There’s a boat out there she came in on but I couldn’t see it from this angle. Blocked by the east end of the Harbour Master Building. I thought this queer. Why couldn’t I know?
And which of me is which?
Someone steps out of the Breakfast Aisle Shuttle in front of it.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0409, Blue Feather Sea^, C2077, Maebaleia/Satori
“Don’t forget about Lichen’s 4 Stomach Tour,” I tried to ground Fern.
“Of course not. But back to immediate business. Black Wall.” Then she forgot. Again.
“Right, right.” I shook my head internally while nodding on the outside. Fern didn’t pick up on my doubts, which was a little disconcerting itself. Lack of recognition. Brilliant in so many other ways. But not irony — comedy in another form. I knew we were entering dangerous territory.
She drew more diagrams in the notebook before her, a gray Mead 5 star spiral with 22 holes and approx. 5×7 inch design. “Pre-1906,” she said, still looking down in a pause between scribbles. “Probably around 1893 or maybe even dating back to 1886, hmm. Anyway (she shook her head), we’ll see soon enough. So the Black, the White, the Green will all be in their proper place and not all mixed up during this period. She punctuated the page before her at the appropriate spots, apparently some kind of crude map as I understood now. “Auburn was still Slaughter with its Slaughterhouse Hotel, or close enough, before the scaredypants changed the name.” She scribbles some stuff on top of what I took now as Auburn on the map, near the old conjunction of the Green and White rivers as I knew from previous discussions. “Everything was right. We can even go there, you know — this Slaughterhouse.” She circles Auburn which she’s changed to Slaughter, with a little cartoon house with teeth drawn atop of it to reinforce the link. “Thanks to the magic of Our Second Lyfe. There we’ll meet Middle. Are you grasping this yet?”
“This… has already happened?” I guessed, thinking of the snake, the tail.
“The Wheel is the middle of the Tarot, or at least the end of it (The Wheel, not the Tarot). 10… you met Tin at another hotel which is perhaps the same hotel — motel — in Room 10. You have arrived.”
“*You* have arrived,” I said. “What happened next?”
“I… drew my gun and opened the door”
“Yes?”
“She turned.”
“Right.”
“Then… black out. Loss of power. But I recognized her. Tin for sure.”
“Ten,” I said. “The Wheel.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s where Lincoln starts his latest Brain Daze. Not 5 days ago. We’re looking right at it in the beginning. Sunset Motel in the Badlands again. Then he goes and hops on his motorcycle and heads back into town from whence he came, or at least the Rancho Coronado suburb. Leaves it at another service station there after walking around a while, finding stuff, interacting with people.” I end my quick review of the BD, wait for Fern to chip in. But she wasn’t there any longer. Where’d she go?
—–
“Are you Lincoln?” she said at the start, knowing it was truth.
“Yes? How’d–”
“You’re heading the wrong way. You need to go further into the desert.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0407, Badlands, Blue Feather Sea^, C2077, Kabusie, Maebaleia/Satori
—–
“Thank you for meeting with me [delete name].”
“Did I have any choice?”
“Not really,” Jer Left Horn answered. “Now about my brother.”
—–
“What did my brother tell you?” Benny Right Horn asked right off the bat.
“That you’re a liar and don’t trust anything you have to say. You’re a Democrat. That’s what he called you.”
“Well he’s a Republican,” the right horned one of the brothers responded. “They lie even more. They lie *all* the time, not just some of it.”
“He said… that only one can continue. The other must end. What does he mean?”
Benny pondered this for a second. “That only one of us is the true Horn. Where the message came through. Problem is, no one knows which is which. Tipping point,” he ended his point.
Breakfast Aisle
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0405, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori
Well, she thinks. I believe I’ve waited long enough. Sticky Rose name problem solved, there’s no excuses left. Time to go into the hole. Just a short gondola ride away via that cable line over there.
—–
Soon she was in the gift shop, not very grossed out atall so far. She, like many others before her, found the fleshy environment, let’s say, kinda comforting actually. Like crawling back into the womb or sumtin. And there’s that hum, like an abstracted, dumbed down lullaby. Some find it unsettling. Not her. She’s one of the gifted ones; one of the people that could succeed down here (the pit thinks for her). She purchases a small yet expensive book about one of its many “grotesque,” flesh dependent creatures and moves on.
At the end of the 4th and last corridor to this entry level: dead end, with ominous tones beyond even for her, the gifted and perhaps the damned if she proceeds. Dare she jump over the barrier and experience the flesh directly beneath her feet, squish squish squish? Tempting… tempting!
Then she thinks of the deaths, and wonders why they don’t get that much publicity beyond scattered reports here and there in the media, seeming to almost treat them like jokes when they do pop up. The cover-up must go way up, she realizes, all the way to the president perhaps, a man soon to be named G. Cleveland if things go terribly wrong and time loops back on itself, mirroring what happened in the late 1800s. Best to stay down here until it all blows over, she decides. If she jumps over this barricade, maybe she can find a safe place to hide deeper down in the pit.
And this, of course, is where everything (first?) goes terribly wrong. For Rose Emily.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0404, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
“No you don’t understand,” she said calmly but firmly after the proposition. “I’m through with you now. You can go back home… the North Pole or whatever. Some circle of ice. I have someone else to meet. And a name change involved — tricky business. So… shoo.”
He shoos. RosE T. takes his place across from her.
She tried to be inconspicuous when listening in, but *this* Rose was indeed curious how the discussion would go. She already had a twin next door with the same name. They bickered all the time about who to call what. A 3rd would *definitely* not do. Tin knows this, she understood. Tin will set her straight. If she wants to stay. Because otherwise… blood may be on her hands.
He walked into the next establishment over, determined to succeed with his proposition. “Buy a pretty lady a drink?” he said to the tender. Rose, he observed. Name seems so familiar, *she* seems so familiar. But of course, he realized, recalling the twin not 50 feet away. This is the sticky name change situation Tin mentioned. I understand now why she didn’t have time for me. Potential blood on her hands. Pretty Roses always come with pricking thorns.
“Yeah, not going to happen,” said Rose T. firmly but calmly back. *Now* what? Tin thought.
Then, knowing this particular Rose got her name from a Zombies album, she figured out another angle of attack.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0402, Blue Feather Sea^, C2077, Maebaleia/Satori
When they reached the top of Birdtail and looked over, a surprise awaited them, like a field manifesting between the two matching, pencil shaped (ached nipples?) projectiles sticking up there, except in the distance. It shouldn’t. The cursed thing known as The Flesh Pit, mystery no more, would follow them wherever they went now — since they were a part of it, *inside* it, actually. To the edges of the Earth and beyond.
Then they found it back down on the plateau over an edge as well, reinforcing the insidedness. More projection.
Back in *our* reality (Our Second Lyfe):
“Damn thing wasn’t pushing through here yesterday!” Leroy Jackson Jones Johnson reported back to A. Pond over the incessant, evil humming. Uncle Barnacles’ replacement. A fellow Northerner ready to be replaced himself. ‘Bout time for A. to finally head down south to the “Slums” to pick up some new recruits, fresh meat matching fresh meat.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0314, Maebaleia/Satori, Montana, X-City^
“Oh Lichen. Why did you have to take me so far?”
By the time they climbed up to the higher plateau all the snow had melted from the night before. And Lichen had turned into A. Pond the true traveling companion as Fern was now Dr. Kelp.
“F-ck Dr. Kelp and her two timing ways,” wrote Rose T. in her journal that night, paraphrasing something similar from the morning entry. Two a day until she catches up, she’s determined. Catastrophe set her back.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0313, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori, Montana
“Montana!
“And 4 buttes.”
“Lemme see!” “Lemme see!” “Lemme see!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0312, Althyria, collages 2d, Maebaleia/Satori, Montana, X-City^
Sunklands 