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March 25, 2023 · 7:34 am

00370403 (party 03)

“There’s only one present left, Amos,” he continued. “*The* present.”

“I see.” He didn’t look away from Edward’s eyes. He spotted it in his peripheral vision, which was good enough. Red and green, he viewed. Rectangular. Life itself. Just under the front seat board. Right where he would sit when he got back in. Right between his legs it would be.

“It’s time to open the box, Amos. Everyone else has taken what they needed, which is everything. Leaving you nothing. Open the box.”

Sandman now knew that the lone box in the boat was empty. The Void, then. Could be another empty box inside the first but that would be it.

“You’ve had your fun,” Edward added. No mention of Shelley here because Amos T. Sandman didn’t know Shelley G. Struthers, wouldn’t know her from Eve beside Adam.

“It’s time for me to leave, Eddie.”

“It sure is,” Edward shot back.

“Well… step aside please.”

“I will. On one condition.”

Deep breath. “Okayy…”

“That you take that empty box over there back to your empty shell of a sim and deposit it where you can’t get to it.  Also: put a big red button on it, like you’d find on New Mexican police intercoms. Make it look important even if it isn’t. Can you do this for me? Amos?”

Sandman wanted to tell Eddie to stop calling him that but bit his tongue. He had to see this through as smoothly as possible. Else: sunken boat, he knew, he gathered. No more presents at all. Time erased, even, along with attached-at-the-hip Space. End of existence. Just that important.

(to be continued)

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March 25, 2023 · 7:00 am

00370402 (party 02)

By the time Shelley and Edward had arrived, Sandman, as most called him, was on his 3rd rosé served by Rose. He missed a clear look of Shelley in the dying daylight, although he had an interesting face to face with Eddie, as he called him, later on. Before this, he started confessing to Rose about some of the situation. “Presents,” he began, shaking his head. “They were all in my mind.”

“There, there,” she said, then popped the cork again and hovered the bottle over his nearly empty glass. “Another?” He waved it off. “Better head home soon. Nothing to see here.”

But before he was able to get back to the boat, Edward, having separated from Shelley, stepped in-between. “Amos,” he said, using his first name instead of last, the only one I can think of to do so. Perhaps the only one who even knew what it was.

“Eddie,” he responded. So it had come to this.

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March 23, 2023 · 2:45 pm

00370401 (party 01)

They were preparing food, of course, when the call came in. Raven and Key needed for a catering assignment. Money not an option, because this was for the big bosses, one of them anyway — I’ll get an actual name asap. All activities at the well established Wooboostook pub would have to be halted for a night. March 23rd was the date. The day the music died.

Soon they were prepping food in a different place. Nautilus continent. Near but perhaps not in the Lemon Free State, advertised as the last vestige of the old empire within now Lime (Linden) controlled Our Second Lyfe.

“Edward should be arriving soon,” spoke Sandy Hook to Penny Mart up front, champagne on wait to be served for the occasion. “Said he had a new girl who wasn’t his girl, tee hee.” “Typical,” offered Penny from the chair, wishing he would get the f-ck here so she could have that drink. Also she was starving.

Amos T. Sandman arrived from next door in a party boat loaded down with his many presents, but he was not the one they desired despite of this. The time: 6:05. The night was young, very young.

Darn. Not even noticed, he thought, grand entrance ruined.

“Hello,” he said. No response, even though her extended legs were almost in the way of getting up the stairs in front of him. What gives? he kept pondering as he approached the house. Who is this party *actually* for if not me?

The presents were snapped up right and left as his back was turned to them. He had nothing left to give.

(to be continued)

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March 23, 2023 · 10:10 am

00370317

They had opened the book, they were reading the script. Their brains had become like one, minds fused. They read together, one with the left eye and the other the right. Coordination. Military people at the top of it this time. Eastwesterners.

They read about Archie…

Biff Carter withdrew the book from the camera, stared into it, smiled.

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March 23, 2023 · 9:51 am

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)

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March 23, 2023 · 1:52 am

party continuation

“You better get back to your Edward, Shelley, and I should get back to my packing.” Because even at this early stage he knew it was no good for keeping the Nautilus residence. 1st thing to be boxed was his pride, his ego. $499,000 dollars is a lot of money but he figures he’ll need just that to save the downtown area from the military. Because the alarm *will* be sounded, somewhere and sometime soon. His personal Sandsim police force will be usurped. Suspect 102, as they called her/him/it, must be found and interrogated for the cause.

“I only ask one thing, *Jennifer*,” for he already thought of her as a cash cow and not a real person, “is when you find it — press the button. That’s all I ask for free lodging, food, haircuts, pedicures manicures, anything you like from any of the shops and other locations. Look where noone thinks of looking. They’ve made sure I can’t be the one…”

“… to do it, yes,” spoke Shelley. “So you’ve said.”

“I’m warm weather, Shelley — I meant Shelley back there, sorry. Remember that.”

“Hmm.”

She’s weighing her options. She can’t bring Edward — that was made clear. It would have to be Arthur accompanying her (speaking of ‘hmm’). She’d forgotten all about Lemont, the actor behind the character, when making the decision. “Sold.” She extended her hand for a shake. Too bad he didn’t have a vanilla hidden in his back pocket to meet it with. Just for a joke, mind you. But she was too precious for all that. She *was*… the golden one, the one to make the change. He could see it in her eyes, all umbrella-y and such at this particular angle in the night’s light. All the books in the world resided there. No need for a library, although that’s where he’ll meet her later and reveal himself again.

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March 22, 2023 · 3:39 pm

mountain majesties

In the southeast corner of Sandman’s sim, where its lone tunnel winds through we just saw that chopper exit from, exists what some call the Purple Uplands, or Uplands anyway, its landscape dominated by 4 same sized, purple banded, hexagonal towers which move up and  down through slotted holes in unpredictable patterns. Some say The Void lives here, and indeed I was able to find her/him/it easily enough in a mine located beside the corner-most moving tower. Snow covered, it appeared — I believe the only object here so adorned. A bit of winter in an otherwise hot desert land. Conifer trees instead of palms.

Okay, a couple of oaks here in additional to firs, and maybe the snow is just different shading on chopped wood. But the indication still stands I believe. This is one a-hole of a place, cold as Uranus in comparison with the rest. Shelley walks inside…

She stands before it now, walking around it, examining every side and corner. A big red button is the only marked thing on its surface, much like a New Mexican police intercom has such to call in the military when needed. Like we saw conspiracy theory mongerer Tank Bazooka use earlier in Lordsburg vis-à-vis Hucka Doobie aka (or so they say) pop/surrealist artist Charles Nelson Blinkerton, returned from the dead and inhabiting her old 102 hotel room on the strip. He felt like he was in over his head on that one — again.

Knowing something needed to be done in additional to what already had been, she presses it. Sirens fill the air.

(to be continued)

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March 21, 2023 · 4:00 pm

hearing

He stared down at her place, trying to take in what he’d just heard. The Void wants to negotiate a price, she said — or hissed.

—–

Shelley was touching up his shape again when they heard it coming out of the tunnel. A bike, but a real one this time, a chopper they call them up in the real world I believe. Aztec Warrior? We’ll see.

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March 21, 2023 · 1:32 am

00370312

How appropriate, he thinks. A big purple cube-like thingy has manifest just outside my front door since I lasted visited, sign of The Void of course.

Anyway (he turns), this is the last of my stuff, Nautilus continent home cleaned out. Couldn’t afford it, you see, with the upcoming court battle looming and paying for legal fees, etc. But I know who my real foe is now.

It seems like yesterday I was standing on the back porch with Shelley, inviting her to my sand paradise sim. She came to the party with Edward, who was somewhere just below with the rest of the still raucous crowd, even at half past 1. She explained, fairly early on actually, that her husband was away and he didn’t mind Edward taking care of her in his absence — trusted him just as much as he trusted someone named Keith who was a kind of surrogate father to her, I gathered. Also revealed that she was a writer, which interested me greatly. I happened to be a friend of a friend of one of the upper echelon of Lonelyhearts Publishers over on the *Omega* continent — caught her with a lie on that: she claimed Corsica Prime for the location, where her husband was, actually (she then admitted), looking for roles as big as his ambition and ego, she stated. I’d even heard about one or two of her books, although I couldn’t remember her attached nom de plume. “Jennifer,” she said. “Jennifer Lane.”

He turns back from the memory, red handtruck and hauling the final boxes down to the boat in his mind now. 1st pre-hearing at 7:45 tomorrow morning; gotta give about an hour for prep on that as well. He’ll have to do with around 2 hours sleep, he figures. He can catch up with the dreaming this weekend. Information, pure information. When he can interpret it, pheh. Like last night with the avocado.

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March 20, 2023 · 12:51 pm

flavors of favors

Thumbs in his pockets to make him look cool (for no one), Sandman contemplates his next move.

Bank sounds good. Not a sand bank like he’s standing in but a bank bank. Just over there, Kera being its name. He needs some money to fund his defense. Because he will get sued over this. Might as well dress him like a man in black for preparation. Reno.

—–

“Reno,” he says to the teller of the day, who then gives him $499,000. Because if he had said that other prominent Nevada city he knew it would break him, his town, his sim. Sinsity — Middletown. It was coming. And he was just being dragged along in its wake like everyone else he knew and loved and cherished.

Pockets filled — he couldn’t even stick his thumbs in them any more — he gave now upfront Vanilla a kiss to say both thank you and goodbye and went his way. This was standard procedure these days, more Middletown meddling. What would the price be even next week?

(to be continued)

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