“We can do it too. Go ahead and sit down, honey. Let’s talk.”
“I hear the Toasty O’s are very good here in the morning.”
“Talk,” she requested, not wanting to dilly dally around. “Spill.”
“Cube. We found the cube. In Hook Tender.”
Her mouth became an O. “My… *home*?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0418, Bellisaria^^, Horns of Hatton^, Horsa^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
It’s time to bring a new character into the picture: Jennifer Lane, twin cousin to our Shelley Lane, right down to the all seeing umbrella eyes. She remembers the bombing, the underground, the… flight.
“Another one, sweetie?” Lichen Roosevelt asked from behind the counter, presently cleaning a glass, perhaps the one she would pour a new drink in for Jenny.
Grasshopper? she thought. No: too obvious.
“Just another stack of potatoes.”
“Coming up!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0417, Horns of Hatton^, Horsa^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
“Hmmm.”
—–
“Nothing here,” he muttered. “Might as well be another Messed Up 05 for all it’s worth.”
—–
I got a strong feeling that this is the night, Axis.”
“Bigfeet,” he guessed, looking over at the tittering squirrels. They too knew more than him.
“Bigfoot yeah. Samsquanch.”
Axis-Windmill didn’t bother to correct him this time. There would be no Bigfeet or Mossmen or whatever they call them colloquially. Because he saw the giant green shoe fly away last night with all the little houses and even the umbrella centered windmill. They had succeeded in loading up and moving.
empty hole
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0416, Horns of Hatton^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
Kick-ass Bogota gets valuable information from an ur-parent and relays later to Axis-Windmill in Horns of Hatton.
—–
“I’m trying to reclaim the messed up 5th. You know Messed Up, don’t you Kick-ass?”
“My *brother* does. A different Kick-ass…”
“… for a different season, yes. You are… unformed… yourself.”
Kick-ass Bogota thought about this for a minute, then said: “You have been uninformed about this. I am instead *uniformed*, as in decorated, as in ace pilot of the 1st World Wide Web War.” He knocks on his forehead with this, pure metal revealed by the clunks.
“Faulkner, then.”
“Maybe,” he shot back quickly, then looked out the window at the surrounding chaos. Unformed, uninformed, uniformed. Brother Kick-ass would switch signs with him later in the night so he could talk more with Axis-Windmill at the Horns bar where they now meet regularly. Lichen Roosevelt is usually there, serving up drinks behind the bar. The Mann is *always* there. Taking notes, most likely. And who is that he spies (at the time) in the back. Green like him, at least in the shirt. And those apples…
—–
“It’s time you got away don’t you think. You’re only *Kind of* Messed Up.”
Kind Of Messed Up takes a sip of his drink and mulls this over. Junbug does the same with her Bombs Away.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0415, Abbey^^, Horns of Hatton^, Maebaleia/Satori^^, Yaya Land
She liked multicoloreds but this was ridiculous.
The attack of the cubes. She knew who was behind it. Thank Gods he wouldn’t be showing back up for months, maybe years.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0414, Bellisaria^^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
She rubbed her bare arms, trying to stay warm. About time to pull out that gray fleece jacket she likes so much, she thinks. Fall is here — finally. “Oh cheer up please, Bartholomew,” she said over to her employee, her roommate at the moment. “You know, I use to be a kid, just like you. I know what you’re going through.”
“Do you?” he answered dismissively. “Do you know what it’s like to go through life as a yellow? A cartoon, even? 2 dimensional? I had to escape.”
“I’m sure your father means well. Deep down.”
“Pheh.”
“What about your manifesto? How’s that going?”
“My *treatise*,” he corrects in his nasal way.
—–
Indeed he had been working on it — hard. His sister was creating a complementary piece called “Cowabunga: Truth and Lies”. More scholarly, with proper footnotes. Bart(holomew) didn’t like footnotes; preferred a more direct approach to convey his feelings about the whole subject. His own attached treatise to the TILE Manifesto was called “Ay Carumba! I’m a Mouse!” Alysha could see right through it, having been a mouse for a while herself. Before the removal of Black. Bart didn’t really know what he was writing, although she did. And the same applied for Lisa in a lesser manner. She’d go over his newest material and make the appropriate edits after she returned from Blue Feather tonight. Very little chance that Blue Feather Douglas himself would show up again, though. Could be months, she figured. Years, even. But it was thrilling while it lasted!
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0413, Horsa^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
She’s connecting the dots again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0412, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
“In the big scheme of things,” he declared in his big voice, made for a tyrant, “the Earth and the Moon are the same size, although, true, the Sun remains considerably larger than either. We’re working on it.”
“The Sun too?” Alysha said by his side, following him around like a little puppy. The Master, she thinks excitedly, watching him walk tall to match his tall talk. But don’t call him that around Lena and Zach (!).
“Yes. Let’s move to Rose’s brother — 1/2 brother actually. The alien was a deflection of course. Two hearted green Martians are a dime a dozen where I’m from. We’ve solved their anatomy ages ago.”
“Marvelous,” Alysha cooed, looking into his pepper grey hair to match his eyes. And I wasted all that time cubing her and seeing what made her tick. The Master knew all along (!). He added this and that and that to her knowledge. She knows about the Man About Time now and what makes him tick as well. A man named Tick actually. Ironically. Oh joy, he’s speaking again.
“The birthday hat at the top,” he began after looking the “specimen” over. “Thoughts? Ideas?”
“Weelll,” Alysha tried, “I’d say it stands for the body itself, controls it like a Controller.”
“What happens if you remove the hat?” The Master Blue Feather Douglas stared deep into her eyes, grey penetrating almond. Her mind is good! he thinks from his superior position. She could be next on my specimen list.
“A conundrum,” she spoke. “A riddle,” she said. “You… *can’t*,” she concluded.
“No, instead you have to merge it with another body.” Blue Feather Douglas was pleased. This was enough for today. She’d learn more tomorrow. Or whenever he wished.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0411, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
She said she didn’t mind but I’m not sure how she made it all the way over here in that position from upper Nautilus. Darn near 5 miles! Of course the different alien physiology allowed her to be balled up like that for a longer period of time. Humans would be turned into sardines. “Ruby, are you there?” I spoke down after opening the multicolored storage container which slipped through Grayling Airport that grey day in early May. “Ruby?”
“Yes,” she said in a watery voice, more than usual since she hadn’t used it in a number of days.
On the other side of her: Billie Jean Kidd; unseen to Alysha; checking to make sure herself that Ruby was okay after the grueling journey — grueling, again, to us humans if we had to do it. Ruby was fine. Being scrunched up like that helped her arthritic neck, actually. She caught up with her long behind self cleaning. She texted old friends with her mind in her otherwise idle body. She finally solved that math equation involving Dark Matter and the Milky Way and the Black Hole at the center of it all. She fell into the Black Hole for a while so she could dream. She woke up refreshed, pure and white as the driven snow. She texted more friends. She revised another equation. More self cleaning. She decided to grow hair and then decided against it, shaving it all off (with her mind, of course). She slept. She woke up. She slept. She woke up, did some more stuff. She slept. She: here.
—–
“Is she okay? Is she damaged in any way?” Billie Jean Kidd knew that Alysha couldn’t hear her but she asked anyway, being nervous and momentarily forgetting her invisibility. She pried her eyes away from tested Ruby and moved them to Alysha, noticing the flowers on the faded blue jeans. “Oh,” she realized. But Alysha answered her anyway, talking to herself as well.
“Looks like she’s been to Jael. And Miccall: she’s a Tilist (!). Thought Martians where always Pentagonalists. And, just there (she checked another part of the rotating glowing blue cube before her): *mermaid*. And jellyfish!” This particular specimen was proving to be more complicated than promised. She’d have to complement The Master on his research as soon as she sees him again. Which should be yesterday’s tomorrow if today’s clock is right.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0410, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori^^
Kick-ass Boos said to sit at the table with the Bigfoot book, so here he is. He picks up another book laying nearby by John Shaw Billings, which he quickly gathers from his reading was a librarian for New York city in the US of A, Earth.
Kick-ass Bogota, Boos’ brother, strolls into the bar. His brother said he’d “mark him” to make sure Axis-Windmill knew who it was.
Yup. That’s him!
“Grasshopper please, Bertha. Extra mint.”
“Coming right up, Ted.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0029, 0409, Horns of Hatton^, Maebaleia/Satori^^, New York
