I am far away from you now.
But I will return.
Category Archives: Small China
00480602 (Alabama Phoenix)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0602, Alabama, C2077, Small China, Starfield
00480511
Just as I enter Little China from Kabuki (1), this formerly expressionless kid breaks out into a big smile when I approach him while crossing the street. I can’t recall seeing that happen — at least to that degree — in all my now many months walking around this Night City of Cyberpunk 2077 game fame. About all NPCs there maintain an expressionless look on their face. Seemed to *mean something*.
Then a couple of minutes later in the same walk I pass Happy Juniors. Can’t recall that store before either. Get it? That junior back there unexpectedly turned happy and then this.
And we’ve met the guy posing next to the store before too in that above screen capture. I call him Sunamai T-Shirt Boy or STB for short, featured in no less that 8 posts now from 2 different photo-novels.
I have a suspicion this is connected to the idea of transitions, specifically here, the transition between two sub-districts of an imaginary city. It’s happened before with Kabuki, except here we’re going out instead of coming in.
https://bakerbloch.com/2024/07/10/00430413/
We’ll most likely revisit this whole “happy” subject soon.
(1) Elsewhere in the blog and attached photo-novels I call Little China *Small* China and turn Kabuki into Kabusie. Overarching Night City is also transformed into Nightsity. I have my reasons. 🙂
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0511, C2077, Kabusie, Small China
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0046, 0505, C2077, Small China, Witcher
00460408
“Hey,” I said while approaching, noticing he was looking across the road at it. “Know anything about it?”
“Wellsprings?” he said, with head now cocked sideways in a listening position. Could just as easily have been Welles, hmph. But, directly: Hey. Thus my opening. Did he get it? I urged him to continue.
“Yeah, Wellsprings will do.”
“I can do Welles too,” he said back cryptically. Another me! I recognized.
“How about Hey?” I said, splitting the difference. “As in, let’s say, Heywood.”
“Overarching.” And with this word he moved on down the street further into The Glen, seemingly concerned with other matters now. My matters took me to Vista Del Rey less than a minute walk from here. All part of Heywood, though. Including Wellsprings.
On the other side of town in Watson, Mysti tries to resurrect dead boyfriend Welles in her Small China esoterica shop through various channels and potions and stuff. Will she succeed? Another: we’ll see.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0046, 0408, C2077, Heyworth, Small China
00460407
“What I *saw*, V, was the vision of a robot. Not to be cliche, but a robot from the future. Jonny knows.”
“Huh?” I say, knowing this would prompt an explanation.
“My canal channel told me this robot, who is described as being female, saw something that greatly disturbed her which she couldn’t help but record at the time. Which became the recording for all time. She saw herself. In a video. As a human. Doing something she couldn’t do but wished to do. Both Japanese, but 1/2 of 1 being. She had split herself in two to experience this thing but had forgotten about it until that moment. Half Japanese — remember Jonny said that about her. She was full Japanese but Jonny was actually picking up on the split. I was even given a location for the, um, reunification. Place called The Burg. Ever hear of it?”
“No,” I said without emotion, all that busy dealing with the ramifications of what Mysti was saying. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it! Yet, deep down, I knew it was true. Because, deep down: there was Jonny, smiling at me in his wise guy way. I preferred Panama but he liked Lexi (=Judy). Yet here came an X factor. Literally.
“Bimbo is the name,” declared Mysti in front of me between the two magenta balls held by that statue she worshipped, what, 4 times daily? Maybe 8. “Got that too from my source. They said that would be enough for you to find out the truth.”
“Truth is a relative term,” I said back without thinking, that being busy too with the ramifications.
“Too true,” said Mysti to end. Time to get busy. Better meet Judy Lexi down at the Afterlife. Because I’d figured that part out too. Lexi wasn’t my potential lover. She was my sister who lived in the big city, me from out in the Nomad sticks. Separated, when, childhood? I had to ask.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0046, 0407, C2077, J-Town, Jeogeot, Small China, The Burg
00450314
I backed up after passing him, intending to ask the obvious, something like, “Enjoying that Chinese food, bud?” But he piped up first.
“You again,” he said. He recognized me! I thought. And I him too. Desert. Burning. But in the morning: okay. Just an Arasaka crash test dummy robot, if still deactivated. What I mean is that he didn’t have a scratch on him from the burning. And now: here. But, just as quick, “Oh, sorry; never mind,” and started eating away again even though he obviously couldn’t. No internal workings, I mean by that. So I moved on, logged it in as yet another glitch in the matrix. But not after seeing he had a yellow head and was sitting on the same bench as a redhead…
… and then two benches down with only one person between them, a blue haired lady sitting with a green haired dame. TILE again. Or very close, close enough to count, I figured. I was still noticing.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0314, Badlands, C2077, Small China
00450313
“May I remind you just here that this *could* have been you.”
“No time for dwelling in alternate realities, Jonny. The Prophet’s successor just disappeared in front of us (!). After talking about Alpha Centauri!”
“I wish I could be comforted,” Jonny continued nonplussed, “that aliens were up there, looking after our well being or *not* looking after it. But, truth be told, the only blood sucking vampires up in space with reptilian skin are the corps sitting atop their high towers in their fancy, snakeskin suits with their eyes all lit up from all the eddies they’re taking from the common people down below. I’m a realist V(al). It’s all here and now for me. Look around. What’s in front of your face. No escapist fantasy for this ol’ rocker boy.”
“Speaking of which, Jonny. What do you know about (the town of) Rocky Boy out in the desert? Per chance: named for you?”
“I’d rather not go down that path, talking about alternate realities.” He looks down at his feet, exhales. “Yeah, admittedly I had a hand in that you could say, ha.” He dexterously wiggles the fingers on his silver one, looks over at the Hustle Girl again as we’ve started to call her. He was expressing *his* desired reality in no uncertain terms.
Jonny later said that people *can* just wink out in Nightsity; it’s not unheard of. Because it’s all part of the Matrix, he expressed — everything we know is, he held firm.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0313, Badlands, C2077, Small China, Starfield
00450112 (associations)
After being left alone in the Badlands desert without a male to ogle them, our two Mary Anne and Ginger type girls decided to play a game within the game around a warming campfire to pass the time. After all, Lexi had been summoned and Panama was already there. Just around the corner. She could return. So she did. Sister act. Act 2 of 2 can wait. Still point in the middle.
“It was right around a campfire much like this that the legend of the Burning Man began,” started Panama, wise to desert ways being the nomad she was, an outcast of the city. “A man we only know as Edward D., dancing up a storm to summon… well…”
“Me?” Lexi guessed. It could be so, Panama thought, but she pretended not to hear her and continued. “Soon, very soon, others remembered a rock with a depiction of the scene, along with the glyph 01 + 02 – 03 = 00.” Lexi repeated it to make sure she heard right and Panama nodded. “It all added — and subtracted — up — and down — to zero.”
“Hmm,” said Lexi. “Burning Man,” she summarized.
“But wait, there’s more. If you go to this rock at 3 o’clock at night you’ll find him again. The Burning Man, burning away inside a fire much like this one. You smell the flesh searing right off of him. Or so they say. You can follow him, burning away like a fireball, streaking across the desert…
… then collapsing, the screams finally silent as the fire keeps consuming.”
“Wow,” says Lexi. “That was a good story.”
“Wait. There’s more. So move the clock back to daytime — return. There’s only a dummy there, not even charred. An Arasaka robot, a crash test dummy, or so it’s been described to me.”
“Uh *huh*.”
“And *that’s* the end.”
“Great. My turn now.” Lexi already had a follow-up and was eager to get at it. “City this time now obviously — where I’m from.”
“Right,” says Panama.
“But burning man again, but in a different way.”
“Oh?” says Panama. “How?”
“Penis burn. Or some say balls. Crotch malfunction. But — get this — Arasaka again. Interesting, eh?”
“Eh?” says Panama.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0112, C2077, 0045, Badlands, Small China
00430508 (inversions)
“Of course I’m not going to take that playdoll on a world tour, Mysti. You *are* Mysti? Aren’t you?”
“You can call me that if you wish,” V admitted. She’s become the person she should have listened to and heeded most. The Devil is in the cards. She glances over at the golden gun beside her again, knowing it was almost the end.”
“No no, I’ve put that bogus world behind me, that bogus adventure. Like I said, it looks nice in comparison to 1998 and Omikron and all, but–”
“Jonny,” V Mysti requested, wanting to enjoy the cityscape from the rooftop while she could. “No more talking please.”
And shortly after that it was over.
—–
In another ending, she appears before non-suicidal V as normal as normal could be in this dark dark world, tribute to “Bladerunner”‘s Pris played by Darryl Hannah back in the day put behind her as she moves to an ancient forest region of Poland to start a new life, ditching Nightsity just like Lexi wanted to. Before she found the Ditch. Was this the right thing to do?
—–
“Something over there to the right, Lexi. Can you see it?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0508, C2077, Kabusie, Nightsity, Small China
00430411 (2nd J-Town encounter)
She didn’t turn around when V entered the shop, as if she was expecting him. “Show me what you found,” she seemed to say as much to the magenta hued statue before her, also illuminated by candles at her altar for it. No crack about the porn from the last time. Both understood it came from Silverhhand, not V. She accepted the scan.
“A ring… huh,” she spotted. “I’ve seen these before. 3 metals involved, gold, silver, bronze. Hard to tell which this was in the light. Do you think this is an NPC or a regular character?” she tested.
“NPC. Found her standing inside a chair in front of a table in a restaurant off Sagan. Thing is, there were *2* of her, both standing in chairs not 15 feet from each other. I could tell one of the agents following me was calling in the anomaly, even though he spoke in code.
“Since I wasn’t their focus in the moment,” he continued, “I thought I could take advantage of the situation and go over and speak to Edward, who, *ahem*, just by chance was also in the area. Watching me of course, as I watched him before. The stalker had become the stalked. But the other agent following me turned around and gave me a knowing look as I was trying to leave, making sure that I knew he was also keeping watch while taking a lunch break. So no go on speaking with Edward. Couldn’t take the chance. And I still haven’t had that chance, Mysti, even 3 days after, let’s call it, The Switch.”
knowing look
“Hmm. All this stuff is fascinating, V, but I must tell you before we go any further that the woman — women — in the restaurant were not NPC’s — not really. I’ve seen them — her — before in another scan, just yesterday. Given to me by, get ready for it, Edward.”
“Edward??”
“The ring is a give away. I don’t recall any other woman wearing it in Nightsity. Only men wear the ring, V. Men of power whether they know it or not. This woman is special.”
He tried to figure this all out in the moment as Mysti continued staring with those deep, accepting eyes, as if she were trying to read his thoughts. And maybe she could, who knows? But all he kept thinking of was a snake swallowing its own tail, and that he should stop following this particular rabbit down its hole. He was looking too far, creating complexity when there was only the simple and open.
Mysti returned to her statue, seeming to seek answers there. After a moment; perhaps channeling the knowledge (the oracle speaks?):
“You must approach Edward and ask him why he is following you. Be kind to him. If you are not coercive then he will yield the answers you seek. This all ties back to Silverhhand and the Relic. He’ll tell you. If you’re nice.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0411, C2077, J-Town, Nightsity, Small China
Sunklands 