Category Archives: 02

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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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0202, Jeogeot, Michigan, Newtown+, Oooo

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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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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0201, Jeogeot, Michigan, Newtown+

back to Torrance country

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0216, Colorado, New Mexico, Omega, Southern

small European counties

Barry Deboy made simple collage-photos about it later:

“No luck, chief,” Officer Blair spoke over the police radio. “We’re sitting right outside 102 — been here for about (checks his watch), 17 hundred hours.”

“Since 7 this morning,” chipped in Officer Doublebush riding shotgun, simplifying Blair’s language as usual. Blair continued. “If that old scoundrel Charles Nelson Blinkerton is here, then it’s like he disappeared into thin air. Over.”

“Roger that,” replied the chief. “Keep… your position. Over.” Lt. Tank Bazooka had made a decision. The military needs to be called in. Hesitating only slightly, he punches the big red button on his intercom to start the process.

—–

“Wonder what kind of conspiracy theory Tank roped us into this time, ha ha.”

“UFO’s?” also laughed Officer Gore, riding shotgun. “Portals out the desert?”

“Shakespeare, pheh,” said Officer Chamberlain to this. “And now a surrealist painter come back to life.”

“Pop,” said Gore. “Pop artist. Like Luxembourg.” He meant Lichtenstein of course. Or did he?

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0215, New Mexico

missing people

https://searchlightnm.org/down-for-the-count/

Turns out Lordsburg didn’t kill Shakespeare after all, despite the present presence of the train still.


Heater presents…

Turns out they died together, just separated out by a bit o’ time from our perspective.

Separ, New Mexico

“There’s only one thing to do,” observing Hucka D. opined to mate Barry DeBoy, trying to decide where to stay for the night after Shakespeare vanished again with the death of Nikki and Hal down at the (former) saloon. They’d come upon it: Room 102, where Hucka use to exist as New Mexican surrealist/pop artist Charles Nelson Blinkerton back in the day. Before she died and was reborn as a bee. Way back, now, in 2008. Good times.

She knocks…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0214, New Mexico

death at the saloon

He stands in the 4th and stares out at a Hill fronting another hill in the distance. He knows the mystery of the Silver Nuggets is buried along with her blurred given name — he can’t make it out on the queerly angled monolith before him. “Jnlo,” he tries aloud, a mere slur of the truth. Sirens, then, in the distance; dust trails along the road below him from this vantage point, the one belonging to Shakespeare and not Lordsburg, but not for much longer. The present is about the breach the past in order to find him, the perpetrator. The bully of the town and then some. True murderer we have here, two times over. Nikki and Hal. Who could have seen it coming, except everyone who had ever read the Bard.

—–

“Blurred”, speaks Barry DeBoy about the pale face in the center. “I’m afraid we’ll never know.”

“Truth,” says Hucka D. to this.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0213, New Mexico

Lemon Cove

“I’ve been betrayed? By a *triangle*??”

“I can explain.”

—–

He often thought of that day he found Elvira with a shape. Three corners and the truth, he knew after that. So far did he run to square and the extra corner that he didn’t have time to stop. Until today. Decision. The portal would be open again to New Mexico: 7:15 this morning. He could take his bike and just ride ride ride, never looking back. Stupid second world, he thought and almost spat on the ground, at least imagined it. The powers that be had a plan. He would blend in with a pack of choppers heading south from Los Lunas, become part of the pack itself. “Do whatever you have to to accomplish this important important mission,” spoke his most immediate boss. And so he found Nikki at Silver City when the rowdies that had been hounding him since almost the beginning finally and completely dropped away (siren calls just here there and there), rode alongside her until the Shakespearean end. He didn’t plan to fall in love on the other side but love happens, as they say. Yeah, he also thought of the triangle as he made his plans for the future with her, used that negative energy to propel himself away away away from Burro Alley and the possibility of return.

He sat here like a lifeguard on that fated day, actually imagining blonde Nikki from the future before (and below) him. Across the namesake cove, not quite in the corner but getting there: the 4th, the future — without Elvira, Our Second Lyfe, his triangle of bratty kids, pheh. “Elvira can take care of them,” he said aloud, still staring down at the form that had taken shape. “They all take after her anyway; best that like stays with like.” He refused to see his own brattiness, the bully that he’d become in his negative thinking about this that and that. So if Nikki likewise betrayed him… well, it won’t end pretty.

“How pretty,” he said, oblivious to this possibility.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0212, Nautilus, New Mexico, NORTH, Slaashsides

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When he shot out of the 1st to 2nd life portal known as Burro Alley, Santa Fe, New Mexico at 9:34 Mountain Time on Sunday, March 5th, 2023, he had a good idea this would be his last trip to reality reality. He’d prepared for this moment, said goodbye, in effect, to the virtual wife and kids — if it came to that. Because he didn’t intend to go back to playing second fiddle in a second life devoid of 3 of the 5 major senses, subtract psychic, which was in fact stronger over there. He cherished feeling the bumps in the brick pavement of the alley, loved the smell of fresh bread coming from the Burro Alley Cafe beside the stick laden burro statue at the entrance, reveled in the taste of their fish tacos for breakfast, dinner and sometimes lunch, if fish burritos, which he didn’t like as much, weren’t substituted on the menu.

—–

“The plot deepens.”

“Or thickens,” Hucka D. responds, taking another gander at the photo Barry’d produced from a facebook page on the ghost town. Can-can girls in Shakespeare, the past come to life. Both knew this was an important clue. They’d just produced the word “cancan” in a collage created by folding up the back of a 1923 German dance recital poster found in Hal’s saloon near the center of the resurrected village. Or altered village is perhaps a better way to put it, since both dead and alive versions are just as real as the other. Featured Isadora (or Isadore) Duncan and her daughter Irma, joined at the hip now through the collage fresh as a wet drink produced for a condemned bully whose throat was bone dry from defending himself and saying other locals had perpetrated much more heinous crimes. Didn’t work: hanged in the Grant Hotel Dining Room alongside a cattle rustler. Could have been Barry and Hucka’s fate as well except it wasn’t.

“And the Hills buried on a hill (above the town formerly known as Grant in a county formerly part of Grant). Don’t forget that — fits in with Grant Hill, who drinks sprite, both lemon and lime together to produce something not quite as good as either separately.”

“Another one to wet the whistle.”

“Yess.”

—–

The dog burrows deeper.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0211, Google Street View, Nautilus, New Mexico, NORTH, Slaashsides

00370210

They’d prepared 2 nooses for “folding f-cks” Barry and Hucka down at the dining hall of the Grant Hotel, named after the president and not visa versa. But that’s when the choppers arrived from the north, disrupting everything as stated. Johnny Cage was hiding amongst them, blending in as best he could, speed included. Around Silver City, Nikki (that’s it: Nikki; not Penny, not Wanda) slowed down enough to ride alongside him for a while, enough to strike up a friendship, enough to open doors for the potential of more. By Lordsburg, Johnny had made up quite a number of scenarios in his head, all involving Nikki and marriage, some with babies, some not. In some they just ride and ride off into the proverbial sunset, the wind in their hair and the moon at their backs. Others they use the top 5 gears of their 15 speed mountain bikes (which Nikki had bought in the meantime, ditching her motorized version) to climb the highest peaks of each of the 50 states, Florida and its puny 345 foot high Britton Hill included. “Well start with that,” he said in one version. “Just to get you acclimatized to mountain air, ha ha.” And then he laughed a bit in reality at his imagined joke. Nikki motoring to his side noticed. “What’s so funny, Johnny?” she asked, but before he could answer they were upon the sign. Shakespeare thata way, ghost town no more. The Void saw to that. He could feel it deep in his bones now, starting at his modified neck and working down. If he could just figure out a way to steal it outta here he’d be a rich rich man, set for life in whatever form it decides to take in his future. Babies? Sunsets? Mountains? One way to find out. They followed the choppers that managed to beat them down the now dusty road, beside the water tank with the town name emblazoned on its front.

As they passed, the LORD on it sank below the horizon with the rest, history come back to life.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0210, Google Street View, New Mexico

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He pulled up to the station even though he didn’t need gas, just to look like the rest of the crowd. Despite being unmotorized, he’d outraced half of the choppers here he blended into around Los Lunas. Rowdy crowd — didn’t take to his showoffiness. Tried to shoot his tires out a couple of times but he just weaved and bobbed his way to safety. At one point he had to ride through the desert for a couple of miles to avoid bullets. Finally around Silver City enough of the real troublemakers had dropped out so that he could feel at ease with the rest — attached to one bar or brothel or another along the way — siren calls. He’d actually made a friend, he felt. More on that later: an escape hatch from a lifetime of crime and corruption otherwise. Penny might be her name. Wanda?

—–

*Meanwhile*, on Nautilus…

Shelley Struthers got her wish. We, the Baker family as a whole, have returned to the Nautilus continent, which she’s decided should remain an Our Second Lyfe focus. Now the big Nautilus map in my skybox becomes very relevant again. I bought waterfront property quite cheaply, so I can, in all likelihood, recoup my money and then some from the purchase. Not far from the old Collagesity location in Fordham. More details soon!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0209, Lower Austra, Nautilus, New Mexico, Wild West