‘Big Red Machine,’ ‘Big Red Machine.’ *Here* it is.
Now to finally finish that chapter.
As she read, Morgan (Orient PO) was being rebuilt starting with green, blue and red blocks.
From peak to shining peak.
Category Archives: 04
dream over
—–
“So I was over here paying my rent and I thought we’d hold an improptu Table meeting. Thanks for making the time, Wheeler. I see you’re still dressed as Shelley.”
“Like the clothes, like the fit.”
“But you’ll go back to being her mom, right?”
“Oh sure.”
“We still need that angle of course. And… looks like Arthur might not be making it.”
“No, you locked him up for being married to me or making love to me. Something. He’s still in jail over in, let’s see, Morgan? Has the jail been deleted? Guess not,” Wheeler answers herself. “Or else it seems he’d be free to join us.”
“Right, I’ll check on that,” Baker still dressed as Policeman Clubb replies.
“Hope you have better luck than the last thing *I* checked.”
“Morgan — deletion, yes. Which brings us to perhaps our main topic. Spider. But first, lemme just see if I can call Arthur. I believe I, as Clubb, allowed him to keep his phone on his body, after a full search on the rest, ha.”
Wheeler smiled. In that 30 minute window allowed, she’d done a full search too but for different reasons. Shelley, I mean. Not Wheeler. Although she was wearing purple at the time. And it’s *not* Arthur Kill but Kill van Kull, a sophisticated, clean as a whistle, non-crinimal twin cousin. It was all a mistake, a mix-up. She looks up at the screen. This may be him here too, she realized. Or Clarence, although he was going by a different name if so. This was the last dance in the created town of Morgan (Orient PO) whatever. It ended after that, for Wheeler but also for everyone involved, all the group, the gang.
The receiver rang but there was no body around.
After 6 rings, Baker got back to the subject of likewise caged Spider. The numbers deleted the town, but it had to be all 24 to work. He had another idea, tried Arthur/Kill van Kull again, let it ring 24 times this go. Didn’t work.
But not because Spider didn’t hear it.
The deed was already done. Newt shows up to the meeting — Shelley’s father — *not* playing Arthur Kill importantly. He stares over at Wheeler, giving her a look like: you could have made the effort too. He felt she was becoming trapped in a role; unable to be herself any longer. How far would she go?
“Where’s Grassy?” Newt then asks, seeing the empty chair across from him.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0407, Mountain Lake, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega, Rooster's Peninsula
00350406
So she went back to another place in the Morgan sim, still intact, and spoke with the dog, or spoke *toward* the dog because it was a one way affair this time, no mysterious chanting of magic numbers, no nutt’n. Because the deed had already been done.
“What *are* you?” would be redundant, so she added to it. “I *know*,” she started, “that you did all this, the creation of the treasure down there (because they indeed were way up in the air here, about 1/2way to The Void at the 4000 meter level). You just wanted me to *see*.”
Stares from the dog, but, like I said, no real replies. Shelley thought the sombrero atop his head disappeared at one point but wasn’t certain. Could be a trick of the eyes in this rather dark place, this Tesseract Tavern in the skies. But we happen to know it wasn’t.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0406, Mountain Lake, Omega
death
After some extensive scouting efforts, I’ve been banned from what I call Morgan (Orient PO), high in the Omega continent mountain country, in its heart in essence. Has the heart of this story similarly been carved out? Let’s hope not. Shelley, in her poking around, found a treasure, among other interesting things. And a seeming awareness, by the town, of its nature. There was also a definite, unfinished quality to it.
Write down what you know, I urged to her. Tell what you can. View remotely tonight and investigate more.
But when she returned to the namesake sim of Morgan which it partially covered, irregularly stretching across a central grey ridge from a peak on its northern boundary to one similarly positioned in the south, the town was GONE — disappeared. Vanished *poof*. She already had her only photos of the place, the last to be snapped here fer sure. What timing! But not totally unusual. Still — part of the story.
Morgan: site of vanished town
former statue on the northern peak
So it moves into the stuff of legends. Shelley never got to meet the big boss, the hoarder of the treasure. Back into The Void whence he or she came.
And I don’t think those are dragon eggs but we’ll never know.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0405, Mountain Lake, Omega
00350404
She hadn’t shaved her legs in a week, it seemed, so she decided to do so, despite the circumstances. She knew that shaving cream could be substituted for laundry detergent in a pinch — why not the opposite?
It kinda worked I suppose. Now for that black dude… Kill van Kull, synthesizer specialist for the Oil Can What. Seeing him, she suddenly had an urge to wear purple, uh oh.
Reversion.
“It should have been you in here instead of me.”
“I know.”
“30 minutes, Miss.” The policeman purposely didn’t call her Mrs. This was *illegal* what they did. So the town of Morgan (Orient PO) has spoken.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0404, HANA LEI, Mountain Lake, Omega
then and now (waves keep coming)
Recently I moved to Toyger on the Far eastern coast of Gaeta (New Continent) so that I can honour the rising Sun.
“Clarence was wrong about the dance animation studio being there. It was all a setup.”
“You said Clarence,” Arthur tested into the receiver. “Did you mean Claude?”
“I…. don’t know (!).”
“Check on that please. Before I head over.”
Later she went back to the theatre and checked again. No screen. This is all real; Clarence is real. She is in the film being filmed as we speak. Perhaps that would explain all the close ups. She is looking for the camera, ha (!).
A well dressed black man enters the picture.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0403, Gaeta V, Mountain Lake, Omega
Spider
The town was rather a jumbled mess of buildings, but Shelley didn’t stay there long, taking the path of fellow Klancasterians Dixon One and Dixon Two before her and heading to Omega mountain country for purity, cleansing, or so they attempted. One came back but the other one (Two?) didn’t. We still don’t know which, thanks to the built-in ambiguity of these here photo-novels, 35 in a series of 35 so far. And last we saw of bride to one of ’em, Snowwhite Well, a mutual cousin, she was living with giant chickens over on the Maebaleia continent, as old as her Maw now — the Dixons’ Aunt — and just as aged of skin. She thought visiting monarch Greyscale Kimball was a tithe collector and was going to sic Gander, the biggest of the fowl, on her. But turns out they had a common love for reading, and a special fondness for the epic novel “Moby Prick”, so famous in that land where it was set, uniting the highest and lowest of classes in this case.
Point is, the Dixons were searching in these mountains for treasure that was right in front of them all along, smack dab in the middle of their hometown: Snowwhite Well herself, as she tried to explain to them in Vain (a suburb). Now, I don’t think Shelley is looking for treasure as well, at least this version of herself, but she found some anyway, in a tavern in Morgan about as Oriental and far away from the Occidental West as you can get. This was the Tesseract, this was the Hypercube.
She turned away from it at first, not believing her eyes. It was dressed up like a circus dog and set inside a display cage. The 4 repeating numbers over his or her head had been removed. Why would Roberts do this? she thought. She had to get in contact with Arthur again somehow, make that Lemont somehow. She was not on The Cross but she was still trapped, East becoming West and North becoming South every other day and every other week respectively, as she soon found out. She had jumped from the fire back into the frying pan but it remained hot as hell in here. Then she began to hear them, soft and sloow. “Two.” “One.” “Three.” “Zero.” A human-like feminine voice, surprising her, with a bit of a hiss in it, like a serpent. No barking or yelping detected. Then it started again. “Two.” “One.” “Zero.” “Three.” A bit of a break and then again: “Two.” “Three.” “One.” “Zero.” And again and again. She had to listen to them all, the 24 permutations of those 4 cursed numbers. She finally turned after it was over, sweat dripping off her body, making her long shirt-blouse wet at the stomach, neck and back.
“What *are* you?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0402, Mountain Lake, Omega, The Cross
new angle
“So you see, babydoll. You *can’t* leave The Cross right now. Right there in the contract you signed. You’re part of the club now.”
Shelley studied and studied the thing but couldn’t find a way out. Biff Carter was the same age as her or older than her by 2 decades. If the former, then *they* may be destined to be married — Biff — Mr. Carter — must know this too. If the latter, Mr. Carter — Biff — could be her father.
But she has a father. Newt, yes. And a mother: Wheeler. She tells Biff/Mr. Carter this, along with being engaged to George already, who, turns out, he knows by another name.
“Oh I know about Arthur,” he says in response to all this. “I don’t think you’re really engaged to this… *Musician*.”
“Am too,” Shelley tried to defend, but knew it was hopeless. Says right here: Shelley Struthers will be stuck on The Cross until the end of novel 35, where she’ll make a choice between 3 lovers. She knows two. Here could be the 3rd — has to be, I suppose.
Biff knew she couldn’t weasel out of this. The Umbrella Club has spoken. “Satisfied?” he ended.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0401, Omega, The Cross
silliness
There. He has it, shrunk back down to its original size. In the hands of the original owner. John L. Brown can stop grovelling now and move on to something else. Like selling cars.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0417, Tennessee
states
“Interesting place you brought me to, Wheeler. All I asked for is to give me back the mop.”
“Brrr,” she fake shivered. “Getting cold in here. You’ll have to put on at least a shirt soon.”
“You know I don’t do that, Wheeler,” spoke John L. Brown honestly. For a change. He *was* getting cold. A paradox was coming up. “It’s right there,” he continued. “Just… hand it over.”
“No,” she replied bluntly. “I… I’m not ready.”
“You like the *power*.” His smile turned into a smirk. Change x 2.
Wheeler thought back to using it on Arthur Kill. Indeed made him rise from the dead, just like Duck said it would when they met last. She desired to meet him again. John L. Brown said that he would meet in his stead and that he was away from Our Second Lyfe for the moment. Something in Real Life, he said. Uncopyrighted and untrademarked business. Herbert Domain.
“Herbert Domain?” Wheeler uttered at the time, obviously thinking of Tennessee. And she was right. They weren’t ready for that kind of business here. The dog named Spider is enough for now.
“You’ve done your business here,” spoke John L. Brown, the smirky smile not quite off his lips. “You know you can’t get out of this.”
“Chop me some wood first,” she said, fake shivering again. Because Wheeler had her own internal heating system. Unlike John.
But there was no wood to find in this desolate place high in the Foxtrot Backcountry. Only snow, static to others. Tennessee remains untraceable. The plane remains crashed in Kentucky and not Black Jack. That was the whole point of this.
Wheeler relented, gave over the mop. John L. Brown would hand it over to Paul in the next post.
Sunklands 