be a technical trick here or there that my schedule simply didn’t afford me the opportunity to pursue, and I would just know that Jesse had it figured out, and I was going to have an adventure and a half working Jesse’s brain on why he ought to tell me how to do it, or what would I have to trade him for it.

And we talked about you, Prok, our sekrit plan to send a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man parading through your land, earth shattering footsteps and residents running in awe. Of course, I know Jesse found the *idea* more interesting than if we had actually done it, it was about exploring the space of what’s possible.

And today, I saw the message in the libsl mailing list, very vague, “Jesse was a contributor to the libsecondlife group”. My eyes didn’t want to believe it. I went on to a couple more emails before it registered. WTF does ‘was’ mean? Did he quit or something? That doesn’t sound right… I checked again, and there was an attachment, with a link, to this page about a young man whose life had been taken far before his time, and I just don’t want to believe it.

There are very few people in this world whom I consider truly interesting, but this kid was, and I know I’m not alone when I say I found a kind of kindred spirit in Jesse Malthus. I was really looking forward to making cool stuff in Second Life and if there was *anyone* I’d have liked to work on it with, it was him.

There’s more to it than that, of course, simply not enough words on the internet to express the aspects of Jesse’s character I admired, and not enough math to calculate what we’ve all lost in this tragedy. To say he will be missed is an understatement.

You were a truly great person, Jesse, and the future has lost a great deal of it’s shine at your passing. My sincerest hope is that wherever you are now, you have all of the code and all of the answers your inquisitive mind and optimism of youth motivated you to seek in this world.

I worked with Jesse on many projects regarding libsl, I can’t believe he is gone! We started a new project (which really doesn’t have a name) the other day, I will dedicate it in his memory.

RIP