2 boats. 2 ships in essence. Aliens. Now to the shack.
“Clean. Someone wanted this… to be found.”
—–
“There! Behind the server we just moved. A gun!”
“Well pick it up sister of mine. We need it! Tom is just outside. The one server won’t stop him. No time!”
—–
*POP*. *POP POP*… *POP*.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0208, Forest, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02, VOTV
“Freeze it!” she said behind me. “There. The square that is this sim.”
“That is this forest,” I dutifully completed.
“TOM shows us this,” she tacitly agrees.
Tom again, I think. All caps, like she said before when the name was first brought up in an emphasized way. Tom is after us. Tom thinks we know too much. Us — why did she call us sisters? Green and blue green and blue she also emphasized. Also: something about AI. TOM is the name of the file we’re viewing. Too much. Back to 00520208.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0207, Blue Mountain, City Park, County Park, Forest, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02, VOTV
“I’ll help.”
“W-what?” She spins away from the vintage computer and its monitor to face the speaker. Green! Like the forest, these woods. “W-who *are* you?” she managed in her shock.
“Not another assailant, don’t worry,” spoke the shadowy green stranger in a human enough voice, back still glued to a computer server about 10 feet away. “We know about the triple numbers. We were expecting you. We knew exactly where you’d show up. The bunker is for your protection. As well as mine.”
Shelley tried to absorb this new information. The green being needed protection too? But from what? So she asked her this.
“Someone ancient. You should boot up your computer now. Check those files. But first–”
“Barricade,” Shelley guessed about what the other was going to say. They become in sync here. Funny how she adapted to the presence of this alien figure so quickly.
“I think we should start with these servers I’m leaning against. They’re useless now anyway. Anything left to know is on that hard drive…” Sister, should she call her sister? She decided against it. tbc
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0206, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02
62 62 62. Triple number for the sim that’d basically the same as this forest. Lone one, unlike the two she discovered in Bandanaboro (77/77/77 and 88/88/88). Unusual to have more that one per sim, she understood. And what’s that over there? Small grey structure, perhaps cement — a bunker? She listens for any sounds coming from that direction. A full half minute. Only crickets all around her and a single crow cawing somewhere in the trees above. A warning?
Then: footsteps behind her! “Oh God what’s *that*,” she couldn’t help but say aloud despite trying to be as quiet as possible here. Suddenly the bunker or whatever she saw in the distance didn’t seem so forbidding. She hurried to its open door and went inside to get away from the open woods.
At least there’s no one “sitting* over there, she thinks. Nor a skeleton or a decomposing body or anything like that. But those footsteps. What was that??
Spotting nothing following her, she decides it would be best to hunker down here for the night, leave first thing in the morning, set up some kind of barricade at this opening if possible. She’s *not* going to teleport out of this sim and back to safety in the arms of her handsome, broad Eddy. She’s going to see this solo mission through. She can hang on to her wits.
Yes, she’ll sit down in front of this old computer, see if she can get it powered up and take a look at its files. That’ll keep her mind occupied while she waits for daylight. Maybe drink some of this Russian vodka on the floor someone left behind, ho. Is this a listening station by chance? Wouldn’t that be the oddest?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0205, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02
—–
“I was told to meet you at the center. So here I am. White on one side, black on the other. I’ve checked twice.”
“Hmm,” he said, turning away from me and facing forward again. “Let me think about it.” And that’s all there was to it. This Zebra both black and white, yin and yang, had said his part, information *sealed*… back up. Zipped (lips).
I didn’t interact with black directly, i.e., make eye contact with him like the others, but I could tell he was also keeping tabs by the drink in one hand and the phone most likely connected to the powers that be in the other. About the same distance on the other side of the zipped and sealed Zebra as white was at the front. Same solid colored suit and fedora hat. How I figured out they were connected.
Where we were (center).
“Honey. Why don’t you come to bed now. Stop worrying about that portal over there.”
“I can’t sleep. Aren’t you… excited?” she decided to call the feeling.
“Sure. I’m here aren’t I? With you.” Always, he thinks but doesn’t say. He still wasn’t sure the feeling was mutual. And that damn portal that’s got her obsessed now, a new one. He’s worried she’ll see something in it that he won’t. Or can’t.
“What time will we go in it tomorrow? We’ve explored the town here today, the immediate neighborhood. We’ve put it off long enough. The forest.. beckons.”
Beckons, he thinks. Interesting way to put it. Sounds like a trap. “Um, how about 2 o’clock?”
“In the *afternoon*? What if we miss something? No, I want to spend a whole day in there, or as close as we can get with our late sleeping habits. How about 9?”
“*Morning*?” he exclaims in turn. “The dew won’t even be off the grass by then. We’ll get our feet wet. Through the shoes.”
“What shoes?” she says to this.
“Our tennis shoes of course,” he replies. “The ones we’re wearing, well, now.” He looks at her feet, then down to his. He knows dew. He had to battle it as a part time cow herder back in the o1’s. These canvas dogs don’t stand a chance.
“Oh. I was thinking boots, as in combat, as in we’re going to war. Against the woods.”
What is she on about now? he ponders. War? Woods? Boots? “There’s nothing in there. That’s what Daisy said.”
“Oh Daisy Daisy Daisy. Just because she lived with her maw here for those several weeks.”
“Years,” Eddy corrected.
“Whatever. (*sigh*) I was just joking about the boots. And the war.”
“Oh. Good.”
“But we’ll still have to battle dew. I’ve decided to go barefoot, how about you?”
It was his worse fear come true.
—–
9 AM the next morning:
“I don’t like this, Shelley. I don’t like this one *bite*.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0203, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02
“Us longies gotta stick together, right girlfriend?”
It was a sentiment actual boyfriend Eddy didn’t share. She was a 10 to him. Shorten the legs and she descends into a “mere” 9, better than almost anyone else but still not quite the same. Actually not quite the same atall. The one makes a whole lot of difference.
“Do you like me,” she imagines the likewise stretched out dummy next to her saying. “I mean–”
“I know,” she pretend talks back. “I’ve got my arm behind you in a suggestive manner. A-and I just called you girlfriend. But: no. It’s just an animation in the mat we’re both laying on; the only way I could face you. My Eddy is just over there. In the gallery. I got bored… as I do.” She pretended that Sally — yes, that’s her name — glanced over at the gallery too, saw Eddy’s silhouette in one of its windows. Just above the waterwheel with its two golden lions.
“There,” she points to the actually empty window with a new animation. “There’s my Eddy. Handsome and broad. Tattoos; oh the story I could tell you about those tattoos, phew (!).” She imagines wiping sweat from her forehead and continues. “Gave some to me too. Colorful ones. Here.” She raises her butterfly shirt a little to reveal more around the navel. “He said, let’s see, that I needed to have something at the end of my fish that can fly, escape the gravity of this dense dense Earth and its water dominated lands. He said, yes, birds were too busy — that was his description. Butterflies, he settled on. Primary ones, but red green blue instead of red yellow blue to heighten the escape… into the light. I sometimes imagine them as moths, heading to the sun up above and then even the moon at night, pulling me up with them. All the way to the stars.” She heaves a big sigh with this, pretending also to see tiny glints of light in the sky instead of clouds blasted clouds.
—–
Meanwhile Eddy is in front of this. tbc
Is that an old vintage computer lot # 03152460 birthday June 6 1966? she thinks from the only animation she can properly make with its chair. Schweet. She gets her dumb duck ass out of the stupid seat and begins to bang on its keyboard. Break mother f-ing board break!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Omega, 0201, Bandanaboro, 0052
Healing the mind and body with bathing blue and red ray treatments respectively, another reason to like this place.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0116, Bandanaboro, Omega
Staring at the pink door at the bottom of the place, she thinks back to the night of her assault, wondering if she had had her present dirty blonde hair and protective duck duds and mannerisms the incident might have turned out differently. Because the black hair she had back then stifled the attack at first but only at the head. The brute ape of a man couldn’t see, hear, smell or taste. But he could still touch, the final sense he had remaining to go along with his senseless nogg’n. This attack didn’t make any sense except for 1, and that’s all he needed. At the peak moment he was distracted, she managed to break free and deliver back her patented hook kick that knock him out dead. But… the shame. How she did it she still didn’t know. All she knew was that she was able, in this one particular moment of singularity, to uncouple Ichelus from Orgamast and live to see another non catty-corner day in the month of late April’s May.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Omega, 0115, Bandanaboro, 0052
