An instant in time (Summit Inn Pizza, Kamas UT):
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Center of circle:
Category Archives: MAPS
Presidents’ Ball 04
“Money, get back / I’m all right, Jack / Keep your hands off my stack / New car / Caviar / Four-star daydream / Think I’ll buy me a football team.”
The gala crowd erupts, to which Sprite adds on top: “Tear down this wall, Mr. Orange!”. The crowd continues to clap. A “Tear Down The Wall” chant begins slowly, then builds, until Alo Bama takes the mic and motions everyone to calm down.
“*Freedom*. (pause) It’s what everyone wants, everyone cherishes.” Alo Bama indicates Sprite sitting back in the crowd. “Like our tree friend Mr. Sprite, waiting to be unencumbered by the shackles of The Wall, ready to join Wallytown as a *full* *fledged* *citizen*.”
The crowd claps enthusiastically again. “With inalienable rights,” he says over them, calming them down once more. “And established levels of treatment honoring decency, character (pause), respect.” “You go Alo!” someone shouts in the rear, prompting him to reply, “I’m going, I’m going. ” Scattered laughter is heard. “I’m telling it like it is.”
—–
“I thought you were going to dramatically change into Green Squirrel or Roger Pine Ridge or something to show who you really are,” spoke Natali seated beside Sprite now, his date for the night.
“Ahh, it just didn’t seem to fit the bill. Didn’t feel right. It was *my* poem and that’s what counts.”
“I suppose… oh he’s starting to talk about the Bottle Mound indians now.”
—–
“On the one hand,” Alo Bama extends his left arm and opens his hand. “Orange. On the other…” Alo Bama extends his other arm with the mic. “Purple… Violet, some say, although they prefer the former and we should respect (pause) their rights. And they’ve fought with each other, fought, fought, fought, down through the years, the centuries (pause). And what’s come of it, hmm?” A “free the trees” protest comes from the same person as before in the back. Alo Bama ignores it this time.
“Death is what came of it. And *disappearance* (pause) in time.”
—–
“You know he really is quite the orator,” opined Dr. I.C. Yourinsides to Captain Spocari. But when he didn’t respond she found that he’d fallen asleep.
“*Really* Captain. But I guess you’re all knackered out from this afternoon, hehe. Twice a day keeps the doctor okay.”
—–
“And now. (pause) The Mound. (pause) Comes here. Leemon or Leeman standing on the beach just beyond 1/2 refuses to even admit it is there. He can’t fully *see* (pause) this *new* New Island. The Greys *descend*…
… and fall backwards, face down (pause) in the sand.”
—–
“When’s he going to get to Jimmy?” whispers Billy Bloodsworth on a back couch to Lavender. “I can tell he’s nervous up there, ready to come out of his shell like Alo Bama and Bill C. did before him.”
“Be patient,” replies his sister-in-law. “He has to get to the point in his own, circular way. That’s what makes him such a great speaker.”
“Jimmy was better.”
“Nice of you to say.”
“He *was.*”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0704, Alabama, Wallytown/Fishers Island
fluid 02
Red. And a bit of yellow toward the center.
But she couldn’t fly to see the whole from above. That was what she was shown next. Ruby’s Democratic Empire, a sky platform, well, about the size of the Rubi Woods.
And then she was *there*. Back at the forest. Coady the wolf before her at 168/168, about to howl “The End” again but this time with second thoughts. *Was* it The End? Was it really, truly, the finale? Really? Truly? Finale?
“Well Coady,” Ruby offered the stuck canine, hands on hips. “What happened to Madam Mexico? Did she get her wall between California and Nevada paid for? Did she fix the perfectly round hole in the middle? Can she still see the cursed valencia navel? Answer me Coady. I know you know.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0611, Mexico, Rubi, Ruby's Empire/Fishers Island
fluid
“Is it a place of good…
… or a force for evil, this new New Island?
Fishers Island. Eraserhead Man might know, but he’s already done with this particular Collagesity novel, taking his strange troupe of actors along with him. Loaded onto the Isle of the Top Dog, they are; destinations: unknown. ‘Out there’, as Captain Spocari Nemoy might say. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Bill/Wheeler paused in her story, took a good look at Baker/Pitch sitting opposite her.
Still wearing his Russian hat (she must look up the name of that thing). Still fretting over when Mary gets home, what she’d like to eat on any given night, what wine to buy her, will her several different changes of clothing with different fabrics have to be washed separately or can it be done altogether. Small problems, nothing that can’t be solved with a little more experience and know-how. Yes, he is knitted together with his woman. And as such, he can never really go back to being plain ol’ Baker Bloch any longer. That’s the takeaway about *him* from this novel she’s receiving.
But herself? It’s a more complicated story, involving Philip Strevor, Marion Harding, True Opp (Tropp — *not* Troop). Maybe we can revisit the third one for more answers. Last we checked, he’s still up in New Eden, hanging around with Madam Mexico and Mr. Peanuts.
“But what did Ruby see there?” Pitch then asked (yes, she’s just going to think of him as Pitch from now on). “What is the ending to her Democratic Empire story?”
“Nothing,” answered Bill confidently. “There was no one in the lab. Just a stack of cheese in its center. And… a moth.”
She hesitated slightly, then: “Wait! There *was* someone there. Is!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0610, Mexico, Ruby's Empire/Fishers Island
passage
“So you see, Chloe. It’s all about the interior to that game. This game within a game you are on about. The Basin. We must get beyond Dead Lake — both of them — and enter the place of the burning dog.”
“I don’t like that idea,” returned a worried, slumped over, arm crossed Chloe. “I just want to stay in the trailer park, shoot up some people, and then *leave*. I don’t want to find this door into a hidden place. Just leave me out of it.”
Sandy breathes out. “Okay, okay. I’ll try the other Chloe, then.”
“It won’t be any different.”
“It might.”
—–
“Soo Chloe. Whadda you knoow?”
“Get away. Playing on phone.”
“Just a couple…”
“GO AWAY, JEEZ.”
—–
“I suppose I owe you an apology.”
“Just leave me in the trailer park,” she reinforced.
—–
So he returned to EM at the blue painted coffee shop of Fishers Island, mission seemingly a failure. But EM thought otherwise.
“You got them thinking! They’ll come around. A seed has been *planted*.”
—–
The next time Chloe Price approached the end of the pavement representing the limit of the Gunn Mobile Trailer Park game…
… she suddenly recalled that thing about a glitch which allowed one to go further down this road — into the dirt part — all the way to a place called Dead Man’s Lake. No: just Dead Lake. Dead Sea, something. But it had to be done a certain way. Today, unlike yesterday or the day before or the day before that, etc., she decided it might be worth the risk. Checking back into the heart of the trailer park to make sure none of her enemies were following her (or were left alive, period)…
… she walks over and shoots her oh-so-familiar weapon at what looks like a weirdly shaped grey rock in front of her (the “glitch”). Not once, not twice, but three times.
She then sticks her gun into a suddenly opening black vortex, never to be held or used again.
The dirt road opens up before her. “Dead Sea — whatever — here we come!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0605, Alabama, Google Street View, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
snoopy
In the Sister sim of VHC City, Sid stands on The Diagonal at 148/148 and notices a diagonally placed stack of books.
149/149: He stares at a blocked grey wall full of white lettered names. “Songwriters and Musicians” they are collectively labelled.
Back to the book stack, which you can sit upon. Quite a few poses. Being a dad himself (and a swell one in our estimation!), he likes how the stack is made by DaD Designs. Sid picks up a book from the pile, opens it at random, and begins reading:
For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days.
Fisher again, he thinks. Fisherman. Change of name. Just around the corner in the next room is an Apple Fall Sunbleached Sete — directly on The Diagonal this time. Can he take the book in there to read further?
Yes, but at 142/142 he quickly, almost instantly, falls asleep and has a dream about craftily editing fig leaves.
—–
He wakes up, gets up, stares down at the couch. Midday already. Quite a nap, he thinks, and ponders on the dream he then remembers. 2 statues trying to make their way through a trapping waterfall into a brave new world. Bickering about which sex is stronger, and who will take on which role. Adam and Eve, he realizes. The couch did this. Fall from Perfection.
But he better teleport back to the trailer and feed the dogs (Newte and Jaspo); they won’t eat for anyone else in the family, not Ragdoll, not Indigo, and certainly not the rather seedy dimension skipper they took on as a boarder since Collagesity novel 9 ended who presently goes by the name of Golden Jim. Sid had unspoken plans for him, though.
151/151: Lake Harriet Japanese Blood Grass (“Red Baron”).
Red Baron (in the cross hairs)?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0513, Heterocera, Minnesota, VHC City, Wallytown/Fishers Island
nightmare
“Man I can’t stop playing this *game*.”
—–
“All right Jill MacGill. Where’s the sacred orange? Is it behind trailer number 01, 02, or 03? Choose or lose.”
“Wait. Let me take a picture of that pathetic expression.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0505, Alabama, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
dammed 03
“What does it say in your little red book about me? About us?”
“Let’s see,” improvised Jill MacGill through Gwin again. “‘The Story of Doris and Gwin’. Sorry: ‘Gwin and Doris.’ Says here we’ll be married in 2 years. Will stay with Aunt Sally until the crops are harvested. Then we’ll be free to live out our days wherever we choose. But, again, says here: Wallytown. That’s why I need the book. To learn all about our future home.”
“All right, all right,” cedes Doris Drane across from her. “We’ll go back to the library and get the other book. The big blue one.”
Gwin rushes over and kisses Doris full on the lips, then sits beside her, holding her hand. Yeah, this is some *real* acting, both actresses think (hint: they despise each other).
—–
“Smells weird in here. Old book smell, I suppose.”
“Shhh. I’m trying to read.”
“I thought you were just going to steal that book. Not read the entire thing while we’re here.”
“I’m reading up on the part about the wall. The Green Monster. So… shhh.”
Doris Drane kept quiet for a bit, then started again.
“Never heard of a tree eating wall,” Doris rehashed some of what Gwin was saying before. “Glin or Glinda, Gliph or Glyph — with an i and a y. Why do these cypress trees always come as, um, twinned pairs of the opposite sex that don’t, er, don’t know anything about the other half?”
“It’s only one tree,” corrected Gwin. “It can appear at different times in different places and think it is the same. Like I could sit over here and talk, and then we could switch chairs and I could talk over there. But to the tree, it’s as if the switch never happened. They’re always where they are.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Doris noisily scooted back her uncomfortable wooden chair and stood up. “I’ll be freely roaming the grounds if you need me. I’ll check back in about, say, 30 minutes?”
Gwin is absorbed in what she’s currently reading (trees have 2 souls!) and doesn’t respond. But then improvises: “Watch your navel!”
God I hate that woman, Chloe Price thinks. And EM is letting her get away with all this!
—–
I wonder who’s actually sacrificed here? Doris ponders, laying in the center of an elevated stone circle. Trees? Fish? Fish people? Her mind is running wild.
Huh (mysterious floating pylon).
“Hello. Anyone home?” But Doris needn’t had worried because no one lives here.
After waiting the appropriate time, she goes inside and sits at the dining room table. I hope those are candy bunnies on that platter over there, she thinks.
Hmm. 2960. Probably another empty building. I’m not even going to knock this time. Feeling free to roam indeed.
Lemons and lime; that reminds me of something.
This is a little different.
Don’t mind if I do.
What’s this? My foot must have accidentally activated the screen. Doris studied the graphic.
“Gunn Mobile Trailer Park,” she spoke aloud, then saw the byline at the bottom. “Your Darkness.” She settled back in the executive chair. “A game. I love computer games.” So she just decides to start a two person round with herself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0417, Alabama, Google Street View, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
Billies
“I’d like to hire you for a job Detective Strevor. I’m looking for my brother. Billy.”
What a peculiar thing, thinks Philip Strevor before answering. *I’m* looking for a Billy.
“I’ll take the case.”
—–
“Got a job today, Marion. Looking for *Billy*.”
Marion Harding stared at the tv screen a bit. Then: “*Our* Billy?”
“Dunno.” Philip Strevor shifted his weight on the couch. “Go ahead and hit unpause. Just wanted to tell you that before we got into the whole atomic bomb thing.”
“Have to think about that one.”
“Yep. Sure will. Find out soon enough, I suppose. If I can find him.”
“Her,” Marion Harding corrected. He picked up the remote.
“Yup.”
The explosion continued.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0405, New Mexico, Twin Peaks, Wallytown/Fishers Island
Sunklands 