“I wonder if Rockstar is mad at me. For, you know, not getting the Beethoven thing; being, ahem, deaf about it.”
“Nah. He’s going through a lot of crap in his life right now,” I continue talking to myself on a high road over on the old continent of Our Second Lyfe, a location pointed out to me by an old acquaintance. “I’m just being paranoid, creating situations where there are none. Okay, better get back to Vortexville or, maybe better, ‘false’ New Island so I can kickstart my new novel again. ‘The Hmm.’ Bothering another one of my, he he, *allies* for a change. So naughty!”
“Yes?” he wheezed, manifesting on the ledge before me.
“No not *you* Nauty,” I said, looking over at him, not too surprised by the sudden manifestation for some reason, as if I was expecting it. Nothing’s changed: he’s still the same old Nauty with long, sharp pins stuck through his burlap body just there there there and there. We might seem equal in stature from the above snapshot…
… but we’re not. Not much different in that regard than, say, towering Kong up there is to me judging by his big foot over there from this angle. Not much different atall. Hmm.
Suddenly just like that I was in a different place with more pins, many more. This was Nauty again, I understood, but turned into a whole continent, or a representation thereof. I walk through his pin marking the former location of Spongeberg’s Mystenopolis…
… toward Center.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 