Category Archives: Buildings

February 7, 2024 · 6:41 am

00410706

“The only Theft name of *any* kind in the US according to the old GNIS database was ‘West Central Texas Auto Theft Task Force’, a building in downtown Anson TX. The new database contains no listings with Theft. The old location, the whole *name*, was *stolen*, in effect: theft of Theft.  I actually visited the site and found no Auto Theft Task Force office, much less a whole building devoted to the matter. I looked all around the supposed address, with only a bricked up side door and an unmarked back door fitting the Google Map directions. My theory is that it only existed in the first place as an indicator.”

Petty was furiously taking notes opposite yammering June Bug Johnston at his small office in the so-called Cement Village, hidden itself from the surrounding town of Aisle of Palms. The discovery of the 2 matching Dennis’ issued forth a torrent of words. She was *so* close to the answer (The End). The sun having rising about a 1/2 hour back now, he was late for his other job at the Perch Restaurant. But Manager Percy would understand. Overlaps sometimes happen with such a busy soul. Many a night he postponed sleuthing activities when a late dinner party arrived, or a bus full of tourists pulled up 5 minutes before closing. Too bad Percy doesn’t believe in phones or he’d ring him up. Mother’s exploded after she left it ringing too long one day; killed her and mortally wounded Aunt Gertrude who was playing strip poker with her at the time. Blew off a valuable piece of her body but she survived. His mother Wanda Bertaaa Doris’s naked parts were scattered about like a broken Humpty Dumpty. Speaking of which…

“… Humpty Dumpty sea ship modified into a space ship,” June Bug continued in sync with my own internal dialog. “Jim the Bastard Pirate–”

“Wait. *The* Bastard Pirate? Jim Randolph?”

“The same. Anyway he was *suppose* to pilot the ship all the way to the Red Dead planet but he crashed in the sea. Thing couldn’t take the pressure of the strange atmosphere and anyway, he took the wrong ship indicated by his pirate pal Black Pearl, wise in such matters.”

Chef-Inspector Petty, still an inspector despite being on the clock as a chef (and a waiter), thought back to his giant self peering out over tops of internal Cement Village buildings to the new ship parked out back, ready for space exploration according to all the rumors and gossip about town. The *correct* ship according to Black Pearl. Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate had gotten the wrong vehicle from the right creator as we spoke about before.

Petty’s sharp ears then heard the ominous roar of a tour bus roll into town from the south. “*F -it,* June Bug,” he cussed, checking his nonexistent watch again. “We’ll have to resume all this in another post. Gotta get to the restaurant!”

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February 7, 2024 · 5:54 am

March 12 1951

The file was as thick and complex as St. Dennis itself. “How did you find this office?” queried Chef-Inspector Petty, watching her closely as she studied it, watching the eyes dart about, noticing the scars cutting across her forehead, eyes, nose and cheeks somewhat redden in the excitement.  He could look past it. He wondered if she had any hair underneath that metallic green hood. And what up with the 3 eyed owl perched on her shoulder (!)?

“A little birdie told me,” she answered, which he assumed was the owl again, whose middle eye quickly winked at him right when he thought this.

“Oh. Yes. I see.” He kept staring at the owl, then, but no more obvious winks were produced. Just a steady stare with intermittent, calm blinking, each eye taking a turn now. He decided to ask the sex.

“Um. Both I think.” She was still staring down at the files, flipping pages rapidly in the swift reading. Was the owl helping her with this too? he pondered. Odd thought, he realized. But nothing was ordinary about this case, nothing atall.

“Light okay?” he thought to ask, although he had no way to increase it. Electric grid didn’t get this far in Aisle of Palms yet, on the opposite side of town from the generator in the Blue Feather and attached Perch Restaurant. At least the sun was coming up now. She’d been reading for about 20 minutes.

“Fine.” Looked like she was about 2/3rds the way through the file. He then thought he was peering down on her a bit, understood that he had missed the mark on the size change once more. He’d have to wait to adjust. Can’t risk shaking the table and jostling the pages out of order or something. He’ll just be patient. He looks at the watch still not on his wrist. Sunrise in 7 minutes. He’d have to excuse himself and go to his other job soon, the chef-waiter thing. Looks like she won’t be finished by then, he gauges. Would she allow this? The owl and its three eyes kept staring, blinking.

“Ah HA!” she then emitted, spreading out and then matching the edges of 2 pages she’d reached in the file. The owl then turned to her as she turned toward it. “You seeing the same thing I’m seeing?” Both looked down in synchronization. Both were staring at a picture of St. Lemon, before the beheading and the replacement with a giant lemon. Dennis again.

Another 2n1, both knew. They understood where to place the time machine.

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February 6, 2024 · 6:02 pm

00410704

He gives her time to look around the office, check out the maps, the painting, the works on the bookshelf, even the files in the filing cabinets if she wishes. What does he care? Sleep deprivation again we’ll assume; might as well burn the place down, he thinks while yawning for the 1000th time tonight. He finally gathers the energy to enlarge himself again — *just* enough to do the job (no overshot or undershot this time!). He waits for her to walk out, snooping apparently done.

“Find what you need, my fine lady?” he calls over, shocking her of course. It’s here he notices the face scars as she stares over with wide eyes. Too bad: otherwise quite pretty.

“Are you him?” she decided to stand her ground, defend her actions. “Are you Petty?”

“Some call me that. Some only know me as Chef. Or Inspector, depending on the time of day. Or depending on whether it is day or night I should say. You’re here at night. I assume you’re looking for Petty the Inspector, then.”

She approached him, scars looming larger. What *happened* to her?

“I also go by different names,” she said in turn. “Some call me Beautiful, some Plain. Some call me June, some Jane. Right now I’m June — night-time for me as well, I suppose. But the scars are there to remind me of Jane.”

“Yess,” he said. “Wondering about that. How did–”

“I just told you,” she cut him short. “I’m a 2n1, just like you. We have that in common but we have so much more. St. Lemon of Troy — the painting within. Do you know about Dennis?”

“Dennis,” he said thoughtfully. “Let me think…” Let me think of a *lie*, he says to himself. He *knew* he shouldn’t have hung that painting on top of everything else. His brain’s starting to operate better, perhaps because of its change back the correct size.

“St. Dennis, yes. The one that lost his head in the transition. The next time, the next go, he wore a helmet, golden in color. But it still didn’t protect him from the eventual consequence. So he had to be *deflected*.”

She know about that as well, he thinks. “Well,” he says to this. “Saints Hotel is a pretty nice place to stay, nice compensation. And anyway, I’ve heard that he and his *gang* have finally made their way down to the big city, the 8th wonder of the world some call it.”

“Where’s the auto in all this?”

“Auto?” He still couldn’t help play dumb within the flow of truthful revelations. Force of habit.

“You know which auto. You have pins of Yvonne, Dorenna and, yes, Anton inside on the Nautilus City map. Anton from Anson. I understand you were there when it first appeared, or when — I suppose — it first decided to reveal itself.”

“The Bug, yes.” Enough talk for now, he decided. He remembers that he’d locked the filing cabinets before enlarging himself tonight. At least he had the sense to do that. But perhaps it was time to look inside.

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February 6, 2024 · 6:33 am

00410703

He enlarges himself beside his office so he can better peer over the tops of internal buildings and view the object while still remaining clandestine in the dark. Probably; maybe the sleep deprivation is really catching up with him now and he’s beginning to lose his mind. Enlarging himself? He hasn’t resorted to those tactics since the early days of Collagesity (!). But they’re readying another ship to travel into space and he has to know the ins and outs, and since he has another job in the day when people are actually awake to answer questions about it…. well, circumstances seem to dictate this.

Footsteps behind him. He quickly micronizes back down to ordinary size or attempts to. Overshot! — you see, this is one of the dangers of enlarging in the first place. But maybe all for the best, since he didn’t think he was spotted that way. *No one* comes to his office. He’s embarrassed about the smallness of *it*, which he’s hidden in the bowels of the otherwise empty, cold and foreboding so-called “Cement Village” for this very reason and then put out rumors in the community at large that the place was haunted. Plus the population wasn’t ready for the truths within yet. St. Lemon of Troy.

Indeed she hadn’t spotted him because of the size. She walks within, intending to snoop around while no one was apparently home. Yes, she thinks. She’s in the right spot. Yvonne, Dorenna and Anton marked on a Nautilus City map.

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February 3, 2024 · 4:36 pm

straightening out the past

They’d found it at the bottom of the sea just north of the boat house where she was staying. An Anton avatar was there in the Anson sim — so close of a name it couldn’t be an accident. Spiderwebs covered this orange version of a VW Beetle but she knew it was the same. Had to be. Someone was playing Grand Theft Auto in Our Second Lyfe and it all led up to this place. Shoes inside, she recalled. Of a ruby variety. Stolen as well.

Roger Pine Ridge kept looking at the flickering white glow beneath the water that he knew was Anton. Shoes stolen; mission accomplished. Like finding the ruby slippers of Oz, he thought. Anorexia’s gonna be pissed off as hell.

He looked over at the green robed woman beside him, face harshly illuminated by the glare of the flashlight she held. Scars. “I’m just waiting for the significant other to finish up inside,” he explained from his *self named* chair.. “How about you?”

—–

Cyberpaperdoll walks out of Fae’s Boat House with 50,000 lindens in hand.

“Come on, Biker,” she said just above a whisper toward the closest Pine Ridge chair. “Time to go.”

“Don’t forgot to sign the guestbook out there!” Jim the Pirate Bartender called from within, a request they most definitely ignored while leaving.

I should have kept the name Kelp, she pondered while still staring at the pirate ship in the bay from the balcony of the big white empty house. The owner, Shippe, *must* be the same as Jim the Bastard Pirate from back in those days. Too coincidental (once more). And as Anton is likewise close to Anson, so her own chosen nickname at the time, Kelp, is to Kulp, as in Nancy Kulp as in plain Miss Jane from the “Beverly Hillbillies” TV series, replaced by similarly plain Miss Janet in Grand Theft Auto, Ski Inn bar parallel. The one who woke up Philip Strevor to who he really is.

Apparently the opposite happened to his partner-in-crime Marion Harding back in the past which may be the same as the present. From the same deck she sat on and read her book of spooky stories in the dark one year later, he dove into the sea that represents the unconscious, intent on finding the vanished auto that was his little Bug. Where did it go? Back to the beginning of this here photo-novel? Think, June Bug, think!

Then she realized: Chef-Inspector Petty would know about Anson. He was there with Baker Bloch when the original auto was found. He’d probably have records of it in his files.

Now to figure out where he ran his private dick nighttime business in Aisle of Palms. In Perch Restaurant as well? Another 2n1? So many questions, but we’re still indeed nearing the very end of the thing.

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January 13, 2024 · 12:08 am

00410511

Soon after leaving Aisle of Palms, the pirate ship ran into choppier waters rounding Thailand, encountering unexpected waves of stretch marks in trying to stick to the prepared dotted line of their journey. But this was only prognostication derived from the leg, with the actual voyage into space and not sea still lying ahead of them. Keeping with the body analogy, The Black Pearl was about to set sail for the fabled or perhaps fantastical Islets of Langerhans, said to dot the Pancreatic Sea in considerable numbers and whose shores are protected from harsher elements by huge ribs of sandbars, or so the legends go. The parallels to all this in space could only be guessed at (islets = asteroids? etc.).

Hopefully the sea and its islets haven’t been removed from the body in question and the dotted line they’re following turns out to be more akin to this, ick. In other words, the chest had been opened and the buried treasure within removed. Like coins in a gold bullion, maybe the islets themselves are this trove. We’ll work on it.

Barfly Sparrow has a secret.

“Hold *still* Prisoner Bermuda or whatever your actual name is while I take this final shot.” Officer Michelle Roundup had started at the end and worked her way back to the beginning. As shall we.

There. The Black Pearl is now in Aisle of Palms.

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January 9, 2024 · 6:01 am

00410506

Michelle returned to the graffiti on the side of the Hole in the Wall bar, but not with paint. Instead she chose another art form to practice today: collage. John of Arc was left back in his cell. She decided she had to do this on her own — for now.

“What are you doing, Love?” spoke Sparrow in his smooth, pirate voice to her side, always peering down this direction from his perch in front of the bar. “You’ve dissected public property, Dearest.”

“I’ve *confiscated* public property. *Dearest,*” she spoke back harshly. And she almost had it before the interruption. She was mapping out the differences in the two treasure maps she had found this week, one here and one on the body of new prisoner Bermuda, aka Victor Ratt the owner of Parrots for Pirates, as we’ve already reviewed. Charged just yesterday for not charging customers for his/her goods.

“Almost all treasure maps have an “X” (at the end of a dotted line),” offered devil’s advocate Sparrow. “Almost all involve a pirate ship; almost all involve dragons or octopii or some strange watery creature.”

“*No*,” says Michelle to this. “The patterns are just too similar. You have the islands with the 2 palms trees in both. You have compasses in both, although I don’t think it centers on the compasses.”

“Again–” started to counter Sparrow once more.

“I know I know,” interrupted Officer Roundup. She exhaled deeply. She kept staring.

“Well let’s review, then,” Sparrow continued to help from his observing perch. “With — Triangle isn’t it?’

“Bermuda,” said still staring Michelle.

“Bermuda, right. Well, Ms. *Bermuda*’s treasure map began at the palms.”

“Right right,” cited impatient Roundup. If he’d just *shut* *up*, she thought… but still, he may be able to help, being a pirate and all. And what of silent Hook so far? Always peering into that *2d* version of the ending treasure. Nothing to add in the real world.

“And what part of the body, hmm?”

“The… calf. Yes the calf on the back of the leg. Then it winds up” — and here she traced the upper progression with her billy stick — “and passes the pirate ship; *first* in the graffiti, with the palms being second in that case. And then the dragon or whatever.”

“What part of the body are we up to?” spoke Sparrow.

“We’re circling around the rump, yes.”

“And the X at the end?” Sparrow’s eyes became wider in anticipation. Michelle caught the look.

“*Not* where you think, Perv.” Back to the map, back to the X.  “At the ribs, actually,” she realized aloud.

“*Welll*,” said Sparrow to this, looking over at Hook in a knowing way. Hook just kept opening the chest, peering at the treasure, and then shutting it and repeating the action. Over and over. “I think we *both* know what that is.”

Michelle kept silent for a minute, brain wheels spinning. “Adam and Eve?” she finally outputted. “The *rib*.”

(to be continued)

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January 8, 2024 · 8:48 am

stripes

“Yeah, this doesn’t seem to be scrubbing off, Michelle.”

“Don’t call me that, Murderer. Call me Officer Roundup.”

“Sure. But, um…”

“Option 02, I get it. Let’s go back to the station and pick up some white paint and some brushes.” But then, staring at the back of her heavily tattooed prisoner, Policeperson Michelle Roundup had an idea.

“John,” she said, making him pause. She’d always called him by one of his many crimes before, Murderer if pretty to really upset down to Burglar if only mildly so or not atall. Never the actual name. Before this; what did she want? “John,” she repeated, trying to phrase it in the proper way. “Erm, have you seen a tattoo like this by chance? A full body one? One that wraps around the whole body front to back I mean? Another treasure map is what I’m saying.”

Oh Jeez, he thinks here. She knows about them! What will he do?? How will he answer?? “You, um, mean on another person’s body.”

“Yeah. That’ll do.”

“Then: no.” Relief! He didn’t have to bring up the curse attached to the design.

“How about in general?” Michelle Roundup intuitively followed up. “Like a drawing of such a body? Or a painting? Oh — photo,” she then realized. “Have you seen it in a photo or a series of photos?”

Drat! Now he’ll have to actually lie. Certainly he can’t admit to stealing Officer Roundup’s camera behind her back. Burglar becomes the worst nickname in that case!

“Iiii…”

In the hesitation, she sensed something else, something new. The camera! Missing for a couple of hours yesterday. She thought she just misplaced. But, upon thinking about it, it was there on her desk, then next minute: not. Then *placed* in almost the exact same place a bit later in the afternoon. He knows about the treasure, he knows about the X! The inability to scrub this one off was a sign, a portent.

—-

She acted really smart. She didn’t accuse him of the theft to his face. After all, he was already in custody for several other, more henious crimes. He can’t go anywhere.

There were a couple of possibilities in play, she thought as they walked back to pick up the paint and brushes to finish the job. First, he’s just a desperate perv wanting to look at some pictures of a naked girl. Two, he was gathering information about, I don’t know, the location of an *actual* treasure. Three: maybe he just stole the camera to take pictures himself and then saw the photos already on it. But indeed he knows about them. People just don’t turn that red for no reason. What’s black and white and red all over has a new answer beyond newspaper and embarrassed zebra. Actually I guess the latter still applies, she finished her joke.

(to be continued)

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January 7, 2024 · 10:37 am

00410504

There’s pirates all over town doing who knows what, she thinks, and yet he’s always here at the pool, staring at the girls. I should probably report him.

—–

Some pirates are here to look for treasure, some pirates just want to hang around bars.

And as we’ve seen, one pirate in town sells parrots and one pirate *is* a parrot wanting to sell parrots. But neither making a good effort at it.

We should probably get back to the former. In her cell. Away from the mob. For now.

Who is this strange woman dressed as a pirate? thinks not-so-easily-fooled-as-the-policemen Michelle Roundup — or so she believes — peering in at the enigmatic expression on her face, blank in a way but also revealing so much. Pretty deep facial scars — checks with being a pirate. Tattoos, some of a lewd variety — also check. One of a treasure map, even, a big one covering most of the body as she personally found out this morning during the prerequisite cavity search — even took some pictures of the complex pattern, writing in her report that it could be related to the crime. Which reminds Michelle: she needs to send the other in-house inmate John of Arc over to scrub off or paint over a curiously similar treasure map on the side of the Hole in the Wall bar. Here:

Does one somehow have something to do with the other? she ponders. She tries to compare and contrast in her mind — X marks the spot in both cases. Did so called *Bermuda* commission both, possibly? The computer lists her as a Victor, owner of Parrots for Pirates pet shop in town but gone missing for quite a while until her return just day before day before yesterday’s tomorrow (yesterday). Obviously this is not Victor. She explained it through a more gradual sex change involving hormones; described it as a Victor-to-Victoria conversion, as if the switch was built in to her birth name. Interesting, hmm. She rubs her chin with her free hand, the one not holding a billy stick. And why did she bring the stick to the cell in the first place? Then Michelle realizes why: she’s as culpable as the men. She stares into those eyes. No one, not male or female, could resist, she understood. The power of being both sexes in one? Yeah, we’ll leave that as a question.

(to be continued?)

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January 6, 2024 · 3:20 pm

00410501

“We’re only rescuing you from yourself, ma’am,” spoke Officer Howard earnestly, responsible for the check in. “What if, say, I ran up to Starbuccaneers just above us and Barista Wanda — or whatever her name is; I just made that up — Wanda, say, gave me a free coffee this morning, on the house just for being a cop. And then let’s say I take a couple of sips and then give it over to Officer Brendan, and Officer Brendan gives it to Officer Ferguson, and Officer Ferg — well I think you get the point. Pretty soon there’s free coffee all over town and Starbuccaneer’s is not making a dime off of it, business closed. So you see it’s dangerous, really dangerous, to offer stuff for free in a capitalist economy. Say, if we were in China or Cuba it would be different.”

“But we’re not anywhere,” Bermuda (Atlantis High Priestess) countered. “We’re right here. In Aisle of Palms on the Jeogeot continent. Neither here nor there.” Kind of like the Azores, she thought to herself.

“Well,” said Officer Howard back, taken aback a bit, “I don’t know about *your* user but *my* user comes from the good ol’ red white and blue US of A up there in the Americas, no communism in sight. Er, except for Cuba as I think I mentioned before. Anyway–”

“*Anyway*,” interrupted Bermuda, eager to get this over with and be locked inside her cell, safe from what she senses might be a growing mob. “I believe I get a phone call?”

“Indeed, ahem, indeed you do,” said Officer Ferguson, suddenly tired of lecturing the virtues of trickle down economies. He indeed got his coffee free from Starbuccaneer’s this morning from someone named Wanda, indeed shared it with Brendan who shared it with Ferguson and on down the line, everyone in town with their required caffeine high and no one else visiting Wanda this morning. Like the Loaves of Bread story from the Bible, Howard being a modern day agogo Jesus. Yet he still didn’t know he had that power. Too bad he didn’t also have the Savior’s power to resurrect himself because, after the decaffeinated 3PM afternoon break mob led by Jittery Joe was finished with him, he’d need it to continue.

“Let’s GET HIM!”

“YEAAHHHHH!!”

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