Category Archives: 04

April 15, 2022 · 9:32 am

00320417

Swanie is finally asleep and dreaming up her own characters to play with. Center of the night: time to crack into that Monster Book for real, but caarefullly so as not to jar loose the remaining marble again. (Got in) so much trouble before!

He opens up the book in the middle which is the same as the beginning. Just then, the “front door” of special collection slides forward. Someone enters.

“Ross C.!” Man About Time exclaims in a rare outburst. So mild usually.

“I’m glad you made it back, sir,” she said in her robot way, continuing to dust around the shelves and making up time for last week’s snowstorm. Ross C., Man About Time ponders. Haven’t seen her since…

“Sir?” MAT still doesn’t respond. “Sir?” She approaches the reading table. “Oh dear, he’s gone a bit *glassy*-eyed, hehe,” and then dusts him off as well while she’s there.

Pretty good joke for an interloper.

“Oh look,” she continues while looking down at what he’s studying. “Abner again.”

The marbles fall out of his eyes and he can see. But Ross C. was gone. Ross C. was never there.

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April 15, 2022 · 7:49 am

Fred…

Cone grew up in Pine Apple, Alabama, with a population around 100. He attended Moore Academy, a one-room school from kindergarten through high school. He did not play football because there were not enough people to field a team.

He emerged from the blue and yellow tent in another dream, a blue and yellow type dream himself. He closely studies the pine cone atop the book tree we found Agent 47 (or 23) reading beside a bit earlier, remembering something about his father. Pine cone… pineapple cone, he free associates. My father lived in one. The cone became the same as one of his eyes. The Other: The Mother.

“I’m worried about my son,” Snowmanster confessed to her bartender at the town’s Hole in the Wall. “He’s built this whole fantasy library around this Kactus figure he made up when he was a kid and still believes in. He *is* Kactus… at times. When he’s playing that role he doesn’t remember who I am, who his parents are. His whole life becomes a blank.”

Now kimono clad Miss Ouri waited patiently for Snowmaster to come around to the obvious, and the prickly green doll she held in her arms. Maybe she needs a coffee mug or t-shirt to spell it out better. Don’t be a prick! The white swan turns into a black swan.

Wheeler wakes up and instantly remembers to jot it down thanks to a strategically placed poster. Good ol’ Arkansaw! Back to reality, phew.

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April 14, 2022 · 8:04 am

jot em down (Pine Apple)

Could it be true? The tent would have been potentially facing that direction: toward the thick Pine Forest. But Mystery Cave to the north and Fern Wall to the south could also be involved. Maybe even *triangulate* between all 3.

Spongebub might know, if his last name is actually Triangleslacks and not the more obvious. We’ve already met his wife, his son in this here story through the similarly dreaming Leforest Bresford over at Ontario village. What happened to her?

—–

“There are rumors about a big floating can seen in the park or thereabouts, Ms. Bresford, sometimes with a woman’s legs and head attached to it. Some reports put it with 2 other figures, both cowboys, sticking out the can’s top alongside the woman’s. Others have two children, still others have red and blue dummies or mannequins. Others… well, you get the picture.”

“Yes. We: Can!” the blue one to her left wanted to reveal freely to the Big Wig before her. “You *can’t* do it,” countered the red figure on her right, knowing it was the wrong thing to admit. The only thing she could decide in the moment was that she had to choose. The world opened up in front of her. A bullet that had formerly been frozen in reality caught her square in the heart, the center. Bart had the last evil laugh or at least aberrant chuckle.

Another agent would have to be sent in. Or not… maybe just forget about the whole Ontario village sub-plot — for now.

Next!

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April 14, 2022 · 6:37 am

radioactive (041422)

Well, Eric is not standing but the sentiment is definitely there. He’s reconstructed his Delta based blue and yellow tent in the Collagesity library, either skybox or ground, take your choice. Even both or neither if you wish, reader’s option. It could be time to get more of his story. “I’m assuming you’re a man, and not an Erica.”

“Correct,” he says in his dreams to us. Because he only exists on Delta and has those memories during sleep. When he wakes up, POOF. Gone.

“What happened?”

“I ran out of money what can I say. Life’s circumstances. But I got too far out, saw too many things.”

“UFOs?” I guessed.

He looked out his tent toward the New, toward the regulated pine forest across the meadow across the river. What he saw was inside that. We have more information.

Erik wakes up. He later sits at his visiting scholar writing desk watching the tent start to glow in his mind. “Strangest dream,” he mutters to himself. “Something is not right.”

“Who’s that?”

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April 13, 2022 · 9:24 am

00320413

It was getting foggy again. They must be close to the library. “Who are you?” she demands from the nefarious agent before her — ‘nother one — on this 3rd of levels, with yet another door to go through to reach the absolute end. “47,” he said, still reading, which was a lie because he was 23. Woman now: no hair on the lip atall. Thanks to the drink. “Reading about you, actually.”

“Oh yeahhh?” She was trying to act tough, heard gays or lesbians tend to do that. Stereotyping, even though she is one of ’em now.

“Um, yeah,” he answered plainly back, wondering about the posturing. She adjusts and leans left. She thinks it is the right thing to do — to back down from this man who seemingly has a plan. “Panama,” he continues to follow that last sentence. “Bridge between North and South.”

“Phooeysticks,” she barked, and then actually covered her mouth, wondering where the words come from. Phooeysticks? What kind of childish utterance was that?

But then she remembers saying it, long ago. In a crib by the silver shore. She said it to her Pop.

She looks toward the end which is not quite the end. “What’s behind the curtains, Pop?” She was talking in her head to her long dead father, going on 20 years now. “Oz,” came the kind voice back. “Or Ozzie; whichever you wish, darling.” She now knew she was dreaming but couldn’t wake up still. “Go to the pulpit and see,” requested the voice again. Agent 23 remained silent and frozen, his role done for now. She proceeded forward and sat.

—–

She still held the pop in her left hand, which was the channeling device. She still heard Pop in her head. “Feel the landscape, feel the *ground*,” as the lightning struck all around the picture before her. The tree! she thought. The swamp tree, but a… tamer one. One I can actually deal with. Not the one…

She recalled the last level. Sykes.

No need to go there now.

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April 13, 2022 · 8:41 am

games now

There it was, plain as day. Between the Whac a Pirate and Pack Man. And bottles at that, or so it said. She’d been fooled before. Dare she? She approached the portal, prepared her quarter for entry into the proffered slit. More channeling tonight, because Joey was about to turn gay. One touch of the magic pop to her lips (*drop*)…

There, ahhhhhhh.

Now to ditch this bitch wig and find the next door.

There! Behind the Hook A Duck.

She ain’t scared of no witches (but she should be).

(to be continued)

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April 13, 2022 · 8:09 am

00320411

The cracks of thunder behind the door should have been a clear warning for danger ahead, along with the illuminated cracks in the wall beside it. But Joey ignored them all, going through door after door to reach the ultimate end. John L. Brown tried to warn her, albeit faintly, albeit sarcastically. “Don’t go,” he whispered over after she went through, and then had a giggle. Count him among the nefarious agent types. Joey: good. But Ontario had become malfunctioning thanks to the deletion of half the town and so she was back here, trying to retrace her steps to the… tree. Or whatever the thing was: family tree perhaps, like in genealogy. She had to fill in the memory gaps. She resisted the urge to become plastered beforehand; wanted to keep her mind open just like the doors that were presented to her, 1 2 3.

Onlooking John, seen by us but unseen to Joey, tried to determine what species she was and correctly guessed Venusian because of the blue-green skin. Or blue and green skin. But orange eyes. Alien obviously.

There she goes!

“Don’t go,” he whispered as the door closed behind her, even hitting her rump a little bit. The giggles begin.

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April 12, 2022 · 9:58 am

big red machine

“Lou, be a dear and buy your old man a drink while he’s studying, would you?”

“Dad-dy,” Lou replied, arms still crossed. “We’ve been here *3* days.”

“Keep it down, keep it down,” father Osborne Well says over more in a whisper. “Other people are here too.”

Lou Well stays quiet this time.

“Weelll?” her father prompted, a typical reply and a play on their last name he loves to utter when he can. He beams a wicked smile. She still doesn’t return the smile but rises from her chair with a small huff and does what he asks. She inserts a quarter, hears a bottle drop. Or is it a can? — she can’t tell if the sound is more glassy or metallic. Queer, she realizes. And — great — she can’t get the door to open at the bottom of the thing. “It’s broke, daddy. We’ll have to go into town for your sody pop.” *Finally*, a possible way out of this prison of books for her.

“Then leave it,” he decides, learning winning over thirst and sugary desire. He’s about to uncover the deepest, darkest secrets of the great tentacled one. He confers this to his daughter.

“MOA,” she replies without thinking. “We’ve been there already. We *know* what it is.”

“Shhh,” he reprimands again about her raised voice, but then realizes she’s right. It *is* MOA he’s searching for: Most Old Ancient.

Man About Time wakes up but remembers what they said behind the wall. He’ll return another night in another dream to this spot. This portal is *key*.

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April 12, 2022 · 8:56 am

00320409

Just past the gate the fog increases. Man About Time can’t find the front door of the library — blocked in the direction he thinks it should be. He’ll have to find another, more indirect way inside. No flying on this parcel, or at least he pretends flying is verboten. Oh well. This way he’ll get to know more about the castle, he rationalizes. Right off the bat, it appears we’re working with lemony ways to get from one point to another here, much like with the Blue Feather and a couple of other Collagesity structures. But especially the Blue Feather — maybe they’re related in other ways. We’ll know soon enough.

He steps through the first door encountered in the opposite direction and ascends some stairs. This could take a while. And it did, since he hung a left instead of a right at the top.

He’s starting to think the idea of banning flight in a pretend way was a bad one.

A larger outer tower encountered. He decides not to investigate potentially upper floors and just circles around an enclosed inner wall to find an exit to this porch. He crosses a wooden board.

Interesting. Perhaps a dead end here too, he ponders while rounding another corner.


But then: a teleporter.

(to be continued)

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April 11, 2022 · 3:12 pm

the Long and Yd of it

It was a particularly clear day at the library castle in the skies, kind of completed tonight, or as much as I want to flesh out right now. You see, this is a window into the past. Or the future. Man About Time stands before a portal. He’s on Rooster’s Peninsula. Several other castles *could* be seen in the distance — both west (the titular Roost Never Sleeps) and south (Arkaig) — if only the fog were just a little less thick. It never is; this is as good as it gets. And so Man About Time — MAT — enters the castle to oblivious folk who don’t really know where they are, and, by this point, don’t really even care. But one thing’s for certain. It’s not just a library any more. It’s a fortress, a Center Point that Collagesity desperately needs in the present. Because the Temple of TILE just wasn’t hacking it in that role.

MAT’s looking for a particular entity, let’s say, a Man who is also a Rump, and a big one at that, really big. His Huge Ass plane almost grazed the top of the temple after he moved it from lowest to highest in the village about, oh, about 2 months back I suppose (CHECKING). Yes: a little over 2 months. He wants to give him a piece of his mind if he can find him. He understands he could be locked up in a key-less cage because he is the key himself. But where?

Back to the library to start his investigations, he decides on the spot. The castle gate raises in response.

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