On his days off, Grant (aka *Fred*dy) Price likes to roam the streets of Lost Sanos, sucking up people’s dreams to replenish needed energy for his various security assignments. This unsuspecting guy walks right into it.
Meanwhile, on another planet altogether (most say), Arthur sees horses at the end of a tunnel.
“We got a second one!” shouts Newt from beyond the 4th wall as Arthur reenters the light.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0602, Big Woods, Bright Moon Cottage, GTA, Jeogeot, LSD, Natural World, Newtonia, RDR2
He often came here to rock and think about the battle of rock vs. paper vs. scissors, which for him was won by putting paper (1) before scissors (2) before rock (0). 102 if read left to right, with rock always in the center like the ground zero it is.
He hears a noise outside. It’s 3:25 in the morning — no one else up, he imagined. Except ghosts.
He stops rocking, gets up, leaving the maple leaf throw pillow behind and thoughts of Canadian Picturetown along with it. “Who goes there?”
The right Wendy walks through the door of the establishment…
… with her first words inside being: “This entrance has changed.”
It certainly has, thinks Barry De Boy, very happy at the sight. It certainly has. No demo over her head now; he was seemingly dealing with a real flesh and blood girl again. They can… well, you know. This is what boys think. Boys like De Boy.
“The gatekeeper said I’d find you down here. Said it was his last night to work, the last hour, the last minute. Said he was here for me and then he could go. He put a Help Wanted sign on the door as he locked up behind me. I turned around just in time to see him leave. Go figure. Guess I’ve found my work in town after all.”
“Wendy!” he exclaimed, not knowing how to follow it up. Shock!
“In the flesh.” She twirled around, showing him the different dress. “And blood I suppose, ha.” She approached him. Dare she kiss him this early? It’s been years after all. Instead: “Share a cup of coffee with me?” She tweaked him on the nose, a sign of things to come.
“Of course! Over there,” he pointed to a nearby table. “I’ll find the brew.” He started rummaging around the back of the counter. “As you can see, we’ve also turned the tables to the side.”
“We?”
“Yeah, Me and Grumpy. We run the place now. Or manage it — Stew’s still the owner. Technically I suppose.”
“So no jobs I suppose,” Wendy spouted as she took a seat. She so so didn’t want to be the new gatekeeper of the town. Boor-ing, she knew. She’d heard Devil Dave complain enough about it back in the day.
“No… sorry. Can’t can Grumpy, you see. He has a wife and two children now (!).”
“Who could have imagined.”
“I know.” He’d found the coffee. Now to make the concoctions. “Espresso alright? All I can find.”
“Yeah. Perfect, actually. Make mine a double. No… triple. What the heck, let’s go with 4.” Could be a long night, she knew. Lots of restaurant talk to get through, potentially. Lots of talk about success and then failure. Utter failure. All tests show 5% human DNA, PHEH. I’ll get that Okama Majo, she thought. If it’s the last thing I do.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0601, Canada, Canada/Picturetown, Castle Town+, Omega
“Yes can I help you?” she vocalized, not turning toward the visitor, not bringing any energy into her words.
“Wendy??”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0516, Castle Town+, Omega, Southern
“Honey, get out of the shot. I’m trying to take a picture of that ghost over there!”
—–
“So this is where we’re going,” Mabel said to Teebestia, who had removed her mask since the facade was dropped, like water off a duck’s back.
“We *all* do,” the mechanoid rattled. “Eventually.”
“Riight.” Mabel was pondering how to get out of this. Really hard (!). “What happens when I wake up? I mean, when I get to the other side.”
“You’ll see your brother,” Teebeestia spoke plainly. “Reunited at last.”
I must be dreaming, thought Mabel. She goes to the edge, stares down into the hole, sees light at the bottom, way way down. She’ll be killed, yes. But the light will take her, swallow her. (Almost) all water removed. Just like a mechanoid. There will be little remorse for a life lived fully, quietly, in contemplation on the world at large. *Worlds*.
“Soo… this is how you got to be who you are.”
“Yes,” Teebeestia clipped rapidly. Death was good for her. She had a diseased heart, a diseased mind. The hole was a way out.
Mabel looked around the landscape for perhaps the last time. So much had changed about the Dawg Pound since their childhood, growing up with Winnfield — happy happy days. But the Cleveland Rocks up there remain. Perhaps, at least in part, as a memorial for Little himself, she imagined, the last place she saw him before he was taken. By the Universe. The mechanoids at least do that for him while shifting around everything else. She can’t really blame them, though. Climate change, she knew. “Oh, Little,” she lamented. “What have your Green-Gray Wars done?”
She shifts her attention back to the hole. Taking a deep breath… she jumps.
The bones rattle on.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0515, Google Street View, MARS, Texas
She sat at the bar nursing a tall cool glass of lemonade while waiting. Risky to come back here of course, but she had to take the chance. Potential information about her brother! After all these years.
Bartender Ricki Bendicky didn’t seem to recognize her — good. 052 class mechanoids like her sometimes have leaky memories, drippy recollections. Like a faucet they could even run dry if left on too long. And that’s what Mabel was hoping. For a reboot here on the red planet… *not* dead but alive with fauna and flora unique to the universe.
“Slow night tonight, it seems,” she tested. No immediate answer; does the mechanoid even recognize where she worked? Mabel pondered. Is she just programmed to served drinks in this out-of-the-way establishment and that’s that? No RAM for barroom banter, as they call it, no ability to even direct customers to the bathroom? She’s heard of such stripped down types.
But then: “I expected someone older.” Dang, Mabel thought. Spotted!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0514, MARS
She didn’t understand. These kind of jokes killed it in good ol’ St. Dennis. The beheading was a shocker and a stunner there but here, just groans of, what was it, disgust? Even, what-*ever*? So when the main act started warming up on the stage to her right everyone who was anyone flocked over there, leaving her with, who was it? The ogling Thompson Twins? Obviously here for more than comedy or an attempt at such.
“Stand back, she’s mine.”
“Oh no you don’t,” said the brother, trying to regain the advantage.
Then when lead singer Shelley hit the stage and started dancing and singing to Linen to appease the band’s God, things changed once more. She became who she really was back on the Red Dead planet. Atlantis High Priestess aka Libra Neptune, inextricably linked with the other 2 girls in a symbiotic triangle.
How to get out of this?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0513, Big Woods, Bull's Bar, Jeogeot, RDR2
Pitch Darkly and especially (of course!) born fisherperson Mary Ball Darkly were so successful on their extended angling vacation that they had to rent a truck to bring the caught loot back home to Aisle of Palms. “Hope you brought your appetite back with you too,” issues Mary while staring at the smelly crates piled 3 high in its bed, knowing they had limited space in the manor’s freezers.
Now to get down to serious issues once more: the Ball situation. They were four weeks late getting back as it was. Too much fun! Couldn’t let it end despite the potential cost. It’s all virtual reality anyway, said Pitch to Mary after their huge haul at Fox Island (alternately Squirrel Island) in Endlessly Antipodal. So it was on to the Amazon Basin and piranhas/electric eels after that to finally get the cold of Walsh County ND out of their bones and blood, and then All Orange to finish up, a virtual fisherperson’s paradise as indicated by Mary’s knowledgeable friend Sandy Beech way way back in the days. Just got around to getting there. Sandy’s never wrong about these things, she knew. Best fry cook in the whole of Great Belt where he comes from, she’s heard from not one but several sources.
“Are you sure this is right, Mary? Fish in a *volcano*?”
“Emm, maybe I got the wrong color in that name. All Green?” she tested, burning through yet another line. “Brown?”
“Let’s go, Mary. Well have to rent a truck to get back our vast haul as is. We have enough.”
“Alright.”
“Plus the Ball situation; Baker wanted us back there a month ago.”
“I know I know.” Mary starts packing up the tackle…
… just in the nick of time as it turns out. *Great balls of fire* that was close to where they were standing! And more on the way. Get off that erupting mountain quick guys!
But, as we know, they got home okay, phew. Mary wasted no time in placing a call to so-called expert Sandy Beech.
“All *Blue*,” he erupted back when hearing the color she chose to remember in their by now long ago conversation about the place. “There’s no fish in a volcano!”
But, savant that she is, Mary still caught a couple.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0512, Big Woods, Great Belt, HANA LEI, Jeogeot, Middleton, Xilted
So Newt/Baker Bloch started looking around the various shops spread across the twisty-turny alleyways of Kowloon’s Gate city in search of the “Greg” avatar Mr. Moon used as the star of his fabled “Ticket to Hell” movie about the pitfalls of Our Second Lyfe. He purchased a cheap Mr. Moon t-shirt found on the marketplace to, in his mind, help bring him luck, and sweet talked Wheeler into buying a women’s version of the same. Below we see her joining in the search; she had some almost freebie female avatars she wanted to purchase here anyway, as observed by Newt and, above him, by me the user of all. Then a 3rd version of “me” entered from the rear.
“Looking for, ahem, *me*?” They turned.
“Greg!” both yelled at once. Turns out he was one of our default library avatars, hidden there all along. Good ol’ library.
“Are those… Mr. Moon t-shirts?” he observed. “I’m *flattered*.” He was already in character, awaiting another plot in another movie. Or at least a blog.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Kowloon+, 0511, 0042
When we first see Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate in a fox’s body in St. Dennis, he’s waiting for his Our Second Lyfe friends to arrive in a streetcar from Valentine to the north. He thinks this is the streetcar but he’s wrong. Thing is, in this position his new body — head specifically — is juxtaposed directly in front of a taxidermist shop that the streetcar in the back is currently passing…
… whose display window prominently features a stuffed fox. Seems to be some kind of foreshadowing but of his own death I’m not sure about still.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0510, RDR2
I wondered why these two little figures of the same person were running around a Kangerootown table under the watching eyes of two looming rabbit creatures.
Then when I found two normal sized figures of the same in a nearby fort, my interest was really piqued. The name of the object was Magnum, created by Magnum Yoshikawa, obviously a self image of sorts.
His profile picks quickly led me to this shop in Kowloon’s Gate City, one of the most notable locations in all of Our Second Lyfe. Places like this are a big reason I keep hanging around the game. 🙂
His created museum there was *big*. Then around the corner…
Ah hahaha. Mr. Price! Well, the same Real Life guy who *plays* my Grant Price who is actually called Freddy Price. You remember, the guy who guards Bull’s Bar and is now the same or has incorporated the figure of Gray Man from the LSD Dream Emulator game. I’d be insulted if you forgot *that*.
This find certainly acts as inspiration. I must locate this “Greg” avatar if possible and purchase!
Reference video here, perhaps the best one about Second Life® ever made and certainly the funniest I would imagine. And the best video by the prolific auteur Mr. Moon period as far as I’ve been able to check, the Freddy Price ones included (although they’re very very funny in stretches too).
More on this soon (!).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0509, GTA, Kangerootown+, Kowloon+, Omega, The Cross
Sunklands 