Category Archives: 05

May 4, 2025 · 3:35 pm

00460505 (Siri + Gerald Too)

“You and Merry. Never expected it to be honest.”

“Life’s full of surprises.”

“So how did the two of you–”

“End up together?” Gerald finished Siri’s question. “Hmm, with Jennifer it was fight after fight, lots of arguments, drama… not saying it was bad, but…”

“But what?”

“Got to be exhausting. With Merry, it’s not. I finally feel… harmony. A calm. Feel like things are the way they’re suppose to be.”

—–

“Show me what you found,” she said without turning away from the ball holding, 4 armed, magenta and amber tinted statue.

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May 4, 2025 · 1:47 pm

00460504 (Lady of Space and Time)

“I fled through many worlds, many times… They came very close to catching me once. It was then that Avallac’h appeared, out of nowhere. He found a portal and took us to a world where Eredin couldn’t find us for… oh, perhaps half a year…”

“The world where Eredin couldn’t find you. What was that like?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“People there had metal in their heads, waged war from a distance, using things similar to megascopes. And there were no horses, everyone had their own flying ship instead.”

“Siri, stop fooling around.”

“Told you you wouldn’t believe me.

“Ah, we should’ve stayed there.”

—–

“And so *that*, dear lady, is how we all came here, you, me, Gerald, others. One by one by one, we all got sucked into the portal, with Siri on the other side, desiring us to join her after she returned to this strange but hopefully safe land — safe from the Wild Hunt of course. And I’ve… adapted. As you can see.” He waves his arm around the small but busy cocktails bar he runs with Zoltar, another that came through the portal. His old tavern partner who had become his new bar partner.

Merry Gouldbusk’s brain gears were spinning fast with excitement. “So… Siri is here as well?”

“Of course,” answered the colorful, dandy Dandelion with confidence. “She’s at the center of it all. A game within a game. Trapped. But for a reason. Found her in a drawer in my office out back. ‘Hmph,’ I say at the time. ‘Wonder how someone who looks like Siri got on the cover of that magazine?’ Later I learned that *was* Siri. Literally. Siri and the game had become one.”

“Fascinating,” is all dumbfounded Merry Gouldbusk could think of saying. Portals, she ponders. She’s beginning to understand why Gerald hates them so. Trapped! Just like all the rest. What would she do here? Streetwalker? Would it get that bad? Surely it wouldn’t get that bad.

“So… Dandelion.”

“Yes, my lady?”

“Do you, ahem, need a dishwasher here by chance?” she only 1/2 joked.

“I… have something better. Siri has been preparing for this moment. Come with me. Back to my office. Another part of the magic of this world. A talking book. Just as Siri linked up with me, I was suppose to link up with you. Gerald… not really sure about yet,” he admits with a shake of his head. “We’ll cross that bridge later. Here… come.”

And they get up and go to his office out back for further instructions from Center Control.

(to be continued)

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May 3, 2025 · 8:01 am

00460503 (Vista (Del Rey))

“Interesting place you have here, Dandelion.” She’d caught up with the owner of the cocktails bar. Indeed a dandy, a playboy, but of the loyalest kind. “But… I must ask, of course. How did *you* get here?”

“Interesting question in turn, my lady, interesting indeed. And the crux of the issue — you’re good at getting to those as I’m recalling. Our many adventures.” He shakes his head with the flood of memories, takes a second to absorb and then recalibrate the discussion. In truth, he didn’t think his great great friend Gerald, the former witcher recently retired to the Touisant vineyard he inherited after killing that, well… red headed *monster*, would choose Merry here over Jennifer. He considers the red head before him, looming large and bright. That must be it. Gerald was always a sucker for bright colors. Like those painters who only paint red yellow blue all over Beauchamp. Abstracters, they’re sometimes called. His other great great friend Princess Anna of Lea who ruled that land had explained it all. Abstraction’s the rage of Beauchamp, she said while pointing an artist out, busy away at it on one of the many town terraces. If you paint or draw realistically you are considered mundane, run of the mill; *anyone* can do realism, she said at the time, which he thought was odd. He preferred landscape paintings himself. And portraits, especially of himself. Which gets him to the point.

“It all had to do with a painting, Merry. A painting of me.”

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April 30, 2025 · 2:00 pm

00460502 (lost & found)

I know, I’ll ask that pedestrian up ahead for directions, she thinks.

“Dandelion!?” she shouted over the cycle’s roar while pulling up beside him and slowing to his pace. “Know where to find!?”

But he kept on trudging along in his stumbly bumbly way, not answering. “Well *fine*!” she said and motored on, only to encounter him *again* just ahead. NPC, she realized. Not real. And no dialog assigned to it apparently since she got the same non-response from the second one. Meet him in another district of town and he could be a Chatty Kathy, though, she theorized while pulling away once more.

“Dandelion?!” they said after she finally flagged down someone real about 3 blocks away, a native to Night City named Dave. “Different part of town!” he answered over her still raging motor. “You’re in Watson! You *need* Heywood, Vista Del Rey to be specific…!”

“… Dandelion to exactly pinpoint!” she finished for him. And he told her.

But when she arrived at the indicated location, she finds that she *herself* is already there. As another Redd. She gets up off the bench to its side and heads within…

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April 30, 2025 · 9:14 am

00460501

“I’m going to rub than d-mn coffin right out of the painting, that’s what I’m going to do, hmm-mm-mm.”

“Paw?”

Andy twirls away from the flawed painting Uncle Herbert gave him as a wedding gift for his first marriage and toward his son from that marriage, trying to block his vision of what he was doing to it with his body as best as possible.

“Opie, what’re you doing out of bed?” Andy says in a harsher tone than normal, which of course Opie, being the sensitive child he is, picks up on. Something’s wrong, he senses.

“I-I just wanted some milk. And maybe cookies (!)” Should have been a laugh track there, Barry De Boy thinks from the couch, also understanding something’s wrong.

“Milk milk milk, okay okay okay,” Andy says while rushing over to corral his son and herd him toward the kitchen. “And then right straight back to bed. Do you realize what time it is?”

—–

After making sure Opie is good and tucked in again, Andy returns to the painting. But his rubbing has made the child’s coffin even *more* visible to his complete exasperation, uncovering additional layers of paint. “What the–” he says while staring at it, and then instinctively glances over his shoulder to make sure Opie didn’t come back down again. “That’s it that’s it, wedding gift or no, this painting’s got to *go*,” and he grabs it with both hands, intending to take it out to the squad car parked in the driveway and dispose of it in the dumpster behind Floyd’s first thing in the morning, before he even goes into the office. He’s just that determined — suddenly — to be done with the thing. Uncle Herbert hadn’t visited in months after all. But Aunt Bee, he thinks. Herbert was her favorite brother. She’ll notice, she’ll be upset; won’t let off until he puts the painting he gave us back up above the mantelpiece, pheh.

There’s another way, he realizes. Who can change a painting but a *painter*. “Barry De Boy,” he says aloud, probably to the camera.

“Barry De Boy??” Barry utters too. He looks down at the red tie, wakes up.

(to be continued)

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January 24, 2025 · 7:41 pm

00450516

“Quick, driver. To Vaalserberg. And hurry!”

—–

It was just a glimpse of green through the trees, but for the first time in his long journey across The Netherlands he found he had a legitimate rise in front of him.

The about 15 minutes later he climbed a rock face to get a much better view. Marvelous!

Yes, he was wise to jump off that bridge into the canal back there to avoid going home, he thinks while surveying the countryside before him, Lester and Mikie’s hard efforts be damned. And soon afterwards, he’d found that little fire in the road that couldn’t logically be there, also a first in his journey, and potentially much more important. He felt like a modern day Prometheus bringing humanity a gift from the beyond, proof of its existence and his own sojourn there.

Passing another kind of impossibility in this world, he imagines it riding on his shoulder to his final destination, the place of triple and perhaps even quadruple contact. And so it came to be.

NEXT PREVIOUS HOME

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January 23, 2025 · 10:59 pm

00450515 (grand theft auto)

Is that a red white and blue flag of The Netherlands up there? Philip thinks while passing, not use to such decorations in his journey.

At the same “time,” Fern, after having created her own, more limited Earth simulator along with her own bus for travelling through such, leaves Arnhem in the eastern part of The Netherlands, destined for Amsterdam more towards its west-center, a 98 KM trip. At Amsterdam she plans to take a specially rigged up gold car to the Ells Bridge and beyond, hoping to catch up with Philip before he reaches Vaalserberg at the SE end of the country. It will be a close race, she knows. That’s why she created her own simulator at a 1:10 scale compared to Earth instead of the 1:1 scale to same for Microsoft Flight Simulator. She’ll need the time saved, she figured.

—–

*Not* copper, she knew.

*Not* silver just up the road, which she also passes by.

But, dang, where’s the gold one that’s also suppose to be here? Has it already been *use*? She gasps. It’s already been used! she understands and starts recalibrating her goals and outcomes accordingly in her vast brain.

(to be continued)

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January 23, 2025 · 4:23 pm

00450514

“I’ve been struggling to complete this piece for a long while. Could it be you’re the assistant Jack Shepherde promised? I was beginning to think he’d forgotten. Let’s test your artistic eye. Where should my last portion of lime green paint go?”

—–

“I ordered my feets to stop moving but it probably was just an illusion caused by the higher ups, the powers that be. I was still in control by them, not of them. Not yet. And probably never will given what happened when I laid down on that green green patch of grass that so attracted me. I had to lay there, commanded to again, I suppose. I intended just to rest my eyes and body for a second…

“… which turned out to be another hour, the same period of time I spent on that Dry Rock back in, where was it — not Windytown but the town before that. A couple of towns ago. Anyway, I’ve told you the result. Was my period at hard Dry Rock negated by this square of soft, cushiony green, I have to ask?

“Then, after another hour — the place I would be, say, if I didn’t take that long nap, hmmm — I found the plane that I *didn’t* crash. I began to think I wasn’t alone in this netherworld after all. Lime green as I still was, I began to fear The Other.”

“Thank you very much for this information, Philip,” I said, seeing sweat bead on his forehead again. Time to stop for today. Maybe tomorrow we’ll continue. Day 3? I’m not sure if there is such a thing but we’ll see.

(to be continued)

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January 23, 2025 · 9:26 am

00450513

He rolls down the window after pulling up. “Hey Philip, it’s me, Mikie! Get in the car. There’s room for 2 as Lester’s already told you. This is your chance, Philip. Get – in – the car.”

Without turning or acknowledging Mikie in any way, which was part of the plan so he wouldn’t get tempted and sucked in to the offer, he jumps over the rail he’s been waiting at for the longest time and into the canal below.

“You’re making a big mistake, Philip!” he heard from the bridge behind him as he continued to walk on water after landing with a splash. “Alright, gotta go! Loser! See you in the afterlife you SOB!”

And that was it. For Mikie.

(to be continued)

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January 23, 2025 · 9:25 am

00450512 ((more) animals)

Horses.

Bison.

And, as we’ve already seen: sheep (like Fred). But no humans except for this fellow casting his own shadow against one of those old fashion Dutch windmills this time and who doesn’t really count except to one.

That was about to change. As instructed by tech wizard and friend to the gang Lester from up above (or sideways or whatever) in Lost Sanos, Grand Theft Auto, he waits at the Ells bridge for the other human now inhabiting this Netherworld to drive up. But, standing here looking out at the canal heading in the right direction to end this, he’s had a good long time to think about the decision. He’s God-like or at least a God wannabe here. What is he when he returns to the, er, surface? Just Philip Strevor, small time criminal with big but in all likelihood impossible dreams for greater glory. And he’s a *bad* person up there — he admits that now. Down or over here — Hell, Heaven or wherever — it’s all morally ambiguous. He has to see this through, he’s realized. Find out what’s at the finish line. SE corner it is!

earlier:

“Okay, Mikie, I’ve arranged to have a *gold* car waiting for you when you crash. Not silver, not copper, not any other shiny metal. But: gold. If you choose silver you’re in the wrong one and you’ll derez in about 15 minutes I’ve estimated and that won’t be pretty. So make *sure*.”

“Got it,” said Mikie. God knows he knows what gold is like, he thinks. He’s dreamed about having it in great abundance all his live long life (live long life again?).

“I’ll set the coordinates to crash you as close as I can but I can’t risk landing on top of the rigged thing. So it will be at a distance, I don’t know, maybe 5-7 minutes away tops. That’ll give us 8-10 minutes wiggle room. Once you’re in the car you’re safe. The car’s body will become one with yours, just like (with) the plane before. You’re merely making a *transference* of the container.” He turns away from the computer and his typed out plans and toward Mikie to emphasize his point. “Do – you – understand?”

“I- I think so.”

“You *think* so… or you know so?” Lester wants a yes, which he gets with, at first, slow and then more steady nods and finally a verbal confirmation.

“Yes,” Lester mirrors, turning back. “You’ll understand or you’ll die. You can’t live without a body there. Only Philip can do that because, well you know.”

“Because he’s already dead,” finished Mikie for him.

“Yeah. So *don’t* let that happen to you. This isn’t easy to set up, believe me. If I wasn’t a genius of the *highest* rank–”

“I know I know,” says Mikie. “You’re a genius, Lester.” And Mikie wasn’t being his usual sarcastic self for a change. This was big, he knew. This was bigger that his dreams of huge amounts of gold, potentially. This was a gateway to the afterlife we were talking about. Something that could reshape the world as we know it — and bring them untold fortunes in the process. They could *control* the access.

—–

“Okay, Mikie,” he says to himself after disengaging from the plane and looking around. “There it is over there between those 2 buildings. Better hustle.”

“Made it! And 11 minutes to spare, ha ha.”

He goes inside.

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