Category Archives: 0032

April 12, 2022 · 9:58 am

big red machine

“Lou, be a dear and buy your old man a drink while he’s studying, would you?”

“Dad-dy,” Lou replied, arms still crossed. “We’ve been here *3* days.”

“Keep it down, keep it down,” father Osborne Well says over more in a whisper. “Other people are here too.”

Lou Well stays quiet this time.

“Weelll?” her father prompted, a typical reply and a play on their last name he loves to utter when he can. He beams a wicked smile. She still doesn’t return the smile but rises from her chair with a small huff and does what he asks. She inserts a quarter, hears a bottle drop. Or is it a can? — she can’t tell if the sound is more glassy or metallic. Queer, she realizes. And — great — she can’t get the door to open at the bottom of the thing. “It’s broke, daddy. We’ll have to go into town for your sody pop.” *Finally*, a possible way out of this prison of books for her.

“Then leave it,” he decides, learning winning over thirst and sugary desire. He’s about to uncover the deepest, darkest secrets of the great tentacled one. He confers this to his daughter.

“MOA,” she replies without thinking. “We’ve been there already. We *know* what it is.”

“Shhh,” he reprimands again about her raised voice, but then realizes she’s right. It *is* MOA he’s searching for: Most Old Ancient.

Man About Time wakes up but remembers what they said behind the wall. He’ll return another night in another dream to this spot. This portal is *key*.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0410, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

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April 12, 2022 · 8:56 am

00320409

Just past the gate the fog increases. Man About Time can’t find the front door of the library — blocked in the direction he thinks it should be. He’ll have to find another, more indirect way inside. No flying on this parcel, or at least he pretends flying is verboten. Oh well. This way he’ll get to know more about the castle, he rationalizes. Right off the bat, it appears we’re working with lemony ways to get from one point to another here, much like with the Blue Feather and a couple of other Collagesity structures. But especially the Blue Feather — maybe they’re related in other ways. We’ll know soon enough.

He steps through the first door encountered in the opposite direction and ascends some stairs. This could take a while. And it did, since he hung a left instead of a right at the top.

He’s starting to think the idea of banning flight in a pretend way was a bad one.

A larger outer tower encountered. He decides not to investigate potentially upper floors and just circles around an enclosed inner wall to find an exit to this porch. He crosses a wooden board.

Interesting. Perhaps a dead end here too, he ponders while rounding another corner.


But then: a teleporter.

(to be continued)

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April 11, 2022 · 3:12 pm

the Long and Yd of it

It was a particularly clear day at the library castle in the skies, kind of completed tonight, or as much as I want to flesh out right now. You see, this is a window into the past. Or the future. Man About Time stands before a portal. He’s on Rooster’s Peninsula. Several other castles *could* be seen in the distance — both west (the titular Roost Never Sleeps) and south (Arkaig) — if only the fog were just a little less thick. It never is; this is as good as it gets. And so Man About Time — MAT — enters the castle to oblivious folk who don’t really know where they are, and, by this point, don’t really even care. But one thing’s for certain. It’s not just a library any more. It’s a fortress, a Center Point that Collagesity desperately needs in the present. Because the Temple of TILE just wasn’t hacking it in that role.

MAT’s looking for a particular entity, let’s say, a Man who is also a Rump, and a big one at that, really big. His Huge Ass plane almost grazed the top of the temple after he moved it from lowest to highest in the village about, oh, about 2 months back I suppose (CHECKING). Yes: a little over 2 months. He wants to give him a piece of his mind if he can find him. He understands he could be locked up in a key-less cage because he is the key himself. But where?

Back to the library to start his investigations, he decides on the spot. The castle gate raises in response.

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April 11, 2022 · 11:48 am

00320407

Making his viewer a square, he shields his eyes from the Abyss to the west. And the east. Only center is safe. Center Point center.

(to be continued)

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April 8, 2022 · 4:27 pm

special

He’s done as much work on the library in the skies as he needs to tonight. Now to crack the back of the book before him while Swanie’s on lunch break.

Chapter 1: “Marbles Fall, Marble Falls”. So much to learn. Oops. There goes the other marble, rolling away almost through the wall. Swanie will not be pleased; have to try to stick it back on before she returns.

Maybe I can just use one of my own eyes, he thought crazily, but then did just that. He stuck the blue eye marble in the now empty socket and started to see the future, the North beyond the South. Miss Ouri! This must be kept top secret.

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April 8, 2022 · 9:04 am

book tree

Select one. Sit a spell.

Agent 47 has already perused Frank Herbert’s “Dune” and found it applicable to Fordham’s Collagesity. The movement of the town from Rubi to a lifeless ridge of Nautilus is like the movement of Paul, Atreides, from lush Caladan, his home world, to the brave new world of Dune, ultra rich in spice but ultra harsh in environment. No Rubi Woods here to protect and balance. There’s a small park owned by the neighbor to the immediate east but it’s not quite the same. Fake green. Beige landscape dominates underneath it all.


park next door/fake green/library in background right

New book: Well, it seems to be about a man who grew up in coal country Virginia and became a Tennessee detective. Biff Carter. Now recently retired and off the force but still acting like a private dick. Teresa, hmm. Who are you? Did that cause the breakup, like the separation of McMillan from Wife? Rock was gay — couldn’t help it. But what about Biff?

Getting sleepy, he thinks. Better put the book down and go find a bed or at least a floor.

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April 7, 2022 · 8:59 am

00320404

One of the first things Miss Ouri does in her new role is to make special collections part of the library, despite protests from some in town that the structure is an eyesore sticking up there on the side of the square, pheh. But no one actually threw up at the sight and the addition was passed 4-3 in a special town council meeting held just below to emphasize the safety of the thing.

So let’s go inside and have a look.

The first visitor to the newly attached collections is none other than Our Second Lyfe creator Philip Linden himself, who was curious to find out what had been written about him. He can’t select one item or the other, drawing suspicion from reading room manager Swanie Rivers, here also seen alarmed at discovering his “Don’t be a Prick” coffee mug he brought in with him.

No drinking in special collections and no foul mouthedness, whether verbal or written. She tells Philip all this in no uncertain terms, threatening to expel him if he doesn’t choose an item to study and get rid of his coffee and mug. He downs the coffee in one long swig and then additionally eats the mug. “How’s *that* for special?” he replied to the exasperated swan being. It’s always about him, it seems. The rare book and manuscript he subsequently selects and brings back to the now empty table was full of it.

(to be continued)

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April 7, 2022 · 7:19 am

00320403

“Live around here?”

“Nooope. Pietmond,” he said. But Sunklands’ Pietmond had been destroyed long long ago. Something was up.

“Live around here?” she tried again just around the corner in a “secret” nook.

“Naah. Just here to study,” the long haired man across the loaded down table said hoarsely, as if he’d just sang a rock n’ roll concert for a 100,000 people.

The other sitting there even turned her back on the child, not wanting discourse and hoping her Goth father was about ready to split this boring town. So that takes care of Pietmond Boy, Osborne Well, and Lou…

… moving us into the opposite corner of the new Collagesity library containing an estimated 100,000 books, a book for each person at one of Osborne’s concerts to put it another way. Here: Tronesisia.

“Live around here?” she tried once more to the former pleasure bot turned tame, this child named Shelley who had given up her castle to construct this building, be with these people. But blue eyed Tronesisia was having a vision and couldn’t answer immediately.

Where had she heard this before? Blue *and* green. It didn’t compute: something was ill fitting; broken even.

“Arkansaw,” she said softly, starting to figure it out. “Arkansaw,” she said again, one blue eye changing, seeing beyond the other, seeing North beyond South.

In the center, Missouri appeared — Miss Ouri. The new librarian.

(to be continued)

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April 5, 2022 · 8:08 am

00320402

The first thing to be destroyed in the dismantling of Fordham’s Collagesity was the 128 meter long spaceship of skybox 03, intended to be used to pack up Collagesity itself in just this very event. It remains clunky and unpractical for its purpose. Gone after saving to inventory.

Baker also deletes the skybox 03 base cubes, including the teleporter needed to reach it, and drops down to skybox 02. More painful here: Baker is quite attached to this aerial town centered by the golden calf that is Claudette: the grassy arena where Peter Ladd performed his lame comic routine to an audience of his Uncle Babyface and perhaps others; the abbreviated Kidd Tower on the other side of town that acts as the residential unit; and then…

Baker Bloch can’t do it. Not tonight at least. He has several more to decide. The clunky spaceship was an easy choice. Now it gets more difficult when we move closer to the ground.

And then, heading down to skybox 01, there’s the problem of the Nautilus map and its over 100 strategically placed pins now. My idea: to transfer all this to the “Iowan hypercube” displayed in my GoogleEarth file (Oracle) but it hasn’t been successfully accomplished yet.

Seems like, to me, as I ponder this further, that Collagesity has at least another month to live. I’ll renew my membership on a month to month basis. Subtracting the rental connecting the two parts of Collagesity — the main 8 and the now disattached 9th representing the Temple of TILE and its grounds — frees up 15 dollars a month, reducing the total cost from 50 to 35. New decision date: early May, when novel 32 should wrap up. Synchronization remains important.

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April 3, 2022 · 4:50 pm

bon appétit

“Thanks for coming over from Wendy to meet with me, Wheeler. I know you’re mighty busy over there.”

“I am (!).”

“Anyway, I see you brought your bodyguards.”

Wheeler looks at one Eighty-eight at the table in front of her, and then glances over her shoulder at the second one sitting at the table behind. “They’re still needed,” she summarizes. “176,” she totals up.

“Fascinating,” says Baker Bloch, still in sarcasm mode. They have important business to discuss tonight and better get down to it. Baker has been waiting for over 30 minutes now while Wheeler lounges about the castle library. I thought we were done with all that. He condenses these observations and says them aloud for her.

“Yeah, not quite (about the library). We have more issues to work through.” She looks around again, quicker this time. “But good we are in Ontario. I sent Dickie Doom over. He is my (original) burger.”

“You… as Wendy.”

“Yeah.”

Baker looks down at his hands through the grated table. “Center Point,” he blurts out.

“Yeah?” Wheeler waits for more, hands still in lap. Her food and drink are getting cold.

“It doesn’t come up in the Oracle. The one in Kentucky, probably the most important one. It brings to question…”

“… the Oracle itself, its veracity,” she finishes for Baker Bloch. Because they are one beneath it all as well. Just like Baker Blinker and Baker Bloch. Just like *all* the cores. There is no real separation from The One. In the end.

He produces the tic tac toe board from his inventory; is kind of irritated that Wheeler doesn’t move her dinner tray so it can be positioned more in the center of the table itself.

“So this is the game, Wheeler. Who moves first, what moves second? We don’t know. But *whoever* it is, they win.”

Wheeler takes a sip of her coffee, takes a bite of her plumeria sandwich, getting under Baker’s skin again. He doesn’t like people eating when he’s explaining something and Wheeler knows it. “This is,” she says with mouth full and muffled speech, “Collagesity.”

(to be continued)

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