Category Archives: **VIRTUAL SL

00440513

It was right here where his ship landed years ago, perhaps 5 now, which would be about 42 or 43 years for him I suppose, given the 1 : 8 1/2 year conversion between Earth time and Our Second Lyfe time. Volcanic Zebrasil-Ichelus was and is the island, a well known landmark (infohub) to old timey Our Second Lyfe residents like me and perhaps like you. His robot parents were destroyed by hostile native glytches shortly after arrival but he survived by hiding in the bushes situated just here there and there, his littler body not detected by the marauding mutants, diminutive themselves but bad of eyesight. Then, not too long afterwards, vacationing adventurist Sugar Demossville, a brightly hued, small dinosaur who ran the eponymous Sugar Shack over in nearby Big Woods at the time, scooped up his little robot body found on an inner tube in the offshore water (glytches don’t like water, he’d found out in the meantime; too late to save his parents, though) and took him back home to the mainland with her. Since Sugar was red and green herself, just like Billy’s safe haven inner tube, she deemed it fate that he join her in the woods and live out the rest of his natural mechanical life there with her. But it was Sugar herself who died first from a stimulus induced heart attack brought on by one too many pieces of pecan and cherry pies at once several years later (2? 17?), freshly plucked from 2 of Big Woods’ many pie trees and too delicious to resist gluttonously gobbling down that fateful morning in late April’s May despite the warnings from her 2 doctors not to double up on the sugars like she did with her physicians. She was survived by mate Donald the Thong, a man-sized, almost naked duck to complement Sugar’s woman-sized, totally naked dinosaur — very tall but still within range, let’s say. He couldn’t deal with, let’s say again, Billy’s hypersomnia where his constant sleeping blended day and night until he couldn’t tell one from the other. “What time is it?” he’d ask now mate-less Donald. Then 5 minutes later, “What time is it?” “Five minutes after you asked the last time, little Billy,” Donald originally said to things like this but patience gradually wore away like his clothes did before (thanks Venus!), soon leading to harsh replies like, “You’re *clockwork*, Billy. You can’t tell time??” Time for Billy to be sent away himself, not to the Land of Death like Sugar thankfully but still regrettably to a robot orphanage over in Lesters Best, with many similar stories of eroded owner patience in the air, mostly for other kinds of conditions but with one in particular sounding very much like his own: that of Sally’s, who turned out to be the love of his life and the light in his eyes, particularly after the brain meld. What fortune, what fate! (once more!). He would never be left in the dark again.


Billy revisiting his “homeland”.


Billy staring over at his red and green inner tube, his safe haven until Sugar rescued him from this hellish landscape which took the lives of his parents (additional note: the glytches have meanwhile been rounded up and taken care of).

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0513, Big Woods, Jeogeot, Xilted

00440512

He sat down on the toilet even though he didn’t need to go to the bathroom. Mechanism, you see — no inner fleshy workings of that type to maintenance. He needed *oil* yes. Oil to think. Because he was lost. Lost in a forest that had inexplicably, to him, turned white. Too early for snow he knew. Maybe some kind of virtual blight? But here he is, trying to cogitate with the limited power he had left. Suppose to meet someone named Fern here who would take him to an isle named after food. 2 isles actually, she said, a 2n1, she described it. Breakfast… and some other type of food he couldn’t recall.

He also couldn’t recall how to contact Fern for help. She was not the same core as him; he had that at least. Something about flesh again. Yes, he went into the bathroom to think about flesh, hmm. The bathroom and its toilet would help him remember.

If he just had his trusty oilcan he could squirt some in his left right ear and the gears would begin to spin properly up there again. But he lost it somewhere in this forest, too confusing with its whitewashed nature to retrace his steps to that tree stump he left it by.

*Sally*, he then recalled. He could ask his *wife*. His better, mechanoid half. Yes, of course. Sally. Speed dial so he didn’t have to come up with the number. He could ring her up in his head they were so close. Almost the same brain workings.

—–

Sally woke up with a ringing in her head, cursed the extra glass of diesel wine she had before bed, then realized what it was, *who* it was. “Hello?” she spoke to no one around.

“I’m in trouble, er…” Long pause.

“Sally,” Sally said, understanding that he *was* in trouble if he forgot her name in the moment. Lack of brain power, lack of oil most likely. Where *is* he?

“I don’t know,” he spoke back, understanding her thought. “Somewhere white. The trees… are white.”

She intuitively remembered the “blight” starting in upper right central Maebaleia, in the middle of that new super city developing there. “Hold on,” she thought back. “I’ll be right over.”

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0512, Blue Feather Sea+, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

00440511 (7 to 6 revisited)

“It’s okay,” he says, peering in. “They’re actually all blue.” He turns toward me. “No choice.”

“Let’s go, then,” I said, and picked one. Any one. The slide begins.

And: out.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0511, Back Rooms, Google Street View, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

00440505 (the end of AISLE 01?)

I check to see when the next due date is on my Aisle of Palms rent. 1 week away. Decision time (again).

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0505, Big Woods, Jeogeot

00440504 (the end of AISLE 00?)

Despite having a microscope instead of a telescope, she was able to connected the dots that were the lights that were the stars in the cube pretty far away in the nighttime sky into a triangle with her naked eye. Naked all the way down, actually. Helped her work, helped her with the unaided magnification when needed. Like here. Damn that Edmund Scientific catalog order mixup! she cursed internally.

One emerged from the 3, she observed with her 20/5 vision at least: Emily for a Rose, backwards, she knew, from The Zombies song “A Rose for Emily,” perhaps even the source of her own name too like Rose T.’s.

Falling. Falling.

—–

“Where *am* I?? And… what’s that *thing* over there humming like there’s no tomorrow?” New Southern recruit Tom Morrow from Horns of Hatton shows up and explains everything. “Sit down,” he requests to begin. “This could take a while.” After saying this he just disappears from sight while continuing to talk. Convenient — time saving, even. Like he was never physically, bodily there in the present; simple reuse of an old photo a number of posts back; no avatar appearance for Tom Morrow needed (only spiritual). But, anyways, she has her back story.

I’d end this with my usual “(to be continued)” but we already have, also part of Tom Morrow’s explanation.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0504, Big Woods, Blue Feather Sea+, Horns of Hatton+, Jeogeot, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

00440503

“Gotta light?”

“Lincoln!!” both occupants of the black car in the desert or at least the very arid landscape screamed in unison, their last coherent words.

—–

“Com’n Trevor. Time to go home.” And he dumped the lifeless body in the container, determined this would be his last Badlands gig. Ever. Retirement himself, if not in body, in soul. He had a old bunker picked out he could remake as a desert home. Even had a contractor on board for the remodeling process. Cliffside dwelling. Perfection. Half an hour tops now and done with all this. He got into the make-shift hearse and put the 4 way flashers on, Tiler Church straight ahead and then turn left and another left and then a right and then a left and right. And left, he believes. Then: done. Away from the grave and reborn. This old monkey’s about to acquire a leaf and turn into a new man. Adam. And he also has an Eve picked out. Mechanism, but it was the best he could do. They would manage. Box labelled Live Cargo should be arriving any day now down at the harbour.

—–

“What do you *mean* I can’t go home?!” shot back Fern, her business done here in The Aisles with Tin and all, with much learned and much to ponder about later.

“The Cpt.’s duties have ended,” he said plainly, not going into any details.

OD, Fern assumed. Or hospitalized or fired or a combination of 2 or all three in one. Well, something had to happen sooner or later, she rationalized.

“How long till you get another cpt.?” she asked, knowing she could pilot the vessel herself back to mainland if needed. But she had to obey protocols with this officer of the Navy, Army and Air Force in one. And perhaps the Marines as well, the oft forgotten 4th. She looked at the insignia. Hard to tell from them; designed that way due to the ’68 Force Bias Wars as they became known.

“1 day, maybe 2.” She looked at the many weapons about his body. She’d have to wait. He’d stand guard until the replacement showed up, she knew from his stance and former talk.

Finally time for that drink, she supposed. Time to visit Rose, one of ’em, maybe both of ’em before the day’s ended. She heads in their general direction from the harbour, letting her feet decide which is what and who first.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0503, Badlands, Blue Feather Sea+, C2077, Maebaleia/Satori, New Mexico, Twin Peaks

00440502

Upon exiting the shuttle from the airport where the ship “landed”, she immediately turned to the harbour to see if she could spot the boat. She only saw a head sticking up but that was enough. Hooded, she observed. This was the one.

Now to find Tin and clear this up once and for all, she said to herself, trying to retrace her steps from a month back now.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0502, Blue Feather Sea+, C2077, Kabusie, Maebaleia/Satori

00440501

“Soooooo… youu headingggg (hiccup) backkk… todaayyyyyeee *weeeeeeee*?” he said in his drunky, sloppy way, suddenly spinning around as he spoke, almost toppling over. Typical for the morning. By afternoon he’d be popping the pills, becoming less slurry as the drug fueled words popped back out of his mouth more in staccato form, with consonants and vowels left out, soon to progress into whole words and even phrases and sentences. Word salad they become in effect, not slurry but just as incomprehensible and useless.

“Yup,” she uttered, coming onboard and up the stairs to directly face him. She wanted to know what he was drinking, wanted to smell it on his breath. Because she might need some too. Given what she was potentially facing today.

Vodka. And not a hint of vermouth to change it into her normal. She’d have to pass, pure being too strong for her liking.

“Well,” she said as he stumbles and falls. “Get to piloting… Cpt.”

“Right right right. Heading back, right. Riiiight *weeeeee*.” Another fall.

“You know — never mind. I’ll do it myself. Been there enough lately.” Still on the ground. “Yes, you just rest, Philip. It *is* still Philip? Right?”

“Right right (hiccup)… right,” he repeats, and then falls asleep on the spot, pills in his mouth as soon as he becomes conscious again at 12:01.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0501, Blue Feather Sea+, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

00440413 (Arroyo)

“Chop!” I said, looking into the Dewdrop Inn room I’d force-opened and recognizing my dog at last. Well. At least the *map* of my dog. Martha’s Vineyard. Always wondering what it meant and why the feet were there. And the head with the two Chop names, East and West, like paired lips or ears or sumtin. Well that head is *this* head, those feet — clearly — are *these* feet.

My dog is a robot. And a sexy one at that it appears, at least to those of its kind. But maybe Chop is instead the robot in the chair — watching. Maybe the map is that of his true love, something he wants to *eat* — chomp away at. Like breakfast, hmm. Rose, I remembered. Better get back and finish my meal.

“Never mind me,” I wanted to say to the robots in parting. “Wrong room.” But I knew they couldn’t hear me. This was a spectacle, something only to be observed and that alone. Same as, er, Chop is doing here. I’m engrossed, he’s engrossed. Seems to fit, yeah. I shut what remained of the door and leave the motel and head next door again.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0413, Arroyo, Blue Feather Sea+, C2077, Maebaleia/Satori, Massachusetts, Witcher

00440411 (metals)

It was Crazy Black and Crazy Blue at once, 2x crazy. Perfect match it seemed. She had almost finished reviewing the story of Big Woods. Or he, whichever. Who is who, which is which? Black and blue once more. Oz.

And at the very end of the Big Woods story we find Lincoln again, oddly enough. Crazily enough. Desert time, me thinks. AISLE can wait.

—–

https://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/tpr8.htm

“Oh, look. I found a penny!” she says in a New Mexico location, in the desert or at least very close to it. Arid. “Oh, and it’s heads up. That means it’s good luck.” The boy says, “I hope it does bring you good luck. Penny.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0411, Big Woods, Blue Feather Sea+, Jeogeot, Maebaleia/Satori, New Mexico, Oz, Twin Peaks