—–
Answer:
Green Thumb Rd. Master Gardener. To be continued?
Category Archives: 0311
00480311 (Tom tree (What lies behind the picket fence? Really?))
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0311, Dokken Hollow, Jeogeot
00470311 (level 9223372036854775807 = trap?)
I spoke clear and distinct into the Air. “I’m here looking for a BOOK.”
No answer for about 15 seconds, then:
“WE ARE HERE.”
I think that’s *Lauri*, I realized. I pondered what to say next. Simply repeating the request didn’t seem right. They knew.
I had to specify.
“31 pages with a 32nd ripped out,” I tried.
15 more seconds, then:
“CHECKING.”
10 more seconds, then:
“LIMITING QUERY TO PICTURE BOOK, 32 PAGES MAX. PLEASE RESTATE REQUEST.”
Picture book? I thought. I didn’t even know what that really meant. I assumed: children’s book. What children’s book did I know?”
“‘Little Black Sambo,'” I said once more into the Air.
2 seconds later: “THAT REQUEST IS NOT ALLOWED.”
O-kay, I thought. Good the library has some kind of racist filter, I suppose. Although someone old enough with a valid ID should be able to request the material anyway. Just then:
“PERHAPS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS CAN HELP YOU SELECT A PICTURE BOOK. OPENING A CONNECTION…..”
Hmmmm. Dare I? It would mean returning to the beginning of it all. Perhaps losing everything that’s happened since in the process. All those hard earned years of service.
Couldn’t do it. Like Denmark, something rotten went on there. 42. Bad juju.
I’d have to keep working from outside the system. Nibbling away on the periphery.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0311, Back Rooms, Canada/Picturetown
00460311 (3Ms)
“Are we keeping you up, Ms. Wilson?”
“Oh. *Sorry*.” Wheeler quickly moved her feet off the table, sat up straight. She realized she’d made perhaps a grave mistake falling asleep at the employment assessment meeting here in The Burg. But it was all part of the play, the fun and games. None of this really mattered except *as* in a play. “I’ve been, ahem, sleeping in my car lately,” she tried to excuse her pretend drowsiness. “After I left my last job.”
“And, let’s see, that’s as a maid, I see. Interesting job description. All sorts of tasks — laundering, ironing, vacuuming, window cleaning, in a, quote unquote, semi-aquatic setting? Can you explain further?”
Yes, it was a skybox partially filled with water. My 2 feet were always wet, she started the joke she’d prepared beforehand. Make that 3-4 feet since the water went that high, ha ha.”
Wanda Wilma Willa Brown Halter didn’t laugh or even smile. “I’ll just add to my notes: owner fetish,” which Wheeler knew would be pretty correct. She knew she was always being looked over. “So… why did you choose The Burg to come to after this, Ms. Wilson? Your old job was in the upper east central lower part of Nautilus, which is a virtual hemisphere away from here.”
“I have a friend here,” she lied or pretended. “Charlene Brown, er, just Charlene Brown. You may even be related. I couldn’t help noticing your Brown middle name on your card.”
“Charlene Brown and I are *not* related,” she returned quite firmly. Charlene was Downtown, she (Willa): Uptown. The two sets of townspeople which include the two sets of Browns try not to mix. Clean and Dirty was another way she thought of them. Ms. Wilson here, she thinks, seems to fall into the Downtown category too despite the maid cleaning background. She’d deduced, correctly, there was a dirty aspect to that too. Friends with Charlene who’s also friends with fellow Downtowner Emily New Moon the smut store manager — that also fits. Sounds like the pay was for *show*.
And this time, she did crack a smile. She thought of Wheeler Wilson’s leg tattoos as well, the blue and red fish making their way up the right one to who knows where. She imagines a homecoming fish bowl for the 2 on her stomach for some reason. Reinforcement of The Core.
The meeting ended with Willa determining the only job Wheeler was qualified for was the just vacated mayor’s position, highest actually being lowest in this here Burg. Straightening her hem so you couldn’t follow her fish too high, she sat up and (reluctantly?) shook Willa’s hand to seal the deal. Mayor Wheeler Malone Wilson she is. Again.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0046, 0311, Jeogeot, Nautilus, The Burg, Upper Austra^
00450311
“Big going’s on down at the Eden Plaza tonight from the sound of it, Madison. Another media frenzy I suppose.”
“Checking,” he says from within their luxurious penthouse apartment overlooking Nightsity’s upscale Charter Hills district, doors opened to the balcony because of the warm night. He scans the hit list on his big boy computer in front of him, picks one from a source he knows and trusts. “Looks like another country to city success story according to this article from the ‘Daily Bungle.’ Couple named, let’s see: Eddie and Eva. Straight from Farmville. Film debut tonight. Something called ‘My Green Square Mile.'”
“Sounds abhorrent,” she weighs in without knowing anything else about the project. More vocal cheering now in the distance. Another celebrity must have arrived at the debut party, she thinks. Maybe that wretched *Cary* who seems to show up whenever these things occur. Cary, she ponders. I wonder who he’s dating these days. Tin? Nah, couldn’t be Tin again. Not after what happened the last time.
“Honey,” says Madison from within, still checking out that article. “You might want to take a look at this.”
She moves away from the sound and through the open door to come alongside her husband, who’s turning the monitor her way. A picture of the front of the plaza with new, golden animal sculptures is enlarged before her, heads cut off but it’s clear what they are anyway from the rest.
“Flamingos??”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0311, C2077, Charter Hills
00440311 (Hellboy?)
He comes around when I sit down and slap him. He looks around. “Where are we?”
“Motel. Middle of nowhere.”
“Any specific Middle?” he intuited right off the bat, being the smart-ass psychic he is. They had to talk about Jonny. They had to talk about the relic.
I soon got this out of him anyway with a couple more slaps, turning his cheeks from orange orange to apple red: “The suicide model was just a prototype. *Arasaka’s* aims were always higher.”
Arasaka — the *Tree*, I think. Should’ve known. Add another hotel/motel to the growing list of hanging fruits.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0044, 0311, Badlands, C2077
00430311
“We’ve been controlling your dreams for a while, Fern, judging your actions and the consequences involved. We’ve been studying your tree in short.”
Fern knew to be quiet in the moment. Fern knew this was important.
“We see you’re *clearly* qualified to join our group, The Masters. What we, as a group again, aren’t sure of is if you should become president. It’s either me… or you.” He looks at the golden gun on the table. Fern wakes up.
—–
“Were any jokes involved?” asks fellow cereal eating Lichen that morning at the breakfast table, the sun rising over her right shoulder in the window behind her from Fern’s perspective, just like it did with her “rival” in the dream. Lichen’s usually twirling and swirling mouth straw kept still as the sun kept rising.
“No,” she answered. “It was all dead serious. The guy even had a skull for a head. Dead — serious.”
Lichen knew this was bad and that somehow someway she had to enter Fern’s dreams with her. A mind meld came to mind.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0311, Castle Town, GTA, Hana Lei^^, Omega^^
00420311
In the middle of the night, I decided to fix the deletion issues of Aisle of Palms myself and keep it from Wheeler until later. No need to log in as her tonight too. I got rid of the damaged Temple of TILE after placing a new one atop it, moving the whole thing several yards to the south to hopefully take care of the property line issue. Planted two new palms at the pool beside it to replace the two that were deleted under similar circumstances, moving them a bit south as well. I chose not to restore the trailer on the back side of Fal Mouth Moon, and instead focused on creating a new living space in this very interesting building behind it, with the same creator as several other structures in town already (Herbert Gold and April Mae Flowers’ Gothic Deco House; police station; base of Fries with Cheese Church (the part not made of cheese)).
Interesting: only after setting it up did I realize it had a basement to go along with the other 3 floors, ha. So I had to dig one so that the rooms would be accessible. I can put the house toilet there, and maybe a washer and dryer. More details soon if needed.
And so the other consequence of this is that I’ve decided not to rent more land for Aisle of Palms but to keep things as is: cheap and still pretty large. Could change my mind but probably not. I’ll gauge Wheeler’s reaction tomorrow when I tell her the news. I don’t think she wants to rent it herself but I could be wrong. Hard to judge what is obviously my more earthy, feminine side.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0311, Big Woods, Bright Moon Cottage, Jeogeot, Temple of TILE
00410311
Clare knew she shouldn’t have worn the ribbon dress, not yet. Madam Mayor had an assignment for her when she arrived at work the next day. To retrieve *two* golden coins from the hidden stash downstairs in the underground tunnels, no more but no less. “And be sure you turn off the gargoyles in the final chamber,” she reminded her secretary, her girl Friday. Yes, thought Clare here. Don’t want another Eldwina situation. But the sudden vacancy procured her job with the Mayor, after all. Weed out the careless, is how she likes to view it, not knowing the young girl from Gatesy Pearl personally. She’d heard she was a hard and fast typist. She liked to think she had a considerably softer touch on the keys without the loss of *much* speed. Yesterday’s ribbon change was the 1st she had to do since she started several weeks ago. This brought her thoughts back to her bad luck ribbon dress, her present situation. The underground was *spooky* — more dangers down there than just the fiery gargoyles, she felt. At least there was Bulby, a bright spot at the end. She’d known him in different, less dark times.
While in the final room with the treasure she took the opportunity to catch up with the robot, knowing the Mayor didn’t need the 2 coins until tomorrow’s meeting with the Town Council. She had to convince them, she said, that the connection with the Azores is more important than the one with Our Second Lyfe and the Maebaleia continent and such. “I have to explain to them that we are more connected with *Real* Life — up there in the real world instead of here in the virtual. In the end, you have to choose one or the other, see.” And so Cass City, Clare gathered, is being weighed in a balance against itself. There is a *real* Cass City up there, like there is a real Amiable over on the Portugal mainland, as seen in section one of this here photo-novel. And then there’s a virtual version of each. The difference is Cass City adds an alternate history layer, complicating matters. It’s not a more or less exact copy of its real self like Amiable. It plays broadly with the actual, setting up the possibility that Cass City is the replacement of itself up in the real world. This is what the Mayor wants to emphasize to the council. That there’s a chance their town is more real than the real one, if that makes sense. She’ll have to *make* it make sense.
“*Oh*,” she says to Clare before she leaves for the underground. “And also bring up the statue of the pointing man on the horse, you know, the miniature of the real thing that use to sit on that high ridge of Corvo. It might help me with my case. Bulby will show you where it is.”
“Yes ma’am,” and, steeling her nerves, she was on her way.
“I see you still have your hair, your head,” Bulby said while she sat down for her 1st mug of wolfberry wine, coins on the counter but for show not for pay. Everything was free down here. “Yeah, I’m not no Eldwina,” she said back, and both had a chuckle. Empty-headed, both knew or had heard about. “Probably didn’t even feel the fire burning it off,” one of the two joked a bit later.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0311, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
00400311
He was trying to take advantage of the situation, get to know Mythos Roswell better through this new avatar he created on a whim to make a point. He did that sometimes.
“Sure,” he as she answered back about the offered drink, seeing his green alien friend (friend?) had fallen for the bait. He’d set him up well. Loneliness goes a long way toward it. And Fillip and Brindle showing up now and then putting him even further down on himself. Mythos Roswell figures he could use a drink himself, although it defeats the purpose of the first (making a buck — he just gave it back). “What’s your, um, name? Stranger?” he said in his mind. But she answered aloud, surprising him. Was this really Horace? Was the t-shirt, what do you call it, a *synchronicity*?
“My name is Lilly. Lilly Day.”
He stuck out his long green alien hand and shook her normal human one. “Well mine is Roswell. Roswell Mythos, although, like the Oriental way of arranging it, you spell it Mythos Roswell over here on the old continents. So… just call me Mythos to make it simple.”
“I can do that. Mythos.”
“Horace are you in there?” he tried with his mind again. “Horace? Where are you?” No answer.
She orders a second slurpee and he does too. Soon they were careening up Route 2 on a sugar high toward Fillip and Brindle, aiming to brag that they were on top of the world and not them. And soon they were also calling each other sugar. Was this wrong? they kept asking themselves. “Was this wrong?” Mythos Roswell tried to communicate with the mind of Horace again in the UFO they drove up there. “Beats me,” Horance wanted to say back but remained silent, not wanting to ruin the moment. The square and circle as one! Now he as the third can come in and save the Day.
(to be continued (?))
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0311, Heterocera
original Robert
“Black Ice and Marwood, huh?” he spoke from the illegal 7th to fellow pew sitter Blue Berry Girl after everyone had left. Neither had been seen in these here photo-novels in a while. “Blue and yellow blue and yellow blue and yellow,” she rattled in return. They knew they had to do it to save NWES City as a whole. It was a start anyway, the *conception* of the thing. “Kiss not kill,” she had requested earlier, fairy wings fluttering in anticipation. She’d lost some weight, maybe enough for it to work, magnetic attraction and all. She’d overlook his lopsided legs and arms in turn, the blue and red split, and focus on blonde — yellow again. The uniter of the hemispheres. If this didn’t work then: maybe the spherical blue berry torso would return and everything would go to rot, town lost. Jesus use to save. Now it’s up to them.
“Your place or mine?” he finally relented, imagining in his head what would turn out to be reality a little later. It seemed good it seemed right. “Right here,” she said in turn. “Split the difference.”
“Okay.” And they got to it.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0311, Black Ice, Jeogeot, Marwood, Neptune, NWES Island^
Sunklands 