“It was big in its day, Barry DeBoy. But now it’s all a mirage, a ghost of what it was. We have to put The Void back in the middle for it all to work again. Are you ready?”
“Um… sure,” he answered, not understanding what the smart bee-girl was up to now. Then he did as he walked up to the saloon.
“Make it a wet one, Hal,” said Hucka D. to the proprietor.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0204, New Mexico
“I’ve *been* here for 2 weeks,” complained Johnny Cage, tiring of the assignment in Slaashsides. He was ready to get back home to his wife Elvira and kids Lester, Luke and Leonard Jay (Leno). But the problem was: Barry DeBoy was a quick healer, a *real* quick healer — like he stood outside of time or something (as his supervisor exasperatedly explained over the phone to him) — and that he may be needed for another one of those “accidents” again.
“We need you to stay close to that New Mexico portal,” he said. “That’s the only way we know how still to reach him. Work on your biking, work on your *bike*,” he suggested. “Slaashsides is fairly big — about a 1/2 sim as I recall. Just ride around and around, check your tires, check your gears, handle, seat — *everything*. Just don’t go groundside yet. And that’s an order, John, from the guys and gals upstairs that pay *both* our salaries and bonuses. You got a big bump recently. Don’t screw all this up. You need to start thinking about your pension — the future. Think of little Leno.”
The stinky green pocketbook displayed on the side of the news stand was starting to get overwhelming. “Listen, I have to go,” spoke Johnny Cage. “I’ll do what you said. I’ll keep them happy. But either get me back to New Mexico or get me back home pretty quickly. I can’t stand these halfway places, neither here nor there.” And with this he hung up the receiver, rather slammed it back in the carriage really, and walked up the sidewalk and turned left again. Back to Burro Alley, pheh.
10 days, he determined while treading carefully on its slicker surface — not daring to hurt himself as he would hurt others. That’s all I’m going to put up with it.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0203, Nautilus, New Mexico, North, Slaashsides
“Whoa there. Slow down Speedy Gonzales. We’ve past it — there’s Fraggle Rock.”
“*Past* it?” spoke driving Barry DeBoy, just getting really comfortable with the F-150 after 300 miles on the road. “But…”
“… there was nothing much there, I know. I didn’t even recognize the place. I was here during the glory days. It was the main stop on the highway between Arizona and Texas, or so it was billed. The lights, the activity. Like a teeny tiny Las Vegas it was then. But *this*…”
“I saw a shortcut back there,” said Barry, looking for a place on the I-10 to turn around. “We can get to Lordsburg the back way. Maybe you’ll remember stuff better coming at it from a different angle.” But Hucka Doobie doubted it. And the worst was yet to come.
—–
“Well *great*, Barry *DeBoy*.” You *dunce*, she thought, but of course didn’t say out loud because of his past problems with grades. “We’re totally…”
“… lost,” completed Barry this time. “And, let’s see, we have about 2 hours to get the truck back to the rental agency, since you said this town was so walkable.”
But Hucka Doobie was checking her smart phone just earlier. No rental agencies listed in Lordsburg — she hadn’t really thought about this possibility. Nowhere to turn the truck *in* to. Not round these here parts.
“Hold on, Hucka D. I see some kind of rusty machinery sticking up over there from the brush and desert. Let’s go check it out.”
“30 minutes in the sun *tops*,” warned Hucka Doobie, knowing their water supply was limited. Also: sunscreen. They could shrivel up like a sponge and a starfish in no time, with no spacesuit wearing squirrel around to rescue them unlike in the cartoon she was thinking of.
—–
“I know this place, this wagon. We’re going to be all right, Barry.” She points to the formerly hidden buildings. “Shakespeare.”
“Awesome!” Barry already wanted to paint soo badly. Or do collages — something.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0202, New Mexico
And so they traveled from Mountainair down to Lordsburg, Hucka Doobie’s old stomping grounds. Before she died and was reborn again anew in her old bee form. Now she’s progressed far enough back to human to also more closely examine her human past, pre-bee. She retracts her antennae for good and dives in. Would they make it? Would Duck prevent the success of the journey? The point is that they made it. And Antony at the bottom again or at least Anthony, two of ’em in fact; double the fun. Border towns both. It was not all about Anthony — unlike that other claim — but at least the first 7th was (approximation). I don’t have many friends. Let’s call him up.
“I have to take this,” he said to visiting Hucka Doobie and Barry DeBoy. The Devil, he knew, because of the timing.
“Hallo?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0201, New Mexico
The Void had come to Mountainair in January 2008, drove right through the middle of the town *basically* unnoticed. Probably on a bike. Probably unmotorized so as to cut down on the attention. Barry found this out on his computer back at the hotel, only 2 blocks away from the passage. The Void was making a statement, he knew. Best to get out of town before “accidents” happen again. The Duck was presently gone but for how long?
“The bottom of the state,” he urged to Hucka Doobie that night. “That’s probably what it means.”
And indeed Shakespeare is to be found there. Hucka D. knew the area well.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0116, New Mexico
“Is this the one with my father in it?”
“Just keep watching,” Hucka Doobie requested to her sometimes lover, all times friend Barry DeBoy, secretly, way down deep, our own blog core leader Baker Bloch again. Thus the question… and the confusion. Only Hucka Doobie can see this through.
—–
“Is that the Vampire Planet?”
“Close,” answered Hucka Doobie. “Very close.” And it was upon them.
—–
“What’s all those Shakespeare quotes at the bottom of the screen about?” continued DeBoy with the questions after they arrived at the studio.
Hucka Doobie sighs. “That’s what we have to get to the bottom of.”
Pause. “Oh.”
“Shakespear Club.”
“Yes. Of course.” He continues to study as this line fades and the next one appears. “Antony and Cleopatra,” he believes. Although it’s been a long time. Something about indecision…
Spaced Ghost receives his first guest.
They renewed their vows before really, actually heading out into new life, her in black and pink this time to better match his blue and black. So speaks the magical Abra-cadabra laundromat, the place of the clothes. Cold, damp basement no more for Lemont Sanford, now truly in control and not subordinates Arthur Kill and his more sophisticated cousin Kill van Kull. At least for a while, for this morning, for the next hour.
Their new, good friend and 3rd wheel Edward Daigle performed the ceremony, since he was qualified that way, as he also explained in one of their basement escapades out and down on Cable Isle, the place Arthur Kill was buried, at least for a while, a morning I believe. About an hour. Before Wheeler went down in the grave after him and swished or mopped away all the heat and fire and brimstone with her magic swishy mop and told him to rise up and then go down. For a particular reason of course. “Basement,” she indicated, pointing toward the slanted cellar doors nearby after he unsuccessfully attempted to just dust himself off and exit through the front gate of the dinky cemetery with its one or two plots — wouldn’t work, Wheeler knew. “Await me and my orders. We have an important choice coming up. Which (she eyed him keenly) *cousin* will you be?” She knew it could even be both at once. The basement has that power.
Slowly but surely, a past formed in the present, tiny Tintown revealed again. The tiny mountain in the background — a hill, really — being the link.
Suddenly he was there, staring at The Void.
Not as big as he thought it’d be. Not really big enough to crawl into, even. His mind settled on the club. Shakespear’s, he found out.
“Hucka D.,” he said when awakening. “You were right.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0112, New Mexico, Pennsylvania
So here it is, thought Barry DeBoy, out of the hotel and its Duck and back on the plains, thankfully. To find the actual Void.
“On your right!” shouts passing biker Johnny Cage. But there was only left. Collision. KaBAMM!
Mission accomplished well enough, as he checked. Johnny will be able to afford pheasant tonight. Barry: back to Duck.
—–
“It hurts soo bad, Hucka Doobie.”
“There, there,” she consoled, reaching over and patting his remaining good arm. “The doctor said it will take days, even months.”
“Must… get… back, ahh.” He collapses in pain. Hucka D. knew The Void could wait. But she had to stay with him now fer sure. She looks over. That darn quacker! I’ve got to do something about it once and for all.
There was always… Maw.
—–
She picked up the receiver of the green phone, dialed all the numbers except 4.
“Hallo?”
Turns out she was just downstairs, what are the odds?
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0111, Maebaleia/Satori, New Mexico, Pipersville/Sink X^
Sunklands 