Category Archives: Collagesity Fordham

skybox 03

Sometimes — just to mix it up again — Mr. Babyface and his nephew Peter dine in the old, abandoned spaceship. Today the topic of discussion is the Peopleeater of their new hometown directly below (skybox 02) and his hatred of its stick people residents. Assisted by Big Baby Jane, he’s declared war on them in essence.

“He hides out in that purple building in the smallest block of town, which *isn’t* purple when he’s out and about.”

“Must be the same as the building, then,” speculates Mr. Babyface alongside his nephew, hearing their voices echo in the big empty chamber, a full half of a sim from front to back. Big enough to carry a town the size of Collagesity to a new location if needed. If it were finished. Perhaps it is: maybe it’s just suppose to be an empty hull until utilized.

“Heidi’s gone again,” Mr. Babyface then ventured. “Said something about the North. She said she’s sorry she didn’t make your rant rave.”

“‘Tis okay. *You* were there. You are the important one.”

Mr. Babyface stopped eating, took in his nephew seated across from him. Subtract the freakish babyface, a medical condition, and he’s kind of the spitting image of himself at that age, down to the Hawaiian trunks and sunburned skin. Always in the sun he was. “You’ll turn into a prune or raisin you’re sitting out there in that sunlounge so much!” he recalls his Mom yelling at him from the window of her cool, dark kitchen. He can’t imagine how it was at his birth with that big, fat head of his. She complained about it not at all all the time. “You’ll never imagine,” she described the pain in no uncertain terms.

Peter was different, thank the Gods. Escaped the head gigantism that cursed himself, his father before him, and his father and so on — a male trait of the family. “Maybe it ends with me,” he remembers telling his Mom after Peter popped out with an ordinary nogg’n, easy as pie. You don’t know how relieved Marsha (sister) was at the time; she’d taken enough drugs in preparation for the birth to paralyze a small elephant. But here he was: Mr. Ordinary. Not Mr. Babyface or any other nickname that would stick with him through time. Just plain Peter. Peter Ladd. He continued with the Heidi discussion.

“Where’s (*bite*)… her partner?”

A good question indeed. Skybox 02 was created as a tribute to the golden hued, mechanical dominatrix but he never learned her name — Heidi, I mean, Billie never spoke it, saying it needed to be kept a secret. “Just keep calling her Golden One,” she requested. “Or Goldie — whatever — just something with Gold in it.”

Some say she’s the same as the big golden robot statue in the center of the town itself, ready to spring into action when needed. Perhaps her presence will spell the end of the Peopleeater-People War, or at least before it switches from blue (not very serious atall) to red (quite serious and worth looking into for solutions).

“Dunno,” he remembers to answer. “Maybe — you should make it part of your act. The not knowing anything much about her.”

“Tie it into the statue.”

“Exactly.” They were on parallel frequencies for sure. If only he could get the comedy.

(to be continued)

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rant rave

—–

Afterwards:

“No, it was really great, Peter.” Blue Pennant this time. Billie had run to the grocery store before departing for northern Nautilus and picked up a can. 9 big puffs later and the flavor hadn’t lost its zing. Not yet. “But what’s all this stuff about red being serious and blue being comedy?”

“It’s *all* comedy, Uncle. Red vs. Blue is suppose to be funny.”

“I don’t get it. Maybe I’m too *red*, hmmm.” Suddenly the Blue Pennant wasn’t as satisfying. A couple more inhales and he’s done.

—–

“Mind the dead stick figures on your way out!” Peter called in parting.

“I will!”

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skybox 02

Mr. Babyface loads his pipe down with Red Dragon.

As he then happily puffs away he continues talking to the Kidd.

“I’m glad you brought me back, Heidi.”

“Billie here. In this location in this novel.”

“Okay, Billie, sure. But I promise I’ll take care of the city while you’re away on your journeys.”

“Big Baby will help you. She can patrol the streets; keep the various citizens and denizens at bay and under control. Along with the Peopleeater.”

“Cool.” More puffs. So satisfying. “Listen, are you going to stick around to hear my nephew rant and rave on his soap box over at the Arena tonight? He’ll be accompanied by the interpretive dance group Suds and Bubbles. In fact, I see they’re already warming up over there.

“Sure I will.” But Billie Jean Kidd knew she had another date and couldn’t make it. No need to let him down right now, though; dampen his enthusiasm for the new town and ruin his enjoyable pipe smoking. Next time she’ll buy him Blue Pennant. Billie then thinks Mr. Babyface is kind of like a cat: keep feeding him (tobacco) and he’ll always return. But you must mix it up because, also like cats, he’s a bit persnickety.

7 more puffs and Mr. Babyface is done, already tired of the flavor. Billie Jean Kidd ends up smoking the rest of the bowl herself; no need for waste.

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squeegeed

“Using the tip from Sally, we followed the car all the way to the entrance of the park but could go no further. *Fifes* Grove Park, like in Barney Fife.”

“Like in Barney *Rubles*,” emphasized Man About Time, fascinated with the new information. He hardly ever emphasized anything in his speech, so mild manner and calm and cool and collected he is. But this seemed different. They had found a way… inside.”

“I thought you might want to know, being second in command of this here chilly town in the mountains.”

“So beige,” said MAT almost religiously. But he understood. “In case something happens to me,” is the unspoken sentiment.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0212, Collagesity Fordham, Iowa, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Upper Austra^

Hollywood

They were all dead now, these “monsters”. All except herself. She stared at the empty space that should have held her own picture, thinking back to the time they first discovered her superpower. She was called the ugly duckling, the unpretty one who instead seemed to be cut from the cloth of the ordinaries all around them, the mundane, the *muggles* to borrow a phrase from another supernatural mythology. Must have been blinded Uncle Sam on a town bender, they figured. But as they aged, she didn’t. They then traced the genes back to Great Great Great Aunt Selma on the father’s side, who was from a long line of immortals. Then they traced the whereabouts of Selma herself, living under a new guise in Cheeseburger, Wisconsin down near the city dump or city hall take your pick. “Of course she has powers,” Selma replied in a middle-aged voice about Sally’s seeming normalcy, at least judged by the outer world that we, us non-monsters, live in. “Why would she be staying with you otherwise, humm? Uncle Sam has nothing to do with this; she’s actually the oldest of all of us.” She addressed each of her visitors individually: “Great great grandson, great great great niece and nephew(-in-law), great great great *great* grandson. Meet your ancestor with a family name so long that it would take the rest of the day to pronounce. I’d suggest you just keep calling her Sally, then, but respect the hell out of her from now on and look to her for sage advice instead of just ridiculing her looks.”

Even Selma is dead now, since the great majority of so called immortals are actually quite mortal and only live to be a couple of hundred years old at the most. Sally is a little different, since both her mother and father were pure bred. But one day, still a long way down the road, it will catch up with her.

She had to say goodbye to each one, watching them fall like dominoes in time’s passage.

—–

Jeffrie’s note came under the door. Without opening it, Sally remembers how she was slipped under the door, as it were, of her own great x 2,375 niece and nephew(-in-law)’s gothic Mockingbird Lane abode by parents long in hiding themselves. Marge and General Johnston I think they’re calling each other these days. She’ll have to look them up sometime. “Uncle Sam’s kid, yeah,” she presented herself at the threshold, luggage just behind. Stooping down in the present, she picked up the note and read.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0211, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Upper Austra^

00270210

Spying from a safe distance, he watched her enter the library on the southern edge of Collagesity and the Fordham sim as a whole. She stayed until about 1/2 past 6, and then exited with no books checked out as far as he could tell. Tim Bean had retired from the library in ’72, about 2 years ago minus a year or three. Right now it was auto-service in there until they could get a new person. She had her pick of the books, then, but she seemed not to want any. Then he remembered *he* had the monster book, found in The Abyss temple atop unique, unicorn-like Fissure Mountain over on the old continent of Sansara. Maybe she came out with nothing because *that’s* the book she was looking for — interesting.

He could slip a note under her door at the Kidd Tower where she was staying, directly beneath the apartment of Man About Time, a kind of vice chancellor to the city and a right hand man to himself as head honcho. He’d made his peace about the resurrection through the marriage to Wendy over in the Urqhart sim or thereabouts. Man About Time would still have to bid his time to become the ruler of this here fair burg.

“Meet me at Perch (restaurant) at half past 7 in the evening after today’s tomorrow,” he decided to word it, with just the right amount of detail, he felt.

In the meantime, he was due to meet with Man About Time anyway concerning the town budget wars so he slipped in a couple of questions about the new gal. Sally was her name, MAT said. Sally Nugent. He gathered she came from a family of monsters, because the pictures he helped tote upstairs for her all had people with green or bloodless white skin, with fangs in their mouths or bolts in their necks.

Bingo.

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Newgal

“It’s moreso now don’t you think?” speaks Jeffrie Phillips to sometimes/always companion Charlene Punk Brown, perhaps the best of all his girls. She puts up with a lot at the very least. “The hair, I mean.” He points to his own hair here between bites of the spinach pizza. “Blue. Whaddaya think?”

Charlene also steals a glance, trying not to be jealous. This *could* be her replacement. Why did she arrive so mysteriously in the middle of the night, as they say, on a plane originally bound for Starfish Sea, or Starfish Lake as some call it? Jeffrey said it landed just outside the town over the sim line in Siliconicus. He said he’d been meaning to put a small landing strip over there if he could only figure out how to position the anchoring prims properly, since it’s not technically his property but instead abandoned land — a lot of that in Siliconicus, which is commonplace in the beige highlands part of the continent. She *is* cute, probably as cute as she is. She’d also look good in that pink babydoll Jeffrey keeps around, she suspected. Maybe she should dye her own hair blue.

“Are (bite) you going to answer me or not, woman?”

“Woman?” Not now she isn’t. “Listen *man*–” but then bit her tongue as Jeffrey hesitated to take another bite, waiting for a lashing, which he knew he probably deserved. Sometimes he slips into old world talk, as his daddy use to say. Poor old Dad: he hadn’t thought about him in a while, nor Ma-ma. They didn’t approve of his playboy ways so he had to leave the family hearth. So long long ago at this point. Seems like a different lifetime.

“I’m sorry,” he ventured, then finished his bite.

“No — me. And in answer to your question it does look a little bluer. Is — she really the woman of your dreams?” She meant *in* your dreams but she let the statement stand, too ashamed to go back and correct it. She flushed a bit, even. He stared at her, trying to figure out how to get past this awkward moment so he could finish his pizza.

—–

He couldn’t stop thinking about her as they lay in bed later, bedposts not put up yet so nowhere to hang his tie and suit. They remained fully clothed. Charlene wasn’t anxious tonight to slip into that babydoll. She was just as worried as Jeffrey was excited. “What do you think she was looking up on the interwebs over there?” he asked his likewise restless partner. “Man About Time said she was a scholar of some kind, but he didn’t know what of.”

“*I’m* a scholar,” muffled Charlene, mouth to pillow. She moved so she could more easily speak to her partner. “Perhaps you got us confused with each other. Let’s try that quiz again.”

“Okay,” he relented, knowing he may or may not pass it.

“Alright, who’s your wife? An easy one to begin.”

He knew he shouldn’t say, “you” — that never seemed to work. He remembered the roses. He remembered the checkerboard face. Or chessboard face, take your pick. “Wendy,” he said.

“Right, and where did you get married? I’ll throw that in for a new wrinkle.”

“Er… Urqhart?” He remembered a house across the road from the Illuminati place.

“Correct. And *why* did you get married… to Wendy? And, say, not *me*?”

“Because…” He couldn’t remember that part.

“Yes?” She wasn’t going to drop hints, it seems.

He simply didn’t recall that he was recently dead and had been resurrected by the power of the vows. It happened a lot when he’d just returned home.

(to be continued)

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cowed

It was raining when he got back to Collagesity and it made his depression worse. He decided to go to Vivian Blue Hair, the new girl — or one of ’em — for advice. She was a fire scryer, using candles for the most part, like here. He asked what was foremost in his mind. “Which… one?”

Vivian could have been selfish and said she was the one, but almost immediately upon staring into the flame saw black and white patterns all around. She slips deeper into trance, closing her eyes. “I see two countries — or counties — one black and the other white, but both named Austra.”

“Austra, yes,” Phillip replies. “There’s a Lower and an Upper — everyone knows that–” Phillip stops here, understanding that Vivian Blue Hair arrived off continent just day before last week. She was a friend of… he can’t remember. Maybe Man About Time, wherever the heck he is these days. Phillip is already itching to leave his Collagesity but has nowhere left to go, he doesn’t think. Not after Wendy.

Vivian Blue Hair changed into someone else, chessboard patterns moved to the face. “A promise made, a promise lost.”

It was the cards (!), heart upside down being a spade.

Jeffrie Phillips wakes up from the rabbit hole as the lot of ’em fall to the chessboard floor in a disheveled mess, like roses. He’s received his clue.

“Charlene,” he says to the woman beside him, the usual one, but probably not *the* one. This also stirs her.

“Yes, Mr. Jeffrie Phillips, sir,” she dutifully and groggily recites, automatically reaching for his red tie hung on the bed post but then realizing it was still the middle of the night. She returns her hand to his bare chest.

“That new girl in town…”

“Right… see where *this* is going.” She yawns and looks at her nails.

“No, no, I don’t fancy her or anything.” Jeffrey Phillips definitely fancies her as he does most women, but that wasn’t the point here. “She has black hair, correct? Not blue or anything crazy like that.”

“First off, blue *isn’t* crazy. My Aunt Zelda had blue, red, and green in a row before her death in the early 80’s.”

“She lived that long, huh,” Jeffrey replied, starting to contemplate time and the colors that one can change into at the end. “But to my point…”

“In a certain light,” Charlene said in answer, “yes, it could be considered blue. But the light has to shine upon her hair in a very particular setting, I’ve noticed. Early morning or late day perhaps: hafta check.”

“So: blue.” Jeffrey decides to lay the cards on the table, this time in an orderly manner. “I dreamed about her just now.”

“I bet you did.”

“Not that kind of dream. A dream of this whole continent, which (he then realized) broke down into a series of black and white squares — *sims*.”

“Fascinating,” she deadpanned, and put on her babydoll and got up to get some water. “Want anything to drink or eat while I’m in the kitchen?” He watched her move away from him in a satisfying manner. Nice to have compensation when he returned home. Charlene is a swell mate as well as lover. He’ll keep her around for sure; a short leash. Strange way to think about it, he realized. I don’t *own* her. Or maybe… maybe I do in a way. I pay her bills, I give her a place to stay here at the Blue Feather (building). She was rummaging around the kitchen now. “Are you going to answer me?” she called, hoping he could hear her over the static this time. “I’ll get you something anyway.” More noises, and then about 5 minutes later she returned with some milk and a plate of choco chip cookies. She lay down beside him, put the plate on his partially bare belly, and picked up the top one for herself, studying it. “Cow chips, they’re called. Saw them advertised on TV. Big beaver holds one up in his paws.” She extends her arms here and holds the cookie between them like a small steering wheel toward the static filled TV on a table just beyond the bed. “Like this.” In the snow, she imagined the big beaver mirroring this back to her.

He studies her, then he follows her arms to the cookie, realizing what this meant. “That’s disgusting.” He picks one up himself using just the one arm. Oversized and heavy on choco chunks, he sees, but otherwise just an ordinary cookie.

—–

In another dream that night, the cookie Charlene holds expands and turns into a whirling vortex, sucking up everything in the room including his milk. “And so on the 5th day…” he heard her say beside him as they fell and fell, blobs of white and chunks of brown all around. The rabbit hole seemed endless this time.

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Lost Angel

We begin where the last one ended. On a map of Nautilus continent in my Collagesity skybox, the full view this time. Because this go ’round we’re going to tackle the whole thing. We’re not at one of of those nodal photo-novels yet but we’re closing in. Preparations must be made. Alysha jumps off the pin representing NO Tor and proceeds northward, intending to find Ruby the tall, green alien, perhaps Martian but also perhaps not. The qualified doctors would know, but Dr. Mouse the unqualified as it turned out, doesn’t have access to that information, that file. Ruby Alien remains, thus, a…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0101, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Rim Isles, Upper Austra^, Yd Island^

secret schweet

And so we end where we began: on No Tor hill in Leemington seen in the distance in that last photo, following young Alysha around again searching for that ship of hers.

The hill is like an ant to her, in that she is her ant. She crawls forward, scrambling to the top, eager to have a better perspective on which to build further, view farther. Let’s zoom in.

Just gotta get up over this rock, *ugh*, and smooth sailing.

Good. She’s at the peak. Now to ratchet out the draw distance to the max and see what we have. MAX

She’s happy she can peer beyond the Green Between from Lower Austra into Upper Austra, most likely where Ruby Alien will be released day after Wednesday’s yesterday. I believe it will be the 5th. Doctor Paul Mouse will cave into local pressure and bring her to the proper authorities, meaning the actual, qualified doctors who are able to deal with such things. Check her out, let her go. Maybe she’ll make her way into the great, empty city of Perch-Mistletoe, she thinks it is called, a doorway between dimensions where one kisses another and won’t let go. She knows this is the two sides of herself, 13 to 13, evened out now; Nautilus (continent) complete. But it won’t be in this photo-novel.


Perch-Mistletoe

The continent remains a conundrum, a mystery. 32×32 sims, 41 times the size of Collagesity’s localized 5×5 we just exited back there. And that 5×5 is hard enough to understand as it is (!).

Alysha and SEAN Green, Mr. Michigan, look to one of the far corners filled out in the past two novels, with more Nautilus fun to come. NW NE SE and, with this one, SW. Jeffrie Phillips in a Santa outfit floats on Little George Lake — or just Lake — waiting for 2 blue eyed pools to become one blue eyed pool so that he can proceed with the examination of the Arkansas book, which appears to be the same as the Oracle. He’s taken it back to Collagesity still in the middle of it all, or at least Lower Austra. He’s starting to study it intently, with help from sometimes wife, sometimes girlfriend, always lover Charlene the Punk Brown, currently rocking a hot pink babydoll for him. They’ll probably remain childless though; he has too many mistresses on the side, which Charlene allows now, or rather puts up with. *Barely*.

She takes off the babydoll, intent one more time to get Jeffrey to forget about all those others.

END OF “COLLAGESITY PHOTO-NOVEL 26”!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0026, 0616, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Michigan, Nautilus, Perch-Mistletoe, Rim Isles, Upper Austra^