Category Archives: MAPS

00330315

He corrected me as soon as it came out of my mouth, perhaps before. “Bono, I’m Bono here,” he said. “And you’re Newt — we can’t change that.”

“But Peggy –”

“Peggy Smeggy.” He took a breath. “You don’t understand the implications yet. Darkside is *here*.” He looked me square in the eyes now, black inside black. He wasn’t evil but he came from a place of called Intensity. In Mississippi I believe. Very focused in his tasks, he was.

“So… you brought them here.”

“Yup,” with the “p” emphasized with a pop. I reviewed what I knew. I thought he was Nemo but he said he was Bono. Bono Jores, fresh from the bowels of Mississippi. Or was it Arkansas? Anyway, he presented me with the book; said it was the way out. He did this now.

“This is the way,” he said, scooting it toward me. “The Way.” He scooted it closer. “Open in the middle and start reading.”

“I–,” I started to protest. Closer. He even opened it for me, eyes still boring. But he was no Sherwood Anderson. Or was he?

—–

3 hours later — sunset — I finished the book that was the same as 1/2 a book. Everyone had left in the meantime, Bono to my right and Peggy Gertrude to my left. Peggy was still here with her friend over at another table in the establishment. And that’s where I headed next — to give her the good news. All was not lost.

The convincing took a while. Her hometown was still gone; I led with that. But there’s *another* hometown coming up where gravity’s not as much up in the air. “Aerial,” I said, and demonstrated with my hand.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0315, Lower Austra, Mississippi, Nautilus, Squared Root City-

disattached from land

“Can’t you pull one of your Tungaske type miracles to save my village?”

“I’m afraid not. Too small.”

She shed a tear, perhaps with more to come. Probably so. These were scientist tears, the tough ones. “Hard to believe it’s gone.”

“No one under 18. Really nothing we can do [Eyela]. (pause) I’m sorry.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0314, Canada, Canada/Tungaska, Iowa, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Squared Root City-

Newt and Eyela (one strange rock)

“No. You go first,” she requested, not being as prepared as I wished.

“I was just going to say,” he started, probably improvising, “that you look lovely tonight.”

“Thank you (!).” Cute tittering, cute covering of mouth. “Oh, I was going to check out *Whitson* tonight,” she realized. “*Sorry*.”

“Kind of your double, I’m assuming.”

“Kind of,” she agreed. “Um… uh…”

“Well,” he decided to insert in the awkward pause. “Baker Bloch still has ties to Lower Austra, *roots*, even.”

“In Squared Root City here, yes,” she said, remembering some of her lines now thanks to the prompt. Not all, but perhaps enough to get by if she can fill in the rest with filler.

“Zero Club.” He glanced over his shoulder at the sign; another prompt. “Just like Baker was looking for. A place Baker, the male one, could Zero Out and reset everything.”

“Good to know.” She was struggling. The Whitson gaffe threw her off her game. She decides to end the scene and do some research.

—–

“I’m going into space again,” she said after learning she was. Thanks once again wikipedia! You’re a life line. “It’s a joint venture between Axiom and SpaceX.”

“So… Axis,” he responded. “Like me.”

“Wellll.”

—–

“My name is not Axis any longer. My name is Newt.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t like to be reminded of my Axis past.”

“I… won’t say anything more about it, won’t bring it up.” She cleared her throat. The research got her into hot water (!). She said his new name to reinforce her conviction. “Newt, yes I like it.” She recalled a tree growing out of his head instead of the other place. She realized she had to part with Whitson on this, Mars or no Mars. She had to choose… well pump over spaceship.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0313, Iowa, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Squared Root City-

Hy-Vee

The wind blows hard as we enter the village.

Well pump replaces rocket ship on the next encountered welcoming sign. The pump is a rocket?

Ah ha. Well pump standing by itself in an otherwise vacant lot more on the edge of the tiny hamlet. Launching pad?

And then another one in the exact center, blue instead of white.

Visiting Roger Pine Ridge (as it turns out) waits on a bench at the store he saw pictured on that rock, the one that absorbed Marty. Maybe Marty is here, he reasons. Might make sense. He’ll give it a couple more minutes or hours or days at least. Years.

The flapping continues. Roger is unable to light one of his personally rolled white sticks because of it. Sparks too dangerous in a spot so wooden and full of history.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0311, Google Street View, Iowa

00330310

We live in the North now, me and my collection of avatars. Centered around Route 12. Below us are Upper Austra, Lower Austra, Wild West, and Yd Island. Between them are border areas such as Alien Island, Frog Isles, and Lands End. Surrounding it all are the Rim Islands and also Southwestern, where that big rock which obviously doubles as the oracle Carrcassonnee is located. The rock also links Nautilus to the Real World through Iowa. Most likely. Marty disappeared inside it; became one with it. He and Roger Pine Ridge drove all the way to the central square in that old, beat up Chevy that apparently didn’t go into the levy. Marty: how can interior and exterior be the same?

Maybe the answers lie here, a bit outside the defined hypercube.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0310, Frog Isles, Google Street View, Iowa, Lands End, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NORTH, Rim Isles, Rooster's Peninsula, Southwestern, Upper Austra, Wild West, Yd Island

00330202

In a place run by cats, there were always a lot of naptimes to get the information he needed. Like the actual scoop on the Poop Pool, as it was called locally, at least behind closed doors, often in the middle of the night when a faint whiff of the former smell could be caught by those who’re perceptive. Deputy here had been out since about 8 now, hugging her little froggie toy until the wee hours of the morning. Eddy Daigle, cousin to our Edward Daigle already met in part one and originally sharing the same name, sniffed the air. Faint but perceptible. He hit delete on the sheriff’s computer and the file about it was permanently gone, as if the problem never existed. Much like Edward from his name, revised and revamped to the more colloquial Eddy after 5th grade when he also switched first and last names to hide the connection even more. “Daigle, Eddy” he liked to be called after that, 2 steps or functions away. And he was from Montana, not Louisiana or Maine or, especially, Illinois. Unlike that John L. Brown we’ve yet to come across in the current novel but who played a part in the last one, small but effective, like a rat silently and stealthily tearing away at the insulation in your walls, leaving you eventually laid bare to the elements. John L. Brown was a bad one, and deserved to be behind the bars of this here law enforcement establishment.

Uh oh. Deputy’s rolled over and lost her grip on her little, favorite toy. Sheriff’s snores on the couch over there are getting a little shallower and further apart, REMs decreased. Soon dreaming will be over for the fellows, Eddy knew. But he still couldn’t find the second file he wanted. Best to pack it up, come back tomorrow. Or after, actually, the next town animal banquet when the ferocious gazelles would bring more fresh kill from the beaches and the water. Snorklers this week. Could even be some deep sea divers mixed in next. That would put them even more under for his clandestine night operations; would allow him to get more work done, dig deeper.

“Daigle, Eddy” knew he wasn’t kosher and that saved him many times from being on the wrong side of one of these feasts. 9 times he had been saved in fact, making him part cat himself. Thank you great great grandma on my father’s side! He licked his hand softly as he does instinctively every now and then and shuts the laptop off and heads home.

No one in the cell right now except a member of the Bad Katz Gang, who was turning her back to the illegal nature of his visit. He hoped to change that soon.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0202, ENIGMA, Illinois, Nautilus, NORTH, Wild West

00330108

The elimination of George.

Harrison remains. *Barely*.

“They got his knee, which knocked out the rest of his leg — sorry. A thumb was missing from the hand but they were able to regrow it with the intact others. Don’t ask about the procedure. It’s messy, complicated. But without that hand, that regrowth…”

“He wouldn’t be able to play the guitar,” the other in the room finished for Dr. Diper, fresh from the surgery. “Thank you.”

“The red and green almost got him this time,” warned the doctor. “Best not to send him back out to war.”

“Oh, we won’t. Denisce just made a bad decision sending him over there. It’s in her name, you know, bad and good.”

The doctor paused with this, then said, “oh yeah,” as he got it. “Denisce. I forgot it could be spelled that way.”

“Almost,” replied the other. Probably Marty at this point, since he’s so concerned with the hand and its dexterity. “Will he lose any chords? I don’t mean vocal chords obviously (Dr. Diper snickers here, since both knew the head wasn’t involved — nice break in the seriousness) but guitar chords. Can… will he be able to play…”

“All your songs,” the doctor finishes a sentence in turn. Like tennis they were this day, battering concerns back and forth across a net that is the separation between people. Good and bad. Sometimes it’s absolutely necessary. “Wellll.”

Nurse Jem comes in, celebratory drinks in hand. Vodka for Diper and a, let’s see, Russian Roulette for Marty, a new drink he claimed to have concocted on the spot back at the hotel after the San Francisco concert in Candlestick Park, knocking it out alongside a couple of new ditties: the embryonic form of “Back in the USSR” and the unreleased and seldom heard “Moby Prick”. A baad song, Georgge Martin proclaimed upon hearing it back in England. “Hey, we’re the f-ing Beetles, Martin. Leave us alone!” exclaimed Marty after the judgment, but then the others admitted it was sour instead of sweet too and he let the matter drop, song unrefined and left in a raw, unprocessed form. They all secretly felt it was about Marty and his character, though, but to voice this out loud would be character assassination. He was just that much of a prick. At the time — he mellowed out later. After he died.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0108, Canada, Canada/Picturetown, Canada/Tungaska, Jeogeot, Towerboro

00330107

“No it has to be one of those other colors,” Denisce decides, which was in her name after all. A decision maker she was, a go getter. And blue wasn’t in her name aim. George neither.

“Aw, *rats*,” he says, and starts moving toward his clothes.

—–

“Blue,” George begins, floating like a ball in his Southwestern pool as Little George, thinking of Michigan and some other stuff. “And yellow — *that’s* what did my beloved Duncan in, Marty.” George looked over at the red topped Beetle, checking to see if he was actually listening. Because he often wasn’t. He was currently looking at his soaked shoes and wondering how to slip them off and make his feet bare, like young George’s tootsies over there. He was wondering how he could Be Like George.

“Are you hearing me, Marty?”

“Um, sure sure. Blue, right.”

“And…?” George prompts.

“Um… *yellow*, yeah yeah. Real reet.”

George actually shakes his head with this while floating in the water. George thinks that Marty isn’t black. He should stop trying so hard. The Mann, pheh. “So that leaves…?” he prompts again.

“Red and green.” Marty was starting to pick it up. The Annaberg balloon; Blue and Yellow seeing a yellow sunrise with his two blue peepers. Duncan didn’t look the other way this time. This was all about TILE.

“You disappeared into that rock over there, you rocker. Do you even recall *that*?”

He recalled… something about a Cyclone. Blue and yellow. Then red and green. Oz.

Wizard Cube

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0107, Iowa, Jeogeot, Nautilus, Southwestern, Towerboro

00320602

He waits between hot and cold, choosing hot himself and currently enjoying a mustard and ketchup laden dog of such temperature before customers show up for the midday “rush” — not much of a rush actually but he’s not much of a worker these days, being technically retired and a bona fide Whitehead in Da Woods.

The Mustard Ketchup Kid plays soccer in a nearby field with his sister Ventura, who hails from California. She channels her energy in order to attempt to get the ball past Bert (actual name), but all this is just more code.

Squared Root City is expanding across Highway 13-14 into the sim to the north. Still exciting times for the burg. We hold out hope that it can replace Collagesity-Fordham as proper capital of Lower Austra. Because the latter is probably going away and is, anyway, too small for the role, being only a little over 1/8th of a sim in size. Squared Root Cy is, in contrast, about a sim and a 1/2 in area now.

That’s why the Axis-Windmill character is back. He waits in the Zero Club at the beginning of it all — just before the beginning, some say — for another important character that has chosen to resurface in these here blog-novels to match the new energy. Vim, some call her; others: Vigor (that’s actually her sister, maybe a twin). She counts her Mississippi’s in anticipation of the manifestation. One Mississippi, Two… wait, she forgot something. Newt! At the Zero!

“Hi baby doll.”

He turns. “Eyela?? Wasn’t expecting *you*.”

“No one is,” she speaks truthfully and, after adjusting the strap of her new clockwork eyepatch to better match her face, takes a seat beside him at the bar. Both now turn away from the camera and speak privately. We try to listen in but only catch a couple of words like Geronimo, Slick, Olive, and Oklahoma. We gather an oil spill in Indian territory of the panhandle state may be involved but could be mistaken. Let’s back up and move in closer. We’re the bartender. Let’s call him Jim. Tom, actually, only 3 feet away. Close enough to properly record. We ask if they need a drink to be more legitimate seeming. They refuse. We move away but not too much — should be OK. And… PRESS.

“I’m glad we could mustard enough energy to catch up,” she began, which was code for “very important information to follow.”

“Spill,” he requested, and she did. We were right. Kind of.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0602, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Mississippi, Nautilus, Squared Root City-

ROCKS

“We have to get rid of your kind to make room for the ships.”

“Oh okay.”

“We’ll give you a proper burial spot.”

“Query?” Rock would have raised a hand to ask an important question in his mind if he had any. But [Paper] already knew the answer.

“Quarry,” was his presumed corrective response. Stupid Rocks, he thought inwardly. We should cover them quickly to halt the dense talk.

Scissors then cut in, the hopeful champion of Rock and defender to the grave. But he would only beat her to a pulp when freed from his cage in the interrogation room, continuing the circle ad nauseam.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0601, California, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Outer Islands, Trinidad