“So. This is your portal.”
“I come down here to Dennis, I get cleaned up, um hum.”
“Err, you mean you get cleaned up and then you come down here to Dennis.” Baker Bloch remembered that Wheeler had said something was wrong with Tropp — True Opp. Maybe it’s that he gets everything backwards. He decides to test.
“So, Wilson Wheeler is your best mate down here.”
“Wheeler Wilson, yes.”
Aha! Baker thought.
—–
“I left him over there dancing. He seems to try to dance his way into a different form. Axis.”
“I’ve heard of him. Rules The Waste, among other places. Rosehaven even, perhaps.”
“We can’t get rid of him.”
“I know.”
“We tried. Same with Wheeler.”
“True enough.” Karoz leaned forward. “You know I have a different user than you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Come clean with it.” Baker Bloch knew, but he wanted to hear Karoz speak the name.
“Gene Fade.” Baker Bloch nods, trying to look a little shocked. “And the same goes for Tropp — Opp.”
“Gene Fade is Tropp’s user as well.” Baker kept his mouth open.
“But Tropp is the same as Bracket, originally king of the Comma Islands.”
“And, I’m guessing, Mmmmmm Grassy Noll is a Gene Fade avatar as well.”
“Could be.” Karoz continues his own story. “I was designed to safely walk the uber sacred peak of Grandaddy Mountain without damaging precious and sometimes rare plants. No animal interaction either. But I forsook this destiny and became enmeshed in Second Lyfe. Our Second Lyfe.”
“Chilbo.”
“Noru, actually. Norum.”
“Right.”
“Norum was stronger than Chilbo — Chilbol — in the early days. Before the deforestation.”
“Right. Plants talk. Plants aid. Look at Collagesity now. The only thing keeping it living and breathing is the Rubi Woods.”
“Correct.” He continues onward with more “revelations”. “Gene Fade is my father. Father *and* user.”
“I still…”
“Grassy too. Gene created Grassy from his own genes.”
“‘Fade to Moss,’ Baker proffers. “The production tells all of this.”
“But not in this dimension. Not yet. Gene wanted to go beyond his days as Grassy Noll’s sidekick in all those Salad Bar Jack action-adventure movies. He was quite famous, but only through Grassy. ‘Fade to Moss’, an autobiography that wasn’t an autobiography, was suppose to propel him into a different circle, a different level.”
“Didn’t work.”
“No.”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 