“Appear.”
But, panning out, he did see something. Might have been an oversized coconut, might not have. Nobody around except himself. Bobbing in the water right in that corner, emphasizing it.
Hmm, no coconuts falling *now*. “Fousquare,” eh?
—–
*Here* they come!
—–
“The little pool with its rim of rocks must have been specifically designed to catch the falling coconuts for some reason, W.”
“You know the reason.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0207, Nautilus, NORTH
“Looks like you’ve had some kind of adventure, Uncle of mine.”
“I have. But it’s all pretend.”
“Right. Bringing it to me, I suppose. Why I’m here.”
“Welll…” Mr. Babyface settles back into the bargain bin couch, wishing he’d bought up a little more to avoid the oh-too-soon broken springs, ow. One in his left cheek right now, as in buttocks. “Let’s say,” he continued, light bulb over his head now, “you’re here, staying with me, because of a local rock concert, say a progressive group right down there at the base of the peninsula, at the, what’s its name?”
“Dunno, Uncle.”
“Ah, heck. Progressive Rock Museum, but that’s not the name of the venue.”
“I’m okay with Progressive Rock Venue if you are.”
“Alright,” relented Babyface. “But you’re here because of that, say, supergroup Yes, which we both love, although we have a separate list of favorite albums. Yours is…”
“‘Close to the Edge’, ‘Relayer’, and ‘Going for the One’.”
“Yes, and mine would be ‘Fragile’, ‘Yes Album’ and ‘Topographic Oceans’.”
Peter winces. “‘Topographic Oceans’,” he says with some derision. “Bloated.”
“Okay, okay, let’s not get into that argument again. We agree to disagree. We’re talking about loving the same *group* anyway. It’s like we like the same forest but not the same trees or clump of trees — something.”
“Okay, my Uncle.”
“And we need to keep in touch more. You’re not even real here. You’re just in my head.”
“Sorry, Uncle. I’m busy. Winning tennis tournaments for one. You haven’t even congratulated me on my latest. Plus the comedy — another thing we differ on…”
“… but are also the same, yes yes. Firesign Theatre.”
“‘Bozos’!” shouted Peter Ladd.
“‘Dwarf’!” countered Mr. Babyface to his thought-to-be estranged nephew playfully. They would hug each other in the moment if they weren’t so maladjusted. It was just the families, their upbringing. Both kind of square pegs in round holes. Just so thankful, thought Babyface here, that Peter was born with a normal head, phew! Which brings us back to conception.
“Tell me about Shamon, Peter, how you got here. I’ve been thinking about the Big Schwa lately.”
“Big E!” shouted Peter, making his Uncle Babyface smile but not as much as before. This was more serial stuff, as the young’n’s might put it.
—–
So they pried themselves away from watching the blog on TV and went upstairs to stare at it from different sides, different angles, to ponder what Mr. Babyface had surmised earlier. “Shamon on top of course,” he reminded Peter. “Closest hit in the Oracle is Shamokin PA, but with a pinch of collage magic we can create one of those 2-n-1’s… that you hate so much.”
“Stop it, Uncle. We’re not enemies.”
“I know, sorry.” But look… I’ll project it on the screen downstairs when we return.”
“What else while we’re here?”
He pivoted the Big E around until the proper side was facing his nephew, turning it into a Big Schwa. He was seeing from his Uncle’s perspective now.
“Orgas, Peter,” recited Mr. Babyface on another closest Oracle hit, this time for the sim of Orgamast, label right in front of Peter’s eyes. He reloads his pipe, Blue Pennant now. “Orgasm, obviously (puff puff). And there’s also an Organ Cave population place in the same state of West Virginie. The Lordshore-Orgamast Floor is the lowest level of the Kidd Tower here (next to the Lebettu Castle). Lordshore also begins with LO.”
“What are you getting at, Uncle?”
“Let’s go back to the couch.”
—–
“Shamon… from the inn… place of thorns. This is where it happened.”
“What happened?” Then Peter realized what his Uncle was talking about. “Ooooh.”
Mr. Babyface thought of a joke here but wisely decided not to mouth it.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0203, Jeogeot, Nautilus, NORTH, Pennsylvania, Rooster's Peninsula, West Virginia, Xilted
Afterwards:
“Look down there, Shelley. That’s where you’ll live; same as the color of your hair.” He dared to stroke it from behind. “That way, darling, you can come up here to the box and play any time. Anny time.”
“Shelley?” she questioned above.
—–
“Shelley,” she answered below.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0201, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Retirement Islands, Wild West
Dodgey City bookkeeper Gemilly “Jem” Johnson (or Johnston) manifested at a 4th wall of town.
“Duck duck duck,” she said, walking like such. “Cluck cluck cluck,” she improvised, making director Kurt Strawb (he got a 4th!) cringe off-screen. “Now *where’s* that John? I’m ready for my close-up!” she called in the air while waddling. “I’m *ready*… for my CLOSE-UP!”
Close enough.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0118, Nautilus, NORTH
“There it is again, Dixon 02! Shoot it this time with your bow and arrow! Quick!”
“*You’re* Dixon 02,” protested the one with the weapon. “*I’m* Dixon 01.”
“No time for that now! (POOF) Oh… darn! Look at what you’ve done brother of mine, *second* out of the womb.”
“*You’re* second out.”
“She’s gone.” Pause.
“Pretty boots, though.”
“*Darn* pretty boots.”
“And gloves.”
—–
“‘Nother dream this time about those Dixons, Grassy. Something about them poisoning the alcohol of this town.”
“Hmmm.”
“Wonder….”
“Yeah,” predicted Grassy to what Sassy was about to say, Nogin’s horrific tossing noises also etched in his memory. “Me too.”
“Should we warn somebody? Who’s the mayor of Hardrock Island?”
“Hardrada, actually. Remember, Hardrock I. contains the guitar with no strings. The pool here has strings. The one you like so much.” Maybe more than the bigger one I prefer, he thinks to himself. Differences: small, but they can add up.
Sassy contemplates heartstrings again, and how Grassy should make her sing but not quite getting there; differences again. But no strings might have its advantages as well, as in, no hands advantages. As in *recording* advantage. If you don’t play forwards, you can play backwards — that kind of advantage.
“Welll?”
“Based on a dream?” he protested about the earlier warning request.
“Dreams,” said Sassy to this. “Repeating dreams.”
“See what happens tonight in your dreams and then tomorrow we’ll go to the authorities if needed.”
“*No* alcohol in the meantime. Or only what you brought in.”
“Cough syrup,” complains Grassy. “Stuck with cough syrup.”
“And mouthwash,” chips in Sassy. First time she’s glad about having a mild case of chronic halitosis. Wouldn’t be the last.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0117, Nautilus, NORTH
“Don’t get sick in here, Nogin,” said Bob the bartender. “It’s not my fault you rode the Ferris wheel for 2 hours and then came in here for a couple of margaritas.”
“Carousel… *next*,” he gruffed as he looked over at Grassy and Sassy doing the same. Stay in motion, he decides. Because if still — this. *Head* in motion. Stomach.
“Well, yeah, why don’t you go ride the carousel over there — away from me — and get sick off it. I’m sure Bud (carousel operator today) won’t mind, ha.”
“BLEEHHHHH.”
“Great. *Thanks*, Nogin.”
“You’re BLEEEHHHH… welcome.”
—–
“Little hard for me to skate in these tennis shoes.”
“I’m doing just fine in my slick sassy boots,” his Mmmmmm partner returned, gliding along with much less effort. Good thing Grassy is 5x bigger or he wouldn’t be able to keep up.
Does she have to name *everything* she wears after herself? he ponders while struggling onwards. Well: 2. Gloves and boots. And the occasional “sassy” hat.
“What about that guy getting sick at the Beach Bar?” said Sassy over. “Sick and sick and *sick*. I could still hear him throwing up when we left the park to come down here.”
“Why we chose not to stick around for the Ferris wheel,” spoke Grassy. Else why would I be *here*, he thinks.
—–
“Oh God, there he starts *again*. Just when you thought it was over.”
“Let’s skip the margaritas and go straight back to the cottage for some Alka-seltzer.”
“Good idea.”
—–
“Oh (‘BLEEEHHH’), yet *another* present, Nogin. Christmas keeps coming and coming (‘BLEHHH’).” Where *are* those paramedics? Bob thinks.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0116, Nautilus, NORTH
“I had a dream about Dub again last night. Talked to him over on that couch again.”
“Black dude?”
“Yeah. Asked him about the jungle, how I get back. He picked up a guitar with no strings.”
“Oh. New (!).”
“Yeah, and he played it, but it sounded like a recording, with the echo and all.”
“A dub. Guitar dub.”
“In a way I suppose.” She reached over, took his hand. If she could only play the strings to *his* heart.
—–
“It must have been that book you were reading. By the hot tub. Up above the main pool.”
“I recall.”
“Was the jungle mentioned specifically within?”
She thought back. “Can’t recall (that).”
He sipped on his Russian Roulette, borrowed from her earlier. Said her stomach was a little upset from before. The tension, she excused herself. Both blamed each other, and then, afterwards, themselves.
—–
“Are you going to go back into the box now?”
She thought about it. “I’ve decided… that 777 dollars is quite reasonable for something we can, er, style together. I don’t want to be a slave prisoner. I want to be a woman. Shackles removed.”
“I see.” Arthur Kill thought about this. Liz remained the ultimate goal, how to get there, how to *make*. Singularity awaiting, even looming by this point. A black hole and white hole together. Ylem.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0115, Nautilus, NORTH
“He’s quite a big bigger than her,” observed Baker Bloch or Wheeler Wilson, laying under another one of those umbrellas on the far side of the pool. “Your turn now,” one of them said.
“I didn’t know Mmmmmm’s came in different sizes like that,” said Wheeler (making the 1st speaker Baker).
“They seem happy,” spoke Baker. “For now.”
“Com’on. We don’t know how this species really interacts with each other.”
“I know they have an average lifespan of about 26 years.”
“26 1/2,” amended Wheeler.
“And the little one, perhaps even less.”
“Again… you don’t know that. You’re thinking of dogs or cats or something. Could be the bigger one, the male, who has the shorter life. Plus males tend to die earlier than females (in general).” She looks over at Baker Bloch, those dead eyes, and remembers he doesn’t have to worry about all that. Already deceased. Her? Could be immortal as well. We’ll have to make sure she’s archived if so.
“Notice the TILE floaties all around?”
“No I didn’t. But that’s more your thing. I have my own kind of TILE.” She wonders again about his missing piece, the thing that can turn from an I into an E given the right circumstances. Ones she controls: E; perfection. There’s a whole ‘nother side to the religion/philosophy/game that Wheeler could explain to us in great detail. If she were allowed.
“It’s something we could talk about in great detail (told ya). Me with my own more analytic take, and you with your more physical slant.”
“Hmmm.” She was drifting off now in the noonday sun, just downed Russian Roulette doing its work.
“Notice the Christmas trees,” Baker added about the props in the central platform. “Green and red (line). Being emphasized above the blue and yellow.”
“You’re talking about Roberts now, and what she might give Franklin as a present,” Wheeler replied without opening her eyes. She was seeing in the dark. “Franklin hopes, anyway.”
“Why… did we have to take that away from her?”
“I didn’t. *You* did.”
“Oh.”
“‘Oh,’ right. Think about that analytic boy. Why would I care enough about her Gang of Willard to remove it, like a surgeon. No, that’s intellect, that’s airiness. That’s…”
“Male.”
“Yes.”
“Me Tarzan, you Jane,” Baker spoke while pointing between them. Wheeler couldn’t help but chuckle a bit with this. If only.
—–
“I like this pool *much* better than the guitar one. Bigger!”
“Oh, Grassy,” said Sassy, his new girlfriend, perhaps his new wife. They may be on a honeymoon. Certainly not the first date at least. The other one fit me better, the smaller one, she thinks internally, not wanting to disappoint. She’d save up the grudges, spew them out later like an erupting volcano. A smaller one, but packing quite an internal heating unit. What attracted Grassy to her in the first place. Sassy indeed.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0114, Nautilus, NORTH
The unique chord progression for “I Walk the Line” was inspired by the backwards playback of guitar runs on Cash’s tape recorder[4] while he was stationed in Germany as a member of the United States Air Force. Later in a telephone interview, Cash stated, “I wrote the song backstage one night in 1956 in Gladewater, Texas. I was newly married at the time, and I suppose I was laying out my pledge of devotion.”
“One has strings, the other doesn’t, these HARDR pools, the only HARDR sims in Our Second Lyfe currently (Hardrada and Hardrock Island).”
Hardrada pool
Hardrock Island pool
“Obviously the same creation besides that, Hucka (Hucka!). The unstringed one, useless for playing, see, merely points to the stringed one, the useful one. This is the same as Franklin’s guitar she was playing backwards in respect to Apples’, which is the same as Johnny Cash’s guitar, or at least the one he played backwards as inspiration for perhaps his seminal song ‘I Walk the Line.’ We can understand this through Franklin KY.”
“Sting is a line,” added Hucka. He’s just warming up perhaps. Been in storage for a while. “I meant string.”
“Of course.”
“Gotta run.” And he was gone — oh well; not even time for a snapshot. Plus I couldn’t get to the stringless one since it was on banned property (I continued on my own). I think back to the 2 pools, banned and unbanned, on Owl Island, and how we also found doubles of those in Eveningwood. Back in novel 26, which is becoming more and more relevant to our current novel, 36…
Along with 35 of course. Photo-novel 36 seems to be more of a direct continuation of its predecessor than ever. See, for example, here (post/riddle from likewise section 01 of 35 unraveled/resolved):
Just up the hill as it turned out. Former site of a little place called Collagesity.
—–
“What do you think it is?” said Franklin, apparently to the tall, hiding pampas grass in front of her but actually to fellow greenie mate Apples even more hidden within. The teleport invite placed her right in the center (good one!).
“I can’t see,” logically answered Apples, because of the grass and all. High it was, but not her. They hadn’t partaken in a week. This was all on the straight and narrow.
“Right right,” replied Franklin, still gazing upward instead of inward.
“Describe it to me.”
“I will.” And Franklin counted off the stories for Apples, 7 in number, summarizing that it looked like some kind of prison with its bleak outer facade, a tower prison. She was starting to get nervous, butterflies in her stomach if not upon it. Assumed to be assimilated Franklin had somehow escaped, thanks to this type of Central Park location, a hiding spot that, as I said, is the most-least obvious place to look for her. Little did she know. We, of course, let her go, let her be independent from Shelley once more, but at a price. Checking the downstairs works sometime after she arrived, she saw she didn’t have a Gang of Willard any longer. Roberts would not be pleased — if she could ever reunite with her again. Maybe *Roberts* has it, Franklin thought last night in her loneliness. She had the dog, she continued to rationalize. She has a history of buying unusual magical objects. Maybe this is something like, I don’t know, a *Christmas* present, red returned to what was now thought to be only purest green. Sins paid for by another.
“Any signs of life? Any signs of the light?” Apples broke Franklin’s reverie.
Still backwards guitar holding Franklin studied the faces, the windows. Nothing but plain surfaces, outer masking inner as well. “No.”
“We’ll wait it out until dark here. Then stealthily make our way back to Campground Central and Unch. He might have some ideas on this as well.”
“He’ll probably just start blathering on about how Collagesity is bound to return, and that a Linden owns the prime part of the land now and that the buyer she’s specifically selling it to for one of her kind’s dollars hasn’t reciprocated yet.” It will come back on the marketplace, the sentient tree predicted with its rustling leaves, emphasized this time by a couple of falling limbs even. Unch was confusing offworld marketplace purchases with inworld land purchases, but they didn’t bother to correct him.
“Hmm. Maybe we should be quiet for a while,” Apples said within. And so they were.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0112, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus
Sunklands 