This will be our spot Edward. Always sun in the middle of the day despite the highways overhead, and you can make it so any time of course. Waves crashing directly behind. I can lock Arthur away in the cage of my mind here. We play games but still we are together. Agreed?” Pause. The waves rose again.
“I said: agreed?!”
“O-*kay*, just don’t punch me again, jeez.”
“Good. Now let’s go down the beach and talk to some surfers.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0216, HANA LEI
He was wore out from surfing so he decided to re-energize a bit. Banana should do it. “Just one?” asked Gloria to the request, now working at Hana Lei. “All I need,” he replied in his nasal, boy-ish voice. With his small frame he could make it go far. No need to over-weigh himself. “Help yourself, then,” she said, indicating the bowl full of fruit beside him. “Thanks.”
“Couldn’t help noticing your moves out there me laddie,” said the anthropomorphic turtle beside him, deciding between apples. Ah heck, he thinks, an orange will do, and orders one from Gloria. “No no no, changed my mind, ” he then said as Gloria indicated the bowl again. “I’ll have what he’s having.” “Same place,” she said, hand still extended toward the bowl. “I… don’t want to run you out of them. No, I’ll take an orange.” She turned with this, tired of dealing with him. It was like this every day for the experienced surfer. So good on the waves, so bad on the food. Maybe his ability to choose well runs out when he sits back down here, she rationalized at one point. Thus the reason for the bowl in the first place, actually. He helps himself.
After the selection (orange, no banana, no *apple*; but which one?), he returns his attention to the boy and the spotted talent. “Lessons?” he queries between bites… of something. I believe I detect crunching so probably one of those apples.
“You mean, have I *taken* lessons? In surfing?”
“Yeah. You have talent. If it’s natural then more power to you.” Say my name, he thought. Just say my name.
“Nah, no lessons.” Another noiseless bite from the lad. “I think lessons would just… *ruin* it for me.”
“The talent,” the turtle replied.
“Yeah.” More peeling and another bite. “I learned that quite a ways back. Wrote a treatise and my, um, mentor marked it all up with red. Top to bottom, mind you. Then she changed hair color from red to blue and it all went away, all the corrections. ‘Perfect already,’ she said, scooting the suddenly unmarked manuscript back to me from across the table. So I’m a natural at things — that’s what she said.” Special, he added to himself. Special special.
“Newton’s the name,” the turtle-man said, and extended his apple-less hand to the kid, who shook it. “Newton Jasper, like the liquor. Except backwards.”
“Jasper… Newton?”
Bingo, he thought, and changed directions, facing out to the sea again. His true home — this was just a stop between dives. “Some call me Jack,” he said. “Friends call me Jack. Tell you what, you call me Jack from now on. Eh?”
“Jack,” the yellow *rapscallion* amended, also turning. He’d been here before. And, there, he was starting to glow again. Just looking at them continue to roll in.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” the turtle said, noticing too.
“Sure am!” And they were both at it again, remainder of the fruits tossed aside during the running from land to water.
“Cowabunga!” the turtle shouted as he jumped on his board.”
“Hey, don’t eat my shorts!” the likewise surfing boy responded to this. And so it continues…
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0215, HANA LEI
They were deep in the portal and Edward was her chosen beau, if by default. No more Arthur, but for a good reason. Shelley packs her ring away and decides to dance again, but Eddie went too far per usual and it got him into trouble. Between crests of a wave, this can happen.
But the dancing then continues. Endlessly, thanks to this place.
“Cowabunga!” I suppose.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0214, HANA LEI
Shelley finally got the rescue rope off the tree branch and moved closer to the edge of the thing. She was suddenly in a position of power and was taking advantage of it. “I *should* let you drown in there.”
“Me?” she struggled. “Why??”
“Because you were obviously meant to replace me. Now I’m expendable.”
“You tricked me!” The pepper on her shirt was gone. Next up the shirt itself, then the identical doodle-bug haired head blub blub blub. They were on a walk after playing basketball a while, Jennifer winning in a close match. Shelley spotted the sign which was closer to her, but didn’t mention it to Jennifer, her double, her doppelganger. Slippery on the far edge, thus: this. “Help!” she started. “Hellllp!”
—–
“And pull your shirt up over your shoulder like I do,” Shelley continued with the conditions after the mouth had submerged. “Just NOd if you understand.” This was the final one, the choice of destiny. The tank must be under the shirt, she decided quite a while back, actually. Viewing the exposed thing cost her a point or two in the basketball game, a seemingly small but important difference. The most obvious and distracting in the moment anyway.
Jennifer’s half submerged head managed a NOd. The rope came — just in time.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0210, HANA LEI
Shelley 02 does indeed find something at the location of the red pin. A portal. 1st two offered locations through it seem to cancel each other out in importance: child vs. adult (Too Young vs. Too Old). 3rd location called Wake seems more central. TILE is here for one.
10:01 AM. Time to ball.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0209, Bellisaria, HANA LEI, Pickle 01
She kicked off her leafy shoes and stayed a while in this place wrong for others but not herself. Alvin arrived with the rest of the greens just before the crack of dawn. Just what I need, she thought, staring out at it through unwinterized windows. A warm truck. Soon to be getting even warmer!
But where was the baby she use to clutch?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0308, HANA LEI, Jeogeot, Newtown+, The Waste+
“Hello, Tom? I’ve arrived. And there’s a sprite already here, just like you said there would be.”
(reply)
“Hold on.” He removes the phone from his ear, looks over. “Honey, what’s your name?”
“Morgan,” she said in an ordinary enough voice for a part plant person. He raises the phone again.
“Morgan, she said.”
(reply)
“Wrong place??”
—–
“And that’s what brought me here, to the tree, to the *mutants*,” he said to John the Mind Reader still sitting opposite him in the present, drinking his coffee, still enjoying the beans. “Spill some more,” he requested, leaning back, carefully sipping at this tilted angle. Sometimes just the mention of the word triggers the event, he knew. The others finally arrived, the lot of ’em, crammed altogether in a lime green truck with Dude on the side and Chevy Dodge on the back. Joker and Jester, Jethro and Bauer, Doug and Clyde (formerly Tin Tin and Clubby). Paired troublemakers all. Liars to the hilt. They say caffeine makes you so if unchecked by alcohol. And there hasn’t been a (wal)drop of beer wine liquor in this levee type of place since January. And then: Jackson Bloch riding tailgate, the strangest of them all.
But where was Ted? all began to murmur as they took their usual seats in the establishment set up near the lip of the Great Fissure or Fracture, your pick. “Right here,” micronized Ted said unseen in the center of it all, tightly clutched by his new master.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0307, HANA LEI, The Waste+
“We have arrived too late.”
“Too late,” said the other, just as frustrated with him as he with her. One AM and one PM. But they couldn’t remember who said what. Thus the mutual blame game, which would spill over with the toys before bedtime. Because there was nothing left to do but sleep.
“Twelve hours you.”
“Twelve hours *you*”
It was so cold in here you could see your breath. But people didn’t mind. Celebrities in the audience!
“Good morning afternoon evening everybody!” Her standard opening line. “Welcome to the klub that’s going to put Kedas back on the map!” And then the requisite plug. “Brought to you by Sprite lemon-lime drink. The drink soo clean…” and here she paused to pull one of their sodas from her dress somewhere and chug. She retreats the can from her mouth, aaahs loudly, then: “…Grant *Hill* recommends it!” Cheers from the audience. Grant Hill is in attendance. He makes eye contact with me from where he’s sitting across the reflected green floor. Just briefly, enough to make me know he’s aware of what’s going on, if only in an unconscious way right now. Two Hills, PHEH, he may be saying internally. If he could only turn over the blueprint to his life he could see.
—–
“Dreaming again on that plank, Ted.”
“Just leave her this time. No need to tell Al.”
“I agree.”
“Got us into a lot of trouble before.”
“I remember.”
“Lot of paperwork.”
“I recall.”
“Anyway. Why don’t you enter her mind and see what’s going on.” So John the Mind Reader did. After a pause:
“Soo, what’s happening?”
“Apparently,” John surmised, “the past. Or a version thereof.”
“In-teresting.” They both had changed their minds about Al. The uppity higher up needed to be informed of this. New development!
(to be continued)
—–
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0207, HANA LEI, NIGHTSITY, The Waste+
She barely made eye contact with him to acknowledge his presence. Cyberpunks, hmph, he thought. “Business good tonight, Lexi? Selling many sodas on top of the regular alcohol?”
“Whoa whoa there daddy blow. One question at a time. Try again.” She kept dancing to the beat that hadn’t started yet. DJ was still relaxing and chilling and drinking before the gig. While she had the time.
He skipped to the most important one. “Have — you — sold — many — *sodas*? On top of the alcohol which I know will do good,” he sped up.
“Two Hills,” she instead said.
“W-what?”
“Two Hills.” And she pointed to the left, the opposite way of the horn.
“Oh yeah. It’s a promotion.” He breathed a sigh of relief, knowing it could have been something else. Too early! “Now back–”
“Why does there have to be two?”
“*You* have two,” he wanted to answer, but then thought better of it. Maybe she didn’t. Was she a girl or boy? He never figured it out. I guessed she’d have them either way — doesn’t matter.
His lemon-lime drink awaited at the table. He looked around, seeing a lot of soda imbibing with his own two peepers. One over in the far corner had a Dr. Peeper. He resisted the urge to rush over there and swat it outta his hands, causing a scene. No scenes, his brother Benny Right Horn warned. “Tonight must go nothing wrong.” His words, not mine, Jer thought. That’s why he’s not here. Too drunk and coked up to make a proper showing of himself instead of a proper spectacle of himself. Typical. Cokeheads not allowed.
“Anyway,” he finally answered Lexi the bartender, still dancing to an imaginary beat or a beat from the future perhaps that only she can hear with her futuristic head and ears, “it kind of goes along with the idea of doubling the fun or doubling the pleasure.” He locked briefly with her sci-fi black within green within blue eyes. She was finished with him, he knew.
—–
He sat down beside her. The Hills came square to the camera, a horn curled against one of their cheeks.
“How is the wine?”
“Pretty tasty!” She downed another guzzle.
“Load up while you can. But not — too much. Take a swig of soda every now and then. People are watching.” He indicated the ads beside them. “Can’t let down the Hills.”
“Oh no.”
“Mike should be showing up soon.”
“And Pat,” she said. “I also invited Pat.”
“Oh boy.”
“Maybe. We don’t know!”
Sunklands 