Dark Peak. The Power.
Blue Boy knows.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0605, Back Rooms, Gaston+, HANA LEI
“Mt. Sandraman,” exclaims Eddy, not tired at all from the hike up since it’s only a 42 meter peak. Still he’s very happy they reached their intended goal for the, er, (photo-)novel. 6 sections in; kind of cutting in close….
“Pretty,” admits Shelley laying beside him in not nearly so high grass this time. Nor wavy. No wind here on *this* New Island. Or very little. “But nothing like the black and white one in my dreams.”
She rolls over, faces Eddy, her Edward, her New Island husband and just new husband period. “We can’t stay here, Ed. You know that.”
Eddy exhales. “I know.” He was tired of the argument of 6, slavery — at least in its triplicate form — vs. 7, freedom. He had to let all this go.
“We lost our thought-to-be villa.”
“We should have never left Sandraman here,” Eddy reinforces the loss. Perfect, though, they knew. For a brief time. Oh well.
“There’s always Gaston,” she tried to brighten the mood. “Dark Peak — more good times, right Ed?”
“Yes. Good times. But laaagggy.”
“Yeah. Austin is there, though, 3rd down in the pile of Firesign Theatre members still performing weekly at the Rhino. Or 2nd up.” She edges a little closer. “We could, let’s say, pluck him from the rest, sit him down and talk to him about… stuff.” She looks heavenward, as if seeing more in the sky. “And there’s also his island (sigh). More good times. It seems they would never end. Infinite supply of… you know.”
“I know.”
She rolls over again toward him. “He probably set all that up, you know. He wants to stay on our radar. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to manage. Look at what I provide you, he might say. Do this in remembrance of me.”
“Shel-ley,” reprimands Eddy, glancing over at her with a scolding look. Neither were religious in the traditional sense. But both also believed in the concept of evil in the form of, let’s call it, non-freedom. Witchcraft could be an element of that. Black magic. Control.
“At any rate, he wants us to read him. We also know that from Colorado.”
Eddy sat up. “Where are we *going* with this?” But he couldn’t help playing footsie with her through the frustration.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0604, Colorado, Gaston+, New Island
“Lou, dearest,” he whispered over. “Buy your old man a can of soda while he’s busy studying will ya?”
“Sure thing Daddy. What’ll it be? Kolya? Pepi? Maybe even a bottle instead of a can?”
“Shhh, babydoll,” he said to her louder voice, finger over lips to reinforce his point. “Keep it down. Other people are studying here besides me.”
“And me — just sitting here twiddling my thumbs,” she responded in turn, tone not much softer than before. “Wishing there was an actual town again to visit while you read these old dusty things.” She became curious. “What’d you finding anyway? You mentioned a MOA or something or another.”
“Most Ancient One, yes,” he hissed, finger pressed against lips again. “Right underneath the library here, I’m speculating. That *whole town* you’re after. Files within!” Oh GOD. He shouted he was so excited. And now the whole rest of the library is staring. He waves at all of them, trying to indicate he’s sorry and that the outburst was just a slip-up.
Right through that Big Red Machine there it is, though. The secret passage. ‘Nother one.
He could walk through…
… and be in a different world altogether. And so it was.
“Ahh yes, thanks Lou,” he said after carefully popping the top and taking a sip. “Hits the spot.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0412, Gaston+, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
“You’ve got to hide me, Roberts. Behind the secret wall with the dog. My girlfriend Tessa’s trying to kill me again!”
“Again?” questions Roberts, then uses her own magical 3rd eye to discover the truth. “Ahh. *Overlap*. Again — right.”
“Right?”
“Well. If you go back there there’s a fair chance he’ll absorb you, the 20 right and the 4 left, which are all wrong.”
“20 right and 4 left, er, wrong, yeah. Got it.”
“That leaves you with 5/6ths odds of your self surviving. I’m just telling you the risks up front.”
As an answer, Arthur Kill lays his own 6 shooter on Roberts’ desk, part of the deal. He’s desperate. He’s seen the Oracle map of New York into New Jersey, south into north. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance against *her*. These are certainly better odds than the Mexican standoff he’s facing otherwise. That damn eye (!). The only way to beat it is to find another eye. Thus: Roberts here.
Roberts inspects the gun and sees that it is the correct one. She presses a button under her desk. The door opens, Spider revealed to him once more. 2130, etc…
“You are free to enter, Arthur Stanford Kill.” She keeps staring at him intensely. He faced life and death if he didn’t do this but he also faces it here, just not with the odds stacked totally against him. Can he stay positive and not descend into negativity? That’s the ultimate question. His survival still depends on it.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0211, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, New York, Towerboro
“Oh shoot, Hucka,” Marion says at the door, peering in. “No seats together left up front. We’ll have to sit on the couch further away from the stage.”
“Fine with me!” she responded, knowing the hips did their job on the way over. They’d pay more attention to cuddling than comedy this night fer sure. Besides, they watch this act every Wednesday rain or shine, know every line that’s going to be uttered. Firesign Theatre: the house group at Gaston’s downtown Rhino. Unless it’s uptown. We’ll see.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0115, Gaston+
“‘How can you not hear it?’ he might say to me in frustration. ‘Are you *deaf*?'”
“I say, ‘your work is an impenetrable sphere, reflections all around but not from itself.’ Here:”
“That’s a great story, baker b.,” Hucka said, looking at the mirror ball he pulled up on his monitor. “It really is. But I must buzz off elsewhere to use the old nomenclature.”
“Okay, alright. *Bye* I guess,” I say as I watch her — or him — fly away into the blue blue skies. Hucka D. the Bee showed up again after so long only to leave so quickly!
—–
“He thinks I’ve reverted to bee form, Marion. I, of course, haven’t.”
“No you *haven’t*,” expresses Marion Star Harding, taking all her womanhood in from top to bottom from his seat opposite her at the Welcome to Mimosa tavern, sign lost in the Great Wind Storm of ’02 (“The Great Blow”). No antennae even, now. “Why?” he had to ask.
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s trying so hard to understand the various creators lining up around him now, sees the parallels to them in himself; alternate paths.” I want to keep him productive, was the underlying meaning.
“You’re a fine woman,” Marion said to this. “Very fine. Now let’s walk over to the Rhino and see that comedy group again we so love.”
“You first,” she said with a sly smile.
“No, *you* this time, he he.”
“Alright.” And she got up, wondering if she had the hang of swinging her hips properly. Would this be the last vestige of her bee self and the awkward duck walk showing up? Turns out it wasn’t — she did fine. Very fine. Marion looked on in pleasure and happiness the whole 3 blocks over.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0114, Gaston+
“Why are you back, Arthur?” she says after he sits down. “Is it to see the dog? We’ve been through this before. You’ve seen me feed the numbers into the computer to produce the Red Row. And then The Atom, and an (op art) example of what you can do with it. There’s nothing more to see here. Nada.” She had another client coming in at 11:45. It was 11:30. He said he’d show up at 11 to talk to her about something. He was late.
“I want to go back,” he just blurted out, knowing time was short. “I want to go to… Red Row.” He figured there was something more to it. Too many rows named red for one. A 2 fer 1 (!).
“The only thing you’ll see there is proof that nothing is left. The dog is ours.”
“So I can’t even see it now?” He wanted to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. But of course he had his money, extra feathering for his retirement nest. *Something* had been exchanged.
“No,” she put it bluntly. “Not until the reopening.”
The numbers laden dog remained hidden behind the secret bookcase door, a 6×4 mathematical puzzle-lesson with 20 positive results along with 4 negative outcomes at its center core. Just taken by itself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0112, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro