Category Archives: NORTH

00360109

The Nautilus map in my skybox is lighting up again. Jem’s Dodgey City in the northeast corner, along with neighboring Blacking where Midge critically observed it across the water from her colorful beach towel. Yd Island and Darla and her Umbrella Club to the southeast, also observed from a distance by prevert Albert. Then Fordham in the lower center, the old Collagesity location which is now surprisingly acting as a hideout of some kind for Franklin aided by greenie friend Apples and the sentient tree known as Unch — you remember Unch don’t you? From the Rubi Forest? Think back. And then in the center center that mysterious place known as Perch-Mistletoe where we also see Franklin, this time interacting with Albert directly but who then turns into or reveals himself as Baker Bloch instead, with Franklin likewise realizing she’s Wheeler Wilson. The 2 main core avatars of my blog and attached photo-novels in other words, the great male-female (or female-male) duality. What it all revolves around. Then in the main arm of the Starfish Lake or Sea to the northwest of that we have Dr. Mouse’s practice which Albert also visited and turned into a baby apparently, a symbol of rebirth. Another pin is lit up beside it but we can’t speak of that yet. Place called Dub — displaced actually. To this couch so we can talk with him/it.

Another form:

Another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub,_Arkansas

Then moving to the west and the south again, directly below Dodgey City we have another mystery area centered by a place called the Art Box which we’ve visited several times before in our blog chronicled journeys, and which will surface again soon in relation to the missing file or files mentioned by Midge. Then to finish up for now, in the north central, we have the location of the map itself, my Lebettu Castle on Rooster’s Peninsula, my new home as of the middle of photo-novel 33 back in the late spring now. It’s been a perfect match so far. There’s no question I had to downsize.


Collagesity back in the days

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0109, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, NORTH, Retirement Islands, Rooster's Peninsula, Upper Austra^, Wild West, Yd Island^

00360108

After finding out which one, Dr. Mouse has him lay on a gurney ready to go deeper into the bowels of the place.

“All the way back, Mr. Johnston,” Nurse Porcupeople urged. “I have you.”

“Wheel him away,” said Mouse, studying the newest form and seeing it is good. Ready for delivery.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0108, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^

restored/inside

“Sorry about the hole, Mr. Johnston.”

“Please. Call me Albert,” insisted the tall, black clothed man sitting before him, seeing each other not quite eye to eye like before but getting there. He wanted to make sure he was up close and personal with the troubled man, try to soothe his rather frayed nerves. Yes, Albert had issues. He moved from behind the desk to here, perched before him like another one of his birds.

“I have to separate the wheat from the chaff,” he explained, gazing into his face from slightly above. “As you probably noticed, all I have out there waiting any more are dummies, complete idiots.” Mouse looked down, trying to phrase his frame of mind in a more polite way. “I don’t have time for that any more,” he said, deciding to end that way. Albert’s turn now.

“I… understand?”

“You’re a real life person in this afterlife sort of situation. I appreciate that. You are tall but you can become quite small. That proves you are human. More effective than picking out chimneys on a house or signs on a road. This is not the DMV if you see what I’m saying.”

“Understand… I?”

“Yes, I know how you feel, I certainly do.” Mouse rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as he sometimes does to impress a client, especially an important client like this. Albert was here to talk about the girl: he knew that. But which one?

(to be continued)

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0107, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^

2nd crowd

He looked in on the proceedings with his 2 hats and his 2 perching birds, thinking: busy, good. That means the doctor, the practice is good. Here’s someone I can talk to and learn meaningful stuff from, this Mouse fellow. Never mind the failed Pooping Pigeons franchise, he follows. A bad businessman does not make for a bad something else.

He steps inside, jumps ahead of everyone else knowing they wouldn’t mind. He’s just that important.

The door was locked. The only way in, it appeared, was through this hole at the bottom. Luckily Albert brought his own Mouse costume, except his was a rat, small enough to get away with the deception and do the job. Mouse was just finishing up with another one, synchily enough. Rat named Map who use to be a member of a gang called Willard.

“Come in, big man,” he squeaked up to high-as-a-kite Albert. “If you can make it.”

“Oh I can,” he boomed down. Map Rat disappeared. Albert took his place.

(to be continued)

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0106, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^

Wildest West

“You know it’s not a nice place over there,” she said in her wise voice about the “town” across the water, this Dodgey City where we’ve just seen our now familiar friend Jem — Gemilly Johnston (or Johnson).

“What’s your story, then?” I asked down to the Grandma type figure in her old fashioned clothes, cane clutched to breast as she lay on a colorful towel at the beach house rental. She’s thinking about it. “Missing file?”

Instead of answering me directly, she said: “It’s good you’re back on Nautilus. It’s even better you’re back on the mainland, off that island — even though it technically is part of the continent.” She stared over again. Hard to read her emotions from this distance. Sad? Worried? Angry? Perhaps a mix of a number of these.

“About the file,” I insisted.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0102, Nautilus, NORTH, Wild West

00350707

It was at the end and not the beginning but the marriage finally came through.

“Do you have a problem with this?” Newt ask in a low voice as the I do’s were being said. “Speak now, you know.”

“Why would I have any problems with this?” said Wheeler back. “Shelley would just run around with other men behind his back if she married George. This way she’ll be happy. Or at least have a chance to be.”

“Do you, Shelley, take Lemont slash Arthur…”

“And there’s always Liz,” whispered Newt.

“Yes.”

“Should we end there? Again?”

“Why not.”

“You may kiss the bride.”

END OF “SUNKLANDS 2022 LATER”!

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0707, Nautilus, NORTH

cake = lie

And so we end with Stiggy the Bluebird arriving early for her supposed birthday party, asking where the spectacular cake was Elanea promised to show her. Elanea said she’s it, then fired a tranquilizer dart right in her forehead between the eyes, then dragged her back into the kitchen to be prepared. One too many jokes about her amphibian nature for Elanea to stand. And she’d spewed the same racist type insults to people in powerful positions like reptilian Stu in Marketing, human Pamela in Waste Management, and, most importantly and most damning, to the Big Boy himself, calling him a [delete name]. To the Abyss she must go, he declared, which was his own personal word for the Void, having been raised a devout Tilist all those years ago, memories and rituals sticking like glue. The others decided the degree.

After the party, they prepared one cross that had the wrong year of death — had to be redone (too much partying, perhaps). A second, sturdier and more upright one was made by Harold the Carpenter, a gnome sent down by Head Office to do the task right, along with another named Jack who’d dig and fill in the grave. No coffin needed, though: no part of her remained to be buried by the time Elanea finished with the knives and saws and the gnomes arrived, not even her heart, deemed inedible from her species but which was still put into the cake just for spite and to rub it in all the way.

The bird was George.

Shelley’s still beating heart only pointed one direction after that. Biff Carter provided an interesting alternative but had aged 20 years overnight, thus eliminating him from the picture. Big Boy again, of course — [delete name] again the hurled insult. Only Arthur remained. And through him Liz. The marriage will take place at the beginning of the next section, 7 in a series of 6.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0617, Little Hell, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega^^, Southern

stop and go

“See the whirlybird, Tabitha? Whirl whirl,” she emphasized with a twirling finger. “Whir whir,” the toddler she was holding mimicked without the finger. The actual birds in the vicinity, doves, remained frozen between them, opposing frantic spinning with rigid stasis in protest of the “invasion”. Or so legend goes: frozen birds, later the inspiration for a frozen pie company.

Tar stepped out of the copter, followed by Guit. The experimental, guitar oriented punk-folk fusion band Tar Guit had landed in rebuilt Moray Docks Village, ready to put on a celebratory show for the ages. Trouble was, they sucked.

—–

I suck at this game, thought Liz. But I’m not going to let these bastards know it. Fiction power: on!

She expertly places the 1st black stone. Everyone had to play clean, the rules stated. So they washed them down before the match, these opposing horses or ponies. They couldn’t take a water or food break until it was over. The Watchers were going to have a good time with this. Because they knew Liz couldn’t resist. Then at the end they’d all give her a big Thumbs Down despite her seeming big win. “In reality,” they might chide, “you couldn’t beat Lichen with one hoof tied behind your midsection. White never succumbs to black!”

“Does so!” she might exclaim back, and end it all with a fall of cards, or, in this case, a shower of rocks, inharmonious black and white mixing together in a fused mish-mash all around.

Robot servant Ruttitutti shows up, ready to take food and drink orders. It was over.

—–

Thank God, most of the scattering concert goers thought.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0603, Little Hell, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega^^, Southern

00350601

When we return to rebuilt Moray Docks Village, radiation finally dissipated after 50 millenia days, Shelley’s good friends and vacation pals George (not her George, again) and Debbie had separated from each other, her on the far bench checking the latest odds on her dogs and he in the foreground perusing the stock numbers. Shelley had taken the opportunity to move in on him, not necessarily to steal him from Debbie (although she did wear that looser fitting Pepper t-shirt no. 2 today for some reason) but just to get more information about marriage in general, what works and what doesn’t. Or at least that’s how she rationalizes it in her mind.

“George?” she starts, after another sip of tea.

“Mmmm?”

“How was your crabs? You know, I think I had something similar. I kept itching and itching and applying lotion and applying lotion and finally –.”

“Different,” he interrupted, still looking at his paper. “Ours were… (he looks up briefly, contemplating the smell, the look, the taste) delicious.” Uncle Jiffy makes the best! he thinks. Back to the figures, although he spots Shelley’s bare shoulder out of the corner of his eye, another figure he sometimes contemplates. But Debbie is right back there, he reminds himself. He hadn’t given up. George rustles his paper, reabsorbing himself in the news.  Shelley will have to be happy with her tea for pleasure today.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0601, Nautilus, NORTH

dream over

—–

“So I was over here paying my rent and I thought we’d hold an improptu Table meeting. Thanks for making the time, Wheeler. I see you’re still dressed as Shelley.”

“Like the clothes, like the fit.”

“But you’ll go back to being her mom, right?”

“Oh sure.”

“We still need that angle of course. And… looks like Arthur might not be making it.”

“No, you locked him up for being married to me or making love to me. Something. He’s still in jail over in, let’s see, Morgan? Has the jail been deleted? Guess not,” Wheeler answers herself. “Or else it seems he’d be free to join us.”

“Right, I’ll check on that,” Baker still dressed as Policeman Clubb replies.

“Hope you have better luck than the last thing *I* checked.”

“Morgan — deletion, yes. Which brings us to perhaps our main topic. Spider. But first, lemme just see if I can call Arthur. I believe I, as Clubb, allowed him to keep his phone on his body, after a full search on the rest, ha.”

Wheeler smiled. In that 30 minute window allowed, she’d done a full search too but for different reasons. Shelley, I mean. Not Wheeler. Although she was wearing purple at the time. And it’s *not* Arthur Kill but Kill van Kull, a sophisticated, clean as a whistle, non-crinimal twin cousin. It was all a mistake, a mix-up. She looks up at the screen. This may be him here too, she realized. Or Clarence, although he was going by a different name if so. This was the last dance in the created town of Morgan (Orient PO) whatever. It ended after that, for Wheeler but also for everyone involved, all the group, the gang.

The receiver rang but there was no body around.

After 6 rings, Baker got back to the subject of likewise caged Spider. The numbers deleted the town, but it had to be all 24 to work. He had another idea, tried Arthur/Kill van Kull again, let it ring 24 times this go. Didn’t work.

But not because Spider didn’t hear it.

The deed was already done. Newt shows up to the meeting — Shelley’s father — *not* playing Arthur Kill importantly. He stares over at Wheeler, giving her a look like: you could have made the effort too. He felt she was becoming trapped in a role; unable to be herself any longer. How far would she go?

“Where’s Grassy?” Newt then asks, seeing the empty chair across from him.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0407, Mountain Lake^, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega^^, Rooster's Peninsula