“We have arrived too late.”
“Too late,” said the other, just as frustrated with him as he with her. One AM and one PM. But they couldn’t remember who said what. Thus the mutual blame game, which would spill over with the toys before bedtime. Because there was nothing left to do but sleep.
“Twelve hours you.”
“Twelve hours *you*”
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)
—–
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0207, HANA LEI, NIGHTSITY, The Waste+
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 hand, 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!”
“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)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0115, HANA LEI, Michigan
They were preparing food, of course, when the call came in. Raven and Key needed for a catering assignment. Money not an option, because this was for the big bosses, one of them anyway — I’ll get an actual name asap. All activities at the well established Wooboostook pub would have to be halted for a night. March 23rd was the date. The day the music died.
Soon they were prepping food in a different place. Nautilus continent. Near but perhaps not in the Lemon Free State, advertised as the last vestige of the old empire within now Lime (Linden) controlled Our Second Lyfe.
“Edward should be arriving soon,” spoke Sandy Hook to Penny Mart up front, champagne on wait to be served for the occasion. “Said he had a new girl who wasn’t his girl, tee hee.” “Typical,” offered Penny from the chair, wishing he would get the f-ck here so she could have that drink. Also she was starving.
Amos T. Sandman arrived from next door in a party boat loaded down with his many presents, but he was not the one they desired despite of this. The time: 6:05. The night was young, very young.
Darn. Not even noticed, he thought, grand entrance ruined.
“Hello,” he said. No response, even though her extended legs were almost in the way of getting up the stairs in front of him. What gives? he kept pondering as he approached the house. Who is this party *actually* for if not me?
The presents were snapped up right and left as his back was turned to them. He had nothing left to give.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0401, HANA LEI, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Wild West
They had opened the book, they were reading the script. Their brains had become like one, minds fused. They read together, one with the left eye and the other the right. Coordination. Military people at the top of it this time. Eastwesterners.
They read about Archie…
Biff Carter withdrew the book from the camera, stared into it, smiled.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0317, HANA LEI, Jeogeot, Middleton, Midlands, Sand Springs, Towerboro
“Where have you *been*, Shelley? They’ve taken everything — all the downtown — except for this uppermost store. I don’t think they know how to work the stairs to get here.”
“What’s happened?” she tried to ask as innocently as possible. Because she is fresh off from pressing the big red button up in the Uplands. We’re back in the present present.
“The *military* is what happened, Shelley? Where’ve you *been*?” he pressed. Continuation.
Shelley talked Arthur into going inside before it was too late. “Buy the biggest and the brightest for me,” she said about the displayed diamond quartz rings, knowing it would be the last thing she could credit to the house. “For our renewed vows — you never got me another one, you know.”
Fate; synchronicity. The military reached the top of the stairs just as they were leaving with it. They brusquely brushed past them and entered the store, shooting up everything they could see. $499,000 was a lot but not enough to save everything downtown, as it turns out. Sandman had his dark dark wish fulfilled: traitor to his own kind.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0316, HANA LEI, Sand Springs
“You better get back to your Edward, Shelley, and I should get back to my packing.” Because even at this early stage he knew it was no good for keeping the Nautilus residence. 1st thing to be boxed was his pride, his ego. $499,000 dollars is a lot of money but he figures he’ll need just that to save the downtown area from the military. Because the alarm *will* be sounded, somewhere and sometime soon. His personal Sandsim police force will be usurped. Suspect 102, as they called her/him/it, must be found and interrogated for the cause.
“I only ask one thing, *Jennifer*,” for he already thought of her as a cash cow and not a real person, “is when you find it — press the button. That’s all I ask for free lodging, food, haircuts, pedicures manicures, anything you like from any of the shops and other locations. Look where noone thinks of looking. They’ve made sure I can’t be the one…”
“… to do it, yes,” spoke Shelley. “So you’ve said.”
“I’m warm weather, Shelley — I meant Shelley back there, sorry. Remember that.”
“Hmm.”
She’s weighing her options. She can’t bring Edward — that was made clear. It would have to be Arthur accompanying her (speaking of ‘hmm’). She’d forgotten all about Lemont, the actor behind the character, when making the decision. “Sold.” She extended her hand for a shake. Too bad he didn’t have a vanilla hidden in his back pocket to meet it with. Just for a joke, mind you. But she was too precious for all that. She *was*… the golden one, the one to make the change. He could see it in her eyes, all umbrella-y and such at this particular angle in the night’s light. All the books in the world resided there. No need for a library, although that’s where he’ll meet her later and reveal himself again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0315, HANA LEI, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Sand Springs, Wild West
In the southeast corner of Sandman’s sim, where its lone tunnel winds through we just saw that chopper exit from, exists what some call the Purple Uplands, or Uplands anyway, its landscape dominated by 4 same sized, purple banded hexagonal towers which move up and down through slotted holes in unpredictable patterns. Some say The Void lives here, and indeed I was able to find her/him/it easily enough in a mine located beside the corner-most moving tower. Snow covered, it appeared — I believe the only object here so adorned. A bit of winter in an otherwise hot desert land. Conifer trees instead of palms.
Okay, a couple of oaks here in additional to firs, and maybe the snow is just different shading on chopped wood. But the indication still stands I believe. This is one a-hole of a place, cold as Uranus in comparison with the rest. Shelley walks inside…
She stands before it now, walking around it, examining every side and corner. A big red button is the only marked thing on its surface, much like a New Mexican police intercom has such to call in the military when needed. Like we saw conspiracy theory mongerer Tank Bazooka use earlier in Lordsburg vis-à-vis Hucka Doobie aka (or so they say) pop/surrealist artist Charles Nelson Blinkerton, returned from the dead and inhabiting her old 102 hotel room on the strip. He felt like he was in over his head on that one — again.
Knowing something needed to be done in additional to what already had been, she presses it. Sirens fill the air.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0314, HANA LEI, Sand Springs
He stared down at her place, trying to take in what he’d just heard. The Void wants to negotiate a price, she said — or hissed.
—–
Shelley was touching up his shape again when they heard it coming out of the tunnel. A bike, but a real one this time, a chopper they call them up in the real world I believe. Aztec Warrior? We’ll see.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0313, HANA LEI, Sand Springs
Sunklands 