Category Archives: Michigan

May 3, 2023 · 10:05 am

Knight returns

She opened the red doors. She came down the stairs to face him. He looked at the different hair.

“I– I thought you went… away,” he rasped.

“No.”

“But–”

“It’s the future, right? *I’m* from the future. Not the present. I’m not a present to be opened any longer.”

“Buut–”

She knew he wanted to see. So she showed him. His “boys”. “Do you understand? Now?”

He wilted at the sight. “Y-yes.”

“I’m DJ-ing at Kedas Klub tonight. I want you to come. I want you to *see*.”

“Kedas?” he mimicked.

“Yeah. Another one owned by the Horns. The Nightsity location shut down.”

“I–.”

“Just *come*.”

—–

“And bring Pat if you wish,” she thought to add while walking back up the stairs to go outside again.

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May 2, 2023 · 4:59 pm

continuation

Early morning; just before the crack of dawn. Alvin Green unloads his greens and other groceries from the truck into the mart. Phyllis walks Baby Chuck in order to try to get him to shut the f- up and not wake Papa. Poor Papa, she thinks. Needs his beauty sleep for the big interview today where he goes up against Tom Finger for sub vice chief manager of roads and agriculture for the town. Of course he had to join the SODA group and correspondingly drop a letter or 2 or syllable or 2 or something from his name to rez his notes for the meeting, big privilege by itself. Honored to get even a nod in his direct from the uppity highers who also happen to be hirers. But the baby must shush. The baby must go elsewhere if not. Thus Phyllis out in the relative cold with a hopefully bundled up enough toddler, fearing that it might catch a cold. Suppress the negative! she thinks while wheeling Chuck around, reviewing in her mind the positive oriented channeling literature she read before bed. But the cold, the *colds*. Baby Chuck sneezes, making it even worse. Alvin notices, invites her to sit in the truck with the child and turn on the heat while he continues to unload. You shouldn’t be out here, he thinks but doesn’t speak. He’s polite that way; likes to stay out of other people’s business. He may know about the interview too, has put 2 and 2 together to make a mother wheeling a baby around in a stroller at 6:15 on a rather cold morning in later April or early May make sense. Can’t believe it’s May or almost May already, he thinks, trying to remember the exact date while shivering. Obliging, thankful Phyllis crawls into the truck with Chuck. “Chuck truck,” the baby says rhythmically, seeming to make him happy. It worked, thinks Phyllis. It worked, thinks Alvin. Finished with the rest of the groceries, he takes his time with the greens, letting them warm up together. And it will be warm for him when he starts again — added bonus.

But Phyllis was desperate. Seeing the keys dangling from the ignition, she must have gone into some kind of trance, put her lead foot down after taking it out of neutral, and just FLEW. She even let go of the wheel, crazily trusting that the truck would have guidance on it own.

She saw a rider-less bike ahead while zooming into the just rising sun, the ultimate warmth as it were. Who would reach it first?

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May 2, 2023 · 11:24 am

going round the bend

Under a spell, a parade of words began to flow from their now unblocked mouths. Newt first. How he got his name. “Right *here*,” he said. Wheeler’s turn. She was Queen to Baker’s Prime Minister but this was not Baker; Baker was not the father of Shelley. “Unacceptable!!!” shrilled the fruit headed Mike, still at the center of it all, holding the lemon and lime in each hand, ready to stuff them back in if needed. And he did. He could get information through other means. He sent in Pat. They high foured each other while passing. Pat would get to the bottom of this, Mike thought. Female influence. Darker origins. Almost Knight but not quite. Getting there, though. He went out of the Cavern to have a smoke under the starless, moon filled sky. Or was it skies? A skiier pair of skis rider-less bike whizzed by, expertly weaving through the tall flowers and small trees despite no apparent guider. A man walked up as it faded in the distance: glasses, professor looking. “I let it go. I let *everything* go. And yet, as you see, it still knows the way home.”

The bike rode into the rising sun. Mike’s lemon head went away. They were talking man to man, human to human. Knight was over.

(to be continued)

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May 2, 2023 · 10:52 am

brightening the load (be like Mike)

“What now, boss? End of the road.”

She paused, then said to the foreman with shovel in hand and questions in head: “We go back. We make sure we’ve got everything correct and well rounded up to this point. We refine within.” The non-foreman beside them turned over his blueprint, looking for “within”. No luck.

—–

“Start with mica,” she clarified a bit later as they all walked back inside together. “Mike.”

Helpful! foreman and non-foreman alike thought. They both knew the guy. From a kid’s television show of all places.

—–

Fruit headed Mike at the center of it all stood up, removed the lemon and lime respectively from the mother’s and father’s mouths. “Speak,” he commanded. “Speaaaaakkkkk!!!”

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May 1, 2023 · 11:27 am

00380201

Another ghostly Knight was showing them around. You can never completely escape the energy of The Father, the Dark Lord some call him. Red Devil in Xian terms. At his urging, they fed the function-o-meter in front of them with small copper coins — no change there — to watch TV. The ever-present ectoplasm did the work it was paid for.

“Very popular group in the 21st Century,” he rattled about the fuzzy figures on the non-machine, off by one century but only a fraction off the truth in present time, this 8008.

“Name?” tested Baker Bloch, moonburned from the larger space between the flowers. At 6’8″ he was taller than the trees. And even though bigger than birds, the bees offered minimal shade because of their speed. The present Knight again wrongly assumed he was embarrassed because of his lack of knowledge about, well, *everything*. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was just from the far far past. Like we talked about before. We apparently are still in Osse, motor dropped long ago. Like we’ve been driving around a car with no engine for forever.

Knight finally answered Beethoven, with Roll Over dropped early on from the name — even produced an early poster to prove his point. He should be the one to turn red, Baker thought.


early poster, according to Knight

Then while rolling back up the poster to put it away again, ghostly Knight, one of many in the clone hive, said he was joking and that their actual name was SODA. Another joke? Turns out: not. As Baker Bloch checked around, this SODA group seemed to manifest everything here, including the mica table (perhaps ground 00), the chairs around it, the Cavern itself, the *town* itself. Taking up the whole of a sim called Newt. Like the man, the father (of Shelley Struthers). This is, in effect, where he was born, or at least the name. And certainly the group name gives us an important clue about what happened to our society as a whole, the flip flopping of animals and plants and probably minerals as well (we’ll check the rounded mica table for more tips on that later). And the bearded and mustachioed Moon above it all. The Dark Lord. Without any possibility of escape via a satellite of its own, a Moon for a Moon. Bendy knows. He may be more than just a cameo figure in this here photo-novel, 38 in a series of a lot.

“We successfully,” continued Knight, “made the name illegal, *forbidden*, beyond any even seductive poser could get to. Even the pharmacists had the hoods pulled over their eyes, duck-like.”

(to be continued)

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April 30, 2023 · 3:30 pm

Duke

“No ma’am, we don’t have that in stock. We *can’t* have that in stock. Laws of the land.”

“Okay, but what if I do… *this*?”

“No ma’am. However many *seductive* poses you try it won’t get you that drug.”

“Okay, but how about *this*?” She remained undaunted. She had to have that soda!

—–

Mike (and, later, Pat) met with Newt and Wheeler on this very issue just across the road in a cavern. *The* Cavern, in fact; sitting around telltale mica. America was slowly but surely being poisoned. Mike had an idea for a new campaign.

“Just *shut* up and *listen*, Moms and Pops.”

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April 30, 2023 · 10:37 am

what is…

“Look! The Moon has come out from behind some clouds. We’re saved!”

“That’s just old Xianity superstition,” replied wannabe lover Johnny Blank to this, hoping she wouldn’t go down that road again, the Jesus Saves one. He’s Muslim and he’s going to stay that way! And Cylinder is Jewish so that’s that. Found God a while back but a different one from mine, and a different one from Gloria’s. But we still seem to be getting along. For now, he thinks.

Gloria stares and stares. With hate. Just like long long ago when she first got this role. The Moon grew a mustache and beard, peered down at her in ultimate superiority and changed birds into bees, flowers into trees. Not God. Something better, she realized. A Dark Lord. She’d been thinking about it for years, but hadn’t said anything about her insights. A good Christian woman she was to others still. Until the Big Reveal. She’d been pondering it for months. She’ll act on it in days. Xianity, as my *friend* Johnny Blank puts it, doesn’t *have* any superstition like that. She made it up. But, being Muslim, he wouldn’t know the difference. Maybe a perfect match after all, a perfect foil. I set them up he knocks them down.

“Johnny,” she says seductively, moving her pointing finger over to his shoulder, making an “X” on it to mark him as a target. “Tell me about your family again, your overbearing father, your loving but absent mother.”

“She *died*. She wasn’t absent.”

“Oh right right.” She sat up with this, looked up to the still visible Moon for strength. “I… forgot.” The Moon went behind clouds and she suddenly became sad, spell over.

(to be continued)

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April 30, 2023 · 9:15 am

Michigan child/teenager

Porcelain laid down in the middle of Helmic and looked up. There was no LOVE here.

Later:

“It’s an important role,” the Common Teacher spoke, knowing only one could get it, trying to make them face the fact that one of them was going back home to an angry set of parents.

Porcelain got it. She looked around, wondering how to shrink all the trees so that they could fit under the flowers. She *would* get this part, even if it meant cheating, stealing, lying.

—–

She looked up backwards to the Moon that was her Father.

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April 29, 2023 · 1:11 pm

00380113

“At the cascade at the end of the stream that was his creek, Mike made peace with those he formerly warred with and screamed and hollered at. ‘Absolution.'”

“Cool, Hucka D. Thanks for showing up, by the by.”

“You can thank Barry for that.” She turns and plants a big wet one on her constant companion’s unyielding lips, surprised at the display of emotions from the usually placid, former bee-person. Insect no longer. No signs of antennae, even. Just woman.

She turned back, stared again. “Now you just have to figure out the Lyra connection. Prism.” With this, she and Barry took their leave of the place, my new-ish Nautilus property with 2 galleries now set up, Bogota and Edwardston. I had much work to do. Collagesity was *kind of* being reborn?

But I was also in Michigan. Let’s check in on Baker *Blo* there, where he spent his first night while distant relative Lottie McDottley was regenerating from a misplaced and mistimed hug, thanks to the ectoplasmic puddles that made sure all death, all disease, all foul play, was eventually cleaned up as in a refreshing fruit combo drink downed on a sticky ass summer day. Do you see how this keeps carrying over, Mike? The reverberations? Water would be best. Like from your stream. Absolution.

“Okay, alright. I’ll talk to Hill about it.”

“You do that.”

(to be continued)

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April 28, 2023 · 4:35 pm

no touch

He arrived almost 6000 years into the future, Osse having removed Motor from its name long long ago due to the end of machines, setting a trend. His great great great great (x332) grandchild Lottie McDottley with marking scarf awaited at the old timey Lake Hore Train Station, so named because of the abundance of such back in the day, along with the water. Including Lottie’s great great great (x334) grandmother, who happened to be Baker Bloch’s fiance, the late great Shelley Struthers Wilson Wheeler, er, Wheeler Wilson. Then known as Wilsonia (source: Henry and Shaeffer). Dream Train we have here; everything functional for travel having to be made of spiritual ectoplasm powered by collective brain control. And everything else functional for that matter. I did mention this was far far far in the future.

There he is, dressed for the future period in his, well, present garb. No need for change there. But, to blend in better, he omitted a letter or 2 or syllable or 2 from his name as was customary. Baker Blo he is while remaining in post-space age Michigan. Or Mich, I should say.

On the edge of reality, Baker kept spotting blurs and other weird fringe effects, making him aware that he was in a very different space as well as time. He dodged another ectoplasmic puddle to reach his far future relative and give her a big, 21st Century hug. Big mistake: she crumbled to dust in his grasp. One of the nearest puddles came over and sucked up the remains. She’ll be back tomorrow reconstituted good as new, thanks to the collective. But our newly renamed Mr. Blo now has nowhere to stay tonight. Big bees overshadowing small birds hover menacingly above the station. And the tall flowers and the short trees that grow under them now. *Everything* has changed. Including love. He looks for older Wheeler lookalike Lottie in the puddle, a face perhaps, a hand. Not yet. Tomorrow. Only the reflected Moon for now. Which has a mustache and beard, he notes. He looks up to see the truth of the place, everything arranged all wrongly. Far future, BEH.

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