Category Archives: Novels

the evolution of the ring

“I’m just waiting for the significant other to finish up inside,” spoke Roger Pine Ridge from his *self named* chair. “How about you?”

But metallic green robed Junbug said nothing and kept reading her book of spooky stories. There were codes inside.

—–

“I’m glad the Floyd Man is gone, Owlshead, because my book is now not full of glitches.”

“Do you have *any* clothes around here that’ll fit me?” the small green being now seated opposite her replied, “because I’m f-ing cold as old mold, *shiver*.”

“Okay,” Junbug relented. “Hop on back up and let’s go see how Anton is holding out. This was just a test anyway.”

—–

“I’m thinking of changing my name again to Kelp, Sidechick… Anton. Whaddaya guys think?”

2 Comments

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0505, Nautilus, Nautilus City

Anson Anton

“Well? How’d it go?” asked Jim the Pirate Bartender about Marion’s exploration of Anson. He was nosey that way. Regular customers usually liked it. Strangers sometimes put off. Like Marion Harding. But he relented, wanting to abate rumors while telling the real, *checkable* facts as much as possible.

“Nothing much there except a hull,” he tested. “No autos within now for certain.”

“We *know* that, Mr. Hardware,” Jim said, speaking for the bar collective he felt he presently represented.

“Harding,” Marion corrected about his name.

“What about Anton? What’s he look like these days? Use to come in here you know. Alternated between a bloody bucket of nails and a naily bucket of blood. Rough drinks both. Usually dove back into the sea pretty wasted. Surprised he didn’t actually drown he was so sloshed.”

“You know that’s impossible,” Marion corrected again. “You know we can all breathe under the water. Above the atmosphere, under the water. Survive fire and flood — although there is that rumor about a volcano on the Old Continent where avatars could actually perish.”

“But look at your friend Stinky Brinkman you spoke about earlier. Riddled with bullet holes. You said you were there at the funeral and another gunfight erupted, with three more dead. Then at *their* funerals nine more dead. What was the total at the end?”

“138,” replies Marion in a level tone. “138 avatars killed so far. Chain reaction, yeah.” He shook his head, thinking about Stinky more than any of the others. “But they aren’t really dead, see. The *core* remains to rise another day. Actually,” he then reconsidered, “there is another way to truly die. You can deactivate yourself — obliterate the core. I’ve been told it’s possible but I’ve never known anyone to actually do it. The problem might be: when you deactivate yourself that way you rub yourself out of existence, so no one remembers anything about you, past or present. It’s as if you never existed in the first place. Working theory mind you.” He took another sip of his Brewmeister’s Quarterly, still being careful not to drink too much. Because that’s when he gets in trouble with the revealing.

“Well I never,” Jim replied, wanting to get back to Anton. He wiped the counter in front of him a bit and collected his thoughts again. “I’ve heard he’s only a beard these days. Anton, I mean.”

Close, Marion thinks. But then utters: “I didn’t see him. No autos, no Anton.”

“Impossible,” returns Jim. “There’s a green dot on the map up there. It’s usually there. It’s gotta be Anton. We’ve had ships pass over the wreck and examined their NAR (Nearby Avatars Radar). Anton: usually the culprit. In fact — let me check my own map right now (Jim’s face went blank for a moment) — well he’s not there now, but *usually* is. Sometimes, anyway.

A cyberwoman walks into the bar and settles into a stool two down from Marion, paper airplanes whirling ’round and ’round her head. Spy? he considers. Jim keeps talking about Anton. Marion wishes he would really shut his yapper now.

“Maybe he’s totally invisible. He use to be whole, like when he came in here. But then there were reports of just a beard and a coat, just a hat and some pants. Maybe he really is gone, man. Dead even.”

“Is this Anton a boy of about 10 years old,” Cyberpaperdoll then inserted.

“Um, no,” Jim answered.

“Well, never mind, then. Paper plane cocktail if you will.”

—–

What Marion actually saw:

Shoes buried in the sand — uncovered. And the left one holding something small and green and almost priceless he soon found out. About $500,000 lindens worth of almost priceless. Enough to leave Second Lyfe altogether if he wished. But, truth be told, he only wanted to get back to that ice fishing shack over in Horizons-Spica. He dreamed about it almost every night.

1 Comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0504, Nautilus, Nautilus City

play with me

“Thank you for helping me, George. Now we’re having double the fun.”

“Sun’s going down fast, Heidi,” speaks a concerned George, still working upon his own castle. He’d been at it for about 45 minutes now. “Maybe we better go look for Philip and Marion. They may have forgotten about us. Especially Marion, you know. And Philip gets sidetracked in a different way.”

“Oh, they’re not concerned about us,” giggled Heidi Hunt Ives. “They know I can take care of myself. *And* you.” She stopped her castle building for a moment and looked over at him. “13, you say?” George nodded, beginning to hollow out the castle door more. “You really don’t look any older than me, truth be told. But look around, George. Do you know where you are?”

“I’m here with you,” he replied smugly, still engrossed in sand sculpting. “In a playground. In Capitol City. On the Gaeta V continent. In Our Second Lyfe. In Virtual Reality. Does that answer your question?”

“Right on the last two counts at least,” Heidi said innocently. With this, George finally looked up, saw the snow-less ground all around the sandbox. Saw the surrounding brick wall peppered with graffiti. Stood up and stared at the tall, disrepaired apartment building behind him.

And then, in an instant, it was all gone, clean, snowier part of Capitol City returned.

Flushing, he turned toward Heidi. Only one castle was in the significantly smaller sandbox now: her own. “There never was a second castle, George,” Heidi explained straightforwardly while still crafting a turret. “Not yet.”

—–

“Do you hear that?” she whispered, strangely concerned now after all that went on before. Then George heard it too. Crunching, soft but unmistakable. Someone walking on the other side of the picket fence.

1 Comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0503, Capitol City-, Gaeta V, HANA LEI

pinpoint

“I’m afraid we have no power to control the theft of the haunted VW, town owner Baker Bloch,” responds Keat Owens Librarian beside the marked up Nautilus City map. “The Oracle has spoken; it will continue to be X-ed out.”

—–

“All right. Time to move.”

1 Comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0502, Heterocera, Nautilus, Nautilus City, Rubi

“Well, we have a giant *beaver*. How’s that?”

Marion Harding openly admitted to having a thing about trees. Here we see him climbing up the ladder into a treehouse he’s fancied recently. The owners of the main house on the property were never around, it seemed. And there was a gas station nearby which provided a small bathroom and also a bed for his more basic needs. Then there was the nice view of *the* tree.

Most Old Ancient (MOA)  was the most impressive thing in Capitol City to Marion. “Nothing like this in your South Yankton,” he told Philip Strevor the other day while petting its massive trunk. This is Gaeta V, *not* GTA V. And while bland and boring overall yes, there are still advantages.” He started to mention Heidi as well, but didn’t want to get Philip thinking along those lines again — about “retirement” in this Muff-Bermingham run by that tall, pale dame he’s described. The heist should be the main focus now. That’s what they were meeting about at the tree’s base. For even Philip knew the huge old growth had authentic power. Power to expose and power to hide. Whatever was in the hearts of men at the moment. And, through knowledge gleaned from his wacky weed and attached fantasy friends, Marion understood how to harness it.

They’d left the kid at the playground in the snowier part of town. George was looking after her. George swears up and down that he’s 13 and not the 10 or so he appears to be. And, anyway, both Marion and Philip knew that Heidi Hunt Ives could take care of herself for sure. It’s just the *impression* of caretakers they were after. Part of the cover.

Anson. He’d received the name from The Oracle that is The Tree. An auto, a *bug*, stolen and then stolen again. Formerly buried in the sand at the wrecked ship just north of Fae’s Boat House by Tom the Booker — Tom Booker — now deceased and buried himself somewhere in the eastern reaches of Corsica Prime. Car thieving was his livelihood. But this theft was special. Because there was something stashed in the exhaust system he didn’t know about. A 50,000 linden reward issued by the Purple Gang of the Black Lake District alerted him to the situation. Then the kid plugged her own ultra valuable information into the equation. This is *the bug* she stated more than once she was working on, beyond the old and middle aged women, beyond even the poodle. Not an insect, but at the same time, yes an insect, she cryptically claimed. A philosopher’s stone she termed it for him.

This is why he decided to bring her into their fold in the first place. The bug. And she claimed to have the power to know exactly where it was at any one time. And it would continue to get stolen, again and again. The money would keep roll’n in.

—–

“We’re gonna drive this car all the way to ‘Pumpkintwisters’ this time, Jackie.”

“Shut up and get starting.”

2 Comments

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0501, Capitol City-, Gaeta V, Heterocera, Rubi

breakthrough 02

The cavern passages were long and numerous. Pitch stopped to ask a gray woman directions, but she was just a statue.

A way out (!). But he dare not step into the sun for fear of waking up. He wasn’t quite ready for that.

He tried to orient himself by statues and other objects, such as that barrel in the background here.

Resting both brains and legs for a bit before continuing…

Then suddenly he was upon it: the source of the music from the former dream, although he didn’t realize this at first.

The birds perched on the keyboard urged him forward. “You are a musician like us!” they seemed to warble.

Now Pitch can’t play the piano worth a lick, but when he sat down on the stool and automatically thrust his hands forward, lo and behold he turned into a maestro. And fingering the same tune as heard before: the eerie, quasi-jazz piece with halting ebbs and flows. A composition by Rutherford “Booger” Hayes, he then realized. The first president of the United States that was never president of the United States.

After a couple of bars, he hunched up his legs and took it all in. He’d really and truly found the great 3-n-1 this time. Thank you Melvin. Thank you so much! He couldn’t wait to wake up and tell Mary.

And so he did.

—–

Mary, pack your bags. I’m pretty sure I can see, speak, hear again up there.

1 Comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0415, Comfrey, Gaeta V, HANA LEI

breakthrough

Pitch sat up on the soft feather bed. He’d made it! But what would happen to Mary now?

No Musician or Wheeler to be seen at the, um, *exit*. But that really wasn’t surprising.

Time to see what’s here in this Comfrey sim!

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0414, Comfrey, Gaeta V

planes and planets

—–

It took a month, but Baker Bloch was finally granted access to the higher planes of Clemscott by holiday entities Santa God, Halloween Jack, and Melvin. The latter asked if he could tag along, feeling Baker’s mission to find the great 3-n-1 in the physical realm was not as futile and meaningless as the other two.

“I met my wife Suzanna54320 here,” Melvin declared, referring to the plane they were then exploring, one up from his holiday castle realm and with a base level at 750 meters above the Linden’s absolute zero (for the record, there are no negative elevations that I know of in Our Second Lyfe; no Death Valley type scenarios, in other words). “We had a stare down, as you term it. Neither of us could believe the other was present. No one came to this plane — still don’t. We received mutual sex gratification in the spider’s cave that very night. The proximate fish promised to pivot their heads, but I couldn’t help notice Wanda, the largest and highest, sneaking peeks during the action. I don’t believe it was a, how you call it, *pervy* thing, though, since fish don’t perceive our species in a sexual manner, and visa versa of course. I think she was just curious how it all worked with us mechanoids. You see…”

Baker Bloch politely stopped him here, not wanting to hear some of the rather uncomfortable details about robot sex again. He had already suffered through the, er, ins and outs of several other such “actions” up to this point concerning his wife and also other robot women he had met before and even after his marriage. Baker instead steered the conversation toward Fourth of Juli celebrations coming up in less than half a year. Melvin was already preparing. This bridged the time it took for them to reach this Spider Cave.

Wanda was still there, flying high and mighty. Melvin avoided eye contact…

… and instead conferred with non-flying (“ordinary”) fish Skippy and Mr. Howe in the pool below on the possible whereabouts of the great 3-n-1. “Inside,” they burbled brightly, if a little out of rhythm with each other. Baker Bloch could feel Wanda’s eyes staring heavily toward them. Weighty like a planet; no wonder Melvin noticed the peeking that night(!).

Music began, a strange, somewhat jazzy piano tune. Haltingly subdued. Coming from the cave.

—–

“Melvin?” Baker Bloch called back over the now louder music upon reaching the impasse within. “Did you guys happen to use a bed while you were in here?”

“Melvin?”

—–

“Another one, Mary. This time with the primary.”

“Dear Lord!”

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0413, Clemscott-, Gaeta V, HANA LEI, Kerchal, Sansara

silver hammer

Maurey “Jiff” Monroe, the Gaston-Berry Police Station staff psychiatrist, wanted it plain and simple today. “Well, Tom Casey. Or, if you prefer it, Casey One Hole.”

“I do.” Casey was ever the method actor.

“Let’s talk about motives. Why would you kill a beloved Collagesity bartender with one deadly swipe of your metallic Wilson driver?”

“He had information he wasn’t providing for me. I hate… dislike people who don’t give me the information I want to complete my mission of…” He paused.

“Yes,” Jiff proclaimed, seeing an immediate weakness. “Tell me about this mission. Hopefully it at least serves free gravy to the poor.” He attempts a weak smile which, of course, wasn’t returned.

“I’m looking for someone.”

By now, George was back in his secret hiding place, listening in. His abbey as he called it. I had been stupid to walk the road today, he vilified himself.

1 Comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0412, Gaston+

Interpretation

Later, Hucka Doobie met with The Bakers, who admitted that Baker Blinker was really the Karl in the coffin at the newly placed Collagesity mausoleum. However, in the same breath they reinforced that Furry Karl was truly dead and in all likelihood wouldn’t be returning, just like fellow Audrey’s bartender Terry before him. Hucka Doobie found herself shedding a couple more tears with this news.

Baker Bloch then said he knew Hucka Doobie had a lot on her plate but since she was in town could she possibly do him a favor. Hucka Doobie instantly knew what this was: interpretation of the newest collage created by me, baker b., over a month back now. “SpicA”. So they went over to the upstairs gallery of the Bodega Market in SoSo Mall and took a look, recorder on.

“This is obviously something being erased, a blonde woman most likely. Probably Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks fame. The yellow mop head acts as the hair, reinforced by the yellow cleaning pad wiping the face into nonexistence.” Hucka Doobie moves closer to the work. “The ‘A’ — the yellow block with the letter ‘A’ on it — seems to be a weakness. Covering (or blocking) chaos. Let’s see, ‘A’ is the first letter of the alphabet…”

“And the last letter of the Virgo star Spica,” chips in Baker Bloch. “We should probably keep the title of the collage in mind.”

“Right you are. But the ‘A’ covers the part of the squeeze bottle here that squirts, this Spic And Span solution I assume, a product I’m familiar with from cleaning up so many pollinating parties over at Patty Peppermint’s.”

Baker laughs a bit. “Those parties again.”

“Oh, and then we have Jim Carey from the movie ‘The Mask’ jutting out from the left side of the cleaning pad. Clad in yellow. This is most definitely a mask. And I’ve kind of identified who it is covering. AND… this is definitely the start of Hunt.”

“The newest collage series, then.”

“Right. And more.”

“Hunt as in a mystery hunt?”

“Right. Burl Ives. ‘Heidi’. Mirroring tombstones. A green Oblong box passes between them filled with the letters of Oblong, none of which are green atall. You must follow the box.”

“Anything else about this?” Baker Bloch queries, wanting to extend the session.

“It’s a woman who wants to rub herself out of existence. Blonde. Laura Palmer most likely. That’s all I’m getting out of it.”

“And the background: Greenup valley.”

“Oh, yeah,” states Hucka Doobie. “We could talk about that. The two beds. The Musician and Wheeler in the Comfrey caves over at Gaeta V. I actually looked for those caves, Baker Bloch. Couldn’t find them.”

Baker smiles, then: “And that seems to be the end of their story in this novel, Hucka Doobie. The ‘Collagesity Winter 2017-2018’ book.”

“Is this novel *7*, already?” Baker nods his head. “Amazing. All that energy from all those years finally flowering. Seven flowers already, or working on the 7th.”

“Back to the beds, then. Did The Musician and Wheeler truly step into Greenup Gill valley? Will or even *have* Jacob I. and Broken Heart the bone cat followed them there?”

Hucka Doobie puts a round bee hand to head. “Unsure, Baker Bloch.” She turns to her left then. “That black shirt (from “SpicA”) even looks like Laura’s black outfit over at “Twisted” from the Bogota series just finished.” Baker Bloch then stares with her in that direction.

“But this is also the star Spica,” Baker Bloch starts again, “being obscured for some reason. Like moving from the northern to the southern hemisphere and loosing just enough light (magnitude) to make former investigations and leads improbable to impossible for follow up. Did that make sense?”

“Philip Strevor we’re talking about here. Who is The Musician transformed.”

“*Is* he?”

“Yes. He had exactly the same metallic stigmata which vanished when The Musician acquired his own from the same operator: Jimmy, aka Chroma.” Hucka Doobie here turns to the right instead and the last collage of Bogota (“See Title 02”):

“Dale Cooper,” she continues, indicating the central figure in the collage to Baker Bloch. “Brought in by the FBI to solve the murder of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. Aiming a dart recklessly. Trying to save a young, pretty girl in (a top tier) situation of danger. Trying to be a knight in shining armor. But being blinded; unable to understand what’s really going on. Now notice, Baker Bloch: the *hair* of the woman to his left, closest to “SpicA”, is being emphasized (or illuminated) again… hairspray and such (cleaning solution?). We’ve already talked some about this before. Can you just drop a link here?”

“I will.” LINK

“So… three hands from three different figures notice and admire the hair over there. Suitors, perhaps. Jacoby and such. Jacob I.” She pauses again. “BUT — this is important. Casey One Hole, our evil side of Dale Cooper or his evil or bad doppleganger…”

“Yes.”

“He’s now in the same jail cell formerly occupied by Old Gregg, who has become, in this story, Gregg Oden, with two ‘g’s. Whatever happened to him? And whatever happened to his counterpart Greg Ogden, with the one ‘g’? And how about Alex and Albert, the red and the green again. There’s a girl, Baker Bloch. I’m seeing it (in my mind’s eye). In the sim of Spica. Something about two eggs. Stars… binary stars. Like eyes, but the eyes are eggs. Red and green. Spica. You must look in or to Spica.”

Sensing the session is over, Baker Bloch then thanked Hucka Doobie for her time and let her go back to her White Palace in the skies.


Attention being withdrawn on the right side. Hand exiting instead of entering. A situation before the arrival of Dale Cooper. Laura remains… Laura’s remains.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0411, Heterocera, Rubi