“I need to have a talk with you, V. Panama’s not my type. I don’t *want* to sleep with her. I actually… have my eyes set on someone else.”
“Jonny. How long’s it been?” I say to the person inside of me, the person I’m wedded to as much as any soulmate lover. We’re not lovers. We are One. “Roller coaster?” I tried to pinpointed.
“Yeah. Roller coaster. Had a fun day back there. Thought I’d end it while we were still on top.”
“Yeah, noticed you weren’t with me after we started careening down to the bottom again on that last big hill.”
“The biggest!”
“Yeah.”
“Good times.”
“Good times, Jonny. So… are you back?”
“Define: back.”
“Welll.”
“Just kidding, kid-o.” Jonny’s affectionate nickname for me, since he’s, I don’t know, like *150*. “Take the blue pill and let’s try that scene (from the last post) again. Let me take over. I want to demonstrate my point.”
“And then you’ll take the red one,” I said, reinforcing the pact we made before. Blue on my side, red on Jonny’s side to return control back to me. He’d been proven a reliable ally on this arrangement.
“Sure, sure. Just like before, chum.” He even gently punches me on the shoulder to reinforce the partnership, the unity of cause. I don’t feel any punch of course, all this being just virtual hallucination.
“Now?”
“Now. Before the inspiration is lost.”
I had a couple of bluesies handy in my back pocket. I pull one out. “Okay. Here goes (swallow).”
—–
For a moment, she appeared in their midst, naked as a jailbird, even bringing a bit of Kabusie canal water along with her which pooled down below her feet. I thought it was a mirage at first, but then I stared at the tattoos, remembered what they said and represented to her, the roses, the firetruck, the spiderweb, that *cat*. No mirage this Lexi Alvocado was — straight out of the city and into the desert, Panama nowhere to be Scene. Tattoos like that don’t lie.
I could feel myself stirring down there. I wasn’t sure I wanted to lose control again this time. Which of course — doofus — V or Val heard, being One with me. What gives? he says way down there, but aware of the stirrings not his own, the thoughts. Okay okay, I say back in my head to the other part of myself. I’ve proven my point. Take the red pill, he pleads. Get out of there before it’s too late. But what do you think? I say back. Beautiful isn’t she. Better than Panama, eh? So go with Lexi. We’ll get along *so* much better later. Take – the red — *pill*, he insisted from within. Okay alright, I say. I had two in my back pocket as well. Wait… one. Always forget how that works. I pull it out, I swallow. Yeah, before it’s too late. The arrangement, etc. etc.
The pill begins working its magic. She acquires her regular garb to stem the stirrings, cut them off even. She was Jonny’s type, I said in my head while making my way back to the surface. But she wasn’t *my* type.
—–
Then *I*, baker b. of the Baker Family of Our Second Lyfe avatars, took over. Neither one, the Mary Anne and Ginger of Cyberpunk 2077 as we could call them, were my types. I put the patch back in my pocket to end the game before it even began.
Sunklands 