Category Archives: MAPS

rave’n

“You were *superb* Mr. Tom Casey. I smell: *emmy-y-y*!”

“Thank you Billy Jean Kidd. Oops. You’re Heidi Hunt Ives now.”

“I am.” She shifted her small weight in the chair. “And how is Karoz down in Chilbotown? Chilbo! as the locals cheerily shout.”

“He’s fine. He’s eager for a return as well.”

“Another eager beaver, cool. But… we must give you a full name. How about Casey One Hole? Reference to both your Indian complexion and a signature kill, perhaps. And how’s this (for a catchphrase): I don’t come from Uranus, I come *for* Uranus.”

“Too gay,” Casey quickly opined. Seeing Heidi scowl, he clarifies: “What I mean is that I’m not a gay character, or at least that shouldn’t figure into the equation.”

“Good enough. Ditch the catchphrase. Keep the name, however. Let viewers ponder over it.”

“So tell me about these prison schematics,” Tom Casey inquired. “What’s my modus operandi and such?”

“Here,” Heidi returned. “We can just pull them up on the screen.” She looked around the large, long room.

“Oh drat, we don’t have a media feed here.”

“That’s all right. Just tell me about them for now.”

So Billy Jean Kidd who is Heidi Hunt Ives explained how the 5×5 layout of metallic looking maps shown in the last Collagesity novel is actually of Montgomery County, Arkansas with its Rubi and Silver villages and the rest — Waters, etc. But it’s somehow also the prison schematics over in Gaston. “Maybe Gaston is actually South Yankton?” she then asks, half to herself and half to Tom. “That would go along with the tropical clime,” she quickly followed. “North Yankton: cold. South: warm… hot. Brazil.”

“I don’t know,” Tom Casey the actor offered. “Oklahoma has to figure in here.” He begins to create his own back story. “I’m an Indian in the past too, perhaps. Hana Lei — check out that Lafferty fellow’s novel, eh?”

“I will!”

“Anyway, we’re in Beaver City, Oklahoma and not Beaver City, Nebraska. The only other one. That means we’re in the past and not the present. Dust Bowl.”

“Beaver as the 7th and last county of Oklahoma before it became a brand new state. I’m trying not to confuse it with Ohio again.” Casey doesn’t get her inside joke. She continues after clearing her throat. “Anyway, I think you’re on to something there (as well). Let’s put all the ingredients together and make a big, whopping celebration cake. Emmy-y-y!” she trills again.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0311, Capitol City-, Gaeta V, Oklahoma

limey

“Pitch, I’d like you to meet Jessica — put your hand back, sweetie, he’ll shake it in a moment — and this here is Phillip Linden. You know about my creator now. Well, Phillip kind of created this *whole thing* we’re in, this Second Lyfe of ours.”

“Cool,” Pitch replied. “Nice to meet you Jessica, Phillip.”

“Phillip runs a bar now,” continues Mary. “Just for laughs and giggles, you know. Something to do when he’s not away creating worlds. Like now apparently, haha.” She turned toward him to emphasize his “away” status at the time.

“Right.”

“We should go sometime,” suggests Mary, then winks at him. “To the bar, I mean.”

“What about *Steven*?” Was Mary asking him on a date despite what he knows?

“Steven schmeven…”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

“You and I, Pitch,” said Mary to her pale counterpart. “We’re the real deal.” She turned to Philip and shouted. “Hey in there! Hey Phillip! What time does your bar open!?” Everyone in the building turned and stared.

Philip woke up from his away status, looked around. “Um, what was that, er, Mary?”

“I said!” Then she lowered her voice, realizing there was no need to shout any longer. “I *said*… what time does Gene Autry open?”

“Gene Autry?”

“The bar, silly. Your bar. Just over there in the corner of the sim. Above the ride. On the second floor of the freebies shop.” She turned back to Pitch, took his hand. “Here, let’s just head on over, sweetie. Phillip’s there already. I should know.”

—–

“You see, Pitch darling. *This* is where it all happens. A philosopher’s corner. A veritable cornucopia of ideas and inventions. Why, just last week Phillip suggested the idea of a cubic moon for Second Life with equilateral gravity on all six sides. Not flat like this place. And I think that’s where it’s all headed, Pitch. Diagonal. Because diagonal leads beyond. Have you ever moved in a diagonal sugar?”

Pitch didn’t really know what Mary was babbling on about. A young black man who had been sitting on the opposite side of the room suddenly moved toward the bar toting a large, green lime between his hands. Not saying anything, he placed it on the counter, then exited via the stairs down to the lower floor.

Phillip became fully awake again, looked at Mary, looked at the big lime. “A lime is called a linden in Britain.”

“Who *was* that shadowy figure?” he begged.

And so it began.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0110, Clemscott-, Gaeta V, Google Street View, Virginia

5×5 02

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0006, 0609, Arkansas, Heterocera, MAPS, Rubi

Greg and Gregg

“Interrupted your little party you were planning tonight, did I Baker Bloch? Thought you were going to start the Greg Ogden story without me, did you? You and your fancy town here. I have a town too. Would you like to see?”

Not staring at it, Greg Ogden turned toward Baker Bloch on the couch, who is also looking away. “Which one of us is *real*??” he demands.

“Don’t do that.”


Unseen artwork upstairs (“Hidden Vilage”).

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0006, 0303, Heterocera, MAPS, Maryland, Rubi, Utah

pretty things

“Bucket of nails,” requests Wilson to Terry. “And make it bloody.”

“Ahem,” intercedes Baker Bloch. “Not open yet, Wilson. Sorry.”

“Yeah, sorry,” echoes Terry. He tries to size up his new potential customer, but can’t quite make out what’s the deal-i-o. Baker helps.

“So you’re a man again,” he states to Wilson.

“Yeah. A pretty man. Let me show you. You haven’t seen yet.”

“Just a glimpse at the police station. How’s Burt the Cop doing?”

“Brutus?” replies Wilson. “Prostitute problems as usual. Gaston’s filled with them, even choking on them. Berries. Cherry, Raspberry, Blueberry. Lemon. Yes, Berry is fully intertwined with Gaston. You knew Lemon on Mars didn’t you?”

“I did,” states Baker, thinking back fondly to his stay in futuristic INSCO. “Have you seen her? She ran around with Sugar then, but wasn’t a prostitute (like her) at the time. Circumstances must have changed. Science is getting tough to swallow for many.”

“I’m not sure she’s really a whore there,” says Wilson. “She could be undercover. Brutus hinted at so much. Purple Gang. Burt Lake Band. Crooked.”

“Oden, then,” responds Baker.

“Yeah. Have you seen him?”

“Old Gregg?”

“Right.”

“Maybe a glimpse as well at Morrison. Rockabilly Cafe. But we’re done filming there.” He pauses. “And you haven’t shown me the new face yet.”

Wilson changes.

“That’s way too pretty, man,” Baker offers. “For a man. How about a scar? What do you think Terry?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0006, 0203, Heterocera, Michigan, Rubi

Dune

Something appeared today in Grasslands. Sand… dunes to be more precise.

And a castle on top of perhaps the highest and sandiest one.

It has a ring to it.


“Twisted”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0515, Bogota, Bogota Proper, collages 2d, Heterocera, Lapara, MAPS, North Carolina

olde name

“Thank you again for coming in on your day off, Hoss, to help me.”

“Well,” he answers. “Sounds like the fate of the whole town depends on us finding some facts!”

“So right,” Teebestia replies. “According to this ‘Big Book of Moths and Butterflies’, the name Astarte comes from a particular moth, just like Lapara and almost all sims of the continent we’ve checked. Not a local demon. How ’bout you? Found anything?”

“Still looking through this old book on Malone, the one that told us its most famous resident was Wheeler.”

“Which is impossible. She just showed up there! Still, we should interview her.”

“Hold on, Teeb… here’s a section on Owls Head.” He turns the page, reads a bit further, then utters: “Oh me Godz.”

“What is it?”

“Owls Head use to be called Ringville!“

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0501, Heterocera, Lapara, New York

Ashokan, Little Tonshi

“Where *am* I??”

—–

“There, that’s better. Hi Rocky!”

“We found an Ickle,” the raccoon mumbles, half asleep.

“What’s that Rocky?”

His eyes open. “Two of them, Bettie. A blue one, then a green one. East and west. Directly.” He turns into the walking version of himself and goes to her. “Down there. Just in the other sim.”

“What are we waiting for?” she asks rhetorically.

—–

“What now?”

“We wait,” states the raccoon.

“Oh my.”

“Rocky?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0306, Heterocera, Lapara, MAPS, New York

olde 02

Wheeler and Buster then wandered over to the town’s new power station.

“Look, it’s one of those *real* old timey computers, Buster. And there’s Rocky’s novel again. Looks like he might be finished.”

“Is Nancy alive or dead at the end? Can you tell?”

“Who’s ‘G’, Buster?” Wheeler asked in turn.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0109, Heterocera, Lapara, Washington

Studies

Baker Bloch has determined that The Millers of Castle Knight (so named because they’re always milling about the place) are actually Knights as well, one black and the other white. Unlike chess pieces, you can’t tell them apart by appearances, only by what color square they’ve landed on at any given time through predetermined rules. Both hail from Soso, but not Collagesity’s SoSo Mall (just unsealed and reopened!), although they might claim to be so. This one instead. Their common ancestor: Newton Knight, leader of the Free State of Jones who was buried in Jasper County Mississippi with its Ted (and Turnerville) and Baxter also. Right hand man when carving out his Unionist knightdom in the middle of the Deep South was also named Jasper (Collins). Newt’s story seems to have deep significance. Hole to another dimension.

Baker is also still studying the Nancy archetype, and has determined that the 3 US Robertson Counties play a role. Ridgetop, above Bakers in Robertson County Tennessee, was formerly called Nancy (post office name). On other side of this county — northwest corner — is an Adams, famous for a particular, bad witch. In the north*east* corner of Robertson County Kentucky we have an Abigail. East and West: 2 bad witches, he’s decided, just like with Baum’s Oz. Matched up and read together, Abigail Adams is the wife of the second US president and the mother of the 6th president. Mary Ball needs to study this early champion of women’s rights. Future son and original president George doesn’t learn a New York lesson and gets outflanked at the Battle of Brandywine. Political career scuttled. Own grandpa Osborne Well perched on a high hill, master of all British Bermingham. American Muff sealed off and compartmentalized.

And then the 3rd and last Robertston County in Texas: Seale, Headsville, Bald Prairie.

We are on the home stretch…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0004, 0613, Heterocera, Kentucky, Mississippi, Rubi, Tennessee, Texas