I'm not cutout to be a virtual superhero

It started over a year ago. A dear friend called me in a panic and the terror in her voice was apparent. "Please help me!" she said, her tone quivering with impending danger.
"Anything! What do you need?" I said trying to calm her down. I knew she was out of town and figured she was stranded somewhere. Uneasy about the tiny size of my bank account, I crossed my fingers that she didn't need money.
Since this was a phone call, I wasn't worried about it being some kind of hacker, who pretends to be a friend and says they're stuck in England and needs thousands to get home. I've had those kind of text messages and emails and had the fortune to recognize it for what it was: a scam. No, I knew her voice and, besides, my cell showed that her phone number was correct. No, this wasn't a scam, my friend was in serious trouble. My husband, who'd been making dinner, came out of the kitchen, hearing the concern in my voice, and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
"What is it?" his eyes said.
"I don't know," my eyes replied.
I waited with bated breath for my friend to explain her dilemma…

"My crops are about to wither and I can't get internet access here!" she cried. I was relieved and somewhat bewildered. I bit my lip to keep from belting out a huge guffaw. We were Farmville neighbors so I knew what she meant. She gave me her Facebook password and I resolved her problem.
Over the past year, I've become a VirtualHero for some dozen or so friends who've had similar panic attacks. I've even received emails from one friend or another asking if I could tend their crops, or whatever, while they were on vacation.
Armed with superhuman strength, I've supplied my talents to feeding virtual fish, petting SuperPets, sending back gifts, completing quests--you name it--if its a game on Facebook, I've helped out.
Which brings me to the inevitable question: Why hasn't some enterprising go-getter, started a business for this? If there's a need, there's always a business created to fill it. Right?

The Physics of Farm Town

Old hats of the Facebook/MySpace game called Farm Town are familiar with this but its new to me. The geek in me finds it fascinating enough to write about it.
I think about all the years' physicists like Stephen Hawking have been working on this and its right there on a silly facebook page. A Farm Town glitch knocks a hole in the space-time continuum. BELIEVE IT . . . OR NOT.
The glitch allows you to have unlimited dimensions on your farm. In one dimension you can have a crop of pineapples and on the same farm you can have another dimension of crops of tomatoes. These dimensions are not aware of each other, they don't interact in any way. There are no dualities. And, almost, no rules.

OK, stop laughing at me. In order to write this, I have to come clean and admit to being a Facebook gamer. Yikes. There's so little time to do everything I do and yet I often find myself looking at my watch thinking, 'Oh no, I've got to go harvest my (some crop here). Betty White said on her SNL debut, (Facebook) "sounds like a huge waste of time." I actually have gotten a lot out of social networking sites, but that's another column. I was introduced to Farm Town's multi-dimensional universes recently, while assisting a neighbor who'd hired me to harvest her crops. Helping out in Farm Town is beneficial to both parties. Both receive cash and crops, while saving on the valuable fuel commodity. So back to my discovery over the physics of Farm Town, my overall-clad avatar was going along, minding her own business, harvesting this person's crops when suddenly the world started disappearing. It was as though my character was being swallowed up by a black hole! Frightened, I typed, "What's going on????!!" and my neighbor explained what Farm Towners know as "Layering Farms."

Layering farms

Here's the info she sent to me:

Farm #1, completely harvested and plowed.
Open farm in 2 to 4 tabs...depending on how much you wish to layer
tab 1, plant 4 day crop if you have opened 4 tabs
tab 2, plant 3 day crop if you have opened 4 tabs
tab 3, plant 2 day crop if you have opened 4 tabs
tab 4, plant 1 day crop if you have opened 4 tabs
At this time all tabs are still open
All farms are planted
At tab 1, click refresh
when the farm reopens the crop planted on the last tab..(tab 4 - 1 day crop) will be showing. Close other tabs.
When crop is ready to harvest:
harvest crop and delete fields. Refresh, crop showing should be crop planted on tab 2. Once this crop is ready to harvest, do so and then delete fields. So on, so on... After harvesting 4 day crop, plow and begin again. This can be done with all 6 farms...therefore each farm has 4 separate days worth of crop for a total of 16 harvest in 4 days.

I've done it with more than the 4 crops - added 8, 4, 2 hr ones sometimes if I needed them.

I tried it, and even though it's a bit confusing, it worked the first time out. Something happened I should note for those who want to try it. When I did it, it said I had gone offline and asked if I wanted to reconnect. I took a guess and said no. I finished following the directions and it still worked. Now all I have to do is make sure that I harvest the "layers" (I much prefer my definition of alternate dimensions) before they whither. I can't wait to see the black hole effect again.