Category Archives: Nautilus City^

August 22, 2025 · 9:36 am

00470609

“It just BLEW UP. I was staring right at it. And it just POOOOOPH.”

“We could have been on that boat, Marion,” says Hucka. “We could have been blown up too!”

“Blown up *real* good,” added Philip from the couch.

Nada and Lexi walk in from the back. “We heard the explosion!” says Nada. “What happened?”

“Newt’s sim skipping ship blew up that’s what happened,” uttered Marion, still reeling from the shock. How are they going to get, well, to wherever they were going *now*?

“Good,” says Philip, producing stares from all.

“Newton’s probably *dead*, Philip,” says Marion. “Now no brothers in the Orange family are left. What of poor Mama Mitchell?”

“Welll, how old is she? Is she, you know, too old to have kids now? What, you know, I’m saying is that they can be replaced. Maybe.”

“NOT the point, Philip. A man is dead. His hard work has been destroyed too. We’ll never get another one like that.”

“You know,” said Hucka. “Philip might be right. Oh, not about Newton being dispensable of course but us leaving. Maybe it’s good we’re not able to leave now. Philip… you have your opium plants. And Marion, you have your pot field.”

“It’s *both* our field,” says Philip. “But… go on… *I’m* at least listening.”

“And what about Phil?” she says, confusing all.

“I’m right here.”

“No not you Phil-IP. Phil. With no -ip at the end. Down at the Rhino. We’re suppose to talk to him. Maybe he can’t be communicated with at any other location.”

“Possibly,” allows Marion, also wondering about all the aspects of “we” she mentioned.

“Hey Marion,” asks Philip out of left field, suddenly remembering a glimmer of something else in all the excitement. “Whatever happened to that girl we were with? You know, the shape shifter. Helen I believe. Hermania.”

“Heidi,” spoke Marion from the window. “Heidi Hunt Ives.” Every Blue Moon Philip brings her up. And then promptly forgets again.

“Yeah… her.”

Marion didn’t answer because he knew she was at the bottom of a sea too, just like Newton’s sunken vessel out there. Our stolen “Little Bug.” Tears come to his eyes as he watches the still lingering smoke from the explosion drift around the bay. He tried to save her, he really did. He rationalizes he did the best he could… working by himself. If only Philip could have helped.


“I’m coming Little Bug!” **leap**

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February 6, 2024 · 6:02 pm

00410704

He gives her time to look around the office, check out the maps, the painting, the works on the bookshelf, even the files in the filing cabinets if she wishes. What does he care? Sleep deprivation again we’ll assume; might as well burn the place down, he thinks while yawning for the 1000th time tonight. He finally gathers the energy to enlarge himself again — *just* enough to do the job (no overshot or undershot this time!). He waits for her to walk out, snooping apparently done.

“Find what you need, my fine lady?” he calls over, shocking her of course. It’s here he notices the face scars as she stares over with wide eyes. Too bad: otherwise quite pretty.

“Are you him?” she decided to stand her ground, defend her actions. “Are you Petty?”

“Some call me that. Some only know me as Chef. Or Inspector, depending on the time of day. Or depending on whether it is day or night I should say. You’re here at night. I assume you’re looking for Petty the Inspector, then.”

She approached him, scars looming larger. What *happened* to her?

“I also go by different names,” she said in turn. “Some call me Beautiful, some Plain. Some call me June, some Jane. Right now I’m June — night-time for me as well, I suppose. But the scars are there to remind me of Jane.”

“Yess,” he said. “Wondering about that. How did–”

“I just told you,” she cut him short. “I’m a 2n1, just like you. We have that in common but we have so much more. St. Lemon of Troy — the painting within. Do you know about Dennis?”

“Dennis,” he said thoughtfully. “Let me think…” Let me think of a *lie*, he says to himself. He *knew* he shouldn’t have hung that painting on top of everything else. His brain’s starting to operate better, perhaps because of its change back the correct size.

“St. Dennis, yes. The one that lost his head in the transition. The next time, the next go, he wore a helmet, golden in color. But it still didn’t protect him from the eventual consequence. So he had to be *deflected*.”

She know about that as well, he thinks. “Well,” he says to this. “Saints Hotel is a pretty nice place to stay, nice compensation. And anyway, I’ve heard that he and his *gang* have finally made their way down to the big city, the 8th wonder of the world some call it.”

“Where’s the auto in all this?”

“Auto?” He still couldn’t help play dumb within the flow of truthful revelations. Force of habit.

“You know which auto. You have pins of Yvonne, Dorenna and, yes, Anton inside on the Nautilus City map. Anton from Anson. I understand you were there when it first appeared, or when — I suppose — it first decided to reveal itself.”

“The Bug, yes.” Enough talk for now, he decided. He remembers that he’d locked the filing cabinets before enlarging himself tonight. At least he had the sense to do that. But perhaps it was time to look inside.

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February 6, 2024 · 6:33 am

00410703

He enlarges himself beside his office so he can better peer over the tops of internal buildings and view the object while still remaining clandestine in the dark. Probably; maybe the sleep deprivation is really catching up with him now and he’s beginning to lose his mind. Enlarging himself? He hasn’t resorted to those tactics since the early days of Collagesity (!). But they’re readying another ship to travel into space and he has to know the ins and outs, and since he has another job in the day when people are actually awake to answer questions about it…. well, circumstances seem to dictate this.

Footsteps behind him. He quickly micronizes back down to ordinary size or attempts to. Overshot! — you see, this is one of the dangers of enlarging in the first place. But maybe all for the best, since he didn’t think he was spotted that way. *No one* comes to his office. He’s embarrassed about the smallness of *it*, which he’s hidden in the bowels of the otherwise empty, cold and foreboding so-called “Cement Village” for this very reason and then put out rumors in the community at large that the place was haunted. Plus the population wasn’t ready for the truths within yet. St. Lemon of Troy.

Indeed she hadn’t spotted him because of the size. She walks within, intending to snoop around while no one was apparently home. Yes, she thinks. She’s in the right spot. Yvonne, Dorenna and Anton marked on a Nautilus City map.

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February 3, 2024 · 4:36 pm

straightening out the past

They’d found it at the bottom of the sea just north of the boat house where she was staying. An Anton avatar was there in the Anson sim — so close of a name it couldn’t be an accident. Spiderwebs covered this orange version of a VW Beetle but she knew it was the same. Had to be. Someone was playing Grand Theft Auto in Our Second Lyfe and it all led up to this place. Shoes inside, she recalled. Of a ruby variety. Stolen as well.

Roger Pine Ridge kept looking at the flickering white glow beneath the water that he knew was Anton. Shoes stolen; mission accomplished. Like finding the ruby slippers of Oz, he thought. Anorexia’s gonna be pissed off as hell.

He looked over at the green robed woman beside him, face harshly illuminated by the glare of the flashlight she held. Scars. “I’m just waiting for the significant other to finish up inside,” he explained from his *self named* chair.. “How about you?”

—–

Cyberpaperdoll walks out of Fae’s Boat House with 50,000 lindens in hand.

“Come on, Biker,” she said just above a whisper toward the closest Pine Ridge chair. “Time to go.”

“Don’t forgot to sign the guestbook out there!” Jim the Pirate Bartender called from within, a request they most definitely ignored while leaving.

I should have kept the name Kelp, she pondered while still staring at the pirate ship in the bay from the balcony of the big white empty house. The owner, Shippe, *must* be the same as Jim the Bastard Pirate from back in those days. Too coincidental (once more). And as Anton is likewise close to Anson, so her own chosen nickname at the time, Kelp, is to Kulp, as in Nancy Kulp as in plain Miss Jane from the “Beverly Hillbillies” TV series, replaced by similarly plain Miss Janet in Grand Theft Auto, Ski Inn bar parallel. The one who woke up Philip Strevor to who he really is.

Apparently the opposite happened to his partner-in-crime Marion Harding back in the past which may be the same as the present. From the same deck she sat on and read her book of spooky stories in the dark one year later, he dove into the sea that represents the unconscious, intent on finding the vanished auto that was his little Bug. Where did it go? Back to the beginning of this here photo-novel? Think, June Bug, think!

Then she realized: Chef-Inspector Petty would know about Anson. He was there with Baker Bloch when the original auto was found. He’d probably have records of it in his files.

Now to figure out where he ran his private dick nighttime business in Aisle of Palms. In Perch Restaurant as well? Another 2n1? So many questions, but we’re still indeed nearing the very end of the thing.

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February 3, 2024 · 9:05 am

June Bug Johnston

She walked up to the large house owned by the man who also owned the ship out in the harbor, a person named Shippe himself. Queer. Peculiar. She wondered if possibly a cork trumpet or trombone could be found inside but knew, if so, she couldn’t rezz it herself. Highly unlikely, then.

She’d been here before, basically this very spot as far as she could tell. Fae’s Boat House. She was investigating the theft of an auto, an orange VW Beetle to be specific. She’s realizing now this must be the same as Marsha’s Bug that just disappeared from Bombay Beach, California at the end of the last section of this here photo-novel. 41. 42 fast approaching. Everything is at stake.

The big house, so white inside and out, appeared vacated, no Mr. Shippe, no furniture, nothing. She stared out at the ship in the sea which drew her back to this place, the whole thing run by a skeleton crew. A bunch of Certain Deaths.


And also another Black Pearl according to the ship’s description. What’s going on here really?

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March 11, 2022 · 10:29 am

00320113

Although separated now, she often dreams of him still, and sometimes she *is* him in the dream, like here. He (she) exits the rundown house where he’s lived for going on 25 years, intending to go to the library but then realizing he doesn’t have a key any longer. He doesn’t work there no more. A dove flies overhead and something lands in his beautiful purple hair, making it imperfect. Thinking the dove pooped on him, he curses it as it wings its way back over the plain from whence he or she came.

He turns around, intending to wash his hair out in the sink or, better yet, take another shower, then apply more gel and finisher. He steps into the shower after removing his clothes. He’s still taller, darker, and, yes, more withdrawn. But he’s about to change that, about to wash away his “sins”. The water comes on. He washes his tall, dark body. He wishes Debbie were still around, wishes he could invite her over to join him. He imagines them together in his head as he continues to suds. Body done now; hair next. The water moves to the head. He rinses it well before applying shampoo, and, finally, touching it for the first time since the dove incident. His fingers start to move around his scalp. Something oddly shaped and metallic is quickly encountered. He withdraws it from his curls, looks down at the open hand. 319. This is the gift of the dove. This is the gift of the *library*. He doesn’t need to head there any longer.

She wakes up.

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September 2, 2020 · 8:57 am

rhode crossing

The house seemed empty. But it had a portal room.

In the thin woods eyes were watching.

Or not.

Maybe 1/2 and 1/2.

We should walk back to GASTON.

.daor eht ssorc mih gnihctaw ,nacnuD desserpmi na denipo ”,onimoD ,naem uoy tahw ees I“

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September 2, 2020 · 7:33 am

hooker

He cracks a window and then cracks another to stare out at the linden woods bordering this place. Samantha’s Place. He knew this silhouette of a woman with the dangerous curves came between the private dick in the trench coat — the real gravitas behind surface, buffoonish Wendell “Biff” Carter — and the owner of the magic shop over in Colona with the green geode that Jeffrie Phillips took back to Teepot to “mate” with his smaller pink one to complete the circle and symbolically unite the twinned cities. That’s why the former didn’t want to talk about the later, despite 2 requests to do so in case the first was missed. It was a dame, in retro-speak.

Samantha was also the same as New Nun, a disguise that perhaps she forgot she was wearing, like a mask. New Nun knows. Rhodes > Roads.

The Colona man formerly had a herb shop over in Cassandra City. The private, trench coated investigator now has his office *in this very spot*. He’s trying to complete a triangle, just like the A.Team did in this very same town before him. Scarlet Triangle. It was all there in black and blue. Somewhere.

The Man About Time raised himself up from the ground. The portal looked bigger from the outside

than the inside.

Typical. There would be no safe passage to the Amazon this night, but he knew that was death anyway. Speaking of which…

Just later the Man About Time deduced it also had something to do with this chimney, a Big Chimney indeed. He would have to take it apart brick by brick soon to find out what makes it tick. Clock? Bomb? (another one?)

—–

“So tell me about this Colona,” he requested mildly a bit more later to the man with the orange firebird burning in front of the hearth fire. “I know that Teepot use to be the twin city of Pietmond, long since destroyed, but now it seems to be this one.” He stared at the green geode on the mantlepiece, knowing Jeffrie Phillips hadn’t arrived yet. He should be due any moment. Or any century.

“Different,” uttered the man opposite him in a deeper, less mild voice. “Somewhat,” he amended. “Reason,” he spoke about the overlap, meaning there was a reason for it. “Absorption — *assimilation*.” MAT knew that New Nun had also been assimilated.

(to be continued)

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January 22, 2020 · 9:45 am

pre-Lamb

“Could be that the next photo-novel will be all about (the) Nautilus (continent), Hucka Doobie.”

“Good. That is fine.” She pauses. “Speaking of which, we need to get over to Rooster’s Peninsula and wake up Jacob I. He’s due for a return as well.”

“Okay. Sure.”

—–

So they traveled about as far across the continent as you can get until they reached the Progressive Rock Museum at the neck of Rooster’s Peninsula, so named because a dude named Rooster once lived there in a giant castle called Rust Never Sleeps, enigmatically enough. Rumor has it he was part of the Lemon Conspiracy against the Blimey Linden overlords. Nautilus was riddled with ’em. But much of their work and their ways has already gone the path of the dodo. The Prog Rock Museum keeps on progging, thankfully. It’s the way we can bring Jacob I. back and get more of his story — why he came to Collagesity in the first place.

“Wake up Mr. Mower Man,” Hucka Doobie speaks down gently. “Time to come back.”

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February 5, 2018 · 8:20 am

Octopi

—–

“They’ve been out there a long time, Golden Joe. I wonder if the deal will go through?”

“Have you ever thought about traveling to the center of the sun, Marion,” she deviated in her deep, metallic voice. “It’s actually quite nice.”

“I remember Philip mentioning that concept once. Philip something.”

—–

“Alright, I won’t split hairs any more, Cooper. We’re both tired; 50,000 lindens it is. Now spill your contents on the table here and let’s count it out.”

“Okay.”

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