Category Archives: 0038

May 3, 2023 · 3:13 pm

shallow water

It was so cold in here you could see your breath. But people didn’t mind. Celebrities in the audience!

“Good morning afternoon evening everybody!” Her standard opening line. “Welcome to the klub that’s going to put Kedas back on the map!” And then the requisite plug. “Brought to you by Sprite lemon-lime drink. The drink soo clean…” and here she paused to pull one of their sodas from her dress somewhere and chug. She retreats the can from her mouth, aaahs loudly, then: “…Grant *Hill* recommends it!” Cheers from the audience. Grant Hill is in attendance. He makes eye contact with me from where he’s sitting across the reflected green floor. Just briefly, enough to make me know he’s aware of what’s going on, if only in an unconscious way right now. Two Hills, PHEH, he may be saying internally. If he could only turn over the blueprint to his life he could see.

—–

“Dreaming again on that plank, Ted.”

“Just leave her this time. No need to tell Al.”

“I agree.”

“Got us into a lot of trouble before.”

“I remember.”

“Lot of paperwork.”

“I recall.”

“Anyway. Why don’t you enter her mind and see what’s going on.” So John the Mind Reader did. After a pause:

“Soo, what’s happening?”

“Apparently,” John surmised, “the past. Or a version thereof.”

“In-teresting.” They both had changed their minds about Al. The uppity higher up needed to be informed of this. New development!

(to be continued)

—–

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May 3, 2023 · 3:11 pm

00380206

She barely made eye contact with him to acknowledge his presence. Cyberpunks, hmph, he thought. “Business good tonight, Lexi? Selling many sodas on top of the regular alcohol?”

“Whoa whoa there daddy blow. One question at a time. Try again.” She kept dancing to the beat that hadn’t started yet. DJ was still relaxing and chilling and drinking before the gig. While she had the time.

He skipped to the most important one. “Have — you — sold — many — *sodas*? On top of the alcohol which I know will do good,” he sped up.

“Two Hills,” she instead said.

“W-what?”

“Two Hills.” And she pointed to the left, the opposite way of the horn.

“Oh yeah. It’s a promotion.” He breathed a sigh of relief, knowing it could have been something else. Too early! “Now back–”

“Why does there have to be two?”

“*You* have two,” he wanted to answer, but then thought better of it. Maybe she didn’t. Was she a girl or boy? He never figured it out. I guessed she’d have them either way — doesn’t matter.

His lemon-lime drink awaited at the table. He looked around, seeing a lot of soda imbibing with his own two peepers. One over in the far corner had a Dr. Peeper. He resisted the urge to rush over there and swat it outta his hands, causing a scene. No scenes, his brother Benny Right Horn warned. “Tonight must go nothing wrong.” His words, not mine, Jer thought. That’s why he’s not here. Too drunk and coked up to make a proper showing of himself instead of a proper spectacle of himself. Typical. Cokeheads not allowed.

“Anyway,” he finally answered Lexi the bartender, still dancing to an imaginary beat or a beat from the future perhaps that only she can hear with her futuristic head and ears, “it kind of goes along with the idea of doubling the fun or doubling the pleasure.” He locked briefly with her sci-fi black within green within blue eyes. She was finished with him, he knew.

—–

He sat down beside her. The Hills came square to the camera, a horn curled against one of their cheeks.

“How is the wine?”

“Pretty tasty!” She downed another guzzle.

“Load up while you can. But not — too much. Take a swig of soda every now and then. People are watching.” He indicated the ads beside them. “Can’t let down the Hills.”

“Oh no.”

“Mike should be showing up soon.”

“And Pat,” she said. “I also invited Pat.”

“Oh boy.”

“Maybe. We don’t know!”

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May 3, 2023 · 10:05 am

Knight returns

She opened the red doors. She came down the stairs to face him. He looked at the different hair.

“I– I thought you went… away,” he rasped.

“No.”

“But–”

“It’s the future, right? *I’m* from the future. Not the present. I’m not a present to be opened any longer.”

“Buut–”

She knew he wanted to see. So she showed him. His “boys”. “Do you understand? Now?”

He wilted at the sight. “Y-yes.”

“I’m DJ-ing at Kedas Klub tonight. I want you to come. I want you to *see*.”

“Kedas?” he mimicked.

“Yeah. Another one owned by the Horns. The Nightsity location shut down.”

“I–.”

“Just *come*.”

—–

“And bring Pat if you wish,” she thought to add while walking back up the stairs to go outside again.

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May 2, 2023 · 4:59 pm

continuation

Early morning; just before the crack of dawn. Alvin Green unloads his greens and other groceries from the truck into the mart. Phyllis walks Baby Chuck in order to try to get him to shut the f- up and not wake Papa. Poor Papa, she thinks. Needs his beauty sleep for the big interview today where he goes up against Tom Finger for sub vice chief manager of roads and agriculture for the town. Of course he had to join the SODA group and correspondingly drop a letter or 2 or syllable or 2 or something from his name to rez his notes for the meeting, big privilege by itself. Honored to get even a nod in his direct from the uppity highers who also happen to be hirers. But the baby must shush. The baby must go elsewhere if not. Thus Phyllis out in the relative cold with a hopefully bundled up enough toddler, fearing that it might catch a cold. Suppress the negative! she thinks while wheeling Chuck around, reviewing in her mind the positive oriented channeling literature she read before bed. But the cold, the *colds*. Baby Chuck sneezes, making it even worse. Alvin notices, invites her to sit in the truck with the child and turn on the heat while he continues to unload. You shouldn’t be out here, he thinks but doesn’t speak. He’s polite that way; likes to stay out of other people’s business. He may know about the interview too, has put 2 and 2 together to make a mother wheeling a baby around in a stroller at 6:15 on a rather cold morning in later April or early May make sense. Can’t believe it’s May or almost May already, he thinks, trying to remember the exact date while shivering. Obliging, thankful Phyllis crawls into the truck with Chuck. “Chuck truck,” the baby says rhythmically, seeming to make him happy. It worked, thinks Phyllis. It worked, thinks Alvin. Finished with the rest of the groceries, he takes his time with the greens, letting them warm up together. And it will be warm for him when he starts again — added bonus.

But Phyllis was desperate. Seeing the keys dangling from the ignition, she must have gone into some kind of trance, put her lead foot down after taking it out of neutral, and just FLEW. She even let go of the wheel, crazily trusting that the truck would have guidance on it own.

She saw a rider-less bike ahead while zooming into the just rising sun, the ultimate warmth as it were. Who would reach it first?

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May 2, 2023 · 11:24 am

going round the bend

Under a spell, a parade of words began to flow from their now unblocked mouths. Newt first. How he got his name. “Right *here*,” he said. Wheeler’s turn. She was Queen to Baker’s Prime Minister but this was not Baker; Baker was not the father of Shelley. “Unacceptable!!!” shrilled the fruit headed Mike, still at the center of it all, holding the lemon and lime in each hand, ready to stuff them back in if needed. And he did. He could get information through other means. He sent in Pat. They high foured each other while passing. Pat would get to the bottom of this, Mike thought. Female influence. Darker origins. Almost Knight but not quite. Getting there, though. He went out of the Cavern to have a smoke under the starless, moon filled sky. Or was it skies? A skiier pair of skis rider-less bike whizzed by, expertly weaving through the tall flowers and small trees despite no apparent guider. A man walked up as it faded in the distance: glasses, professor looking. “I let it go. I let *everything* go. And yet, as you see, it still knows the way home.”

The bike rode into the rising sun. Mike’s lemon head went away. They were talking man to man, human to human. Knight was over.

(to be continued)

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May 2, 2023 · 10:52 am

brightening the load (be like Mike)

“What now, boss? End of the road.”

She paused, then said to the foreman with shovel in hand and questions in head: “We go back. We make sure we’ve got everything correct and well rounded up to this point. We refine within.” The non-foreman beside them turned over his blueprint, looking for “within”. No luck.

—–

“Start with mica,” she clarified a bit later as they all walked back inside together. “Mike.”

Helpful! foreman and non-foreman alike thought. They both knew the guy. From a kid’s television show of all places.

—–

Fruit headed Mike at the center of it all stood up, removed the lemon and lime respectively from the mother’s and father’s mouths. “Speak,” he commanded. “Speaaaaakkkkk!!!”

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May 1, 2023 · 11:27 am

00380201

Another ghostly Knight was showing them around. You can never completely escape the energy of The Father, the Dark Lord some call him. Red Devil in Xian terms. At his urging, they fed the function-o-meter in front of them with small copper coins — no change there — to watch TV. The ever-present ectoplasm did the work it was paid for.

“Very popular group in the 21st Century,” he rattled about the fuzzy figures on the non-machine, off by one century but only a fraction off the truth in present time, this 8008.

“Name?” tested Baker Bloch, moonburned from the larger space between the flowers. At 6’8″ he was taller than the trees. And even though bigger than birds, the bees offered minimal shade because of their speed. The present Knight again wrongly assumed he was embarrassed because of his lack of knowledge about, well, *everything*. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was just from the far far past. Like we talked about before. We apparently are still in Osse, motor dropped long ago. Like we’ve been driving around a car with no engine for forever.

Knight finally answered Beethoven, with Roll Over dropped early on from the name — even produced an early poster to prove his point. He should be the one to turn red, Baker thought.


early poster, according to Knight

Then while rolling back up the poster to put it away again, ghostly Knight, one of many in the clone hive, said he was joking and that their actual name was SODA. Another joke? Turns out: not. As Baker Bloch checked around, this SODA group seemed to manifest everything here, including the mica table (perhaps ground 00), the chairs around it, the Cavern itself, the *town* itself. Taking up the whole of a sim called Newt. Like the man, the father (of Shelley Struthers). This is, in effect, where he was born, or at least the name. And certainly the group name gives us an important clue about what happened to our society as a whole, the flip flopping of animals and plants and probably minerals as well (we’ll check the rounded mica table for more tips on that later). And the bearded and mustachioed Moon above it all. The Dark Lord. Without any possibility of escape via a satellite of its own, a Moon for a Moon. Bendy knows. He may be more than just a cameo figure in this here photo-novel, 38 in a series of a lot.

“We successfully,” continued Knight, “made the name illegal, *forbidden*, beyond any even seductive poser could get to. Even the pharmacists had the hoods pulled over their eyes, duck-like.”

(to be continued)

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April 30, 2023 · 3:30 pm

Duke

“No ma’am, we don’t have that in stock. We *can’t* have that in stock. Laws of the land.”

“Okay, but what if I do… *this*?”

“No ma’am. However many *seductive* poses you try it won’t get you that drug.”

“Okay, but how about *this*?” She remained undaunted. She had to have that soda!

—–

Mike (and, later, Pat) met with Newt and Wheeler on this very issue just across the road in a cavern. *The* Cavern, in fact; sitting around telltale mica. America was slowly but surely being poisoned. Mike had an idea for a new campaign.

“Just *shut* up and *listen*, Moms and Pops.”

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April 30, 2023 · 10:37 am

what is…

“Look! The Moon has come out from behind some clouds. We’re saved!”

“That’s just old Xianity superstition,” replied wannabe lover Johnny Blank to this, hoping she wouldn’t go down that road again, the Jesus Saves one. He’s Muslim and he’s going to stay that way! And Cylinder is Jewish so that’s that. Found God a while back but a different one from mine, and a different one from Gloria’s. But we still seem to be getting along. For now, he thinks.

Gloria stares and stares. With hate. Just like long long ago when she first got this role. The Moon grew a mustache and beard, peered down at her in ultimate superiority and changed birds into bees, flowers into trees. Not God. Something better, she realized. A Dark Lord. She’d been thinking about it for years, but hadn’t said anything about her insights. A good Christian woman she was to others still. Until the Big Reveal. She’d been pondering it for months. She’ll act on it in days. Xianity, as my *friend* Johnny Blank puts it, doesn’t *have* any superstition like that. She made it up. But, being Muslim, he wouldn’t know the difference. Maybe a perfect match after all, a perfect foil. I set them up he knocks them down.

“Johnny,” she says seductively, moving her pointing finger over to his shoulder, making an “X” on it to mark him as a target. “Tell me about your family again, your overbearing father, your loving but absent mother.”

“She *died*. She wasn’t absent.”

“Oh right right.” She sat up with this, looked up to the still visible Moon for strength. “I… forgot.” The Moon went behind clouds and she suddenly became sad, spell over.

(to be continued)

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April 30, 2023 · 9:15 am

Michigan child/teenager

Porcelain laid down in the middle of Helmic and looked up. There was no LOVE here.

Later:

“It’s an important role,” the Common Teacher spoke, knowing only one could get it, trying to make them face the fact that one of them was going back home to an angry set of parents.

Porcelain got it. She looked around, wondering how to shrink all the trees so that they could fit under the flowers. She *would* get this part, even if it meant cheating, stealing, lying.

—–

She looked up backwards to the Moon that was her Father.

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