Category Archives: Nautilus

Black 02

He was walking down the same beach again as before, but from the right direction instead of the wrong direction, he felt, Shelley encountered *first*, with Darla and her friends Lois and the other one in the background now. “Hi,” he said, slowing down. She moved her legs out of the sun fully under the Umbrella, staring at him. “Some decision we have coming up.” He wiped his brow of pretend sweat to seem more authentic. From somewhere inside her one piece black bathing suit she pulls out a pistol and shoots him.

Albert wakes up in the room intended for first Darla and next Shelley. He’d found her, but only in his dreams. *This* was reality.

He stares out a window between butterfly curtains he’d picked out at Macy’s toward the heart of the pretend city that they both were suppose to live in. Together.

“What went wrong?” he muttered, oblivious to the truth still, and that he had reaped what he sowed. He was the prisoner now.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0513, Crisp Sea, Gemini, HANA LEI, Nautilus

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.

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

Shelley’s castle (Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?)

“You are me and I am you. You have a (phallus) and so do I.”

“Not quite,” I said back to Franklin, green legs still in the distance.

There. That’s better.

“Like I was saying before the interruption, we’re the same *core* but different up here. It’s Our Second Lyfe, not My Second Lyfe.”

“Let’s go to the (Roost Never Sleeps) castle again and see,” Franklin requests. I had no choice but to follow her because of the, you know, being one thing. I was starting to question our differences as well. One of us could get *absorbed* — didn’t want that. But I knew it would be Franklin if so.

And, true enough, by the time we reached that more central castle across the way, she was gone. I looked down at my man pants. Was it actually *real* now? I had to see.

[delete picture]

No, just a better fit still. My hair had a tinge of green in it but that’s all. Arthur/Lemont would be *so* relieved if he were here witnessing this. But he’s somewhere off with Roberts — said they also had things to talk about. I suspect: more absorbing. Maybe. Perhaps it will be different in their case.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0316, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

preservation

My Lebettu Castle is still there in all its glory, seen here in a “Phototools — Still Life” environment. The library remains at its center, its core. However since I’ve been retired from same for *8* months now, it may be time to move on. I revisited the co-workers I was probably closest to a couple of weeks back and exchanged pleasantries and caught up with the latest. My old position had shifted into something new which helped the team, but also probably marked the end of a more interactive involvement with the overall campus in the way I fostered, a continuation from past practices. *Writing* is my job now, that and the accompanying art and photography. And also I view daily hiking as an extension of this, a needed opposite and balancing pole to virtual reality. It’s a good life. 🙂 I explore both.

Moving forward, I’m almost 1/2way done with the current Sunklands photo-novel, 35 in a series of “we”ll see”. Characters keep evolving. I am almost as much there as I am here.

I did not maintain contact with others outside my team. I was as much a part of campus as a whole as the library — theoretically. It was a perfect balance for a while, me acting as one man juggler. But it could not go on. I passed into retirement as naturally as about anyone could, thanks in part to the pandemic and the changes it wrought. It certainly contained echoes of actual death. I know better what to expect.

There have been other libraries in other times. Even now, in a virtual setting and obviously on a much smaller scale, I still have one, another echo. A friend died there.

I can still go inside the special part created by new-ish head Miss Ouri and read books, some of which are even my own.

Like this one.

There still exists a dividing point between Ordinary/Mundane and Special. It’s all in the pages.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0315, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula

Franklin was shrunk down to size.

“We have a read on the shack, Control, over.” No answer.

“Repeat, we have a read on the shack, over.” No answer for a while again, then:

“Uh, copy that, Mission, do you see anyone down below? Over.”

Norris pauses himself now, partly out of spite. “Yes, we have green legs, repeat, green legs. Green as frogs, over.”

They could take her out now but it would mean sacrificing the pilot. Stan talked the possibility over with Tom. When will we get a better chance? rationalized the latter.

“Okay, Mission, we’re going to ask you to go straight in on her, repeat, straight – in – on – her. As in kamikaze, over.”

A longer pause. How much did Norris value his artificial life? Enough to break free of Control? He decided to sacrifice himself but go out on his own terms.

“Read that, Control. Going – straight – in.” And he did, except a little to the side, the left one I believe, hitting the boat. Or the right one, pulverizing the rose colored cottage. But not totally straight, thus most likely not wiping out Franklin under the Umbrella.

Roberts of course heard the crash from just over the rocks and came rushing, and Shelley and Lemont heard too from their beach just beyond and did the same. Collision in a different way. Two arcs of a story not yet met.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0313, Nautilus, NORTH

00350312

“Thanks for coming to rescue me, *Lemont*.”

“You’re very welcome dearest. But you can *really* thank your Venus Cage necklace, or at least the photo of it.”

“Right. Didn’t remember anything about the Umbrella Club until I pulled it out of my purse and took a look. Angles aren’t right in the black and white photograph. Can’t figure out where it is taken on the body.”

“It’s not a body.”

“Yeah, I know that now. But just the studying, the trying to figure it out, changed me. I can never go back now. I remain under the Umbrella. Figuratively, of course, because here we’re out in the sun still. Where is our umbrella anyway?”

“Stashed away for a rainy day,” he said.

She turned on her side. “And… I don’t think I desire to wear purple any more. That must go along with (the change). Or when I do it’s *my* choice. She shaked her index finger to reinforce her point. Shelley she was through and through, she thought.

But Lemont knew the situation could change. Good now for them. But George/The Musician was still out there somewhere.

And Roberts remained just around the corner.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0312, Nautilus, NORTH

gloryous night 02

“Something happened in Belliseria, Johnny, I mean *Arthur* — DAMN: **Lemont**.”

“Yes??” Much like Mr. Ubermodel at the time, he was all ears. Where has she been???

“Anyway, it was undone. The Orient, Johnny Arthur Lemont. Thing like that can happen there.”

“So… something *happened* in Belliseria and… *unhappened* in Omega?” He began thinking the obvious.

“Yes. I went a little — crazy.”

We’ll have to start over, he thought here. We’ll just have to move on and start over.

“Where are you *now*??” he said into the receiver in his house in Nautilus. *Their* house. If he can find her and bring her back and she’s okay after that.

She looked around. “Bus,” she managed. “Heading… um, don’t know what direction.”

“Can you see the Sun?” Lemont tried.

“No. Dark.” Void, she thought. Was she *there*? Had she been cursed through being so mean to Johnny?”

“Anyone with you now?”

She had to keep driving, but she glanced around the bus real quick. She wasn’t sure otherwise. “No,” she said after checking, returning her eyes to the road.

“Do you have another tracker on you besides the phone? Doesn’t seem to be working as such now — may be too far away. Maybe from that Umbrella Club you were at?”

Umbrella Club, she thought. She doesn’t recall an Umbrella Club. Then she remembered legs — removing them from the sun back into the shade. The torch-like sun. So hot. Did she have another tracker about her? She recalled… a photograph.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0310, Bellisaria, Continent 03, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega, Southern, The Cross

thorns and roses

“Okay, Liz is your kid. I get it. Whether factually or fictionally — doesn’t matter.”

“I am Arthur Kill,” states actor Lemont Sanford beside her, also staring at the “Break the chain” statue by Eva, “but I am also me. We made love in both ways.”

“How do I approach *Liz* with this is what I’m wondering?”

“Tell her we have a common aunt that convinced you to go with me over George — The Musician if you will.”

“Oh, he will,” replies Shelley to this. “I’m kind of sick of the ambiguity.”

“Then tell him.”

“No,” she stands firm. “I’m done with it. The wedding is off. We will get married instead. Just like in the film.”

“What film?”

“Stop it, you know what film.”

“The film of our life?”

She sighs. “We have the same aunt. We are already married in a way, future moved to present. We have a child, 1/2 black and 1/2 white, just like us. *No* ambiguities. We are a couple, a team. I, I mean, *they* brought you back to play Kill van Kull, the sophisticated twin cousin of Arthur. You did swell — too much so, as character became reality, bringing Esther in the picture as well.”

“Act I, scene 7. How could I forget.”

“Cut back to the Inky Man from the Boulder Scene still hiding in the rocks, head in the sand — *cringing* (recoiling) instead of Fred. But it *wasn’t* Chaplin. Instead…”

“Keaton, Buster Keaton,” Arthur, I mean, Lemont finished the thought.

“They were heading for the church. I know where this is now!”

“Let’s go,” he deadpanned. No ambiguities any more. The Cross has spoken.

In this “joke” above, Buster recoils after realizing the potential bride he approached from behind is actually an African-American. Although this joke is overtly racial (one of the few in Keaton’s oeuvre), modern audiences may not realize that at the time it would have been illegal for Buster to marry this woman.

“I’ve watched it over and over,” Shelley says about the scene. “This is overt, *period*; this is a line drawn in the sand. No going back! Save the boulder sequence the rest is trite garbage.”

Lemont Sanford mostly agreed. They’d have to edit, they settled. He had a new role. Let’s begin again; technicolor; picket fences.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0212, Nautilus, NORTH

00350211: staying on Nautilus instead…

“Shoo, cat. I’m not actually a bird.

“Hey, watch it! You nipped me you little booger. I’m *not* a *bird* (!). Not really, although, come to think of it, I might taste like chicken.”

—–

A star once more, a pink to match the green in the middle of The Cross which made me dance and drove the toys away, right and left (she thinks).

A red statue created as mate and partner to the blue on the other side of the star-man. Are these toys as well (she ponders)? No (she decides).

—–

I had thoughtful Blue Bird sit at a handy bar while I continued to remotely look around the artsy place set on a high beige ridge of the North, the same Nautilus continent region featured in every other post of this here photo-novel so far, save 3. Staring at her from this angle, I realized that she was also part cat as well as part bird, offering up an alternate explanation for the black cat’s nipping back there, like attracting like. Love nip it was in this scenario, not a hunger bite. Blue Bird considers this as I explain it to her, but rejects it as a partial answer. “We have enough 1/2 and 1/2s in these photo-novels, 35 in a series of 35 so far. Time to go for the all or nothings more don’t you think?”

She was a woman, I was in a gallery dedicated to the efforts and sufferings of women, what could I do? I had to shore things up a bit here; follow her advice put to me kindly instead of harshly, picket fence instead of barb wire. She could have gone with the latter, which would have been more subconsious. Instead: alert and awake, making choices that others would also be pleased with. It satisfied her, I could tell. A suggestion is just that if so framed. I did not have to heed the guidance, although I most likely would have been wise to do so. I ramble…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0211, Nautilus, NORTH

blue place

“My aunt.” “No, *my* aunt.”

She/he went from the cross…

… to The Cross.

Page’s convincing portrayal of the “church lady” image of Aunt Esther was in marked contrast to the “blue” material of her stand-up act and record albums.

“What can I say, that’s my aunt.” “No it’s *not* (pause) Okay, yes it is. But…” “But what?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0210, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega, The Cross