I'm standing out on a desolate, sandy expanse. Off in the distance, ragged lightning bolts worm down from a slate-gray sky. To my left, a brilliant sun stabs through the darkness, almost fully eclipsed by some massive celestial body. Directly before me looms an enormous black pyramid, it's glowing portal beckons me onward. Suddenly, with a sound like that of a submarine's sonar, a yellow smiley-face figure materializes alongside in surreal juxtaposition. As it's eyebrows arch quizzically, a cartoon speech balloon emerges, saying -- "Hiya Vincent!"

Is it virtual reality, a bad acid flashback? No, it's The Palace, the latest online craze spawned by the Internet. A self-described "multimedia chat architecture." The Palace was created by the Time Warner media conglomerate, and takes the IRC/chat-room paradigm to a whole new physical level. The concept sits somewhere squarely between standard text-based chats and VRML. In Palace, you see, move, and interact with others from within a smorgasboard of eye-popping two dimensional graphic spaces.

Each Palace patron comes represented by a self-chosen "Face," or "Avatar." Anything you type at the keyboard pops up onscreen as a cartoon-style speech balloon emanating from your Face. It's really little more than mapping the standard text-based IRC technology into a 2D graphic world. But a Palace room's visual ambience provides a surprising sense of conversational mood -- as in the real world. And there are also spatial cues. If you hit it off with someone, you can move closer, which provides a real sense of physical presence -- something not at all possible in your standard chat room. The concept is simple yet elegant -- and strangely effective as a socializing medium.

Today I'm a rock star, yesterday, I was a blow-fish (full of hot air). At the sight of a familiar, fellow Palace-head, I briefly transform myself into Edvard Munch's "Scream" figure. Others around me assume equally outrageous personas. Some opt for the standard smiley face, but even these are made wildly personalized by an expandable (and editable) cache of "props" -- from hats, to hair, to glasses, to shoes. In fact, you can even trade props with others!

The experience is made all the more rich and textured by the ability to include sound effects. My buddy announces his arrival with the opening strains of the Hallelujah Chorus. And even what you "say" comes in various levels of subtlety, with the facility for the standard bubble form, a frantic, jagged alarmist style, or a mere thought bubble. This latter is particularly effective for your more neurotic, Woody Allen-esque encounters -- "Hmmm, I wonder what she'd say if I invited her to the Honeymoon Suite?"