… awakens in the middle of the night to find a number of startling changes. To begin, he notices the “moon of the moon” is no longer revolving below his perch on the edge of fake moon. Turning around and walking inward, he next discovers the Collagesity diner had also been complete removed, along with the encircling railroad and attached vegetable garden. He wonders what happened to the crazily joined John Lockfry/Dr. Mulholland within, and their Selenite butler. Erased as well? Then, lastly and most importantly for Karoz, the Boos gallery had now fully manifested on the western edge of fake moon, with the prickly cactus formerly guarding the door from premature visitations also gone.
Karoz can finally move forward… back to Collagesity. Once he walks through that open door, this travesty of a moon will no longer have the energy to exist; nothing left alive on it. His period of servitude is near its end.
He looks around one last time at the surface: the glowing entrance to the underground he never got to visit; his crashed, embedded spaceship he worked so hard on to design and build; the oh so blue Second Life cube of a world rotating slowly to the right which he now also knew was fake. He was done with all this. He can build another ship, better and stronger. He can find other worlds to explore. But first he has to get back home.
He turns around and passes between framing craters to walk across the threshold.
Looking back through the door, he sees the moon gradually turn darker…
… and then just wink out of existence, leaving only the starry sky behind.
Karoz takes the time to study each of Baker B.’s collages on the first floor of the gallery. He reviews what he remembers of the interpretations Baker (me) wrote about them at the end of this past year: the start in rural Missouri, the introduction of Second Life’s Nautilus City images, and then the portal into the tiny, artistic hamlet of Tungaske, Canada, whose energy would entice and grab firm to the series beginning with collages 9 and 10 that finish off this floor.
By the time he circles the walls back around to collage 10 (“Goodwater Goodland 02”) Collagesity had appeared through the gallery door, replacing the stars.
“Thank the Lord God Almighty,” he declared, tears in his eyes. Home at last.
Sunklands 