Making his viewer a square, he shields his eyes from the Abyss to the west. And the east. Only center is safe. Center Point center.
(to be continued)
Monthly Archives: April 2022
special
He’s done as much work on the library in the skies as he needs to tonight. Now to crack the back of the book before him while Swanie’s on lunch break.
Chapter 1: “Marbles Fall, Marble Falls”. So much to learn. Oops. There goes the other marble, rolling away almost through the wall. Swanie will not be pleased; have to try to stick it back on before she returns.
Maybe I can just use one of my own eyes, he thought crazily, but then did just that. He stuck the blue eye marble in the now empty socket and started to see the future, the North beyond the South. Miss Ouri! This must be kept top secret.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0406, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus
book tree
Select one. Sit a spell.
Agent 47 has already perused Frank Herbert’s “Dune” and found it applicable to Fordham’s Collagesity. The movement of the town from Rubi to a lifeless ridge of Nautilus is like the movement of Paul, Atreides, from lush Caladan, his home world, to the brave new world of Dune, ultra rich in spice but ultra harsh in environment. No Rubi Woods here to protect and balance. There’s a small park owned by the neighbor to the immediate east but it’s not quite the same. Fake green. Beige landscape dominates underneath it all.
park next door/fake green/library in background right
New book: Well, it seems to be about a man who grew up in coal country Virginia and became a Tennessee detective. Biff Carter. Now recently retired and off the force but still acting like a private dick. Teresa, hmm. Who are you? Did that cause the breakup, like the separation of McMillan from Wife? Rock was gay — couldn’t help it. But what about Biff?
Getting sleepy, he thinks. Better put the book down and go find a bed or at least a floor.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0405, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus
00320404
One of the first things Miss Ouri does in her new role is to make special collections part of the library, despite protests from some in town that the structure is an eyesore sticking up there on the side of the square, pheh. But no one actually threw up at the sight and the addition was passed 4-3 in a special town council meeting held just below to emphasize the safety of the thing.
So let’s go inside and have a look.
The first visitor to the newly attached collections is none other than Our Second Lyfe creator Philip Linden himself, who was curious to find out what had been written about him. He can’t select one item or the other, drawing suspicion from reading room manager Swanie Rivers, here also seen alarmed at discovering his “Don’t be a Prick” coffee mug he brought in with him.
No drinking in special collections and no foul mouthedness, whether verbal or written. She tells Philip all this in no uncertain terms, threatening to expel him if he doesn’t choose an item to study and get rid of his coffee and mug. He downs the coffee in one long swig and then additionally eats the mug. “How’s *that* for special?” he replied to the exasperated swan being. It’s always about him, it seems. The rare book and manuscript he subsequently selects and brings back to the now empty table was full of it.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0404, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus
00320403
“Live around here?”
“Nooope. Pietmond,” he said. But Sunklands’ Pietmond had been destroyed long long ago. Something was up.
“Live around here?” she tried again just around the corner in a “secret” nook.
“Naah. Just here to study,” the long haired man across the loaded down table said hoarsely, as if he’d just sang a rock n’ roll concert for a 100,000 people.
The other sitting there even turned her back on the child, not wanting discourse and hoping her Goth father was about ready to split this boring town. So that takes care of Pietmond Boy, Osborne Well, and Lou…
… moving us into the opposite corner of the new Collagesity library containing an estimated 100,000 books, a book for each person at one of Osborne’s concerts to put it another way. Here: Tronesisia.
“Live around here?” she tried once more to the former pleasure bot turned tame, this child named Shelley who had given up her castle to construct this building, be with these people. But blue eyed Tronesisia was having a vision and couldn’t answer immediately.
Where had she heard this before? Blue *and* green. It didn’t compute: something was ill fitting; broken even.
“Arkansaw,” she said softly, starting to figure it out. “Arkansaw,” she said again, one blue eye changing, seeing beyond the other, seeing North beyond South.
In the center, Missouri appeared — Miss Ouri. The new librarian.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0403, Arkansas, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Missouri, Nautilus
00320402
The first thing to be destroyed in the dismantling of Fordham’s Collagesity was the 128 meter long spaceship of skybox 03, intended to be used to pack up Collagesity itself in just this very event. It remains clunky and unpractical for its purpose. Gone after saving to inventory.
Baker also deletes the skybox 03 base cubes, including the teleporter needed to reach it, and drops down to skybox 02. More painful here: Baker is quite attached to this aerial town centered by the golden calf that is Claudette: the grassy arena where Peter Ladd performed his lame comic routine to an audience of his Uncle Babyface and perhaps others; the abbreviated Kidd Tower on the other side of town that acts as the residential unit; and then…
Baker Bloch can’t do it. Not tonight at least. He has several more to decide. The clunky spaceship was an easy choice. Now it gets more difficult when we move closer to the ground.
And then, heading down to skybox 01, there’s the problem of the Nautilus map and its over 100 strategically placed pins now. My idea: to transfer all this to the “Iowan hypercube” displayed in my GoogleEarth file (Oracle) but it hasn’t been successfully accomplished yet.
Seems like, to me, as I ponder this further, that Collagesity has at least another month to live. I’ll renew my membership on a month to month basis. Subtracting the rental connecting the two parts of Collagesity — the main 8 and the now disattached 9th representing the Temple of TILE and its grounds — frees up 15 dollars a month, reducing the total cost from 50 to 35. New decision date: early May, when novel 32 should wrap up. Synchronization remains important.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0402, Collagesity Fordham-, Iowa, Lower Austra, Nautilus
bon appétit
“Thanks for coming over from Wendy to meet with me, Wheeler. I know you’re mighty busy over there.”
“I am (!).”
“Anyway, I see you brought your bodyguards.”
Wheeler looks at one Eighty-eight at the table in front of her, and then glances over her shoulder at the second one sitting at the table behind. “They’re still needed,” she summarizes. “176,” she totals up.
“Fascinating,” says Baker Bloch, still in sarcasm mode. They have important business to discuss tonight and better get down to it. Baker has been waiting for over 30 minutes now while Wheeler lounges about the castle library. I thought we were done with all that. He condenses these observations and says them aloud for her.
“Yeah, not quite (about the library). We have more issues to work through.” She looks around again, quicker this time. “But good we are in Ontario. I sent Dickie Doom over. He is my (original) burger.”
“You… as Wendy.”
“Yeah.”
Baker looks down at his hands through the grated table. “Center Point,” he blurts out.
“Yeah?” Wheeler waits for more, hands still in lap. Her food and drink are getting cold.
“It doesn’t come up in the Oracle. The one in Kentucky, probably the most important one. It brings to question…”
“… the Oracle itself, its veracity,” she finishes for Baker Bloch. Because they are one beneath it all as well. Just like Baker Blinker and Baker Bloch. Just like *all* the cores. There is no real separation from The One. In the end.
He produces the tic tac toe board from his inventory; is kind of irritated that Wheeler doesn’t move her dinner tray so it can be positioned more in the center of the table itself.
“So this is the game, Wheeler. Who moves first, what moves second? We don’t know. But *whoever* it is, they win.”
Wheeler takes a sip of her coffee, takes a bite of her plumeria sandwich, getting under Baker’s skin again. He doesn’t like people eating when he’s explaining something and Wheeler knows it. “This is,” she says with mouth full and muffled speech, “Collagesity.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0401, Collagesity Fordham-, Kentucky, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Wendy-Ontario-
charmed
“Find out who is in that 9th spot and find out if black or white went first,” Agent 47 orders in his dream to Joey Avatar while hovering above it all. He doesn’t realize the impossibility until the next morning while eating his 9-sided Toasty O’s and remembering the game. But the tree is 9; the other vendor is 8. Time to head back to the plaza for some nitty gritty research. He takes a broom and knocks it against the ceiling, knowing Joey would understand. 3 times. 9 times. Magic Square.
He wakes up for real this time. He turns to Bart on the couch, cleaned up at last and looking like a little cartoon boy again, perhaps 9 himself. Saturn-9. But at what price? 1,000,000? Just then, Bart begins to glow as if radioactive. He’d been exposed, he knew — tricked even. He’d have to deactivate himself. Joey won this time. But there’s always regeneration.
He wakes up once more.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0317, Wendy-Ontario-
102
He was called in to replace Agent Joey Avatar. Or help her — he wasn’t sure. Anyway, he was here, aiding her to begin, not mentioning the replacement part, although of course she suspects. Purple hair, he ruminates. Symbol of suspicion. Just woke up like that the other day, she says. Fat chance.
*There*. John or Jim — one or the other; doesn’t matter. Here’s where he comes out of the portal. Now to pinpoint the center. “What you got?” he asks Joey through his walkie talkie wristwatch after John/Jim moved down the road a bit, out of earshot.
“2 seconds,” she responds from her position on the other side. “He went into the closed up subway at exactly 11:37:07. Did he come out with his sub?” she tried to joke. Agent 47 was a serious type, she understood. She was attempting to loosen the armor. But she knew she was in trouble. First things first, though. They had to figure out the mystery of this plaza that stood in the middle of it all. Umbrellas, they had determined. But which one?
“Let’s let him go in one more time to make sure.”
11:38:37:
“Too foggy in this gal blasted town to do much more tonight,” Agent 47 said after the double check. “Let’s reconvene at 08:00. I’ll stay with Black Bart downstairs from you guys.”
“Um, I wouldn’t do that,” she responds, shaking her head for emphasis.
“Elaborate.” It was one of the most common words these agents used. What he got back surprised him. A shadow being! And all because he was being tracked by The Mouse. Weelll. He’ll fix *that*. Shadow beings have no place in the land of living breathing Second Lyfers. All of Wendy would be for naught if so. Nautilus, hmm, he thought. That would come back shortly. But first…
“Bring him out in the light,” he rather commanded to Joey when they returned to the Underground Apts., 3 in number but only 2 viable in the moment. Because of Bart.
“Told you,” Joey Avatar said to Agent 47 after he opened the door, standing back a bit from the spectacle.
“Clean him up and bring him out,” he doubled down. *You* clean him up! she thought, but then did what he requested. She was only 45. No way to jump two numbers in a fortnight. She’d have to wait til Tuesday.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0316, Wendy-Ontario-
00320315
“I’m glad at least *you* remain my friend, Joey,” she said between sub bites. Dreaming makes her hungry. Must replenish, must recuperate. For most this is sleep itself. Not Leforest. “Agents can be so thin skinned. It’s *just* an assignment. Some fits are better than others.”
“Yeah,” expressed Joey across from her, also eating a sub but with meat instead of potatoes, “they told me to wear purple hair now…”
“Wondering about that,” says Leforest Bresford.
“Yeah, purple is sometimes a sign that you’re about to be taken off a case. Like, you know…”
“Debbie,” replied Leforest, thinking back to her description of the purple door in Lorsters Worst and how she couldn’t open it. *Sign*, yes.
“But to your dream.”
“Dreams,” corrected Leforest, glad for the diversion and thinking about her own red and blue companions at each shoulder, unseen to Joey and others as she chooses at the moment. But potentially another purple situation, with her in the middle which is, as we all know, unfortunately in the way a lot of times.
“Dasher” passes by. “Morning Luke,” says thought-to-be James or Jim L. Brown.
“Morning John,” he says back as he moves on to the corner down the way, no one to push around this time. Maybe next go round.
“Did you hear that?” whispered Joey over to Leforest, watching him now dash diagonally across the road in front of her to continue his cycle. “*John*. Not Jim.”
“Or James,” her fellow sub eater whispered back.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Certainly am.” Twins.
Then in total synchronicity to the situation the other twin walked by in the distance but neither spotted him.
Only we the blog readers know for sure still.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0315, Wendy-Ontario-
Sunklands 