He continues to puff as he stares at the Big E on the now shared table, a ritual of sorts. He doesn’t know quite what to make of it still except that it’s perfect in its own way, and a worthy additional the TILE family of absolute glyphs. He stares at the green green sim of Xilted, thinking back to his own experiences there, 0202 as well and exactly 3 novels back. More perfection.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0202, Big Woods, Constantynople, Jeogeot, Kidd Tower, Nautilus, Xilted
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0704, Big Woods, Cement Village, Jeogeot, Nautilus, Nautilus City, RDR2
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0703, Big Woods, Cement Village, Jeogeot, Nautilus, Nautilus City, RDR2
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0702, Big Woods, Cement Village, GTA, Jeogeot, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Nautilus City
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?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0701, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Nautilus City
Newt called his wife with the exciting news. “Listen honey I know we’re kind of stuck in the moment but I’ve stumbled upon an important lead.”
(reply)
“We’ll right now I’m *physically* stuck — in some rocks it seems. Anyway it’s in a place owned by Pan… actually shortened her name to that from a longer form beginning with those same letters a couple of years back. I made a note to ‘STUDY Pan’ in the Real World — thinking here more of Peter Pan and Neverland and such — and then lo and behold when Baker logged me in tonight, seconds later, I was standing on land owned by this virtual Pan. It’s a way we can go — *potentially* go — from Flores back to Our Second Life. Through Amiable.”
(reply)
“It’s a long story. But Baker and his *own* wife are headed to Charleston, South Carolina tomorrow. Obviously I’m talking about Baker B. and not the components Baker Bloch and Baker Blink–”
(reply)
“It’s a triangle. We enter the real world but there’s only one spot there we can get back — theoretically again.”
(reply)
“I will.” And with this he hung up. Now to get himself unstuck. He has a path to follow. He stares into icy water and sees it is so. Here he also makes a mental note to drink more water to prepare his avatar body better. Because something is coming up. Something big.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0408, Big Woods, Jeogeot, Nautilus, South Carolina
“I still have a home on Nautilus. It was a retirement gift — very pretty there. Lots of vegetation.”
Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer, still dealing primarily with bodily fluids but hoping to graduate to full blown psychiatry soon, looked at his e-machine and gauged this was true. “Describe… gift,” he decided to say.
It was the end of 31 and it was the end, period. March 1 of last year, 12:01 AM we’ll say. Eddie D’Aigle, who sometimes preferred D’Aigle, Eddie, especially if he was traveling in the Orient, had just retired from the private sector of the records management business, having made his fortune archiving the files of rock stars Ozzie Osbourne, Ozmo Daredevils, and the like. His last blog article for the latter, the last he did overall, was about how the song “Jackie Blue” was changed from “Jackie Pink,” which drew the attention of Pink, Marsha, Krakow. He had the evidence before him as he wrote: the altered lyrics, everything. “It was suppose to be about a man who peddled drugs during the day while working nights as a bartender, a very Dada affair,” he reinforced to her in a reply email, then, seeing her avid interest, invited her up to [Blue Mountain] to look at the actual, revised lyrics herself. “Come with your driver’s license or a birth certificate,” he said, “and our staff will bring the whole box out to you; I’ll put it on reserve and not reshelve. You can look at one file at a time, and just mark what you want copied with green (START) and red (STOP) paper we’ll provide.” She ended up photocopying the whole box. New 3d scanner the office just purchased did the trick in a 10th the time it would have taken the old fashioned way. Marsha’s, in fact, was the first request accomplished using that method. Boxy Marsha, she went down in office legend as. Prototype. Especially since Eddie, on his last day of work, helped her tote the (wrong?) box to her still hot pink car, soon to change to yellow. Thanks to what was inside. In many ways, she became the box she requested, a black and white facsimile of herself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0611, Blue Mountain, Nautilus, Omega, Retirement Islands, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island, Wild West
“Your orange-ish hair… so pretty.” He couldn’t help but run his fingers through the semi-transparent ponytail to test its texture.
“Well thanks I guess Al Orange,” she replied, regretting that she sat so close to him now. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Before she realized this was just another one of those mannequins — they all were. No information here to retrieve. And she needed info. So she could get the heck out of Dodge.
“Yes, you’re so pretty overall,” spoke over Dafney Duck, a quack at the doctoring business. Two kneecap replacements just last week. And only none of them needed it. “Why don’t you put on a bathing suit and really, truly join in with us. I have an extra back in the boat, I believe.”
“I *don’t* *do* bathing suits,” she spoke firmly, leaning back and edging away from creepy Al, short for Alvin she assumed. “Not since…” She cut herself off. Couldn’t talk about Mountain Lake yet. Or her actual mother still mayor back in Meat City. But she certainly wasn’t ready to go back to prison. Thus: here.
The host of the party sitting directly behind her — Sandy Hook — then said something. Bitterly. “I wonder if *Edward*… would like to see you in one of those.” Who was this really? Marsha “Pink” Krakow still? Or…
“Coke is real,” uttered the last person at the hot tub, the 6th of 6. Friends? Not really. But the appellation still applied.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0511, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Upper Austra, Wild West
“There!” she cried again. “Mother’s apple!” She was still studying, still perusing the category “All Orange” in the blog through her remote feed. Orange slice after orange slice, she ate, trying to get the whole, rounded picture.
“And there!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0405, Nautilus, Omega, Rank & File, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island, Yd Island
She was back in her old room doing remote research. Mother provided free food, just like in childhood. She had a tape recorder and several hour long tapes in which to record her thoughts. She started at the beginning and worked her way up to the present. Early on she found her Volkswagen bug. “There!” she pointed out to herself and herself only. For now. “Like Emma’s, like Jack’s before her. Or after her, doesn’t matter. A story in a brook.”
The man is Tropp, she recalled. Grown up from Opp and wearing a birthday hat instead of a birthday suit. But she gets the point. He started out as an Mmmmmm but became more, unlike his cousin Grassy who remained a mere toy. He walks pass the bug and through the arch to yesterday’s tomorrowland.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0404, Nautilus, Omega, Rank & File, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
