He stared down at her place, trying to take in what he’d just heard. The Void wants to negotiate a price, she said — or hissed.
—–
Shelley was touching up his shape again when they heard it coming out of the tunnel. A bike, but a real one this time, a chopper they call them up in the real world I believe. Aztec Warrior? We’ll see.
How appropriate, he thinks. A big purple cube-like thingy has manifest just outside my front door since I lasted visited, sign of The Void of course.
Anyway (he turns), this is the last of my stuff, Nautilus continent home cleaned out. Couldn’t afford it, you see, with the upcoming court battle looming and paying for legal fees, etc. But I know who my real foe is now.
It seems like yesterday I was standing on the back porch with Shelley, inviting her to my sand paradise sim. She came to the party with Edward, who was somewhere just below with the rest of the still raucous crowd, even at half past 1. She explained, fairly early on actually, that her husband was away and he didn’t mind Edward taking care of her in his absence — trusted him just as much as he trusted someone named Keith who was a kind of surrogate father to her, I gathered. Also revealed that she was a writer, which interested me greatly. I happened to be a friend of a friend of one of the upper echelon of Lonelyhearts Publishers over on the *Omega* continent — caught her with a lie on that: she claimed Corsica Prime for the location, where her husband was, actually (she then admitted), looking for roles as big as his ambition and ego, she stated. I’d even heard about one or two of her books, although I couldn’t remember her attached nom de plume. “Jennifer,” she said. “Jennifer Lane.”
He turns back from the memory, red handtruck and hauling the final boxes down to the boat in his mind now. 1st pre-hearing at 7:45 tomorrow morning; gotta give about an hour for prep on that as well. He’ll have to do with around 2 hours sleep, he figures. He can catch up with the dreaming this weekend. Information, pure information. When he can interpret it, pheh. Like last night with the avocado.
Sunklands