She was having that nightmare about blood spilling out an elevator.
Later, she really wanted to eat that piece of chocolate raspberry cake but didn’t have the stomach.
“You can have it Tess.”
“I ain’t hungry neither this morning, Mabel. Mud again,” she summarized her own nightmare.
It was all Robert’s.
“Gimme, gimme, gimme,” he cried while reaching.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0208, End of Time+
“128, 128, Mr. Baker. I had to come out and talk to the tree.”
“Really, Ruby Fantasie?”
“*Noooo.*” But: yes, Ruby Fantasie had to come out to get further instructions from the tree. At the centre of the sim (Fruity Islands). She wasn’t going to let Baker know that, however. She splits in two.
“Let’s go back inside now,” she ordered after receiving.
—–
“Come on, come on, hurry it up.”
In a poof of pollen the vines part!
—–
“A choice here, Mr. Baker. I’ll let you choose.” For that is what the Ruby Tree told Fantasie to do.
Baker walks left.
——
“This pool is where we came in from the waterfall. Those torches over there mark the entrance. We’ll never be able to dry out today. Good thing it’s so hot; but not down here.” She sneezes. “Catching a cold, I believe.”
“Just beyond that bend behind the fruit bats, Fantasie,” Baker declared while pointing ahead, obviously in The Trance now. He doesn’t shiver atall.
—–
Inhabitants! thought Fantasie. Dear, lordy me. I’ve never seen *this* before. The tree was right!
Tessa.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0207, End of Time+, Fruity Islands
“You’s guys look *different*. You’s just be passing through?”
“That’s right, um…”
“Jane.”
“Jane, yes,” replied Magus Ellen in an acquired accent. “We be seeking a man named Murdochh who liveth in the area.”
The bar goes silent. Jane stares at him steadily, perhaps even with fear in her eyes. Yes: fear. She immediately closes the bar, saying she has some restocking to do.
—–
Outside:
“We’ll come again tomorrow looking different, Sidechick. That’s your homework for tonight — to get a good disguise. Let’s head back to Nascera…”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0206, Rose Heaven-
“He must have come here after walking across the bridge, Sidechick Corea. Hi Sammie!”
“Sammie seems to want us to go inside, Magus Ellen,” observes the younger man.
“Dog’s tale, yess.”
“We better change into something else.”
“What *you* got?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0205, Rose Heaven-
“Methinks this is my kind of place.”
—–
In a related story, the body of a witch was found just outside her cabin in Wabe today. Authorities believe a rival practitioner of the Dark Arts threw her out the back window during an argument over possession of a cat.
But she’s okay.
—–
“There, there. Now, now.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0204, End of Time+, Rose Heaven-
“Very nice. This will do.”
“I get it, Magus Ellen,” Sidechick Corea shouted from below. “The rat tales are the 2 in the pictures, the first and last of the post. But the *same* rat tale. That of Reginald’s.”
Ellen walks out to the front stairs. “What was that, my friend?” But Ellen heard well what he said. No need to voice it, true, but no harm done. Here at least.
He listened patiently while Sidechick repeated his observations. Then: “Good, good.” He stares back inside the treehouse… “We’re almost ready up here.”… and then toward the cave mouth.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0203, End of Time+
Dr. Brown knew a thing or two about sniffing out mysteries. He’d been doing so most of his life, especially a particular one involving the Cult of the Three Suns. Clues had been flying in from all directions recently. And now another had fallen in his lap: a pregnant Pat or Patrick Starr, connected with *North Yd* of all places (pronounced like “North Wide” just so you’ll know). Tilers, he thought from his secret underground lair, far far away (spatially and temporally) from the simpletons at Eotia Village. Squid people. Opposite sides of the circle, one dead and stuffed, the other living and breathing and… preaching. Vicious cycle — no, not vicious — *natural*, a comes around, goes around sort of idea. But now he had to find Tessa. She was the key.
Less than a half year ago; North Yd:
“The tile here indicates safety, however,” her grandpa reinforced. “Safe to split up, then. You examine the buildings that way,” — Grandpa Gold points behind Tessa — “and I’ll work my way around from this end — counterclockwise — until we meet up somewhere in the middle. Is that okay?”
—–
—–
I could spend the rest of my life staring at these walls and learning nothing else. I can’t believe all of the months from my past I did so. Nascera, he thought bitterly. Turns out nothing’s here. Nothing atall.
Even Reginald appears to be gone.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0202, Nascera, The Waste+
“*Axis*, Zoidboro. That’s who *we’re* trying to defeat. We must make sure we don’t get this VD person to help us. Let’s see, V could stand for Val, Valerie, Valentine…”
“It’s *not* someone’s initials, Pat. Stop looking around. And don’t touch *anything* you don’t have to. Let’s just get you checked up and get outta here.”
After a pause, Pat whispers in Zoidboro’s ear. “I wonder if *he’s* hiding out from Axis too,” indicating the man sitting on the far seat from them.
“Stop — with the Axis talk,” Zoidboro reprimands out of the side of his tentacle covered mouth.
“Patrick!?” a suddenly appearing nurse shrills, making them both jump a bit.
“Um, that’s me.” Pat raises his hand. Zoidboro grabs it and shoves it back down.
“Right this way sir.” She looks at Zoidboro. “Are you his… guardian?”
“Yeah, we can go with that,” Zoidboro grumbles, and gets up to follow.
—–
“Say you come from a, quote unquote, mutanty place, huh?”
“Hambone, sir. That’s right. Zoidboro here lives in North Yd…”
“… but part of the same micro-continent,” Zoidboro further explained.
“Hmmm…” Doctor Brown taps his pen crisply against the report several times. “Well, sorry to break this to you Patrick — *Pat* — but it looks like you’re pregnant. 8 months so, in fact.” He stares at the dumbfounded Patrick, then at Zoidboro. “I, um, don’t reckon you’re the father?”
“N-n-no. No!”
But was he?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0201, End of Time+
“I’m never going to stop playing this game.”
“Dum, dedum, dedum.”
“Ooops! What just happened?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0011, 0217, Google Street View, Purden/Snowlands, Utah
George liked it here on the peninsula Duncan assigned him to keep an eye on. This meant Core-Alena in whatever shape she happened to be in at the time. This included The Between, a slither of land representing a neutral point between Virtual and Reality. This meant, well, anything else in and around the peninsula. Just keep your eyes peeled, requested Duncan.
And something had happened tonight, George then realized, peering around. The Seven Crate was gone from its former position behind the Magenta Girls’ beach house.
First the VEN off the boat moored just offshore several days ago, now the SeVEN crate itself. Better get this information back to Duncan as soon as possible, George considered. Maybe… right now?
—–
“I *told* you not to come here, George.”
“I’m properly disguised — in costume.”
“Nevertheless. You’re still a boy of 13 at heart. This is an adult portal.”
George glanced over at the center of it all again. “Milk. And cookies.” He pointed. “Funny.”
“Stop looking over there. You don’t know *what* will show up. Just stare straight ahead.”
“Okay.”
“Tell you what, let’s just get out of here.”
“But I just arrived,” protested George. “Ohhh.”
“Let’s go back to the apartment.” And so they did.
—–
“Okay, I feel a lot more comfortable now with you being here. So… start at the beginning. When did you find the crate missing? After the boat name changed, I know. But just go through the events of the day leading up to it.”
So George unfurled the events of the day leading up to the discovery. Core-Alena and he had had breakfast together at the beach house. “English muffins, ummm,” George remembered. “Core-Alena is a good cook, especially for a tree.”
“That’s a racist and bigoted response,” reprimanded Duncan. “Trees are no different than people. There’s trees that are good with cooking, good with music, good with science. Just like people.” Duncan stared an apology out of his young ward.
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Now continue.”
“Well, we finished breakfast, and then I helped with the dishes and we sat around and chatted. Core-Alena — well, you know how she is. Always complaining.”
“Watch it,” warned Duncan.
“Alright.” George nodded here. “But she started on… talking about how she got killed again.”
Duncan paused with this, turned and appeared to look out the window toward the great Hotel Chelsea (the center of it all *here*) while actually deep in thought. “I see.”
“She mentioned you.”
“Of course she did.”
“And how she’s not happy being where she is now. Mobile. That’s the problem,” the boy guesses.
“Yeah,” admits Duncan, turning back around. “That’s the problem, George.” He shuffles his feet a bit, wrings his hands nervously. “A conundrum even.”
George pauses in turn. “She needs to go back into the ground. Doesn’t she?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0011, 0216, The Straight, VHC City
Sunklands 