“Hmm, some kind of randomly lit alcove wall Buster. Stop playing in the leaves!”
The tea house.
Perhaps an ancient map of Olde Lapara Towne, Wheeler thought.
And then…
… the scrapbook again. “Nifty!”
“Buster, get your dead ass in here!!”
Category Archives: Heterocera
Leaving Behind
Olde Lapara Towne below him lay just beyond his draw distance from this perch. He was admittedly glad of the pause. “What to do with this place?” Baker mumbled to himself. He asked Hucka Doobie to join him here on the High Mountain Road (aka Route 6) for a thinking session. But Hucka im-ed back, saying he was currently tied up helping an old friend prepare for a bar mitzvah over in East Farmington. Shucks. Baker Blinker and Karoz Blogger remained out of communication, having returned to Chilbo just after Mary’s launch into one of the distant corners of space (aka Muff-Bermingham). Wheeler Wilson was part of the current story, so that probably wouldn’t work. Heck, let’s just bring her up here, along with new bestest pal Buster Damm, he then thought. Let’s get them at least to that house just down the hill and see what happens.
—–
Summoned, Wheeler decided on a lark to teleport into the exact center of the Lapara sim to see what was there. A fence barred her from the house Baker Bloch just referenced. She took it as a sign that there would be no meeting between core Baker family members tonight. So on to her and Buster’s continuing adventures…
—–
Having managed to break away from the throng of protesters, thanks to the distraction of a huge popping noise in the southeast part of town (the aforementioned mushroom shaped explosion, quickly sucked in on itself due to the heroic action of All Nancy’s), Wheeler and Buster made their way across the tracks of the SLRR to the town’s northern suburbs. First up on their visiting list…
… was the Lapara TEA house owned by the real Clare Nova, a must see attraction for them.
They walked through a small but beautiful woods to get to the main structure of the compound. As we already knew from her PCH Forest featured in “Collagesity 2017 Early”, the real Clare is a landscape designer of note.
In the center of the woods, Buster became afraid because of what he perceived to be flying fish, perhaps piranhas, but which turned out to be just falling leaves.
Reaching the main gate of the house alone, Wheeler turned around. “Come on Buster! Stop playing in those leaves!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0201, Heterocera, Lapara
Abode
“Oh look Bettie. There’s Rocky. The guy who wrote the book.”
“But not the play,” added Bettie.
“Hi Rocky!” Nancy waves.
“It just appeared out of thin air,” he chanted to them from his stump seat. He kept looking up all googly eyed at the house, a smile upon his face as broad as Clownski Avenue. “Not 6 feet in front of me. I always wanted a house. God has rewarded my grand accomplishment.”
Nancy turned to Bettie, who just shrugged. “He’s the one who’s responsible for us being here,” she said. “Maybe he’s right.”
Bettie sighed. “Okay, we’ll remain in the hotel together. But I want you home at quarter past 8 at the latest tonight.”
Rocky saved the day yet again. As soon as the shock wore off, he was packing up his stuff in the hotel’s crawlspace. Rocky would go on to write many more novels after “Bible Truth” while based in the mushroom house, some better some worse. But none that came close to being as controversial. Or as cursed. Rocky’s path was set from this point on. Trajectory.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0119, Heterocera, Lapara
repeatoverse
“Isn’t it adorable Nancy? Why keep renting at that expensive hotel when we — I mean I — can have a place of my own. Want to take a look inside?”
“Maybe later Bettie,” replies Nancy. “I have a date!”
“With whom?” Bettie could hardly conceal the venom.
“Danny, that’s who. Daniel. The guy in the play.”
“I know who Danny is. What do you expect to happen?”
“I don’t know,” states a puzzled Nancy, wondering about Bettie’s concern. “The usual. Dinner, dancing, maybe a couple of drinks mixed in. Then…”
“Then *what*?”
“I don’t know. He’s *cute.*” Nancy smiles and tries to nudge Bettie in the ribs. Bettie skillfully avoids the jab.
“This is not good. Remember the curse attached to that book, that play? You must always keep that foremost in your mind. The play’s the thing. Any extracurricular activity connected with it could spell trouble. Look at the protesters. This towne is like a ticking bomb.”
“Ridiculous,” responds Nancy. “It’s just a harmless date.”
But Bettie was right. The events of the play were repeating in real life, just reversed or inverted from before. Concealed in a way. The pattern remains, though. Now Bettie doesn’t have a gun but she has other weapons at her disposal. Poison, just like with the joke back at the hotel. Because, deep down in the depths of her soul, she was only half joking anyway.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0118, Heterocera, Lapara
big >little
All it took was a handshake between two beings of reversed electrical charges. Ka-BLOO-Y. There goes the whole southeast quadrant of Olde Lapara Town. Luckily, All Nancy’s from the Grand Lapara Hotel bathroom was on the scene almost instantly, reversing the blast with her powerful reversing powers.
In the end, all that out-of-control fission energy was just reduced and condensed into a small, mushroom shaped house thanks to our local ghostly entity. Little Tonshi Ashokan steps out the front door, wondering about her atomic dream. Was it a dream? Seems so.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0117, Heterocera, Lapara
The long and short of it.
He spotted her between 2 groups of silhouetted protesters. She didn’t appear to him like she did to other people, like to her best friend and co-worker Nancy, for instance. He saw her for who she really was. A being as dead as himself. Perhaps moreso.
Breaking off her glare, Bettie turns to Nancy, hidden by a rusty pipe from his angle. “We better get you back inside before things get nasty down here.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0116, Heterocera, Lapara
“Je-sus is real! Vam-pires are myth!”
Wheeler and Buster Damm were walking north through Olde Lapara Towne, aiming to check out the teahouse in that direction owned by the real Clare Nova, when suddenly chanting protesters came around the back corner of the Grand Lapara Hotel, startling them. “Look straight ahead,” Buster urged, gauging the situation. “Don’t make eye contact or you’ll be absorbed.” But they were on a direct collision course. Wheeler and Buster had to pretend to become one with the hive mind.
Super good thing for them that they didn’t know who Buster *really* was.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0115, Heterocera, Lapara
corners
Peter SoSo and Prissy have a *ghost* in their bathroom, Bendy pondered when returning to his rowhouse from the hotel. No, not a ghost, an interdimensional being of some sort. A Nancy that is all Nancy’s. All Nancy’s. What does it mean?
Tronesisia, listening in unseen from the other side of the room, knew the answer.
Sissy not Prissy, she thought over and over. Sissy not Prissy, Sissy not Prissy, Sissy not Prissy…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0114, Heterocera, Lapara
Nancy and Bettie
“Weird how my name is Nancy, and I’m playing a girl named Nancy in the play.”
“Not at all odd,” responds the purple haired Bettie sitting in the opposite seat of their posh Lapara Hotel room — the 145 dollars a week one, not the 100. “Fate, we must call it. Like ‘The Shining’ (movie). Jack Nicholson played Jack from (Stephen King’s) book. Daniel played little Danny. Just like your own Danny. We must think of these things.”
“But why would Nancy shoot Gideon if he’s already caught and jailed? What’s my motivation for playing this obviously psychotic woman?”
“I understand it completely,” Bettie says. “Passion rules over all. Nancy’s love of her life had been robbed. So she robbed the robber of his life in turn.”
“But then her *own* life was robbed by the robber after he became… a vampire? Is that really believable?”
“The story has it that this is true,” replies Bettie. “Why don’t you study the script more and take notes.”
Nancy doesn’t even give a glance at the “Bible Truth” script leaning against the chair arm beside her. “Oh I’ve looked at that again and again. I’ve memorized everything by now. Might as well throw it out of this high window for all it’s worth.”
“Well,” joked Bettie. “As your *understudy*, haha, you could just abdicate the role. Let me take over. I could have poisoned your drink there, let’s say. You know how bad I wanted the part.” She smiled.
“Not a bad idea, Bettie,” Nancy said, absorbing the inside joke. “But I’m Nancy let’s face it. Nancy plays Nancy. And you, as Bettie, will play Bettie, who is the understudy to Nancy in the play as well.”
“In the play within the play.”
“The vampires,” complained Nancy further. “Why are they called vam*pures* in ‘Bible Truth’?”
But Bettie was distracted by the noise outside the window. “Oh Lordy, here we go.” She pointed down. “Evangelicals. Looks like you’re not the only one who doesn’t cater to the idea of mortals rising from the dead.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0113, Heterocera, Lapara
rooms 02
“All right baby doll. Tell me which room is yours.”
There was an awkward pause. “I… I can’t remember!”
Prissy’s reality was then chosen for her. Peter SoSo opened the door to the right. “Dear, is that… you?”
“Oh. Hello… Bendy. It’s, um, been… a while.”
“It’s been a girlfriend and a lifetime ago,” the robot replied tensely.
He looked for a sign from his wife. “Invite him in Peter,” she said. “We need to talk about things.”
“Well, yeah, er… I suppose we do need… to… do that.”
“A *lifetime*,” Bendy reinforced to Peter’s face while walking through the open door.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0112, Heterocera, Lapara
Sunklands 