Category Archives: 02

July 14, 2023 · 5:23 am

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Thomasina said that whenever I need to refocus to come back to the FILE, so I’m here. In Tomasina — the center of it; without the “h” but obviously related — staring at what appears to be the ruins of a temple, and beside a shell representing Nautilus itself, my home continent for good it seems.

The beacon shows me how to walk the diagonal of the sim. Here I go!

Another oversized Nautilus shell encountered at 197/197 near the middle of this temple thing. By Shelley, mind you, once again, it appears, our heroine for the novel, especially since promising character Sarah from section 01 seems to be dead and gone from us. And also keep in mind she writes novels herself, and apparently is on the same number *I* am. We differ in content if not frequency. She’s found a pattern for writing, a system, and I have too. She is writing a different sentence as I am writing *this* sentence, for example. Parallel. Actually, in checking, she was writing the exact same sentence back there but it usually doesn’t happen that way. Moving on…

Unrendering water to look around better, we understand that that one temple, albeit the largest perhaps, is part of a complex of ruined structures spanning several sims east to west. I also found this among the ruins, although I’m not sure what happened here. Certainly makes for some interesting speculation, though.

We will probably return here.


exposed part of the ruins in Macavity


duplicate statues found just below and beneath


unrendering water again: all together now

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July 11, 2023 · 5:12 pm

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“Good you came back from the 1/2 world by getting together with Sarah,” Thomasina reviewed. We were back in her old office, the hovel in the Waste, new one in Jasper Falls being redecorated perhaps. “How is Sarah?”

“She’s dead,” Al put it bluntly.

“Good, good,” said Thomasina to this. “Good that the manufactured ones are killed off when their job is done. Metaverse would soon get migh-ty cluttered if we had doppelgangers piling up all over the place.

“We could bring her back,” points out Al. “We have the seed.”

“Indeed we do. But your focus now must remain on Shelley, our Jennifer Lane, author of 38 romance novels to date and still pilling up all over the place. What was the name of her new publisher?”

“Shady Lane,” replied Al. “Just minted.”

“Hmm, we’ll see how it goes.”

Then Al shared some pictures of it.

“This is the beginning of it. Or end,” explained Al to Thomasina, holding this photo. “Notice ‘Lane’ had been cut off of the sign (leaving only ‘Shady’).”

“In-teresting.”

“And… this one indicates that TILE is strong on this road, this lane, this forgotten byway that even the town of Boulder seems to have trouble locating for trash pickup and so on, at least according to that woman I met. And it’s about a block from downtown!”

“No need to shout,” requests Thomasina. “I know this is weird, trust me.”

“And, then this one… a rock. Thought I’d include that– about 1/2 way up the lane. Do you think it has a wielding spell inside? Like that other one we found in that other 1/2 way spot?”

“Swordstone?” offered Thomasina. She nodded while still staring, still contemplating. “Could be.”

“Sorry about the darkness of the picture. Shady in there, you know.”

“Of course.”

“And then this one just looking up the lane from about the location of the TILE symbol on the side of that house. Obviously a TILE enclave–”

“Obviously,” quickly agreed Thomasina. She paused. “Will you go back today?”

“I guess so.”

“Remember to take your walking stick. The one with the eyes.”

“Always.”

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July 11, 2023 · 7:15 am

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In a cage underneath the bed he waits his turn as reality shifts back into fantasy, virtual playstuff and all. It was always going to be this way. Once they returned to the top. “How’s your novel going?” he said over, blue rose decorated suit back on. “I’m really sinking into this one,” she admitted to her hubby who was still gone a lot of the time, acting in Europe, Asia and Africa currently, Shakespeare being a world-wide phenomenon. “Sinking as… how?” “You know, really getting into character,” she replied. He rolled over, stared upward. If he’d kept rolling he would be looking right at the answer. “So you’re Jennifer Lane, the writer who *writes* Shelley. But to me you’re still Shelley, since I’m not in your books.” “Oh, you’re in them alright,” she said, which was truth. Just not the whole. 2-4 percent, like incomplete milk for a half baked, choco chip cookie. And so, on the 5th day… “Explain,” he ventured, pressing further tonight, kind of hearing the muffled cries of help from beneath him but still kind of not. He could sense an actor in peril.

So she gave him permission to come back into her life, to live in this place with them as well. Her lovely Edward, fresh from a dog park over in Pickle 02. Someone else was under the bed now. He stared at the answer. “Jem, is that you Jem?” He rolled over, all the way. “Oh it’s *you*.”

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July 9, 2023 · 4:22 pm

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Mr. Babyface is now downstairs in Kidd, having yielded the top 2 floors representing his old penthouse apt. to the new couple in town, the *owners* as it were (Arthur and Shelley). He’s also agreed to share the dining table of his upper floor with them, since their own upper floor is basically taken up with a bed. That’s fair, that’s fair, he ponders, puffing on Red Dragon this morning. Out of Blue Pennant, his favorite. Have to run up to West Virginie for a restock soon. But how to get there? Last time he had to go through Hana Lei, holding his nose all the time. Fairy poop, yeck! The worst kind, and they leave it all over the place, not believing in civilization and modern conveniences such as flush toilets and pressure showers. Thus the body odor added in to the rest of the smells, the poop, the pee. He *hates* going there. And yet… I suppose the band Lamb is still in all that mess somewhere. High as the sky; not figuring a way out yet. They have likely been totally assimilated, he reckons. Poor Paul, poor Peter and Mary. He may never see them again. His poor poor nephew (*sigh*). *Anyway*…

He continues to puff as he stares at the Big E on the now shared table, a ritual of sorts. He doesn’t know quite what to make of it still except that it’s perfect in its own way, and a worthy additional the TILE family of absolute glyphs. He stares at the green green sim of Xilted, thinking back to his own experiences there, 0202 as well and exactly 3 novels back. More perfection.

He met a soldier specifically named Chet, a veteran of the Trojan-Durexian War. He can’t recall the names of the other soldiers that were there at the outpost with him and then lover Greg (or Gregg) but he remembers Chet. “Grass, the usual,” Chet always use to say to him whenever he asks the ever pointing, gun toting soldier what he’s aiming at today from his lookout post. And Mr. Babyface would always pause in his activities of the day and stare out with him a bit here — into the green green hills of Xilted (now with grass!). Maybe they could be considered even… friends? What else did they talk about? The cow loving, fellow Trojan warrior now living in the Northern Hills of the original Bellissaria continent? Certainly a possibility, I’m guessing, although they could have become chums after this assignment was over given the whole perpetual war thing, but certainly before his own untimely, well, death. Chet died at the hands of a machete wielding enemy with more blood lust in his spirit. Kill or be killed, he learned too late. But perhaps he was right in doing so; rewards in heaven and so on. Mr. Babyface didn’t know about Chet’s death, I’m supposing. He’d only learn that later in this here photo-novel, 39 in a series of a lot. Maybe from Groover.

And how appropriate his table is now 3 floors down from the top of Kidd and thus displaying the Xilted sim on its side wall as well. At the top — his former upper floor again — Shelley has (XY*Z*) Zebrasil, very close to a volcano that had just gone off. Can he recover enough to go at it again the next day? You betcha! Yet another perfection and directly related. Little e to Big E, you see. TILE talk.

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July 6, 2023 · 4:12 pm

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Weird she can see the lower tip of Beatrice from here, she thinks. Where she, in fact, comes from (novel 38; on a white horse). She checks the distance on the inworld map in her, um, mind. Over 200 meters away still, and her draw distance used here is only 64 to reduce lag in an urban area. She thinks again of Constantinople, the *real* thing, and her graphically talented, er, doppelganger. Here incarnated as Myrtle Beech out on the southern tip of *this* island. Another 200 meters or so in the opposite direction.

She moves to the opposite window of the upper floor of her new (!) apartment, important furniture purchase finished. It all revolves around, well, the central affair which is not an affair atall. She smiles at the irony. She can continue with her romance novel 39 and keep the marriage to Arthur intact. She can have her cake and eat it too. She came here, in effect, in 2 boats at once. But what really was this island she now exists on with her others? Constants? Close enough.

Arthur will be home soon from job hunting. Better get back to the interwebs and do some more research before he arrives (she decides). Hogs the whole living room with his applications and such. Great views, but — drawback — small apt. Barely room for the bed upstairs. And what about a kitchen? She’s *not* sharing an oven and a fridge with that big headed dude downstairs (!).

Strange, she think while staring from the couch now (*not* new). The entire Smipsons family shows up at the bottom of the store’s page but no sign of Al or Sarah’s avatar, hmm. Oh, she realizes. No adult content here; she’s not signed in to the Marketplace. And Al and Sarah are certainly adults now after what happened at the Homeless Union last night, away from Cowboy’s still drunk presence. Who cares if he chokes on his own vomit, Sarah thinks while packing her duffle bag for an overnight stay, looking down on him writhing about on the stained bed, murmuring something about Wanda and Gloria giving him 2 rides between snores and incoherent utterances. I bet they did, she thinks with vile, harking back to that afternoon and the beach and the lateness of his appearance and his *appearance* when he arrives. Drunk off his tits. “I bet they did,” she hisses aloud before stomping out, thinking this is at *least* a 2 night absence now. Maybe forever; probably so.

Back to the family…

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May 9, 2023 · 9:34 am

and now the woods

He laid down his walking stick to take a picture of what he’d just been through. He was ahead of himself in the virtual world. Time to catch up!

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May 9, 2023 · 8:04 am

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How can a path be so straight, he thought, and be aligned with that old rusty object. In his mind he was picturing something else, something woodsy. Not this; not the apocalypse. But there was resonance. He continues backwards…

North Yd. He must be heading to North Yd. He’d heard about the place. Bad things. Rotted out Tilers for one.

But he was facing the wrong way.

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May 8, 2023 · 8:58 am

the coffee knows

“Here come the rest,” says John the Mind Reader to his character supervisor Al. “Better wrap this up.”

“Beans,” Al says to this, which encapsulated everything they just spoke about in a word.

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May 8, 2023 · 1:39 am

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“Is it really you, Mother?” he called from across the court. “Alive and in the flesh again?” Ted, aka Stitches, couldn’t believe his ever-wide peepers.

“Come to Mama,” she said to this, and he flew into her open arms, micronized in a flash. Microcosm. She had a subject after all.

And a new character. Ratcatcher of the Fracture. *Not* the Fissure. She extended the story backwards and forwards to give it solidity. Two caught rats in a backpack cage — *not* pets, even though she’d given them names by now: Billy and Corgan. Story about that too. “Pumpkintwisters.” And, come to think of it, two more subjects I suppose, if she wishes.

Noise from the “cafe”. Two people she’d missed before, making a plan Stitches told her in her mind. She couldn’t make out the conversation herself but she knew the ever-aware, lime green teddy would give details later if she’d just hold her position without being disturbed. Physically, not mentally, because it was too late for the latter. Better add another scar or three and maybe the same with the rats, she thought, looking at what was coming her way. Al and John the Mind Reader (aka Jed aka Incognito we think) were only the first to arrive. Weekly meeting of the Last Drop Gossipers we have here. Including long forgotten Jackson Bloch, no kin to Baker. And apparently Ted numbered among them too. How could she explain the micronization? Was that even a word?

“Don’t worry,” she heard him say, still one through it all. “They can’t see you while I’m with you. Just sit over there in the center and *listen*. Takes two to know.”

(to be continued)

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May 6, 2023 · 3:50 pm

Bakers… and Wheeler

I think we have a new candidate for an alchemical experiment going wrong that you originally assigned to Bart Smipson here in photo-novel 09.” They were in the past. Which was also the present.

“Lemongrab, yes. I’ve heard,” the female Baker replies to the male Baker. She reads the blog even if she hadn’t appeared in it for a while. “Sink into Sunklands”. It’s taped to her bathroom mirror so she’ll remember at night. Just before bed. She understands they, the Baker family of avatars and friends, are struggling to establish Lemon Free State in the middle of Nautilus. Thus Lemongrab, who here goes by Mike. And Lemongrab 2 is his now female (?) mate Pat. Both found quickly on the Our Second Lyfe marketplace through a search for complete avatars using keyword “Duke.”

“Does that make you Princess Bubblegum?” He pivots his head, takes her overarching pinkness in. “You always wanted to be a mother, Baker Blinker. You always wanted… *boys*.”

“Not *those* kind of boys,” she shot back.

“Oh sure you do. You were jealous of Wheeler from the beginning.” He knew to let the matter drop after that. They’d been through the transference a 1000 times now, reviewed every aspect. In the early days of such analysis Baker Blinker was trying to assert herself as the queen ruler again, with Baker Bloch by her ever-side as Prime Minister. Like in the UK as opposed to the US, which had just gone to hell. Wheeler, early on again, was kind of like 2016 Trump happening at the same time, the new ruler, the wannabe *dictator* — obvious to them if not a big chunk of the country still surrounding their safe patch of virtual irreality up in the main world. Where Mike and Pat originally come from in Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee respectively. This was all fate.

And she’s still married to original “king” Karoz Blogger — that hadn’t changed, despite all the other stuff that has occurred since they tied the knot in photo-novel 02 and originally started dating in 01. It seems to be one constant of the blog and attached photo-novels. Perhaps the ultimate one. The ability of two to manifest at once and live and interact together as husband and wife. Then: Wheeler.

—–

She ditched the remainder of the crazy blue outfit, made the scars in her face deeper and more off-putting to fit into this world better.

“Last Drop, good,” she said, staring at the the sign of the place on the edge of the Fissure, which some call the Fracture just to be ornery about established protocol. “I have a place to eavesdrop on new gossip.” In particular, she was looking for Jed, who now seems to go by John (the Mind Reader) or perhaps Incognito, obvious enough nod to a disguise, a covering up of an origin rooted in one of those complicated North-South type disputes. And *Stitches.* “Ted,” she mouths his own new name aloud while thinking about all this.

“Yes?”

She twirls in her tracks.

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