I saw the green soldier man lying dead outside the entrance to the Big Inside and my brain snapped. Little Big, my heart moaned. Little Big…
Monthly Archives: July 2025
00470501
“So that’s it down there,” I said, rather unimpressed.
“Yeah,” she said. “I thought we better take a photo up here before we forget where we are. Kabusie — so complicated!”
“Yeah and you’ve lived here, what, 12 years?”
“After Major died…” We both became silent for a minute. Then: “Well, we better get down there and take a look. I need to get you back to the house before dark so you can play with your, ahem, BD’s, heh.”
Just that one night she caught me, I think here. I’ll never live it down. Moving on: “So I still can’t go out after dark here,” I started the now old complaint. “And me 21 1/2 years old?”
“You need to get a job — *day* job. Then you can spend nights at the apartment–”
“This place comes alive at night,” I countered. “What would I do in the day?”
My *point* is — if you’ll let me finish — you’ll be too wore out to do too much mucking about afterwards. Thennnn, when you’ve saved enough money and learned — a *lot* — more about the ins and outs of these mean streets — where to be safe, what places to avoid — *then* we can think about getting you your own place. Under *my* supervision.”
“Super*vision*?” I chafed again.
“Yeah, you know. In looking for an apartment. No, I don’t mean being with you all times of the night following you around or anything; we won’t be living together any more. Truly I want to let you grow up here before kicking you out of your new nest. Mother would kill me if I let anything happen to you. You know that… *baby* brother.” The emphasis on “baby” reinforced what our mother thought of me. Still a toddler in this world, still an infant. With monkey feet that you can’t put socks on. With a crib by the bed watching robots walk past then melt into wall corners. Ro-bots.
“Okay,” I tried to put an end to this worn out discussion. “What would I do in your mind? During the day?”
She readjusted her position on the rail we were looking over, as if preparing herself for a retaliatory blow. “Wellll, you could work at that factory that makes robots we talked about. Uncle Steve could help you get a position.”
Suddenly, with the synchronous conjouring of the word robot, I realized this was fate. I *had* to work at that factory. I breathed out. “I’ll think about it,” I decided to give her.
Lexi beamed while looking down. Her master plan might work out after all. “Okay, wonderful. Now let’s go take a closer look at *Crooked*.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0047, 0501, C2077, Kabusie
00470417
“Dimmy, I am the mama you answer to from now on. Understand?”
Dimmy nods, suddenly not remembering how his mother actually looks. Maybe this *is* his mother. Yes, only several seconds later, he’s convinced. “I *will* find your toys, Mama!” he exclaims aloud.
“Good, good,” Rag Doll says to this. “At least you got the string. And *you* Newt,” she turns her attention to the other male sitting in the front row. “Newt of Newtown. What are you doing flirting with a woman 5 years older than you looking 15 years older? Does *Wheeler* know about this?”
“Well…” Newt glances over at second row Wheeler, who doesn’t glare back as might be expected but seems kind of indifferent to the situation. She’s seen worse. She *is* worse.
“Never mind. You met her in the mall today by the way. Do you think he was really there?”
“I–”
“Moving on,” Rag Doll quickly said. “To Osborne. Osborne, look up from your book and pay attention.”
Daughter Lou beside him nudges his ribs with her elbow. “Da-ddy. She’s talking to *you* now.”
“Oh, ahem. Um. What?”
“The town owner,” Lou tries to whisper but everyone in the room hears anyway. “Up there… on the stage. The dancers are gone. The main show is on.”
“Oh, erm, yes. Yes!” he speaks up, a little too loud he realizes. “I’m here, town ruler,” he softens a bit.
“And you’ve found MOA?” this ruler asks.
“Why yes, I believe I have. It’s in the basement…” Osborne looks around as if seeing the sewer room for the first time. Suddenly he doesn’t know where the library is, its basement, anything. He recalls… walking through a soda machine.
“Good enough,” says Rag Doll. “We’ll talk more soon in private about that. Let’s see, that leaves Eight and Eighty and then Pietmond and Norris. Let’s start with the girls. Eight, we’ve talk a lot down at the ratskeller together while Eighty was away, shared a lot of town gossip and rumors in our giggly, girlish ways. I wonder if you’ve thought about the note.”
“Eighty looks at Eight as if also betrayed, more than Wheeler perhaps surprisingly. Eight seeing Rag Doll behind Eighty’s back? When did her position in town change?
“I took the note from you 2 years ago and yet you didn’t protest. I called it worthless and you didn’t question my questionable assessment. Of course it’s not worthless. I’ve manifested it in your pocket — just look! EINSTEIN; ‘To; Tu/E.”
Pulling the note out and unfolding it, Eight saw, Eighty next to her too. More to talk about later.
“And then the boys, Norris and Pietmond. Clearly Nazis are bad and deserved to be mowed down, ancient headgear or not. So by, let’s say, moral default you have won the contest. Now think carefully: What do you wish your dream island to be?”
After high-fiving each other about the victory, the boys talked amongst themselves and then spoke up. They jointly described a post-Nazi (is)land full of decent Germans in a more modern setting, adding central yellow to an already present red and black in the national flag for increased light and illumination. Given enough time if not space, these people may even be able to make light/find levity in a dark dark past, they theorized. “Our ancestors, PHEH,” said one or the other. “What *were* they thinking about, and so on.” This would obviously take a while, though, the boys furthered. In the meantime, they could go about their daily business in the light of God-day without accumulated sin from their country’s history weighing them down. They’d be free. “This is what we wish,” they finished.
And so it came to be. The burg of Newtown with the sim of Newt at its core was born retroactively from that moment, hurrah! END OF SECTION.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0417, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470416
Newtown policepeople Michelle Roundup and Bill Mustardgas also formed a legitimate and formidable team but they were currently investigating the Blue Moon static murders over on the old continent of Our Second Lyfe and thus unavailable.
Nor were Ted and Cruise of the potential When Push Comes to Shovel team, still on the clock down at the motor shop and unable to get off.
Which left the following, assembled in the sewer room underneath the entrance to also absent Alfred’s grocer store (sick with pill), the heart of the matter. Starting back row to the right, we have Norris and Pietmond, 2 gypsies (don’t call them hippies!) who rammed and bammed into town from the South Gate in a most dramatic fashion back at the beginning of this here section, killing a number of Germans but defending their actions by saying they were zombies and not real people. Were they right? Let’s move on down the row and we might see.
Next are Eight and Eighty last seen in the ratskeller beneath town hall, waiting for Alessandra who is the same as a white-clad Wheeler. Wheeler mistakened one of them for town *owner* Rag Doll, but she got her position wrong in town. The owner herself will be arriving shortly to correct all that.
Moving on to the second row from the back — and also the front — we have Osborne Well and, next to him, his daughter Lou, taking the place of Ruby and Bookie who also couldn’t make it for various reasons. Next is Wheeler likewise subbing for Alessandra, but, unlike the others, not directly sitting with her partner, who would be next up in our review front row right: Newt. Then to finish our teams off we have Dimmy and Marilyn M. from the cloth shop scene a couple of posts ago.
Time for dancing around the main subject matter is over. Red clad Shelley and now black clad mate Eddy unclasp themselves from each other and leave the stage. Rag Doll takes control….
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0416, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470415
Almost as soon as they entered the toilet haunted by a pair of hands and who knows else, Zoomer’s police-issued light went out. “At least our galoshes are holding up,” Petty tried to shine another bright spot on their investigation, figurative this time, the most important kind some say. But Zoomer and Ziegler suddenly were nowhere to be found. In the darkness, Petty must have stumbled into a commode and fallen down into the sewer itself, the source of it all. As soon as this happened all the bathroom lights came back on by themselves and all the pissers and otherwise who had followed the police trio in easily found their own way to commodes and urinals and, if needed due to limited space, sinks and even waste bins and wall corners by this point.
Light also eventually found Petty again as he bumbled and stumbled down that pretty if stinky sewage cascade seen in the below snapshot to a confluence of flows in a more open area. Rattling sounds behind him. He turns.
“*There* you are you little devils,” he said, but the spotted hands kept to their task, fiddling with a bike chassis, almost as if they were trying to repair it in their inept way while actually just scuffling it about aimlessly on the concrete floor. “You know, that bike is lacking wheels,” Petty tried to help, understanding the hands probably couldn’t see and were working on limited feel alone. “Or a seat for that matter. You’ll never be able to get it to work if that’s what you’re trying to do.” No “answer” from the hands; did they even *hear* him? he thinks. No ears too after all. That must be it, he determined. He decides to go over and gently rattle the chassis himself, make the hands aware that he’s here too.
But as he bends down and grasps the bike part…
… he’s suddenly leaning against the wall on the other side with his feet in it instead, his hands grasping something else. Inside he sees the center which is also the end. He unfolds, revealing the full truth. “WOW-za,” were the last words he speaks in this post. We can proceed.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0415, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470414
“I’m having a little trouble playing the ‘Pathétique’, Shelley. A little help here, hmm?”
“On your own,” she said, busy with her own activity (limbering up for her shooting). And so it goes.
—–
“Okay, where’s the body, Zeigler, Zoomer?” asks Chef-Inspector Petty, freshly arrived on the scene. The Z’s, he thinks here. Appropriate… always asleep at the wheel. “I mean, there’s an outline here. That means….” Then he spies the blood coming from under the toilet door. “O-kay, what’s going on over *there*?”
“W-we didn’t know what to do Inspector,” Zeigler the male officer of the two tries to explain.
“*Chef*-Inspector,” says Petty to this, being petty about his official title as is appropriate here. “Don’t forget the day job. I certainly can’t.”
“Hands, sir,” takes over Zoomer the female one. “We don’t…. know how that much blood can come–”
“Open the door,” commands Petty. “I want to see.”
“You won’t like it,” says Zeigler.
“Open — it,” he metes out. “And for God’s sake arrest or at least fine that man — I think — taking a piss against that wall! No public urination, nevermind the circumstances!”
“Yes sir.” But neither move.
“Wellll?”
“Which — one,” stutters Zoomer, “would you like us to do first?”
Petty sighs deeply. “Just open the door.”
After it’s opened remotely, he watches all the toilet related objects thrown out of the blackness — toilet paper rolls, toilet brush, urinal deodorizer — then settle on the floor and subsequently disappear. Finally, after all the clanking and skidding and rolling is over: “Hands, huh?”
“Yes sir,” said Zoomer. “We shown a flashlight in there.”
“Hands doing everything — all the throwing,” emphasized Zeigler. “We don’t know how much blood–”
“Stop,” he said. “Go,” he points. And they put on their police-issued galoshes and went inside. Other wannabe pissers and otherwise quickly followed in their footsteps. Only public toilet within a 1/2 mile radius, you see. Messy, haunted bathroom or not, they had to go too.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0414, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470413
“Why yes I’ll accept your goblet of wine almost naked and equally tall Colossus before me, ha ha ha.”
Shelley Johnston Struthers wakes up drooped over her laptop, realizes she’s got to finish the current photo-novel before August 31st or overdue. Hiding the tempting body evilly illuminated by the black hole sun behind her, she gets back to it.
—–
“It’s YOUR fault, you know. The death of Susan here. You killed her!”
“No, YOU killed her!”
“Did not!”
“Did so!”
“Did not!”
“Did so!”
—–
Oops. 7 o’clock already. Time for Newt to watch TV with Wheeler. Better say my goodbyes and head out. Maybe for the last time, PHEH.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0413, Bright Moon Cottage, Jeogeot, LSD, Nawt Vaya, NVFS, Oooo, Vortexville
00470412 (the great 100,000 book library in de skies)
“Lou, dearest,” he whispered over. “Buy your old man a can of soda while he’s busy studying will ya?”
“Sure thing Daddy. What’ll it be? Kolya? Pepi? Maybe even a bottle instead of a can?”
“Shhh, babydoll,” he said to her louder voice, finger over lips to reinforce his point. “Keep it down. Other people are studying here besides me.”
“And me — just sitting here twiddling my thumbs,” she responded in turn, tone not much softer than before. “Wishing there was an actual town again to visit while you read these old dusty things.” She became curious. “What’d you finding anyway? You mentioned a MOA or something or another.”
“Most Ancient One, yes,” he hissed, finger pressed against lips again. “Right underneath the library here, I’m speculating. That *whole town* you’re after. Files within!” Oh GOD. He shouted he was so excited. And now the whole rest of the library is staring. He waves at all of them, trying to indicate he’s sorry and that the outburst was just a slip-up.
Right through that Big Red Machine there it is, though. The secret passage. ‘Nother one.
He could walk through…
… and be in a different world altogether. And so it was.
“Ahh yes, thanks Lou,” he said after carefully popping the top and taking a sip. “Hits the spot.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0412, Gaston^^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
00470411
—–
He went straight to orange like his mama told him to.
“How much, Dimmy?” asked Marilyn M. the shop attendant eyeing him from the front desk while cutting cloth for an order.
Dimmy fished around in his pockets and pulled out the two bills he’d brought with him and held them up for Marilyn to see.
“No, Dimmy,” Marilyn replied patiently, use to such dimness from the now not-so-young boy. Boy in mind, man in body. The former will probably never grow up. “I mean, how much thread do you want — string, as you put it? 5 meters? 10?” She had 10 meters of cloth in her own hands now. Time to cut again, SNIP.
2 football fields, he remembered. Mama told him 2 football field’s worth. So he asked Marilyn how much that was.
“Well, that’ll be 200 yards worth of thread. That’s a lot. Are you sure you want that much? That’ll take more than 20 bucks but, tell you what, I’ll give you 200 feet for exactly that price.” Wanda needed to get home to feed the young’n’s. She wanted to wrap this up with the dimwitted man-boy, as in wrap the needed thread up and send him back home himself. She figured his mama told him feet instead of yards for that particular number since that would be priced around the 20 dollars she gave him. He just got the terms confused when converting them to football measurements in his head on the walk over. Dimmy — kind of knows his football but not much else. 2nd string fullback for the Newtown Fighting Newts. With his physical talent he could have been a star. But, you know, the mind…
Without more words, he handed over the bills.
His mother watched him walk through the front door without the needed bag and became furious. “TOYS,” she barked. “You forgot the TOYS. Or did you misplace them on the way home? Did you even get the string?” Dimmy, use to such outbursts but still hurt by the stinging words, pulled out the wrapped thread from his back pocket. “Well, at least you did THAT much. I can make my line across 1 2 3 4 gullies but I can’t position toys along the way. What am I going to DO with you, Dimmy Gene? Your father, God rest his soul, would be SO disappointed in you now.”
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0411, Blue Mountain, County Park, Haze County, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470410
“And so that’s how the crash occurred, and for what reason. You should have figured this out long before. Blue Boy.”
Blue Boy? he thought. OH, she thinks I am…
—–
… a different person now, thought older and more mature Newt. I am no longer Pepi – Can – Kolya, he counts them off individually on his desk beside his steampunk computer, old like him but still quite functional for his needs. He likes the way the dimensions of the monitor seem ideal to display full screen versions of his blog pictures (for example).
“Sir? (pause) Sir?”
“Oh yes, young Fink,” he finally comes out of his daydreams and acknowledges the boy’s presence. “Heading home again?”
“No sir. Just arrived. It’s 4 o’clock.”
“Oh.” Newt looks at his watch; still not on his arm, though. 4 indeed. Not 7. Where didn’t the time fly? ha ha, he thinks with a laugh. “Heading upstairs, then?”
Yes sir,” said Fink. “With your permission of course.”
“Of course — our arrangement. You show up at 4, go upstairs and use my attic computer for 3 hours, come back down here and say goodbye at 7 along with a bit of a chat, and then you return to your treehouse home to do stuff with pal Jake while Wheeler and I enjoy our TV shows before my bedtime.”
Fink was thinking: he and Wheeler have different bedtimes? Interesting. But of course said nothing about this. Instead:
‘Yes sir.” And before he took his leave he decided to remind Newt that the mechanical contraption Bimbo from their native land of Oooooo will FINALLY be arriving tomorrow afternoon after a 4 month delay.
After a significant pause while Newt still stared at the screen before him, he said, “right, right,” and moved to shut the door on the young human. “You’ll excuse me, Fink. Sensitive material on the computer now. Not for young eyes. Goodbye. We’ll talk at 7.”
And then he went back to his desk to have a bit of a weepie. He’ll miss the fellow!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0410, Blue Mountain, County Park, Haze County, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya, NVFS
Sunklands 