“Get away from me, get *away* from me!” But Elberta had only been dreaming. Something was after her, something that came up from the swamp, down that very path over there. She was in the middle of the swamp that use to be a lake and she couldn’t remember how she got here. She sheathed the knife she drew in the panic of waking up. “All a dream,” she said, trying to comfort herself and not doing a very good job. Something *was* here.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0414, Mountain Lake^, Omega^^
It was starting to rain. She was no more closer to finding the girl than when she began. But she *was* the girl, hmph. Butterflies… that’s how she remembered. Butterflies lead down a path to the Pond of Memory. But the Mountain Lakes region is complicated, with many peaks to traverse. She was on top of one of these peaks, but Elberta didn’t know which one. Just a peak. Paradise; ecstasy.
She held tight under an eave to get out of the raindrops. Someone was going to come out of that door over there.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0413, Mountain Lake^, Omega^^
Those black, white (yellow) and red ladies said I didn’t have to stay here that long and that’s probably a good thing. A little too grown up here, in that things are too *big* for me… like this chair. Can hardly see over the edge of the table!
But those flowers are nice in front of me, although they make me do weird things when “touched,” like touch my toes — touch for touch. Maybe I don’t want to touch my toes, I say back. And then they quickly relent — they always do — returning me to my sitting position in the chair. Strange also that they don’t have a vase.
And certainly the *butterflies* all around are a perk-me-up in these dark dark times. I lost Carolin! I lost Mabel and now I’ve lost my next best friend, the one that remained behind and helped me through the first dark times. Robert! she remembered. I totally forgot about Mabel’s lime green robot stored away after her — not *demise*: disappearance. Carolin said he would be too hard to take care of now that Mabel is gone, thus the dismantling, the storage. But, oh Robert, I *do* need you now. You were the third best friend, after second, Carolin, and first, Mabel. But do I want to put you in the same jeopardy that they, unbeknownst to me, were in — just by association? How hard would it be to put him back together? Carolin said: near impossible, when she brought it up every now and then, especially when she remembered the most times small sometimes not as small difference between a second best friend (Carolin) and a first (Mabel). Third could help fill the gap and more. Why *not* try now — what’s to lose (except a 3rd best friend)? So when the black, white (yellow) and red ladies come back I’ll tell them. Maybe they can help with the reactivation, come to think of it. They do seem to feel genuinely sorry for my plight — kicked out of Green Yarn, a thought of *new* home, and then turning into a wanderer again, first at the End of Time caves like before, and then — kicked out again. The black, white (yellow) and red swooped down in their spaceship: set down the cow they had in their tractor beam and latched onto me instead; brought me up in their ship. I wasn’t scared, strangely, like I was use to it. I had nothing to lose. They offered me — hope.
Thus the stay in the treehouse. “You’ll be safe here — for a time,” they collectively said before whisking away back into space.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0412, Mountain Lake^, Omega^^
“We could send her over to New Eden to live with recently reunited Wendy and Axis, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Probably not the best surrogate parents.”
“Nah,” she answered.
“There’s a treehouse with a butterfly theme perched on the top of a prominent Omega continent peak. That might do the trick.”
“For a while.”
“But it has to be butterflies.”
“Yes,” she answered.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0411, New Eden^^
“She comes here every day, and every day a different game. I haven’t seen a repeat yet. She must be testing the atmosphere, maybe making sure it isn’t poison. 4 games left in the cache. I predict an actual, breathing human — *not* a mascot — will be arriving in the week. Wanna bet on it?”
“No, I’ll take your word for it. You’ve been here a lot longer than me. In this Castle Town. Isn’t that what it’s usually called?”
—–
We were taking a break from strategizing. I turned away for a moment, tired of looking them in the eye. I’d figured something out. Mascots — that’s what they were. Only mascots. Not real atall. Only symbols of a writer… and an artist. The two aspects of *me*. Maybe it *is* destiny that I take Baker Bloch’s place as leader of the blog and allow him to ascend to the White Palace to rejoin Hucka Doobie. I’ll have to talk to Charlene about it. But I’m kind of finished with these two.
He takes another sip of wine. They hadn’t even asked for anything to drink, not water, not booze. Nothing. That was the first big tip-off.
—–
“It’s time to play rock, paper, scissors, Barry, to see which one of us goes to Castle Town.”
“Oh all right,” answers Barry.
“Ready? One, two…”
—–
“Oh, and also a pad or something that I can write on, thanks.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0410, Castle Town, Jeogeot, Omega^^, Southern
I decided to have tea with another while I was there, perhaps the brains of the operation. One Fern Stalin, not a redhead perhaps surprisingly but still eating at commissary kitchens with the commoners. I ask her about the operation.
“We created it all,” she was explaining. “This art town — we’ve taking over the whole island, actually. And we’ve just plain taken over, period. Your rule is at an end. You should have invested in the Toddles storyline more, gone all 200 meters worth on it.” Brains indeed.
“Toddles could come back.”
“Hmph,” she expressed and turned her head to the left, to the sea. “That island over there is as much toast as your wee yellow one. She’s stuck in the pavement, under the street actually. She has no more power.” She ends with finality.
“New Island?” I questioned, seeing the direction she indicated. I tried to decipher the meaning to this clue. Photo-novel 9 was all about New Island, but we move away from it in novel 10 to the present one, across that bridge just over there, the New Island bridge. But this was Fisher’s Island. *They* have taken over Fisher’s Island. What did this mean? A return to the Omega continent? I as Baker Bloch wasn’t sure this was a good idea. We had kind of wrapped all that up in novel 10, especially as extended to novel 11. Omega continent: covered.
“We move you where we desire.” Witch power she was on about again. I recall that a witch lived on New Island, and probably still does. The same or connected? I ask her this. She got up and ran across the bridge we just spoke about at an impossible speed for a normal person. The she ran back — the path was smoking where she sprinted so fast she was going. “Forgot my lipstick,” she offered as an excuse for leaving, then applied it to her lips. But then it became a piece of straw as she changed into the next (Lichen Roosevelt). We had a nice discussion as well but it was more oriented to comedy instead of gravity.
“And that’s why the French don’t wash,” she ended what I later understood was part of her monologue.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0409, France, New Island^, Omega^^, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
“I feel like I’m at a dead end, Wheeler.”
“Hold still, please,” requested Wendy Wilson Wheeler, painting flowers instead of Baker Bloch but not telling him this.
“It’s just…”
“Are you not happy that I finally found my husband?” Significant pause. “Because I lost him for a while.” She decided to paint the blooms the same color as her skin this go around. *She* is blooming. Is that good?
“Sure, sure, er, Wheeler.” Wendy had stopped asking him to call her by her character name. She is Wheeler, true. And she’s found her Axis. “What of, um, the other one?”
“You know who the other one is, *blog leader*.”
“Sure, sure, eh, Blob? he he.”
“Listen, I can keep them both. I’m a big girl. I can have more than one [boy].”
“Is it fair to *them*, though?”
“They’re the same. What do I care?”
“What *do* you care? I mean, you already had Tr-oop. Opp, Tropp.”
“I like to play one off the other. It makes me feel… important. Needed. I am Queen of Our Second Lyfe. But you are not the King. You are like… a Prime Minister, yes; with all the useful stuff, the power. I am more a figurehead.”
“Can I move now?” Baker Bloch’s neck was beginning to hurt. He’d stood in the same place too long. 156/156. Right on the Diagonal of the sim they’re in, and the only place in the room it falls on. So he has to stay, and Wheeler tells him this.
“You are at a dead end,” she reinforced after a while, washing her paintbrush of pink in the turpentine jar. “It’s time for the witches to take over.”
Earlier:
“Okay I’m done with this one. Let’s move to the other side. More light.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0408, Omega^^, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
I figured a major part of my job now was to figure out who 102 actually is. Or was. This Maebaleia or Satori horned demon highlighting DANGER could be a clue. I know Danger also equates with Dead: Dead Cat Soap, etc.
It’s Bart Smipson but it’s not Bart Smipson. Another ragamuffin of the streets.
It was that t-shirt. He was covering up the t-shirt with his arm. He didn’t want the passing camera to see (!). Or he was indicating the shirt to… me; crossing it. Blood on his… shirt. We’re entering ghost territory (again). He disappears behind a telephone pole. A dead end (in Picturetown). We’ve seen enough. ENOUGH. Gates closed. Text begins again as Barry X. Vampire takes over.
We lie in a pool of blood as Bart Smipson towers above us, Giant for a day.
I think I’ll bring Biff Carter back into the picture. He was the one to let it happen — was on his watch. Demoted to private dick he was after that, no better than a Moby Prick consigned to swim the Southern depths of hell below aerial, pie in the sky Heaven. He was in dark toned, ironically named New Eden. Sometimes he was back on the beat thanks to a shortage of personnel in the local police department due to all those pills. But what of Orkley Andy who was probably the same as Oakley Annie the Ohioan gunslinger? Let it pass, let it slide, Cpt. Henry said as history repeats itself. 3 dead is pretty good numbers for that kind of escapade. We got away with something. Let him get away with it too. Say it was his dog hiding under his couch; go with his story. Hunter the dog — a good story, a *true* story. And so Biff Carter wrote that particular slant in his report, not mentioning the bodies (soon carted away by the ever-present zombies) or the red dress smiling on the ground before him (soon carted away by a female zombie or perhaps a male one experimenting with his sexual identity). All evidence gone and taken care of. He heads down to the Red Dress Diner to talk about all of it with Phyllis at the time…
—-
“Wanda, hi. Where’s Phyllis? I thought it was her shift — just spoke to her over the phone.” Where’s your red dress? he thought.
“Axis. We really need to talk now.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0407, Hills of Bill^, Maebaleia/Satori, New Eden^^, West Virginia
The painting is a split landscape with the top portion being heaven and the bottom portion representing hell. Heaven is illustrated with light blues, vibrant colors, and surrounded by flying angels, while hell is much darker than heaven. This is illustrated through dark tones and demonic creatures to set the distinct difference between the two. The entire space is filled and little absent space is present.
“He’s planning to bring back Robert Drake Johns the lime colored robot,” spoke monitoring Rex Ruddy Red in the control room to the actual head honcho, the big Pie in the Sky. Hucka Doobie? I don’t think so in this case. Someone over even the former bee-person. Or perhaps she (he?) has her wings back now in the White Palace.
The Monitor places an image in the sky. A cave, a room, a… cake, or at least a piece of one. But where there’s piece there’s… No piece without cake, perhaps I should put it. The cake ain’t worth shite, and only tastes good to Robert, because he has no taste. Crying Elvises in his bathroom! That kind of bad taste, but also more. And he doesn’t dream, as we also know. Robots can’t dream. That helps excuse a good portion of the bad taste trait, maybe 3 or 4 pieces instead of just the one now. Pieces of pie, pieces of cake. The cake is a lie, yet…”
“OPEN UP THE PORTAL AGAIN,” suddenly came the decree from Up On High.
Baker stops typing, looks at what he’s written. The weirdest thing on this continent he’s suddenly been redirected to in another tangent is that portal to Earth. Right smack in the middle of it all, between North and South, between East and West, but especially North and South, perhaps. Some call the North Heaven, the ones who proclaim the continent to be Satori. Those from the South, who others call Hell, say the actual name is Maebaleia, after the big whale that use to dominate the southern seas. Moby Prick some deem it, or at least a certain writer. Call him… Millgate? Millville?
So close.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0406, Maebaleia/Satori
I remain ensconced in NWES City — more to see and use here.
And I guess Baker Bloch is still the head honcho of my little family of avatars, since I can’t figure out a replacement for him so that he can permanently move to the White Palace which appears to be in the center of Picturetown (who da thunk?). Speaking of which…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0405, Black Ice, NWES Island^
Sunklands 