“I’m glad we added it to the list, Lichen, because it needed to be saved.”
“Liszt?” she responded.
“Not quite. Very close!”
Category Archives: Omega
WOW
“Do you not know me yet, Fern? I am the one you’re trying to forget.”
Fern wakes up, remembers everything.
—–
“Yellow Jack is where Philip Strevor turned back into Trevor Philips and resumed his Id role in the Grand Theft Auto game V,” explained Fern to Lichen later as the sun rose over her shoulder again. “Miss Janet was the key, and refusing to provide him service and saying he was still banned from the joint. He remembered his drug company, recalled his home in Sandy Shores. He was reassimilated, Lichen. Frank Lynn became the lead man after that, although we didn’t know it at the time. Frank Lynn, through Morro Bay, points to Nightsity. Did I explain the Morro Bay link yet?”
“I — I don’t think so, Fern.” Straw still not twirling. Still.
“But I have a new theory, Lichen my dearest,” she said, avoiding the temptation to spoon another pepper snake and mint ladder into her mouth swimming in what little was left of the now discolored milk in the bowl before her because of all the dissolved flavoring, the last of their kind. She wanted to speak as clear as a bell so that Lichen knew what was going down. “Aliens — now I believe it all points to the hippy egg camp outside of Sandy Shores and not Sandy Shores or Trevor or his trailer or business directly. A man named Night made it all — can’t be coincidence. But not with a K; with an N: the K person would not approve of equating his precious lord and savior Jesus with heretical aliens, you see.”
“I — see?”
“No, you don’t see, Lichen. But you will.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0312, Castle Town+, GTA, Omega
00430311
“We’ve been controlling your dreams for a while, Fern, judging your actions and the consequences involved. We’ve been studying your tree in short.”
Fern knew to be quiet in the moment. Fern knew this was important.
“We see you’re *clearly* qualified to join our group, The Masters. What we, as a group again, aren’t sure of is if you should become president. It’s either me… or you.” He looks at the golden gun on the table. Fern wakes up.
—–
“Were any jokes involved?” asks fellow cereal eating Lichen that morning at the breakfast table, the sun rising over her right shoulder in the window behind her from Fern’s perspective, just like it did with her “rival” in the dream. Lichen’s usually twirling and swirling mouth straw kept still as the sun kept rising.
“No,” she answered. “It was all dead serious. The guy even had a skull for a head. Dead — serious.”
Lichen knew this was bad and that somehow someway she had to enter Fern’s dreams with her. A mind meld came to mind.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0311, Castle Town+, GTA, HANA LEI, Omega
00430304 (Page?)
“I tried to lighten the mood early in our friendship by showing him the Tire Nutz juxtaposition, Lichen, which he didn’t know about despite being local too. You’d be proud of me that day. Two big tractor tires on top of an auto repairs shop just down the street from my dealership, with a phallic water tower in back if you look at it straight on. Obviously done on purpose. Can you picture it in your mind’s eye, Lichen my partner? Do you even remember what those things look like, how they’re configured and such?”
“The tires are nuts, right,” says Lichen, serious in the moment while trying to figure all this out with her lesser brain power. “And the Blue Balls were nearby?”
“The Kentucky sculpture, yes, with three balls instead of 2, so: moons. Made by Tennessee. This was the fulfillment of her unfinished Mars project, poked through into another dimension. But Asylum was behind all of this still.”
“So we’re beyond… the Black Wall?”
“I’m not ready to go that far, my blonde buddy. It’s beyond me right now. And you know how I don’t like limitations of the mind.”
“Dangerous,” responds Lichen to this. “Keep ’em at bay with jokes.”
“Hmm.”
—–
One sector over, Clara Bellissaria is keeping tabs on tobacco selling Redd back at her station, noting that she is a 2n1 now and that the new left is different from the old right. The white horse leads, the black horse steers. Hasn’t gone off the rails yet. But soon she knew there would have to be a decision made, and Fern through her.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0304, C2077, Castle Town+, GTA, HANA LEI, MARS, NIGHTSITY, Omega
00430116
“Well I’m glad you threw on *some* clothes. A bit of bosom still hanging out there I see. Can’t resist.”
“No,” she said nonchalantly, and purses her lips even more in disdain for the discourse. “Whadda ya want? Tobacco? Because that’s all I have to offer.”
“I *want*… to know why Clarence the Spy was here in the first place. And what the assignment is. You’ve already been a model in Aisle of Palms. To the painter Greg Ogden, remember? Why did Clarence approach you about going back?”
“Because he recognized me, I suppose. Recognized talent, like the first guy.”
“Well tell me about the 1st guy for criminy’s sake.”
“Bald. Old. Reformed stealer of art he told me. Gold I think is the name. Remembered me and the girls called him Old Gold after that, yeah. ‘Is Old Gold gonna pick you up in his Oldsmobile this evening?’ Stuff like that… silly girl banter. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh I *understand*,” replied Fern, feeling slighted about her superior brain power. “First you put on a bathing suit, then some revealing red lingerie, and now this, about as fully dressed as you can get, I suppose. I know your type. You didn’t like being *abstracted*.”
Redd said nothing to this except, “you done?”
“Yeah, I suppose I am.” She knew who “Old Gold” was, of course. She couldn’t talk to the wife about this for discretionary reasons. But maybe Greg would know something.
“One more thing. Do you know where Greg Ogden is now? We haven’t seen him since he finished your so-called portrait. I’m speaking for all the members of the Baker Bloch family, extended and otherwise.”
Redd looked around then leaned forward, reducing her voice. “Buy me out of my daily requirement of smoke sales and we’ll talk. I’ll be free to leave my post, then. Boss just wants X amount of money per day. You’ll give him that, then I’ll tell you the information you need.”
*Knew* there was something here, thought Fern while she reached into her gray capri pants to retrieve her wallet. Wait… how’d that *pistol* get in there??
She finally wakes up.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0116, Big Woods, C2077, Castle Town+, HANA LEI, Jeogeot, NIGHTSITY, Omega
00430109
Fern and Lichen pull up to the Atrium building, determined to get to the bottom of some things.
“Is this 3633 Wheeler Rd.?” started Lichen with the easy stuff, softening them up for Fern’s blazing bazooka of a brain.
“Yes, can I help you?” spoke Don the receptionist, on the job since Thursday. He’d yet to acquire an eye for suspicious looking characters, which these 2 certainly were.
“We’re here to see Wayne Bruce or Bruce Wayne, whichever way he orders it. We’re here to ask some questions if you don’t mind,” continued Lichen.
“Yeah, *questions*,” took over Fern in a much tougher voice than cream puff Lichen’s. “Like… what happened to Robin?; why did he replace him with Superduper Guy for a sidekick?; why is Aqua Dude so jealous of Superduper?; did he want to be the sidekick instead?; and what of Antarctica? Penguin? Penguin and Joker both? Backrooms? And finally: Alberta? Is it Albert or Alberta? And what of that tea and the forgetting?; did Aqua Dude and his partner Bullfrog simply drive away after that, no deal formed between the lot of ’em?; why was this his ace in the hole? *That* kind of stuff.” Fern finally took a breath.
Don’s evasion training from 2 days ago kicked in at last. “I’m sorry, did you say 3633? This is 3643. You’re one down from where you should be.”
“Yeah, we’re not going to fall for that,” said Fern. “We’re just going to walk out that door, go looking for 3633 in the wrong location and then come back here all confused. Maybe you’ll say the reverse, then, that this was 3633 all along and you thought we said 3643. Most likely so. But by that time you would have cooked something up. Wayne Bruce or Bruce Wayne is doing business in New Zealand at the moment thank you very much. He’s in the building and we know it. Go *get* him. Or, heck, *else*.” She pulls a gold gun out of her gray capri pants pocket, trains it on his head. She wakes up.
—–
“Asylum is one up on the Black list from Atrium,” interpreted Fern later to Lichen over a breakfast of Toasty-O’s, new pepper and mint flavor, new shape of snakes and ladders respectively. “This is what we actually seek. Just like Snowden.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0109, Castle Town+, Georgia, Google Street View, Omega
00430107 (deep)
“What did you just call those rocks over there?”
—–
“Cleveland,” Fern repeats to partner Lichen what Asylum bartender Teebestia said to her while they were standing with their backs to the hole, gazing up at it. And the co-manager of the Yalta Bar and Grill happened to have the same name. Fern quickly determined it couldn’t be chance. They had to confront Drew “Grumpy” Cleveland with the news.
—–
“Little Big… right up on those rocks… was *taken*. Flung into the far corners of space against his will, his better nature. (Old) Mabel has been looking for him ever since. She thought the hole would provide the answer, or at least relief from her suffering. So she jumped… and came out the other side. Black to white; space again. The hole was a portal to a ship of vast dimensions. She didn’t find her big brother, per se, but found what happened to him, why he never returned. He was *assimilated*. Grumpy — you listening to me? You found that second list, said it was just on the floor when you finished dusting those bookshelves in back. But, truth be told, you’ve *had* that list, probably for a long time. What you didn’t know about is the other, matching list, our first but your second.”
Former porn star and current nudist Drew “Grumpy” Cleveland tried to retain a face of stone but failed. The facade broke down, he started crying even. In the animated blubbering, the huge package down below swayed back and forth like a swinging bridge disconnected on one side and in a heavy gale. He often wondered how it would be displayed when he passed on. In its own big, long jar of formaldehyde at some kind of porn flick museum? He didn’t want that future for himself. He wanted… more.
“I was told,” he said between sobs, “that it would make me *immortal*.”
A phallus! Fern realized. The Martian rocks represent his own. She needed to take a better look at them with this information. Where are the balls, for example?
Built right into the corner of the compound, as it turned out, the whole thing towering over the Asylum bar itself. But the overall smooth, classical phallus shape still lies unhewn and unexposed beneath a rough rock exterior. The sculptor, named TENNESSEE, still had much work to do. Trouble is, it had been over 100 years since she started.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0107, Castle Town+, MARS, Omega
00430106
“A word for each letter of the alphabet,” Wayne Bruce continued about his company, the famed Asylum Inc. started in the 70s on the west coast in a town that time had forgotten. He didn’t, and he’d drag others into his alternate reality as well. With the lists. He separated the top paper from the rest of the short stack and put it on the other side of the opened manila folder. “Second list now,” he said, staring at the new page front and center. “Black for the 1st’s white. Asylum revealed for what it truly is. Shadow government to the world everyone assumed ran from A to Z in an orderly fashion. This was only facade.”
“Here’s where he gets to the part about the Green and the Gray,” Fern directed to likewise watching Lichen, returned from her trip down the river to hunt for opposite shore sea shells. She’d come back home to Mama.
“… the Green… and the Gray.”
“Told ya,” said Fern with some satisfaction. She paused the film she’d found in an obscured archive in a hidden data farm — took a lot of digging to find this gem of a dangling carrot. She assumed Lichen had questions. *Should* have a lot but she’ll see about the total. Will help her determine how far Lichen has come along with her soil studies and overall brain development. She’s *funny*, Fern reminded herself. Funny as all get out at times. But she needs to develop the other side. Fern also reminded herself that she needs to work on the opposite side and find her own funny bone with which to work from. She told what she felt were two legitimate jokes yesterday that Lichen seemed to smile at or at least acknowledge the humor in. Advancement.
“How…?”
“How does Blue fit in?” Fern guessed about Lichen’s question. “With the Black, the Green, the Gray? Dark spectrum colors all I’m sure you noticed.”
“So… Red,” said Lichen, thinking back to the first list. “And…”
“Yellow, yes. And Golden and White. Light spectrum. Dark and light, Lichen. Dark and light.” She looked over at the light that had gone out of Lichen’s eyes. “Daark…” she said slower, trying to reignite. “And liight.”
Bulb went off.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0106, Castle Town+, Omega, RDR2
00430105 (watery predicaments)
The junkies of the apartment took a drug so deep, so powerful, that they forgot to wash themselves much less the dishes. They couldn’t even take off their shoes before crawling into bed. 15 minutes till the sink overflows.
Fern Stalin wonders if the white horse has any chance in the matter *snap*.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0105, Bellisaria, Continent 05, Omega, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
00430104
He looked at the paper that had fallen to the floor from the bookcases in back. He quickly phoned Fern.
“Listen, I have news.”
Fern thought at first: Barry’s back from his sabbatical, But, no, it was another list, printed on Asylum Inc. letterhead again.
“How?” Fern responded to this. “We were just there. We looked *everywhere*.” The thought passed through her mind now that Drew “Grumpy” Cleveland, a nudist originally from rough Grandpa Cliffs across the channel, was playing an elaborate prank on them. She pondered this more as Grumpy explained he was cleaning up, getting ready to lock up, just dusting the bookshelves as he does at the end of every working day, when the thing simply fell out, about at the location of the “Around the World in *1000* Pictures” book (not 2000, as we’ve already explained). He thought he’d just dusted the book but couldn’t be sure. Anyway, he had it spread out in front of him on the bar counter. He described what he saw to Fern.
“It looks very similar,” he said. “26 words again, just like with the first one. Looks like a whole new set of words, though. And alphabetized again.”
“All the letters of the alphabet?” queried Fern.
Grumpy checked once more. “No, looks like some are missing this time.”
“So we have groupings of words starting with the same letter,” Fern said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
—–
“So here they are. I took the first and placed it next to the new one so you could compare. Whaddaya think?”
Fern eyed the new set of 26 words with hoax firmly in her mind now. Grumpy playing games with her, just to try to show off what he thought was his own intellect too and put her in her place? But the words would tell her, the patterns they make.
“Diablo and Draco — did you see, Grumpy?”
“Umm, see what?”
“They’re reversed in the alphalist. Only two ‘D’s, swapped with each other. She eyed him now, looking for signs of feigned surprise. The surprised expression coming from the big, nude man in front of her seemed genuine, though. He’d simply passed over the reversing in his scan of the list.
“And, look here, Greengrow and Grayback — same thing if you spell Gray as Grey, like if we were English instead of American.” UK and US united as one, she thought here, lovely red-headed, pinkish skinned Wendy a vision in her mind. Or maybe UK and France is a better match, Fern quickly amended, considering the bar’s name they were in and the Churchill that had to be involved. “But, see,” she refocused on the colors green and gray instead, poking the printed words with her index finger, “this has something to do with war. This has something to do with *the* war. Green-Gray, sometimes colored Green-White for reasons I can’t quite remember right now.” She waved off the attempt. “Never mind that: Asylum is involved in the war. This Asylum Inc.,” she summarized, “is maybe a weapons manufacturer, or maybe something to do with military training.” Brainwashing, she realized. They’re brainwashing men to become soldiers. Just like…
—–
“Describe ‘hole’,” she asked the bartender in the city of Mars where Old Mabel disappeared from.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0104, Castle Town+, MARS, Omega
Sunklands 