Drew “Grumpy” Cleveland had an idea how to lure the right Mouse over. “Corndogs!” he called while still protecting his valuable package behind the counter. “Corndogs for the pick’n!” Had Mick been successful with the operation? He might soon find out.
—–
“2 please.”
A flower?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0406, Marwood, NWES Island
Pirates, pheh. I wonder if I stand here long enough they’ll come back over here and dance for me.
But I haven’t got time for this tonight (he turns). I must find Norm, try to talk to him again about Fairview Alpha, about that 7610 tattooed to his forehead. About… Static. Snow, perhaps, like in a tv screen. That corner… Jeffrey Phillips looks over to the (northeast) corner of the lot and the 2 prominent, red V’s over there. He can barely make them out from this distance.
Better head closer; Norm should be around too — he always is, along with the rest of the regulars.
—-
But most of the bots appeared to be gone tonight from the fake town. Jeffrey Phillips leans against the kissing booth and asked Elsa, the lone remaining one over here perhaps, where the others went and if she was still mad at him for that Tennessee thing he tried to pull the other day (she was).
“Only us ‘E Girls’ remain,” she said after a spell and a pout.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0313, Marwood, NWES Island
Disguised as a woman, I went over to Marwood to chat with Jimbo/O’Jimbo a bit before the Big Trip about what might or could happen. Intrepid Rock came up early (and often), followed by Fisher’s Island. “Gap between,” spoke the former but also, impossibly, present agent of Pot-D and/or Pan-Z, given his death over a year ago in the Global Fire. “FRY is there” — he later said the word was all caps. “FRY is REALITY” — he said to spell reality out in caps as well when making this here blog post about our talk, because he knew that would happen too. I wondered about the connection between Fry and Fire, as in, “out of the frying pan and into the fire.” Had he escaped the fire through FRY, somehow? Did that make any sense?
I didn’t even have a name for the woman avatar I wore like a velvet glove on the golden robot’s hands we sat upon, and Jimbo/O’Jimbo didn’t ask. He wasn’t interested in a pickup line. He was doing something rather unspeakable to this big robot just before, so maybe he’s more into machines than people these days. But not old O’Jimbo in his pre-Jimbo, pre-death days. When I arrived several minutes before that, he was bouncing on a nearby trampoline while Drunk Dude stumbled and bumbled around down below. Sometimes the former was way up in the air while the latter lie crumpled on the ground. Frying pan and fire came to mind once more.
Suddenly Drunk Dude was up in the hand that Jimbo/O’Jimbo perched upon previously, talking about frying too close to fire. I knew where I had to go next.
I went over and talked to Elsa before I left about who was the best kisser she met this week. Tennessee came up; I *did* make an impression!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0204, Jeogeot, Marwood, NWES Island
Later (or was it earlier?) he was looking at a portrait in one of the city galleries and recognized what he thought were the models. “Wheeler,” he muttered aloud, seeing the Triune that would always rule him. If he didn’t have Collagesity. He *must* hold onto Collagesity. He’ll get the crime spree under control. April Mae Flowers, yes, accomplished the actual homicides, he tried to assure himself. Didn’t work. He knew there were at least 5 active criminals in town (because of the fingerprince), despite only 3 registered residents so far. Danny, who tried to kill *him*, was, true, cleaning out his trailer, getting ready for banishment to… somewhere, Jeffrie Phillips hadn’t decided. Some place that has a lot of broken bathrooms, he he he. Or maybe where they all *worked*, ha ha ha, so he won’t have anything to do. Yes, Hell can be a place of complete, utter boredom too, he realized in the moment. So can Heaven — Heaven and Hell both… which means probably neither exists.
He must think of religion more. There are currently at least 3 active churches in town, or will be — they’re *built* is what I mean. Rezzed. There’s, obviously, the Temple of TILE, and Man About Town — MAT — certainly hasn’t given up on reactivating the old Collagesity ruling deity Carrcassonnee still up on the 3rd floor there, especially since (her replacement) Wheeler seems to be out of the picture. But all he can get out of her still is, “Iiiiiiiiii,” which may mean an uncompleted sentence about herself or maybe the “eye” that dominates her appearance. The eye is broke, he remembers — MAT told him that. That’s the 7th beyond the “unconscious” 6 prims of the body. That is the paradox of the 7 and the 6, the Sepisexton Enigma he termed it at another time. Wacky ol’ MAT, Jeffrie thinks. He’ll always be between one thing or another because of his non-fixed, variable nature. And he’ll probably never get Carrcassonnee to utter anything again except that one word, that one letter perhaps.
He looks again at the picture in the gallery and out of his thoughts. He decides (this must be later, then) that he’ll talk Charlene the Punk out of coming to Collagesity, if she hasn’t already decided herself. She has her business here, and can serve omelettes and other breakfast items in an untimely fashion. No doubt the local residents are use to such lags — heck, they may not even think about them much anymore. Like a fish living in water.
What he could even do is drop mention of Bad Kitten/Zado, Elsa, Darlene, and probably another one or two or three he isn’t thinking about. That’ll keep her here, he assumes. But he can always visit. Often. As often as all the others will allow.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0117, Neptune, NWES Island, Temple of TILE
“Well it certainly sounds like a dangerous place. I’m not sure I want to move there now, despite the advantages.”
“I mean, look at your wine. It’s still gray,” Jeffrie Phillips pointed out. “Sooo laggy.” He looks around, as if he can see the whole, huge city from his vantage point. NWES City, which once, not very long ago, almost decided to become a town and let its several suburbs handle all the city problems. Not any longer. But… what if.
Charlene takes a sip of gray wine, which tastes perfectly fine despite the color. She looks again: red now. But it took a while. And it also took a while, albeit a shorter time, for her shirt to rezz in. She thinks of, for example, omelettes. It would probably take half the time to cook them in Collagesity if she decides to move there. But what is the night life? As Jeffrie Phillips is describing it to her: none. Except for crime — maybe the criminals are just *bored*. She says this aloud to Phillips.
“We think it was just one person committing the actual homicides if that helps, one April Mae Flowers, a widow. She has a history of crime in the town — notice I use town there, not village, but not city.” He was trying to paint a contrast between Collagesity and NWES City for Charlene to help lure her back.
“How big again?” she queries about the size of the town.
“8192, with room to grow. Approximately 500 prims worth of room. That’s a lot of omelettes.”
Charlene was wondering how Jeffrie Phillips knew she was thinking about omelettes earlier but then dismissed the mind reading possibility. But was he? She knew they were separate cores, so no symbiosis there for psychic sharing. He was, at the core, Baker Bloch. She: Wheeler Wilson. Baker Blinker, Karoz Blogger, Hucka Doobie, and most of the others seemed to have faded away in the distance. It was only us two left, she thought. She says this out loud to Jeffrie Phillips.
“Then we should be king and queen of Collagesity. I know you are Fern Stalin in the future.”
“In the *past*,” Charlene the Punk counters about the time relativity.
“See there? We’re a great balance. You look at something one way, I another. We are Janus headed, looking in both the past and future directions. Can’t you see?” He manifests a glass of gray wine in his own hand and adjusts his position appropriately. “Fate.” He takes a sip, the sip of victory. He reaches the wine glass out to clink with her own. Dare she?
She could have asked about veracity advantaged Bad Kitten/Zado, she could have asked about Elsie at the kissing booth and nimble Darlene down at the bay and “Hot Shot” Cloris over in the Rat Village bar and grill. Had she known about them.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0116, Black Ice, NWES Island
She told me to shut the door if I was going to make those kind of rude noises. I hadn’t realized anyone else was here; concluded all of these so-called people were actually bots — unreal avatars. Filler. But she spoke to me while I smoked on the toilet. I was trying to purge myself of Tennessee so I could get back to Elsie outside but here was something different, a real “flesh and blood” type who I might talk to and get actual information from about what was going on in town. Like the old days; pre-bots. The bots, true, saw everything, but they were programmed to move certain places, complete certain gestures. Unless this was a really advanced model from, say, Ohio, there was no way she could speak to me like that. She could hear my noises, she could tell I hadn’t shut the door. I had to go find out who this lady of the darkness was. Maybe my head could override my hips for a change.
I suddenly recognized her while she continued to eat. “Oh. You’re that Oz lady, the one with the puppets. I saw one of your shows.” I saw the *beginning* of one of your shows, he thinks, until distracted by baubles as usual. Not Elsie in that case but another. I think her name was Gertrude.
“What do you know… of Oz? What does *anybody* know of Oz?” She slurped her noodles again, another type of rude noise. Tit for tat. Definitely not a bot.
Then the drunk outside joined us and things got really interesting.
Soon we had quite the crowd and I lit another fag, taking it all in. Chatting! Actual chatting. About Seven. Turns out Bimbo, formerly O’Bimbo, and Jimbo, formerly O’Jimbo were brother and sister, some say twins. Some say: one and the same.
I crouch down like a monkey and wait for the rabbit.
Suddenly I was back at war, like in childhood. “Hold your fire!” she called over.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0115, Marwood, NWES Island, Wallytown/Fishers Island
Jimbo, formerly O’Jimbo, was a Pan-Z or at least Pot-D contact in town but he ran away from me when I started quizzing him about Seven. Interesting — maybe he’s just scared of the still rampant virus going on around Our First and Second Lyves, even though I turned my head while talking and made sure I sneezed into my elbow that one time.
Last I saw of him he was riding a pegasus. I stopped following…
Later on, I remembered that he had been dead for at least a year, no fear of virus needed.
—–
I stopped again when I saw static being displayed in a store front. I got so excited my head started vibrating a bit. A change was happening.
It was all quite red and V-shaped over here in this corner of the parcel. I decided to sit for a spell on a small turf of Linden terrain poking up through the pavement to regain my bearings. The static had thrown me off. Must be a Kentucky model.
Across the way, a drunk was stumbling while a raccoon closed his or her eyes. Neither had mail to post.
Ahh, the virus itself. I could kick it like a football clean outta here, all the way to the coast, the ocean. But I decided to save my strength for something else I spied in the distance.
Ahh, Elsie. Where have you been my whole life?
But then I got slapped when I used too much Tennessee.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0114, Marwood, NWES Island
“I will withdraw the monkey in me,” she said while standing on the edge. “Crime rates *will* go down in this here Collagesity, 25 in a series of 1.” Who is she to be so small yet so wise?
—–
I still have a definite presence in NWES City over on the Jeogeot continent, just diminished. We’ll see how that develops.
“Dear, can we go to the temple… now?”
“Not yet. I’m still trying on shoes.”
“Lordy, *pheh*.”
—–
Ray’s well deserved pizza should be arriving any minute. He’s forgotten who he is again.
—–
And static. Glorious static.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0113, Black Ice, Collagesity Fordham-, Jeogeot, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NWES Island
Charlene Brown the Punk and Jeffrie Phillips sit in the car again in the center of Harbourtown, the twin city of NWES. “Rose Heaven seems to have closed up for us, dearest,” she spoke to him. “Gaston too.”
“Don’t go there?” asked Jeffrie Phillips again, to which she responded in the negative. “Too many ghosts,” she added, looking over at the Happy Travels Travel Agency, Harbourtown Branch, with its 3 featured portals.
“Karma,” he elaborated, or perhaps just added onto what Charlene said.
“We still have Guy. In the temple over there. Shall we go worship?”
“Sure.”
—–
Where a door closes a hole opens. Guy had protected one he knew was important, thus preserving the past as well. The past to the future. UNEXPLAINED ANOMALY.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0610, Gaston+, Harbourtown, Jeogeot, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City
He was a blank, ready to be written upon. Some called him Jonny already. He stared out past the Bellisaria Blues Bar toward the sea, the houseboats. He was looking for a… kite? His mind went blank again. He was a blank. Jonny he was called by some. He stares past the blues bar toward the sea, the sky, the… what was it? A ship. A boat or maybe… space?
I decided it should be a 200 meter long tether of red, knotted up like a rock hard ball of yarn left of center. This is the Jonny part.
—–
Alice Farrowheart was inconsolable. My poor poor Toddles, she lamented to anyone around at the time, the police for now.
“There there, now now,” the squad all attempted to calm. “Toddles is still in town. The tracker implanted in her neck like everyone’s neck tells us so (!).”
“But *where*?” she exclaims back.
“The tracker says Apple’s Orchard. Wait.” Officer Robert Petrie Dish checked Master Radar again. “Heading to Neptune now… yes, she’s in Neptune. She’s… making a turn left. Looks like she’s going to Black Ice.”
“You’ve checked *everywhere*. She’s *physically* NOT in the city!” Alice Farrowheart couldn’t help herself. She had to yell to get the feelings out. Where — was — TODDLES??
The officers and gentlemen around her knew there was one other place she could be hiding but were too scared to raise the possibility. They knew Collagesity was more or less fully integrated into NWES City — and Collagesity contained collages and now NWES City does too. Precious precocious child Toodles could have gone to the Inside World, perhaps, gasp (they collectively did when they thought of this), Picturetown? Inside the pictures that were collages? The squad thinks again about how unwise it was for town to decide to stay “city” and live with all the other lesser and inferior cities intruding in and around it, like unwanted pregnancies and resulting ragamuffin children. They should have been cast off with the name. Now look what happens. Actual children disappearing. She could be anywhere now, even — gasp (again) — Canada.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0608, Apple's Orchard, Bellisaria, Black Ice, Bogota, Canada, Canada/Picturetown, collages 2d, Four Corners, Marwood, Neptune, Northern Hills, NWES Island, Picturetown
Sunklands 