“I feel like I’m out of my depths with these channels, Panama. Feel like I don’t even have a foundation to stand on anymore.”
“I hear ya sister.”
“So I’m turning to you.” She turns in the water. “Just like wet can turn to dry given enough time in space and distance.”
That blasted alchemical text, Panama knew. But it worked.
Lexi reluctantly hands over the keys to Ralph.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0109, Back Rooms, C2077, Kabusie
“This one’s gold. Annnnd (grunts while reaching into the wagon for another one)… *this* one’s gold.”
She pauses in her work to look around the Badlands business. “Jeez, looks like they’re *all* gold to me, huh.”
Her boss comes out of left field and tells her it’s quitting time.
“Do I come back tomorrow?” she asks expectantly, wiping her hands on her jeans before inserting them into its pockets.
He also looks around at all the rocks, gauges the height of the piles, their diameter, whether more rocks can be added to them right now. “Mmmmm. We’ll see. Stay close to your phone in the morning.”
“Oh. Oh okay.”
He stares at her pants, then decided to add: “I’d recommend washing your hands before leaving, err–” He stops; he can’t remember her name; he decides to continue like no awkward pause occurred. “Anyway, ahem, some of these, um, rocks might contain uranium, uh hmm. Not enough to kill you or anything (hardy laugh here). Just as a precaution. Soap’s on the sink in the bathroom over there.” He exits back to the left after pointing in that direction. Fern is alone. No call in the morning as it turns out. Another day off to enjoy the desert sun and wind. Maybe even a dust storm midday to break up the monotony. Out of sunscreen, though, with no money left to buy. She’s hoping for rain.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0108, California, South Dakota, Twin Peaks
—–
“Off by Tin,” said Fern to this, knowing Mercury was instead actually Poison to the alchemists of old. Like her.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0107, Back Rooms, collages 2d, Twin Peaks
I see the Wall the Wall sees me.
—–
“Find anything?!”
“Gold!”
“Yeah, it’s out here!” the silhouetted man calls back from the distance.
“Just laying around! Like rocks!”
“Yuup!”
“So why aren’t there…?! I mean…!”
“Why aren’t there more people around, then?!”
“Yeah!”
“Because it’s fool’s gold you fool! fool’s gold you fool! fool’s gold you fool!”
—–
Fern wakes up under the umbrella the color of TILE. Desert dreams. Badlands. There’s actually only her out here… and Billy, who doesn’t really count since he’s a 3-4 foot, chrome plated mechanoid. He observes with bright, electric blue, pupil-less eyes her awakening not 3 feet away, out of the shade and into the sun. If he stretched out in place, he could almost prop his shadowed, robotic feet up on her torso. “Hi” he metes out as is his duty, and adds a little glinty morning salute to his sunny smile. “Cereal and milk has already been poured in that order. Just like you like.” He winks and his smile also appears to glint like his arm did before. Fern checks her watch (not on her arm?). 9 o’clock. She overslept by an hour and Billy was ready at 8. Can’t blame him for the sogginess then, pheh. Just following orders. She makes a mental note, to add to those orders, to rouse her at the appointed time and not let her sleep late. But for this morning, limp Toasty-O’s Snakes and Ladders pepper and mint flavored breakfast in heavily colored red and green milk to make gray it is.
He washed Fern’s bowl without water, using the sandpaper hand attachment #4 to do the job. Ceramic would hold up under this finer abrasion, he knew. But what happened to all the water? He had produced soo much of it with his endless waterfall toward the end of photo-novel 44, the last installment in our series and also perhaps perpetual it seems. At least I don’t see an end anywhere in sight using my future vision. I’ll switch it off now; back to the present.
After being unable to sand out a particularly persistent stain in the required time according to his inner clockwork, Billy cusses in his peculiar robot vernacular (“Nuts and Bolts!” I believe it was) and throws the bowl into the gorge next to them and proceeds to fashion another from the local clay. Will take him all morning, Fern reckons. Time for her to explore the hills around here without being followed everywhere. She’ll enjoy the isolation.
In the middle of the desert which was also its edge, she soon comes across this military grade helicopter, not so much landed here as crashed — both at once. Philip Stevor was working on one of the broken landing wheels presently. She approached, recognizing the figure. But why was he *here*? In the desert? Outside Nightsity?
“Cpt.,” she said about 10 feet away, unnoticed in approaching the chopper and addressing him the way she always did. He drew his gun as he stood up and spun around. Not drunk this morning, it appears, Fern thought. Impressive! Must have done a required stint in rehab.
“Oh,” he said, relaxing and putting the gun away. “It’s you, phew! So many bad things out here in the Badlands. Guess you came here through the portal — don’t mind if I keep working on the chopper while we talk, I hope. Gotta get out of here asap. I can take you with me. If you’re also stuck out here in the middle of nowhere for reasons still unknown to me.” He turned only his head now while the hands were still busy with the wheel. “Are you?… stuck?”
Was she?
Was I?
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0106, Badlands, C2077, South Dakota
After the BD was over, the driver who was also the filmer decided to make the same loop over again to start another BD, this time focusing on the incredibly compact Tibetian city of Yajaing itself more than a drive into the city from another one called Kangding 2 hours, 44 minutes, and 20 seconds away through beautiful Himilayan mountains. Here are the two identical sections travelled, starting at 0:51 and 2:37:21 in the videos below respectively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpZ-H3nqOMM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSHphBOAc1U
Continuing leads from FBI Agent Dale Cooper (see below), I saw it as an opportunity to study synchronicity through direct overlap. It may have paid off, because this TILE umbrella appearing on the first loop…
… was then removed by the second one, a time I estimate to be about 30 minutes later. Another highlighting of TILE, it seemed, becoming a theme for this here present photo-novel.
Agent Cooper’s advice seems to pay off again (!).
Gentlemen, when two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention.
And this time — so appropriate — in his beloved Tibet he declared intense admiration for early on in the Twin Peaks series, even taping a map of it on the back of a blackboard to lecture about for others in his adjunct law enforcement department. And however confused they seem in the moment here, I’m sure they got a lot out of it. 🙂 And Cooper’s advice I quote above comes from the same talk.
Speaking of TILE umbrellas: back to the cyberpunk desert.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0105, Badlands, C2077, MAPS, Twin Peaks, Washington
“Ahh, there’s me in the middle again. Surrounded by my 2 favorite men, Cary to the left and Madison to the right. If only it were still that way and I could choose and select who I wanted to be with in any one alternate reality, *sigh*.”
“I’m worried about you, Tin. I really am.”
“Why? Because I know who I am and what I want?”
“Maybe,” I admitted, thinking of my own insecurities. Sure I was a writer. But of what kind? What genre? The list goes on.
“Then you need to go away and think about what I’m telling you. Goodbye. Shoo now.”
—–
I first heard of Lizzy over in Rocky Boy toward the edge of the desert. Not *at* the edge. But getting there. Someone named Fern met me at Ten at Sunset during the afternoon soon to turn to night. Told me not to head back into Nightsity on my motorcycle. Told me to go east instead of west. Rocky Boy. Here I am.
I parked my motorcycle on the edge of the small, trailer dominated town, speaking of edges, intending to walk around and see what’s there. The pavement on the main road through it was heavily cracked and overgrown with weeds. Toward the middle of the place there was a garage business with an unlit E in the neon OPEN sign next to its office door, the only building I could find with a walkable interior. Seeing no indications of hostile forces, I go inside to check it out.
Devoid of people, but its lone TV was playing. Someone, some kind of influencer let’s call it, was talking about Lizzy and how’d she’d thrown her hat into the brain daze producing ring, starting with a murder most foul. Of her own doing. Listening to it, I somehow knew this Lizzy person, who, after all, I didn’t know about 5 minutes before, would never do this and that the BD was a fake, if it even depicted a murder. I don’t know how I knew, but it turned out to be correct. There was no body. There was nobody.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0104, Badlands, C2077
—–
I was an expert on The Pit and all matters fleshy. They had set up a base of operations for me in an old castle surrounding the quarantined area. I looked for the promised local airport in which to land my orange PA-18 Super Cub Amphibian 1.2, bought on a lark day before yesterday’s tomorrow 5 years ago. Seems like it’s just the strip of land next to the castle over there. Oh well — it’ll be tight. Here goes!
Nailed it! Barely, phew! Now to find Baker Bloch the owner of this town and see what the deali-o is about the anomaly. Creature coming all the way under the oceanic plate separating Maebaleia from Jeogeot here? Highly unlikely. Probably an independent entity, hopefully smaller in scope.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0103, Big Woods, C2077, Jeogeot, Kabusie, Maebaleia/Satori, Oooo, X-City^
“I caught a witcher, I caught a witcher!”
“What’s your name, boy?” said Gerald, ignoring the fact that he’d come up out of the water from a swim right at the end of the sitting lad’s line. But word would get around. The witcher caught like a fish. By a mere boy!
“Andre,” answered the boy about his name. “Andre the Dwarf, soon to be a giant among men, he he he he.” And then, rod in hand with line aimlessly dragging behind him now (he was very excited and forgot to reel it in!), he started running around the port streets and alleyways, spreading the word that he’d caught a witcher and the witcher wasn’t that tough of a guy after all. Soon fights would be challenged by the many drunken men standing about here there and there all over town. And worst: duels by the some of the most drunken and therefore most emboldened of the lot, also a pretty numerous group in this wine soaked place. No problem for Gerald of course, being the powerful witcher he was — unique in abilities even among his own kind. But it presented, how you say, bothersome and eventually wearisome distractions. He didn’t really want that now, wanted to live a life of peace and quiet. And alchemy. Gerald begins to wonder if he’d actually chosen the right location to retire in after all, long years of monster hunting finally behind him hopefully with the “slaying” of the Beast of Tousaint and the earning of the local vineyard (and dog) that came along with it. There was always Rivia to the north, his birthplace after all. There was always Merry Gouldbusk. And he also had other options. Through the alchemy, the vineyard leads the vineyard steers. The hypothesized spaceship may land here, providing yet another option. Escape to the stars, hmph. Gerald always shakes his head with the thought, thinking he may be going a bit mad for lack of actual work, the monster slaying he’s so adept and practiced at. The alchemy speaks, though, he knew. Mainly through the graytop mushroom trips he’d learned about through the Caed Myrkvid herbalist Pinastri. But still… real.
“Reel reel reel,” sang a chorus of men in the lower left central square of the town with appropriate fishing gestures, making fun of Gerald once again and one or more of them hoping for a fight most likely. “Reel reel reel,” they finished, and then started to laugh. “What are you going to do about our *singing*? Witcher?” said the most drunken and thus the most emboldened of them, pulling a pistol or rod from his pocket in a continuous gesture leading from the the fishing one. Not again, Gerald thinks, and promptly puts the man down with his own gun. I’ve got to find that boy, he thinks over the bloody body with smoking weapon. I’ve got to put all this nonsense to rest once and for all — have the boy make some sort of declaration to the fact that he *didn’t* catch me like a fish and he just made up a tall tale about the *accidental* conjunction of himself and the end of his line. But then he knew this exhibit wouldn’t fly and the damage had been done. Must be fate, he determined, spying another collection of drunken men just down the way doing that reeling-in gesture once more. Maybe this group at least won’t sing, he tries to console himself, readying his still warm pistol once more just in case.
But then the town surprised him by instead starting another song by the band he was passing on stage to his left, a tribute progressive jazz folk rock outfit he quickly determined, detecting influences of both Steely Dan and Steeleye Span within, throw in a bit of hard rocking Stealers Wheel stuck in the middle (part). He was, as it were, in tune with the town once more and through it the universe. Upper, Middle, Lower as one.
“Nice tune,” he said while turning away after listening a bit, enough to get the gist. Strangely calmed, he looked up at the 4 TILE colored buildings now in front of him and remembered it from that dream.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0102, Witcher
Innocent looking enough, right? Vacant backlot for my Aisle of Palms virtual city of 4096 square meters area and 64 x 64 meters design. Wrong. It represents The Pit, a limit for development in My Second Lyfe. The Pit absorbs, the Pit devours even. Much like the Mystery Flesh Pit did to Rose/Emily over in the upper right central part of Maebaleia in a super city that seems to be receding in strength lately itself, with numerous large and small lots for sale dotting the area presently. Here: a different continent (Jeogeot). But same results on a more minor scale.
Q: So Aisle of Palms will not continue.
A: I don’t see how. I haven’t really worked on the town in 1/2 a year. Why keep it around?
Q: The Pit blocks.
A: Indeed.
In other news: Tibet.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0101, Big Woods, Jeogeot, Maebaleia/Satori, Twin Peaks, Washington, X-City^
And so let’s end where it all began. With a cube. In the Back Rooms. But we must add more text and context.
None of this is finished. We have reached a dead end, plywood *blocking* our way again. Besides the highlighted cube, notice also the bit on the sickly yellow wall to the left here projecting through as a line. Future promise but also current limit.
We are going to get answers, though the journey will be hard at times, with many pitfalls to navigate. Let’s call these: falling into the flesh pit, mystery no more. The Back Rooms is actually uplifting in this way. Sometimes I wish it had all remained plywood, this Our Second Lyfe. Would certainly help with lag (!).
We toil endlessly in a 9-5 grind but ultimately use our copiers for nonproductive things like tomfoolery or worse.
We are hanging by a thread, producing writing but only of a disjointed mix of color, font, and narrative.
We wade through pools of shallow knowledge, hoping to get to deeper ones soon enough. If we live that long, pheh (plywood again).
We are bored. We are not fulfilling what we are suppose to be. The powers that be knew this would happen. They gave us a break. Many.
As in bathroom. So many toilets to choose from but only one is real. No people at least, but of course that’s part of the whole problem.
We must come back up to the world, move to the main building by the holidays with all the other 9-5 grinders and out of this Back Rooms place with its pitfalls and dead ends. Things will be okay; you’ll see. Night writing instead of day. Continuity instead of disjointment through increased psychic abilities. Let the photo-novels begin!
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2024 LATER”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0703, Back Rooms, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
Sunklands 