“Hey Newt! I’m over here! Just waiting for *you*. Keep up!”
“Be right there wife of mine!” he called from the table in the center of Amiable, having just finished his wine.
She spots the shadow as he walks over and understands they are still good, still on track to go sideways. She leaps down.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0503, Teepot+
Supergal Ruby had given up fishing but mate Greg Ogden hadn’t. He’d been lucky enough at the sport to distract them from the golden coins and other Corvo mysteries, sucked up inside the mundane for a while. “2 sharks, a mantra ray, and a swordfish in one day!” he exclaimed to Ruby over a fish highlighted supper, perch salmon or cod (another reader’s choice). It was only afterwards that Ruby recalled the coins, and the fact that they had missed the last ship out of Corvo until Munday. Oh well. At least *Greg’s* happy, she consoled herself. And it will give her time to talk to Mr. Gold.
But she never saw him again, nor his spinning wheel nor the big ball of yarn down the beach from him he was supposedly working on. Dare I say he was a figment of her imagination? Eventually the coins became that too, we can follow. As the island had planned all along. In the immortal words of famous philosopher and, later, box company worker John Locke: “It’s not an island.”
Supergal’s second album, “Atlantis Forgotten,” was fittingly titled. There were more things to dwell on than lost civilizations now, like growing fame, more immediate and materially tangible. The Portuguese government working through the music industry had a hand in that as well; suggested “safe” words to use in her lyrics to downplay the supernatural, “lost knowledge” aspects found on the first. The oh too commonplace selling of the soul.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0314, HANA LEI
“You’re going to have to leave soon, darling. Clients showing up, 2 of them. My partner in crime Daisy’s sick today. Darnit,” she faked, since she was directly responsible for the sickness as stated. “It’s just a blasted shame.” She stomped out her cigarette on the leaf strewn patio floor. New habits haven’t changed.
“Just a couple more questions if you don’t mind.”
“I *mind*… but I guess I have a little time left.” She scans the horizon with her 20/10 vision, youthful eyes still in place. Very little smoke had gotten into them yet. She sees no one approaching her from the distance, across the pool, beside the school. “Always come down Twig Lane so I can see you,” she requested to all the men with desires. And she was still quite fetching. Business was good. No need to poach Daisy’s clientele if she didn’t have a good reason.
“You said Greene’s is the name of the motel, but the sign said Lucky.”
“They haven’t gotten around to changing it. Anything else?” She was becoming impatient. Who was this stranger in town with such curiosity? Said she was a relative of mine, a cousin. Just distant enough to not easily be identified. Who doesn’t have some kind of cousin named Wanda?
“It’s just…”
“Hold on hold on,” Octavia says, formerly smoking hand held out like a stop sign. “Someone’s coming — looks like a Mouse. No, make that, looks like Mouse. But you didn’t hear it from me. Now…skedaddle youngster… Wanda… *whoever* you are.”
“I’m your cousin,” doubled down Marsha disguised as a fictional one named Wanda but who inside was actually Alice Tart, moved back in time to the day of her conception. She’s aiming to change the aimer. She doesn’t want a father who’s a villain of all villains. Better it be Mouse. *Has* to be Mouse.
“And… there’s the other one… not far behind. Get outta here. Git git git!”
Marsha had no choice. *Alice* had no choice. She, through Marsha’s body wearing her clothes, moved away from her mother back through the gates, intent on finding a room to stay in.
WAIT. She turns. She had to see her younger father through the eyes of Marsha. Prefiguring his need for a cane, he points to what excites him in the moment.
Axis walks into the main office, intending to check in his copper red hair with Wilma the day clerk. Now was her chance, she realized.
She could… shove him through the green door over there. Yeah, that’s it.
Or hit him with the green phone (reader’s choice).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0308, Paper Soap+, Soap
Station attendant Ginger directed Marsha to a large square map hanging on the back wall. “So it is Lucky,” she said to herself, looking at the name of the nearby motel on the map. Just down the tracks as it turned out.
But in the unaltered reality, it wasn’t.
Mouse was right all along.
—–
“NC,” she said, staring up again. Could be either one still.
And then she walked inside the property to see what up. A considerably younger Octavia Tart awaited her appearance.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0307, Blue Mountain, Google Street View, Haze County, Paper Soap+, Soap
With part of the money she made off her successful debut album “Atlantis Rising”, she decided to take an extended trip to the Azores themselves, starting with Corvo, the smallest and least populated of the 9 island group and known for a huge stone statue of a pointing man on a horse perched atop one of its high ridges, supposedly dismantled and moved to Lisbon by the Portuguese government around the start of the 16th Century and then lost. Or so the legends go.
She tried to get into fishing while there… and failed. She’d settle for fishing out mysteries. She asked around about the equestrian statue, but tales were numerous and often varied wildly from each other. Some say the Portuguese themselves erected the horseman shortly after they discovered the island in the 1400s. They say the supposed inscription on the base of the statue, “Jesus, go ahead”, proves this, although it was originally claimed to be illegible. Some credit the Carthaginians who may have been in the area during the first millennium AD. Some dare to go even further back, before men as we know them began sailing the seas of the world. Pre-men known as Atlanteans. This is what she wanted to mine.
Another popular Corvo legend has it that a stash of coins was found in the cornerstone of a washed out house during the 1700s that predate the Portuguese, including many that were gold. No one on the island seemed to be an expert on this, but several directed her to a pawn shop on the neighboring island of Flores — in the City of Cass that we know pretty well now through these blog novels. But more appears to be there to explore and contemplate. One local even hinted to Supergal Ruby that the pawn shop owner *herself* had two of these gold coins stashed away on the premesis, but he seemed pretty mad to her, furiously producing thread on his oddly placed spinning wheel at Crow Beach in order, he said, to add to a giant ball of yarn she then found located about 100 meters further down the same Corvo beach. Guy who had the curious name of Gold himself, she noted, always paying attention to name synchronicities. We will return to him.
spinner…
… and ball
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0306, Cass City+, HANA LEI, Maebaleia/Satori
Axis shifted the name himself after satisfying his needs at the Lucky, concealing the missing letter. No need to be so obvious about it.
So Marsha “Pink” Krakow changes it back and arrives on same, aiming to do Alice Tart’s will and set things right again. She wore Alice’s “I am a Demo” sweater all along as a constant reminder of her mission in Paper-Soap, the Paper part fully yielded to Soap now, two halves separated out again in the passage through the tunnel. As she stood before the train, the symbolic missing letter now lay beside the track, with the reappearance of Gee Cat naturally coming along with it. Here.
“Can I help you Missi?”
“*Gee*. You *scared* me,” she spoke over to the large, upright orange cat appearing as if from the blue behind her.
“Yes, Gee scared you,” he spoke matter-of-factly in a regular type voice. “Gee the cat,” he announced himself.
“Wait. Your *name* is Gee? Like the letter you’re beside right now. I want to get this clear.”
“Gee is the cat. G is the letter. That is correct all around, then.” Is she the ONE? he thinks here, expecting such any day now. He checks the name on the train. Not yet, then SIGH.
“I’m looking for someone… or something. Greene’s Motel. Maybe it’s the Lucky Motel with a green door in the front office I’m still not sure. Woman with the last name of Tart and maybe a first name of Octavia. That’s all I’ve got. Can you help me? Gee?”
“Gee will help,” and he got to it, entering the station to talk to Wanda Berta Shirley. Make that: Laverne. Fresh from a closed down Barrow County beer factory, dreams of retiring in the bottling business shattered. But most people know her as Ginger.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0305, Paper Soap+, Soap
Couple of battered suitcases left behind but nothing in them as she checked. Clients should be arriving pretty soon; better make herself prettified, as she liked to say. *Remember*, the taller, richer one *doesn’t* like the blue rouge, she reminded herself. And of course that code he goes by to sanctify all this. Oil me up, I suppose.
She’s staking her claim to the room. Daisy Chain can go to hell for all she cares. Pills in her staff meeting breakfast for a knock out punch, BAM! She can work hers and Daisy’s together. She’s not that old yet: only 18 going on 38. Now if she could only remember the year. ’36? ’39? She decided to split the difference and settle on herself. Still before the Axis took control.
Town school superintendent Axis walks through the 104 door, taking control. “Mouse here yet?” He’d checked in his copper red hair at the main desk with Wilma the day clerk — no need for that inside. He could be who he was here. An older, balding man destined for chancellorhood, he felt.
“Not yet,” she answered. Octavia always fancied Axis among her townspeople clientele. Certain a step above, say, a baker, a farmer, a grocery store owner in the swampland. He owns an actual, bona fide *house*. Mouse — that’s the other one’s name: Mouse — might be richer and also have a house but he’s not as devilishly handsome. And the emblazoned cross across his chest he bears helps with this judgment too. Man of God he’s said about himself. Mouse was obviously devoted instead to science; even brought a beaker and test tube along for one of their sessions, and not to decorate the tree in the room, he said. “This time,” — like he was going to bring them again during the holiday season which was in full swing now, hmm. What does he suppose he can test with all *this*. She didn’t like to think about it; didn’t want to ponder the possible weird requests that could come along with such things. Daisy’d warned her about stuff like that. Maybe she was too harsh with the drugs; maybe she couldn’t pull off this 2-n-1 thing she planned today. If it wasn’t Mouse and his eccentricity she figured there was no way it could work.
—-
“I’ll finish up here Mouse; you can go back to your house now,” still-in-control Axis said later on. Octavia needed more than the doctor could provide.
—–
“We’ve gone back and changed time, Marsha,” said Alice, seeing the results, “but now *Axis* is instead my father. Villain of villains!”
“He’s not that bad.”
“I guess you’re telling me *Hitler* wasn’t that bad.”
“He invented the VW Bug — or something,” she attempted to justify, then realized this was wrong, all wrong. And where was her yellow Bug? Still orange? Still in Amiable? She made a note to herself to check. After all this dialog here was worked out.
“We have to go back. Daisy *wasn’t* sick that day in April’s May.”
“I believe that would have to be November’s December, Alice — holiday season and all. The beakers and test tubes on the tree. Remember?”
“I don’t remember *nothing* because it didn’t *happen*. I’ll MAKE it not happen.”
“Again?” Marsha said, staring into the other girl’s eyes who was still wearing the same “I’m not a Demo” sweatshirt as herself, same holey denim jeans.
“Again,” she said back firmly across the gap, closing it for the second time.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0304, Paper Soap+, Soap
With her relatively newfound fame, it seems that our Ruby Supergal was always traveling these days, living out of her suitcase as it were. She was on a mission: to spread love and peace and joy throughout the whole of Portugal and maybe even the western parts of Spain, depending on how much she can grow her fame. She felt she was a light of the world, showing the way to a brighter future out of the dimmer past. And the Atlantis revelation was one step along that path, perhaps a pretty important one, up there with any musical decisions she might make.
She let one of the colorful butterflies circling around her shimmy through her outstretched hand, enjoying the sensation.
She knew the butterfly enjoyed it too. Hope, she decided to name it. Hope for the future.
“Soundcheck on the set in 10 minutes!” her manager barked up some nearby stairs. “Goodby Hope and the other 2,” she said as she moved away from them and back into reality.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0303, HANA LEI
She put away the guitars and got serious. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she practiced, not having an audience yet. It was only 5 in the afternoon and her gig wasn’t until 8. She’d have to eat first of course; make it a past participle before the actual playing began. At the same time, the audience should begin dining on sole food, that particular fish being the catch of the day here in Portuguese Hill village formerly of Illinois, US of A. Where they found *her*. “Ladies and gentleman, simmer down,” she continued imaging the applause coming her way after the song “Rockaway Beach,” a crowd favorite as usual. “I have an announcement to make.”
—–
“Your painting looks very pretty over there, dearest. I see you haven’t used any green yet. That’s good. Stay away from green. And oil. Stick to watercolors.”
“Of course my dear. Those times are in the past.” She apparently couldn’t see the bit of green he used in the couple of village trees from this distance — good. This made him think of Mr Babyface, his old flame. Lost at sea in a craft of too small design. At least he went doing what he loved. Sucked up by a rare water funnel in that area, they said. Glug glug glug, he imagined. Glug glug glug — GONE. The boat was later thrown up on the shore of Kenfield but the short man with the large face was no longer with it, fishing off the port side, fishing off the starboard side, fishing off the bow, the stern. He loved fishing in all its positions. He’d eat his sole later on in honor of him, he decided.
“Did you like my speech at the end? Too serious?”
Yeah, past and also present lover Greg Ogden had reservations about all that. “Don’t you, I mean, what if a member of the Portuguese navy is part of your audience? Gets back to headquarters, say. You could be in trouble (!).”
“I said what I had to say, though. Atlantis is rising in that part of the Azores. All the locals know it, the *government* knows it. They just want to cover it up, the hierarchy. The locals won’t stand up to them either, at least publicly. *Someone* has to take a stance. Might as well be me. I have a platform.” She briefly indicated the stage behind her. The former cover band cover girl now striking out on her own with strikingly original compositions popping forth right and left, backwards and forward. The announcement fits right in with all that, he realized. Unique, he summarized it in a word. Like a perfectly square pyramid perfectly aligned with the 4 cardinal directions, waiting to be revealed in all its past and also present glory.
“*And* — I think we should announce the news of our re-engagement if you don’t mind; make that public as well. Hand in hand.” She takes his hand from beneath the table, holds it tight. The double announcement was a go.
(to be continued)
“That doesn’t look much like the landscape out there,” I opined from behind.
“I paint what my cane tells me to. I mean, my *brush* — force of habit there with the mention of cane. I may not need it any longer,” he furthered. “Getting an update from the person who created me. The heck with the other doctors. Dr. White, the last one I interviewed, turned out not to be even (named) White. And maybe not even a rabbit as advertised, pheh. Looked more like a rab*bat* to me. No, I’ve decided to simply replace me… with myself.” He checks his Diamond Rolex watch, dropping some cerulean blue paint on his gray-black Ralph Lauren dress pants in the motion. “Shoot,” he cusses at the stain, but then realizes the pants will be gone soon, along with the body, the skin, the whole kitten kaboodle. “Gotta run,” he says in parting. “Mind finishing this for me?” And grasping his brush while he did the same with his cane, I sat down and went to work. I can do realism, I said to myself as I added more waves to the sea.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0301, HANA LEI
Sunklands 