Sunrise. June 16, 2018. Indigo returns to the trailer confident that the walking tree can be reasoned with. “Just polished off chapter 13,” she declared to her yawning sister. “‘Unch.'”
Category Archives: Heterocera
the “i” and the “y”
“We’re going to be here a long time. Aren’t we daddy?”
Angus didn’t know how to answer the pointed question by his daughter but he knew they were. The energy was just too strong here. Much more palpable than Obscure. True source revealed!
“It was those woods all along.” his daughter Ragdoll spoke again. “Wasn’t it?”
—–
When they had returned inside, Ragdoll asked her father if Rubi was spelled with a “y”, with a negative response coming back at her. Then who’s Ruby? she wonders afterwards. Misspelling? And why the attachment to the Max deity? She could sneak out of town and ask Max directly, she supposed, but that had become illegal thanks to Sister Martha Lamb. But… middle of the night. Who would be watching?
Sister Martha Lamb, that’s who.
—–
“Ssooo…,” Martha Lamb hissed from behind, startling her. “You’ve chosen Max (over the others). Looks like we’ll have to talk to the *Town Council* about *this*.”
And she hadn’t even received a clear answer to her question tonight.
—-
“Maybe (the graffiti) was all just some kind of elaborate trap set up by Lamb herself,” she theorized to her sister later back at their shared room in the Rubi trailer. She stopped typing in her journal and turned to face Indigo directly. “You’ve never talked to him. Have you?” Indigo just shrugs from her lying position in return. She’d almost always assumed the conversation between the two was just in Ragdoll’s head but rarely said anything about it out of politeness. Let the child have something to believe in, to hang her hat on, Indigo had thought down through the years now. We’re stuck in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. But, anyway, it was all leading up to this. The woods. The town. The religious battles between the Oo’dites, the Cheeseheads, and now, most likely, the Maxers who can’t be x-ed out. Ragdoll would soon turn 13. Old enough to know the truth. She will be initiated into the fold.
This is what Pot-D was about now: The woods. The town. And, of course, The Diagonal itself. Indigo will hide in the 125/125 tree tomorrow until the sun comes up. And she must remember to take Karl’s book with her for study and entertainment. Tinbaby, hrmph!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0408, Church of Ood, Fries with Cheese, Rubi
external/internal
Facing threats to the south (Cult of Oo’d)…
… the east (Fal Mouth Moon)…
… the north (Stairs)…
… Sister Martha Lamb retreats into her fortress of cheese to worship the gateway gods. She chooses liquor tonight just to switch it up…
… but when fellow devotee Jack Richardson starts to sneeze and sniff beside her, she changes back to the standard fries on the opposite side of the prayer room.
Good ol’ fries. Never lets her down. Now if she could only stop stealing glances at Baker B.’s degenerate collages in the Fal Mouth Moon across the street and focus on the Great Cheese. That hand, that hand…
One worry: she’ll start to develop stigmata but of the wrong kind. Tell tale type.
It’s all leading somewhere but she doesn’t know where.
I might.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0406, Church of Ood, Fries with Cheese, Lake District, Rubi, United Kingdom
too soon
Mary usually talked to Ralph (horse) during her after-dark angling sessions at Rubisea, but tonight was different. Indigo, a night owl herself, made an introduction.
—–
Indigo was full of questions about her new home. “Why do you call it the Rubi Sea?” the blue woman asked in her deep, almost masculine voice. And with odd overtones to it.
“Ru-BI-se-A,” Mary pronounced correctly. “It’s just a joke name. It’s a little pool of water but we call it a sea, see? And of course Rubi is the sim it’s in — we’re in. Well, *you’re* in. Say you just moved in night before last?” She looked over at the trailer sitting on the southwest corner of the lot, perched atop the spring that feeds the pool. She was eager to go take a closer look but Indigo seemed to want to keep her distance from it, maybe so as not to wake kinfolk Angus and Ragdoll inside.
” Ru-BI-se-A,” Indigo repeated, and gazed over at the water to her left. “And this *perch*, you say, is the only fish in it. Like the Perch restaurant daddy and sis and I ate at yesterday with the big, human head mounted on the wall — another Perch. And then to add to it we had the perch at Perch.” She pointed left. “From this pool?”
Nah, these little fishes are hardly worth the bait to catch him. The restaurant’s fish are imported from the big fresh water lakes over in the Pond District, I believe. Tethia and Sesea. Maybe Pruni too.”
“Tethia and Sesea and Pruni.” Indigo found that saying names aloud helped her remember them. Or writing them down — but she forgot to bring her notepad and ink pen out tonight. She was going to start taking notes on the position of all the trees of the forest. Her daddy said that’s how she can help best right now in their efforts. Ragdoll will focus on religion, he’ll focus on The Diagonal as a whole, and Indigo will have the woods. She’s started reading Karl’s “Blood Curdling Tells of the Rubi Woods,” a Collagesity classic by now.
“But tell me more about yourself,” Mary then requested. “I know you’re from Obscure just over the hill — beyond The Wall. But were you born there?” Mary was guessing not, judging by her colorful appearance.
“Bennington.” Indigo almost spit the name out. “Don’t want to talk about it,” she added clippingly.
So Mary thought of other things for potential discussion. “How did you get involved in this — Pot-D wasn’t it?”
Indigo reflexively found herself biting her tongue again. She had slipped up near the beginning of their nighttime conversation, so glad she was to talk to another human being besides Angus and Ragdoll. So she decided to erase the faux pas from Mary’s mind. Indigo began toying with the triangular red amulet hanging round her neck, with glints from its silver skeletal hands catching Mary’s eye now and then. “Beautiful, isn’t it. My daddy gave this to me when I turned 13.” Indigo then reached around with both hands and removed the necklace, laying it on the table between them and making sure the triangle faced Mary full on. The fisherwoman was already transfixed by now.
“Pot-D is a secret between you and me Mary. Collagesity will know in time what it means, but for right now you must keep it locked away in your mind. Locket. Locket. Lock-it.”
And just like that the deed was done. Indigo gathered up the necklace and said she had to get back to bed now since the sun was about to come up. Mary picked up her fishing pole and headed back to Darkly Manor, with the last thing she recalled about their conversation being Indigo’s hatred of her home town. Farmington, wasn’t it? Something “-ing”, anyway. Pretty sure.
“Goodbye, um…,” but Mary also couldn’t quite recall the name of the horse she had been friends with going on a year now.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0405, Rubi
new Max related graffiti found in still vacant Stairs Gallery
But who’s Ruby? observing Ragdoll wonders.
Also new: binocular viewer atop Stairs.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0404, Iris, Rubi
The introduction of Pot-D.
“Thank you for waiting, Roger.”
“No problem… The Bill.”
“Bill, please. For now.”
“Well I’ll get straight to it. Since this is the only Fisher Island in Wisconsin (Roger indicates the map still displayed on the media feed of The Table Room), and then the only *Fishers* Island — plural — in the state is on a Hazelhurst topo map — that we’re talking about an exchange: Fisher or Fishers Island for New Island. I am such an exchange, after all, since I’m not Roger Waters but Roger Pine Ridge. And it has worked out all right for me. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are indeed,” affirms Bill. “And we’re glad to have you sitting at our Table. You are *The* Variant, as I might be *The* Bill. Interesting symmetry.”
“Is it?”
“Could be.”
Roger puts a hand to his naturally cracked lips. “Does this Ruby have to affect the change? Can you not do it yourself?”
“As you know, RPR, I am indeed queen of Collagesity, but only because Mabel is so involved in New Island that’s she’s rarely here. Once she returns — all this aberrant energy she feels is dealt with — then she’s back here and a battle shapes up. I need to know what side you’re on. I’d like you to stand with me, obviously. Not that your position at The Table is in doubt, it’s just…”
“So Mabel controls Ruby,” interrupts an engrossed Roger Pine Ridge. “Ruby, the girl of 15, of course, and not Rubi the Woods. No one can control the forest.”
“Not so fast on that, Roger PR, my aberrant friend. We have a plan.”
“We?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0403, New Island, Rubi
It’s official.
Roger Pine Ridge is back in town, and in his old apartment next to SoSo Mall formerly shared with old girlfriend Cyberpaperdoll, who, you might recall, ran off with a younger, hipper dude named Bandit Boy during his stint in Iris in the heart of the Heterocera continent. Roger says he’s tired of toying around, as he put it, with our user Baker B. up in the real world, and was itching to get back to playing a “less pressurized, less constrained” part in the still evolving “Collagesity mythos” — again his words. Here he poses with the cutout of another, directly related Roger at the town’s Blue Feather Club: Roger “Syd” Barrett, his fellow bandmember during the early days of psychedelic mega-group Pink Floyd and its original driving force. The mantle of band leader passed from Roger (Syd) to Roger (Roger) in early ’68, as Syd’s mind gradually turned to mush. But you see his fingerprints all over later (and more commercially successful) Floyd in such albums as “Wish You Were Here”, “The Wall,” and, of course, the masterpiece of them all, 1973’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, whose main theme is elements of the world (constraints of “Time”, pressures of “Money”, etc.) that lead one to go mad (“Brain Damage”).
Roger Pine Ridge had his way paid out of the Iris “swamp village” by newly crowned continental queen Bill — The Bill. He chose to enter the real world first, but now leaves behind the old, old disagreement of Missouri vs. Arkansas as the heart of our US of A to focus on “virtual frivolities”.
Again, his phrasings. Welcome back Roger!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0402, Rubi
more effigies
Once again disguised as a girl of relatively ordinary height, Bettie/Tonshi Ashokan entered Collagesity from the west at sunset and spotted something different about this statue in front of the Town Diner, a 2d copy of Rodin’s “The Thinker”.
It was moving back and forth — barely perceptible but still obviously present. And the vibrating would both slow and increase in radius in the coming weeks until a climactic point is reached. Think about that, attached giant rock and spoon.
—–
“Ahh, my love! I thought I’d greet you by Pitch’s new statue so you’d know the way. Right across this bridge, light of my life.”
“Thanks. Back at you, Buster my sweets!” She changed to match him one-to-one before they crossed the wood plank bridge to their new home.
“Over here dear. It’s this smaller house.”
“Oh.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0308, Rubi
2 weeks earlier…
“Tell me what to do, Max. Give me guidance.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0307, Iris
The Max
Ragdoll was the first person to point out that if you stand atop the Stairs Gallery (still vacant as of this writing) and increase your draw distance to just over 300 meters, the almost totally white Max Statue will appear to the northeast. It then became sort of a fad to have impromptu parties there on Friday nights to celebrate the mysterious, 20 meter high deity perched atop the Second Lyfe Railroad in that direction. But Sister Martha Lamb quickly snuffed out any chance for the get-togethers to develop into yet another rival religion in town to her own. She declared it idol worshiping, and threatened to write the Lindens (rulers of our world) to have the statue torn down. The threat worked: either avatars moved over to Ragdoll’s old trailer park to continue worship (these numbered three: 30something couple Richard and Linda Abingdon, along with octogenarian Steve Barker), or people stayed in Collagesity and conveniently forgot all about it, including Ragdoll. After all, by this time she had a new boyfriend named Jerry Richardson to deal with, an older man himself and well into his 50s when they shared their first bowl of Bumpy’s ice cream purchased from the new Bodega Marketplace dessert bar. Yeah, Collagesity is doing just fine these days, and another religion may have muddied the spiritual waters too much. But Max remains there for all to see from Stairs, and — if you increase your draw distance to the, um, *max* (512 meters) — from about anywhere in town within eye shot actually. Long Live Max!
The eyes of Max.
Max: Second Lyfe RR in front; Great Wall in back.
Max above Angus Nuffin’s Blue Star Truck Stop.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0306, Fries with Cheese, Iris, Rubi
Sunklands 