Category Archives: California
00490604
Oh Jesus, he thinks, checking through the 2-way mirror on who opened the creaking door this time. Someone on the list for a change (!). And John on the john, unable to help me right now. Don’t dare yell over at him to hurry things up, he thinks; people next door might hear. Peter Oesso runs up to camera 03, quickly turns it around. BMK wants all angles so she can transform the video from 2-D to 3-D! Can’t screw this up. On cue, important person #5 on the list, back to the mirror, roughly pushes important person #4 onto the bed in front of him. Peter’s already noted she wears a green turtleneck sweater to go along with grey dress pants, indicating who she is. The man in contrast wears a grimy white tank top and faded holey jeans — working man, he’s guessing, perhaps on a break from the nearby factory given the time (noon-1 PM). Poor and rich, he’s determined; contrast of class. But also on the list. Blue Moon called them the turtle and the hare and said that he’d know them by her neck. The man starts berating her about coming too soon the last time and then climbs on the bed on top of her and proceeds to CHOKE her by that very neck. Should Peter intervene? Is this just part of the sex? Choke choke choke… oh god. Dead on the bed. DEAD… ON THE BED. #5 leaves the room, as if his job is done. Doesn’t try to dispose of the body or anything. Just: gone. Creaky door opens then shuts. Oh my gods, thinks Peter. Now *we’ll* have to dispose of the body? Is that… really why we’re here??? He understandably is terrorized, but just then, stirs from the bed. #4 is alive! he thinks. This must have all been part of the act, PHEW. After a minute to recover it seems, she gets up off the bed and approaches the window just as Blue Moon did before. She folds down the green sweater from her neck after removing some kind of pin, and unclasps a silver band from it, a silver choker if you will. Protection from the choking! Peter thinks. Ahh, this *is* an act. She proceeds to pass it to Peter THROUGH THE MIRROR.
At this moment, John finally exits the bathroom but Peter quickly hides the choker just given to him behind his back. Person #4: gone as well now from room #5, as if by magic, no creaky door noises indicating opening and closing. “What was all that commotion out here?” he questioned.
“Oh nothing, just tipped over in my chair.” It was the best Peter could think of. Would it work?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0604, California, Heartsdale+, Missouri
00490515
“This is where the Pee Pee starts, Biker friend of mine, perhaps a lover too.” Maybe she left the lover part out of that sentence. Hadn’t been decided. But they had travelled to Rodentia for a reason. Daisy was testing out the relationship fer sure.
“Fascinating,” he said but not with enthusiasm.
“Let’s move down this grassy diagonal side road. Keep in mind the beginning point.”
“Oh I will.”
—–
“And so this is where it ends, down at that pipe down there, about 200 yards below the source up next to Route 10. It *should* empty into the Baederwood Forest I just exposed by derendering that wall screen marking the limit of Arang. But it doesn’t. Another mystery, then, perhaps another misery as well.” But maybe she left that last part of that sentence out again. No need to bring misery into the relationship either which also often comes hand in hand with the love part.
“Hmmm… why are you showing all this to me again?”
She turns toward him on the bridge. “Because I want you to know where I come from, Biker. I want you to know *my* source. And my mouth.” She opens her mouth to him and points within. “The words coming out of my mouth. I want you to listen like I had to in the past.”
He looks away from her after she shuts her mouth back up. He opens his just a little, pops in another cigarette, lights it, puffs. Not what I signed up for, he thinks to himself while watching the smoke fill the air in front of him, concealing the stream again. Religious mumbo jumbo in a town devoted to anarchy against the powers that be. He’s not a radical, not even political at all, really. He just… likes Daisy. Why does she have to, erm, *muddy* the waters with this… complexity, pheh. And *what* kind of name is Pee Pee??
“Why?” he says aloud, smoke dissipated, allowing him to view again. “Why Pee Pee? It’s not yellow or anything.”
“No of course not, silly. It’s named for my home. In Nigeria. The one I tried to conceal behind a fancier name. This Second Lyfe offered me a chance to reverse my youthful error, change my perspective on the world. I became a priestess here just like my mother was (up) in Real Life. I’ve told you all this before. The other day, when you were on your 3rd Non of the evening. I *know* you weren’t drunk, ha.” Should’ve remembered, she thinks.
Had she made a mistake in bringing him here? What if Frank Lynn finds out? But she had to know. Now she thinks she does. If only they could resolve that difference of opinion about AI. She’s *firm* about hers. What about him? Is he pliable to change? *She* isn’t. And of course therein lies the problem. Can she realize this in time?
—–
When she returned home, she was shocked to find her bar wasn’t there any more along the shores of Nawt Vaya. Hole in the Wall: simply vanished!! What happened, what happened? she panicked. Then she realized the culprit. The alcoholic sea monster! The Non she’d prepared just before leaving with Biker to visit Rodentia had turned out to be so good that the taste overrode his need for alcohol. Success! she understood about her personal brew. But she’d have to start over from scratch. Maybe rebuild the bar elsewhere now that she had to make a fresh start anyway. It’s all up to Frank, he thinks. She needs to find him, and quick! TBC
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0515, Africa, California, Hole in the Wall, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS, Rodentia 02
00490512
“She called me Martin. Not Murdoc. It quite irritated me, and I think I figured out why. Murdoc Alphonse Niccals I was born, you see, but later changed Alphonse to Faust when I sold my soul to the Devil for rock ‘n roll fame, as any red blooded, white nosed lad of his time would have, he he — just kidding about the white part, mind you (sniff). So to name me something else would maybe break the spell, the, er, *blessing* that the Dark Underlord had bestowed upon me. But — ahh — maybe that’s what she was actually trying to do, see,” he realized while talking it all out. “Martin, eh?” He turned the word around in his mind, examining different angles, different facets.
“And this was Blue Moon doing the, um, renaming?”
“Did I say that?” he responded, eyebrows raised. “I meant Blue Flower… eh hehehehe, *Moon* Flower. Yes, that was her name. Not the other ones. Although 2-D was certainly *her* blue flower. Sacrifice you see. Lamb. Just like…” He petered out here. He couldn’t remember anything else for a while. I put him back in his orgone chamber for recharging. I knew the upside down cross on the front would keep him there. The Fallen One.
—-
“Peter, yeah,” he starts when returning and after a sniff. “Sorry I…” He trails off again. Back to the chamber.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0512, California, Kentucky
00490509 (Violet)
She got tired of waiting for her alternate self to grow up — understandably, because it could take *decades*. She decides to do some investigating on her own about the subject. Shamon. From the inn. Place of thorns. Not much of an inn aspect left to the place — no beds as far as she could tell. More a museum for the lower floors, she supposed. And then she found the letter in the middle of an antique book just chosen at random from a first floor bookcase. Hmm, she thought, separating the 2 pieces of paper from each other and laying them side by side. What’s this? She started reading. Plain it was at first to her. Mundane, run of the mill, no special qualities at all. A journal entry by someone named June about a trip across the western part of our US of A. Then she read it again. And again. And again, starting to put the 2 sides together to make 1; actually, let’s make that she simply eliminated the second to make one. Here’s what she had left…
Dear Dairy,
We’re finally in Missouri! Almost home! Bryan was so exhausted with today’s drive that we decided to have a sleepover at a cheap motel off Route 66. Madry Wise it’s called and the owners Martha and Theodore are just adorable! They welcomed us with open arms and invited us for dinner so we can share our Route 66 road trip experience with them. Bryan is just having a little nap and we’ll go once he wakes up.
I can’t believe how lucky I am. It’s been the best summer ever!!! Two weeks ago we started the journey from Santa Monica, CA and went through several states through Barstow, Kingman, Sedona, Winslow, Monument Valley, Durango, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Roswell, Amarillo, Oklahoma City until now Missouri.
So that’s all of page 1. She checked all the mentioned locations from its last sentence on a map. Santa Monica, Barstow, Kingman, Sedona, Winslow: yes, everything to this point was on Route 66 or, in Sedona’s case, quite close, only about 25 miles away. But June and her boyfriend Bryan start to veer away from that famous highway after Winslow AZ and only clearly pick it up again at Amarillo TX. In other words, June may not have even used 66 through the whole of New Mexico, going from Durango CO down to Santa Fe then Albuquerque then Roswell to its south before heading back up to Texas. *Crossing* 66 in Albuquerque but not necessarily travelling along it. While pondering this, Shelley Johnston Struthers realized, if so, that another motel might have been visited on the journey between Albuquerque and Roswell. Was this what was being implied all along?? Fictional Madry Wise Motel actually standing in for the most haunted hotel in America?
They should have never left some of the swastikas on the building because photos can be flipped and time reversed along with it. 1923: not that far away, then, not far atall.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0509, Arizona, California, Jeogeot, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Xilted
00490506 (high no more)
On and on they played, well into the night, past 2, almost past 3. Bed called, but the drive for success trumped all, kept them going. “How much now, babydoll?” Philip asked about his losses across the card table to oft times girlfriend Nada New Year, soon to be downgraded to “some”, perhaps inevitably heading to “none”, even. He’d passed 10 long ago. Thirty… forty…
After Nada didn’t answer (weariness? disgust, even?), Frank laid down the last card in the Mille Bornes marathon as if in slow motion. Everyone, including worn out Daisy to make 4, exhaled their tired, collective breaths as 50 was determined to be a limit, SCREEEECHH! They can sleep well now.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0506, California, Frank's Moving Castle, GTA, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS
00490505
And now… we come… to Static. It’s always been there, always been a part of us. Question is: how will we rise above it? Do we even need to? Why not dwell in Static forever and ever, become part of the machinery.
Russel here eventually sees Hollywood and the portal opening beneath it and shakes himself out of his stupor to go tell his band mates.
What do YOU see in the Static?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0505, California
00490504 (2-D)
“So you see, I had to escape the (Cross of the) Lamb. Else: absorbed. Devoured like the purest blue flower that I’d become, all because of a cult’s desire for permanence. Both them *and* us. One and the same deep down — like a hole inside a hole with a monster who is the machinery waiting at the bottom. Waiting for his chance.”
Will he get it? Gonna be razor’s edge close if not!
Only his band mate, his primary running partner, can save him at this late point. Essence of Murdoc. Tied right now, ha. (TBC?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0504, California
00460601
“Morro Bay??” Dreaming Frank Lynn was expecting a sign for Paleto Bay but got a surprise, Real Life location intruding in on Virtual here. He suddenly has another important piece of the puzzle. Now to find the Rock.
“There!” he said, seeing it coming into view in the distance after passing a large beach dune. Well… sort of, he thought. Not quite Morro Rock but pretty obviously the duplicate down here. And out there in the bay beyond it: the 4 islands with the, um, bodies. 2 apiece, he knew. A central mystery. 4 islands, 8 bodies. Infinity.
Carolin manifests back at the center.
888 Infinity Lane
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0046, 0601, California, GTA, Jeogeot, Juho, Nawt Vaya+
Sunklands 