At 11, Ketchup Tom came a knocking at the door. Serenity Lane crept in from the opposite direction while he did, wondering why the punk was here as well. Sleepy Eddie rouses himself, steps over still snoozing Dogg by the bed, answers the door. But there was nobody there. It was all because of what was spoken by Marsha and, er, Bethany, um, Ginger — Mrs. Ordinary — at the tiny cafe just across the Big Channel. Because they were figuring out stuff, enough to cause ghost realities to suddenly rez in, probabilities to come into the light which didn’t exist before. Ketchup and Serenity showing up at Marsha’s door at the same time. They had the same goal in mind was the symbolism. And Eddie was in the middle which was unfortunately in the way. But they didn’t get the chance to tell Eddie since the probable reality evaporated when Mrs. Ordinary paid the expensive bill, rum not being cheap in these here parts. Things like this happen more than you realize, folks. It’s all in the books. Eddie goes back to bed, writing off the knocks as part of a dream. A different kind of sleep, then, he’s in.
Category Archives: 0316
00390316
Lisa got permission to view the film because she was in a class for special children and was doing a project for it. Eventual title: “How Milk was Born.” Bartholomew, *not* being a special child and thus not in the same class with the same privileges, didn’t get the same permission. But oh did he watch the same film, over and over again, 5 times in total. He snuck out of his bedroom every night at 10:45 with the help of Lemmy the Magic Tree that was once a mortal enemy with a net and a knife. Lemmy had grown up to be a friend, putting childish rivalries away.
“Lemmy, come over here again,” Bartholomew requested, and a branch was extended, big enough to hold a boy his size and allow him to drop to the ground safely. “Thanks Lemmy,” Bartholomew said at the bottom, loud enough for the tree to hear through his “ears” but not loud enough to alert the parents, usually preparing for bed by this time or already in it. The tree rustled its leaves in answer and Bartholomew was on his way through the backs of lots and down alleys full of cats and rats. On to the 88.
First night:
“*Bart*. What are you doing here??” And so on with the reprimands for a while, which were dampened when Lisa learned that her little brother desired to create a report on the film too, and that he’d show those stuck ups at school he can make something of his life. “I’ll… help,” she finally relented. “Shhh, the movie is starting,” said Bartholomew to this, more eager than ever to be a success.
Lisa only went that one time, thinking with her superior brain that’s all she needed. Bartholomew attended the whole week up until Friday night when the regular people in town would be able to go and he might be caught and told on. So that was Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday, happy days indeed.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0316, Jeogeot, Neptune, NWES Island
yes we cancan
Uncovering this owner created “Shell of Venus” upstairs where she can, among other things, dance the cancan, I knew our lovely, unassuming Shelley Struthers had found a type of home or safe space in this old, established Second Lyfe theater for her and her boys (Edward and Arthur?). The name Flashermans sealed the deal. Here is where she can reveal herself for who she is, what she has become. Shakespear’s Silver Nuggets got nothing on her… or her adopted sisters Gloria, Anja, Mona, Betty Boop, Betty Boo, Alessandra, and Batty Casey (new one).
She points to the nearby Atoll Sea with this particular kick. Directly south, 2D meeting or mirroring 3D.
We haven’t been here in a long time. 5 years I suppose.
The former site of Omikron City, starting in Astarte.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0316, Heterocera, Lapara
00370316
“Where have you *been*, Shelley? They’ve taken everything — all the downtown — except for this uppermost store. I don’t think they know how to work the stairs to get here.”
“What’s happened?” she tried to ask as innocently as possible. Because she is fresh off from pressing the big red button up in the Uplands. We’re back in the present present.
“The *military* is what happened, Shelley? Where’ve you *been*?” he pressed. Continuation.
Shelley talked Arthur into going inside before it was too late. “Buy the biggest and the brightest for me,” she said about the displayed diamond quartz rings, knowing it would be the last thing she could credit to the house. “For our renewed vows — you never got me another one, you know.”
Fate; synchronicity. The military reached the top of the stairs just as they were leaving with it. They brusquely brushed past them and entered the store, shooting up everything they could see. $499,000 was a lot but not enough to save everything downtown, as it turns out. Sandman had his dark dark wish fulfilled: traitor to his own kind.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0316, HANA LEI, Sand Springs
Mortons Gap, Corisca, Our Second Lyfe
Greater and lesser.
OMG, Barry’s here. Fishing. The magic continues…
We’ll catch up with him a little later (!).
RN earns cash by making pots. Well: *a* pot. And it’s coming along very slowly, it appears.
Many cats in the city.
Will meditate for money. Arthur Kill decides to join him in the background.
A single red tree (object of meditation).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0316, Corsica, Northwest
Shelley’s castle (Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?)
“You are me and I am you. You have a (phallus) and so do I.”
“Not quite,” I said back to Franklin, green legs still in the distance.
There. That’s better.
“Like I was saying before the interruption, we’re the same *core* but different up here. It’s Our Second Lyfe, not My Second Lyfe.”
“Let’s go to the (Roost Never Sleeps) castle again and see,” Franklin requests. I had no choice but to follow her because of the, you know, being one thing. I was starting to question our differences as well. One of us could get *absorbed* — didn’t want that. But I knew it would be Franklin if so.
And, true enough, by the time we reached that more central castle across the way, she was gone. I looked down at my man pants. Was it actually *real* now? I had to see.
[delete picture]
No, just a better fit still. My hair had a tinge of green in it but that’s all. Arthur/Lemont would be *so* relieved if he were here witnessing this. But he’s somewhere off with Roberts — said they also had things to talk about. I suspect: more absorbing. Maybe. Perhaps it will be different in their case.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0316, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
00340316
“You’ve found the shower again, congratulations. It’s in the Oracle you know. Chicago.”
“I think you mean Illinois,” I replied. “As in: someone was bad and deserved to be spanked punished.”
“In the circle of the shower with the water on, all is good,” he replied confidently. The person sitting opposite of me. Triangle, I gather. Something about the stabbing of the duck obviously. I am now a resident. How did *that* happen?
“You are not dead,” I decided to say. “You were supposedly killed–”
“Look to the House on the Hill. All revolves around the House on the Hill. Just like before.” The apparition, so solid just a second ago, fades…
—–
She finally got out of the shower and put on some clothes, bound and determined to find the graffiti that would set her free.
“Scuse me, boys.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0316, Gold City-, Illinois, Jeogeot
00330316
She’d just popped down to the fire department to check her mailbox and now *this*. But she dare not remove the parking ticket and throw it away in disgust after learning it came from Zero, apparently a policeperson in this here town as well as the owner of that club. We have been reset.
Glancing over at a clearly distressed Elisa staring at the ticket on her illegally parked Mazda RX-7 sports car, Newt checks to make sure he’s off the street good and pays the parking meter before heading inside to meet the others. He understands parallel time as well as parallel parking. He’s seen three squad cars circling around the city now and knows the force is strong here, like Star Trek or Star Wars — he can never remember which one applies. Star, hmm, he then thinks. He swears this use to be Star Street instead of that long German name he doesn’t know how to translate. Why the change? He believes it may be a bad omen. Or a good one — hard to tell yet. Maybe the meeting with the 3 “witches” will clarify either way.
Uh oh. Likewise tardy Alysha coming from down the street. He pretends he doesn’t see her and rushes inside before she can catchup with him. He’d rather not have the meeting colored (red) before it began.
Just made it.
“You’re late,” black haired Fern Stalin says at the door. “And so is the other one.”
“Right behind me.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0316, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Squared Root City-
102
He was called in to replace Agent Joey Avatar. Or help her — he wasn’t sure. Anyway, he was here, aiding her to begin, not mentioning the replacement part, although of course she suspects. Purple hair, he ruminates. Symbol of suspicion. Just woke up like that the other day, she says. Fat chance.
*There*. John or Jim — one or the other; doesn’t matter. Here’s where he comes out of the portal. Now to pinpoint the center. “What you got?” he asks Joey through his walkie talkie wristwatch after John/Jim moved down the road a bit, out of earshot.
“2 seconds,” she responds from her position on the other side. “He went into the closed up subway at exactly 11:37:07. Did he come out with his sub?” she tried to joke. Agent 47 was a serious type, she understood. She was attempting to loosen the armor. But she knew she was in trouble. First things first, though. They had to figure out the mystery of this plaza that stood in the middle of it all. Umbrellas, they had determined. But which one?
“Let’s let him go in one more time to make sure.”
11:38:37:
“Too foggy in this gal blasted town to do much more tonight,” Agent 47 said after the double check. “Let’s reconvene at 08:00. I’ll stay with Black Bart downstairs from you guys.”
“Um, I wouldn’t do that,” she responds, shaking her head for emphasis.
“Elaborate.” It was one of the most common words these agents used. What he got back surprised him. A shadow being! And all because he was being tracked by The Mouse. Weelll. He’ll fix *that*. Shadow beings have no place in the land of living breathing Second Lyfers. All of Wendy would be for naught if so. Nautilus, hmm, he thought. That would come back shortly. But first…
“Bring him out in the light,” he rather commanded to Joey when they returned to the Underground Apts., 3 in number but only 2 viable in the moment. Because of Bart.
“Told you,” Joey Avatar said to Agent 47 after he opened the door, standing back a bit from the spectacle.
“Clean him up and bring him out,” he doubled down. *You* clean him up! she thought, but then did what he requested. She was only 45. No way to jump two numbers in a fortnight. She’d have to wait til Tuesday.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0316, Wendy-Ontario-
THIS SIM 02 01
“*You* are Taylor,” she exclaimed excitedly across from him, wearing her standard green shirt with the lantern symbol, one from a Golden Age long forgotten by most. But not by Fern.
“And… you are?” Jeffrey Phillips remains confused. He had crossed the line from This Sim 01 into This Sim 02 and found himself here. On this couch. Speaking to this… woman. Stranger. Her eyes were brilliantly alert. She was always thinking, he realized, always spinning around something in her head. He thought back to the rainbow Ferris wheel.
“Orange,” she proclaimed, then seeing his continued blank look, said, “no not the color, the number. You are looking for VI. Ruby,” she furthered. She saw recognition in the eyes. “A… purple car, not blue not red, merges with orange to exit in you: Taylor.”
What was she *on* about? he thought. He briefly contemplated that he had died, had drove his red 57 Chevy into that levy between sims and all this, all that followed, was his dream in the afterlife. Taylor? Was that his new post-death name? And this person: some kind of angel? Or maybe: devil. Half and half. He slapped himself in the face. Didn’t work. He was still dreaming in this reality, wherever he was.
“What do you mean I’m Taylor?” A series of images formed on the couch across from him in place of Fern. He hadn’t yet realized this was his old gal pal Charlene the Punk, come back from the future after her dissertation on Bigfoot had been completed, turned into a book which was turned into a movie which was turned into a franchise, toys, cookbooks, the lot. There was even a brand of kitchen sink named after it. Bigfoot went from backwoods legend to front and center superhero. All the children knew who Gene Fade was and that his birthplace was at Jupiter Rock and that he spent his formative years in Mocksity and that he lived to be over 400 years of age. Children wanted to *be* Bigfoot now. Children wanted to live relatively forever too, where a childhood would last one of our present lifetimes. Fern knew a lot, had seen a lot. Fern had been augmented, just because she could afford it due to the franchise and all. And she had created 2 others just as tag along friends, one a ditzy blonde and the other, the other…
She changed back. “You were in that wagon,” Fern started again, like a well oiled machine, a purring car, a cat pouncing on a bat. Lee Meriwether had nothing on her.
Ruby, he remembered. The witch had said the same thing: that he was Taylor. The spirit she had summoned faded back into the netherworld it had come from. No: there! Outside the wagon now, floating across the landscape, heading toward a bridge of interesting design.
Another sim crossing. There! That’s where he had died. But not Taylor; the other. 2nd in command.
Man About Time woke up. Strangest dream, he though, and picked up his pen and pad beside his bed to jot it down before he forgot most of the details.
Sunklands 