Category Archives: NORTH

00330202

In a place run by cats, there were always a lot of naptimes to get the information he needed. Like the actual scoop on the Poop Pool, as it was called locally, at least behind closed doors, often in the middle of the night when a faint whiff of the former smell could be caught by those who’re perceptive. Deputy here had been out since about 8 now, hugging her little froggie toy until the wee hours of the morning. Eddy Daigle, cousin to our Edward Daigle already met in part one and originally sharing the same name, sniffed the air. Faint but perceptible. He hit delete on the sheriff’s computer and the file about it was permanently gone, as if the problem never existed. Much like Edward from his name, revised and revamped to the more colloquial Eddy after 5th grade when he also switched first and last names to hide the connection even more. “Daigle, Eddy” he liked to be called after that, 2 steps or functions away. And he was from Montana, not Louisiana or Maine or, especially, Illinois. Unlike that John L. Brown we’ve yet to come across in the current novel but who played a part in the last one, small but effective, like a rat silently and stealthily tearing away at the insulation in your walls, leaving you eventually laid bare to the elements. John L. Brown was a bad one, and deserved to be behind the bars of this here law enforcement establishment.

Uh oh. Deputy’s rolled over and lost her grip on her little, favorite toy. Sheriff’s snores on the couch over there are getting a little shallower and further apart, REMs decreased. Soon dreaming will be over for the fellows, Eddy knew. But he still couldn’t find the second file he wanted. Best to pack it up, come back tomorrow. Or after, actually, the next town animal banquet when the ferocious gazelles would bring more fresh kill from the beaches and the water. Snorklers this week. Could even be some deep sea divers mixed in next. That would put them even more under for his clandestine night operations; would allow him to get more work done, dig deeper.

“Daigle, Eddy” knew he wasn’t kosher and that saved him many times from being on the wrong side of one of these feasts. 9 times he had been saved in fact, making him part cat himself. Thank you great great grandma on my father’s side! He licked his hand softly as he does instinctively every now and then and shuts the laptop off and heads home.

No one in the cell right now except a member of the Bad Katz Gang, who was turning her back to the illegal nature of his visit. He hoped to change that soon.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0202, ENIGMA, Illinois, Nautilus, NORTH, Wild West

00330201

“”What’s wrong, honey? (no answer) Oh dear, are you channeling again? (no answer) Is it… the triangles?”

She sat there all glassy eyed for a while like 2 marbles were planted in her head in place of eyes. Then…

—–

“What you cooking today Eddy?!” shouted the runny man, passing by.

“Hot dogs!” he called back. “But made with veggie stew!”

“Cool! Catch you later, then!” Tom shouted, his voice receding in the distance as he headed toward the far corner of the strange, rectangular green pool that centered the apartment complex they both lived in, this Paradise Town as it liked to call itself. The pool begs to differ, because it also has a name, usually unspoken. Tried to be forgotten.

—–

Common denominator: umbrellas.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0201, ENIGMA, Nautilus, NORTH, Wild West

00320615

She’s been here already, he realized, looking at the last visitor picture. Offering an apple — offering *me* an apple obviously. Will you rent again from us, will you be *tempted*? L$831 dollars in the bank, just enough to cover rent for the next week. But dare I?

Novel 32 is coming to a close. Premium membership running out tomorrow, and land use fees resetting the day after that.

It’s too easy. No, I will not pay the rent, nor renew the membership. I will get rid of my land through abandonment if needed. Property in the beige highlands of Nautilus — not very valuable at all and will have to sell at a cut rate price to even ditch the burden in the next several weeks, most likely. Time for a purge.

One more thing to check, the clincher?

Still available. The library, the castle, the Nautilus map can move there. Everything else can go away for all I care, even the Temple of TILE, at least templerarily, hehe. No time for jokes here. Action… tomorrow, tonight, right now.

I im Wheeler, richer in money at this point. “Send me a couple of lindens over, say 1500.” Enough to cover 2 weeks in this location on famed Rooster’s Peninsula.

I wait. The curtains close again for now.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0615, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula, Sansara

the end of Duncan, A.

“He’s not coming out of there,” he says to me. “He’ll always be a part of the library.”

I knew I was weighted too much in the South. But that’s where he chose to stay.  “Who will replace him?” I asked Buster Damm sitting across from me, an impossibly small vampire in such a big big world. Too small to fit in anywhere properly. But too important to die himself. He stared the answer into me.

“So they just found him there. Dead.”

“Gone to South America,” Buster elaborated as best as possible. Just like Sherwood before him, another Allen.

—–

Nighttime at the Castle in De Skies; fog getting thicker. Must think about heading home soon. North.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0516, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

00320503

“It sits on grass — solid ground — instead of floor. There is a rainbow sphere like a giant illuminated marble in the middle, surrounded by frozen swarming tentacles. Rest vs. work, yin vs. yang.”

“Man About Time?” I speculated, knowing he waved at this thing like he did to himself before. Continuation.

“That and more,” agreed the other, yet to be determined. Maybe Wheeler with her green and blue asymmetrical eyes. Miss Ouri perhaps if they are matching instead. Feminine anyway. Female.

We should also determine if we are dreaming or awake. Could be difficult.

MORE SOON.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0503, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

00320502

Listening through the walls and the coke machine is over. It’s time to find out who’s in the basement. Is it Rooster?

I think it must be Rooster. Smells like Rooster, even from this distance. We’ll see.

“Halt! (wheeze)”

It wasn’t Rooster. He backtracks a bit; forgets about the end of the tunnel for now.

“Who are you?” he asks mildly.

Squeaky voice, like a inflatable toy full of little holes: “I am (wheeze) the answer you seek.”

Significant pause as he takes the creature in. “Where’s Rooster?”

“He is (wheeze) not here yet.”

Smaller pause. “Will he ever be?”

“(wheeze) No.” Slowly and skillfully the seated small being then moves a chest pin down to emphasize his pricked nature.

“Funny,” is all MAT could think of to say.

“Is (wheeze) it?”

Voodoo doll, Man About Time mulled over. Obviously related to Kactus back in the library — up in the library, just above him in fact. He tries to see through the ceiling toward it. Doesn’t work.

“Ponder (wheeze wheeze) the nature of the peninsula, another (wheeze) sticky outy thing (wheeze wheeze). I am (wheeze) running out of (wheeze) air (WHEEEEeeeeezzzee).”

The final prick did him in. He shouldn’t have done it, MAT realized. Like Conception Concepción Conception, he’d made an error between his legs.

He moves on beyond the deflated being, encountering himself in the first of two cells off the passage.

“Hi me,” he said nonchalantly to himself.

Should he wave back? Or is that how you become trapped in the first place? Acknowledge that you’re here already? MAT decides to ignore him(self) and walks down to the final cell, the end of the journey that has become this post. Is he ready? After seeing himself down here, what choice does he have? No going back.

“What is it?” he asked, out of his cell and sneaking up from behind.”

“How–?”

“I think you should go back where you came,” the other requested, pointing down the passage over his shoulder while he finds himself waving at *it* for some reason. MOA he knew, but that was just another puzzle inside a riddle inside a cypher. The foul smell was starting to become overwhelming; not Rooster indeed. “Let me handle this now. I’ve been waiting for you after all.” STOP

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0502, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

on Dasher

“Rooster,” he mutters, seeing the weather vane atop the barn on his peninsula. “I must think about this further.”

Full perms on the property here.

I wonder if Rooster could be related to Santa Claus?

What are you Nautilus?

Why are we here?

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0501, Iowa, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

big red machine

“Lou, be a dear and buy your old man a drink while he’s studying, would you?”

“Dad-dy,” Lou replied, arms still crossed. “We’ve been here *3* days.”

“Keep it down, keep it down,” father Osborne Well says over more in a whisper. “Other people are here too.”

Lou Well stays quiet this time.

“Weelll?” her father prompted, a typical reply and a play on their last name he loves to utter when he can. He beams a wicked smile. She still doesn’t return the smile but rises from her chair with a small huff and does what he asks. She inserts a quarter, hears a bottle drop. Or is it a can? — she can’t tell if the sound is more glassy or metallic. Queer, she realizes. And — great — she can’t get the door to open at the bottom of the thing. “It’s broke, daddy. We’ll have to go into town for your sody pop.” *Finally*, a possible way out of this prison of books for her.

“Then leave it,” he decides, learning winning over thirst and sugary desire. He’s about to uncover the deepest, darkest secrets of the great tentacled one. He confers this to his daughter.

“MOA,” she replies without thinking. “We’ve been there already. We *know* what it is.”

“Shhh,” he reprimands again about her raised voice, but then realizes she’s right. It *is* MOA he’s searching for: Most Old Ancient.

Man About Time wakes up but remembers what they said behind the wall. He’ll return another night in another dream to this spot. This portal is *key*.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0410, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

00320409

Just past the gate the fog increases. Man About Time can’t find the front door of the library — blocked in the direction he thinks it should be. He’ll have to find another, more indirect way inside. No flying on this parcel, or at least he pretends flying is verboten. Oh well. This way he’ll get to know more about the castle, he rationalizes. Right off the bat, it appears we’re working with lemony ways to get from one point to another here, much like with the Blue Feather and a couple of other Collagesity structures. But especially the Blue Feather — maybe they’re related in other ways. We’ll know soon enough.

He steps through the first door encountered in the opposite direction and ascends some stairs. This could take a while. And it did, since he hung a left instead of a right at the top.

He’s starting to think the idea of banning flight in a pretend way was a bad one.

A larger outer tower encountered. He decides not to investigate potentially upper floors and just circles around an enclosed inner wall to find an exit to this porch. He crosses a wooden board.

Interesting. Perhaps a dead end here too, he ponders while rounding another corner.


But then: a teleporter.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0409, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

the Long and Yd of it

It was a particularly clear day at the library castle in the skies, kind of completed tonight, or as much as I want to flesh out right now. You see, this is a window into the past. Or the future. Man About Time stands before a portal. He’s on Rooster’s Peninsula. Several other castles *could* be seen in the distance — both west (the titular Roost Never Sleeps) and south (Arkaig) — if only the fog were just a little less thick. It never is; this is as good as it gets. And so Man About Time — MAT — enters the castle to oblivious folk who don’t really know where they are, and, by this point, don’t really even care. But one thing’s for certain. It’s not just a library any more. It’s a fortress, a Center Point that Collagesity desperately needs in the present. Because the Temple of TILE just wasn’t hacking it in that role.

MAT’s looking for a particular entity, let’s say, a Man who is also a Rump, and a big one at that, really big. His Huge Ass plane almost grazed the top of the temple after he moved it from lowest to highest in the village about, oh, about 2 months back I suppose (CHECKING). Yes: a little over 2 months. He wants to give him a piece of his mind if he can find him. He understands he could be locked up in a key-less cage because he is the key himself. But where?

Back to the library to start his investigations, he decides on the spot. The castle gate raises in response.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0408, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula, Temple of TILE