“User,” he said, pointing. He knew who I was. Did I? Am I still Baker Bloch in the game we play that is Our Second Lyfe? Is that my primary avatar still?
Anyway, thanks to Pearl Grey for including this work in her most recent Wanderlust Art Truck show! Pearl’s blog here:
https://millionhappyendings.wordpress.com/
And you can teleport directly to the exhibit here:
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0508, Ashenlave^, collages 2d, Corsica
“Well, go ahead and read me my A B C’s or 1 2 3’s or whatever. We’ll head down to the station, then, and see who’s who and what’s not.”
“Break it off, Kevin,” spoke Jenny, out of her role as Heartsdale police officer Candy Candle Cane. Because she’s always on fire. “Big Black Smoke is out of room 03 again.”
“Uuhhh. I don’t care.”
“Shhhhh.”
—–
You have to go back, Jack. Blue is Pink and Pink is Blue. They’re calling for you.”
“Then I will take your name with me to remember you by, um, Precious. Jack Blue I am from now on.”
“Ingratiate yourself with Green, Brown. They will guide you. Leave Olive alone,” she warned.
They switched places and he ate her cake too.
—–
“Jack Blue, huh? You don’t *look* like a Jack. You’re certainly blue, though.”
“And you’re Green,” Jack Blue quickly followed.
“Pink is dead.” SEAN “Green” Penn’s head hung low, remembering the day he heard like it was yesterday even though it was 5 years ago. Now he was in Little Rock, Arkansas but certainly with a bit of the (New Orleans) blues left. And now a Blue itself shows up. Himself, herself. Something.
“I know,” Jack Blue tries to console, also thinking about Brown. Plans gone awry! “Let’s turn our attention back to the map and the next step.”
Green wipes his eyes and tries to focus. It all comes into place eventually. The Big Picture.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0020, 0106, Arkansas, Ashenlave^, Corsica, Heartsdale^^, New Island^
“I can’t emphasize this enough, Wheeler. We are *here*. Elephant continent. Until the end.”
“I’ll give it a year and a half,” spoke up the part owner of newly relocated Collagesity, just like before. “And you, Peter Oesseo — like an opossum. Are you: *Baker* yet? You don’t appear to be Axis any longer. Not at the core.”
“Hucka Doobie is going to be *soo* mad.”
—–
He stands up, alone in the office that could have been his given different circumstances. Santman was going to be born right over there, Peter Oesso, formerly TronAxis (etc.) lamented. And now he shall. I have escaped the machine. I will let another be absorbed, an alternate self.
I have made a decision which way the current flows.
The Storybrook garage will stay for now. Marsha “Pink” Krakow and new bestie Beige/Brown will return soon. I will tell them a joke about 2 elephants with conjoined trunks. Marsha will remember who I am, and also the aunt. Ant. She can leave, then.
—–
“I couldn’t stay away from you forever, dear, you knew that.”
“I did,” he spoke over to his unfaithful but still forgiven wife. “Dogg would miss you too much!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0019, 0606, Ashenlave^, Corsica, Storybrook^
“Real real good to see you down in New Orleans, yeah. Real reet.”
“*Well*, Marty. We’re not *going* to New Orleans as it turns out. We’re avoiding that boat, that dream.”
“Real reet, yeah.” Then bass voiced Marty stops talking to actually listen to The Man.
“Marty Marty Marty,” The Man starts again. “You should have never left Legos to make the new album. You’re not *black* enough, and I know a thing about black. Why you’re — you’re about as black as White Elvis, and that’s not much.” He points to his wig, perhaps still covering the ant saliva from before.
“Listen,” responded Marty, realizing his own hair is really the only black thing about him.
“Yes, good. Arkansas we’re at and Arkansas we’ll stay. The boat and the stream remain empty, devoid of content.” The Mann then stares at the bar. “And what about this setting? So shallow. Where’s the actual bar with a bartender and all.” He takes another swallow of Jack Daniels in disgust. If only all this were a dream.
“Silly love songs.”
“Yeah. Those too.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0019, 0108, Ashenlave^, Corsica
After the successful gig, SEAN “Green” Penn and The Mann, owner of New Orleans Blues Little Rock for the moment, got as close to the pool table and the spread out map of Arkansas upon it as play would allow. They mapped out a strategy.
“I say we head for Formosa next, you know, the LOST island. Right up here.” The Mann pointed a little north of Little Rock, or as close as his pointing finger could get.
“How about Mountainburg?” SEAN countered, indicating west. “In the mountains–”
“Ozark, I know. Too dangerous,” The Mann opined. “Too many moonshiners. They’ll want us to stay more and that’ll be it. *Stuck*.” He sticks his finger on the pool table, like it’s glued there. He leaves it for about 3 seconds before removing to enhance the Elmer effect.
“What about Kate?” SEAN then spoke.
“What *about* Kate?” The Mann quickly followed, looking at SEAN’s eastward pointing finger this time. Close to the Mississippi River and Mississippi state leading to New Orleans. Can’t take the chance there either. Current could take them. He told this to SEAN.
“Well…” he said, heaving a resigned sigh. “Better just stay here a spell, then. This (he waves his arms around) Little Rock.”
“We could increase the Rock. Make it bigger. Would that help?”
Would it help? SEAN didn’t know right off.
“Shoot girl. You shouldn’t be smoking in here. And why do you want to go to New York City anyway? There’s nothing but trouble there.”
“Because it’s in the–”
SEAN “Green” Penn swung toward her while interrupting. “*Don’t* say contract. I don’t want to hear about no contract.” SEAN knew he had the appearance of a white child to Marsha “Pink” Krakow, about the same size and also color as herself but a boy instead of a girl. He was indeed “Green,” the grocer’s kid originally from Kraken but now living down on Southside Bay in a houseboat.
“Why not? You signed one too.”
“I did *not* sign a contract.”
“But… you *showed* it to me.”
“I,” and SEAN rapped the table in front of him with an index finger to punctuate, “signed a piece of paper, girl. *Piece* of *paper*.” He sat back, looking at her, gauging her reaction to this truth. They stared at each other for a while, as if exchanging information through their eyes. And perhaps they were.
“Baloney,” she finally uttered to break the tension. “Hogwash. You just don’t want to go to New Orleans.” She threw up her arms in exasperation, and then he did too.
“Who said *anything* about New *Orleans*? We were *talking* about New York, and how to cross Arthur Kill to get there.” But then he remembered as Marsha “Pink” Krakow before him kept shaking her head. He was already *there*. In a bar that plays the Blues.
Or was it Little Rock.
Turns out the bar plays blues and a little rock. And it was in Little Rock. SEAN “Green” Penn was the main act tonight. He had yet to meet Pink. Or Olive. It was 5 years in the past. He only had 5 years to make this right, 5 years to make this right, 5 years to make this right…
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0019, 0106, Ashenlave^, Corsica, Storybrook^
Wheeler decides to beat her to the punch. If there *is* evidence of a continuation in Jumboro and this attached Jumbo Core, she was going to find out herself. No filtering through bias. And, besides, Hucka Doobie has a kewl beauty of her own as a strong African-American woman struggling in a white male society. Yes, Wheeler admires her very much. She wishes she were equally spiritual, but there’s the Venus in her that is always niggling away at the good, the correct, the *Christian*. The Lord and The Lamb do not find favor in her sometimes — often. Oh, Axis is right, she thinks then and there, perched on the rooftop of a skybox she had no business prying into. But she was here now, bad instincts taking over again. Might as well take a peek inside.
The Jumbo Core, yes. Amazing. And Jumbo is perhaps the most famous elephant of all time, a Barnum and Bailey product, like oppositely sized Tom Thumb. Wheeler studies the alternately green and yellow colored squares of this “grassy base”, as the description puts it. Is this the original 9×9 square of sims? she ponders. It *must* be in some way. But what does it mean? Anything about the objects positioned upon it? But Wheeler can discover nothing of marked note.
nothing of marked note
She looks all around the rest of the skybox remotely before “accidentally” moving through the wall behind this grassy base into a back room that she hadn’t *checked* for some reason. A broad smile formed on her face. “Yellow-green and red-violet!” she cried aloud, seeing the 2 colors juxtaposed, floor to wall. The Thomas Main and Nick Barkley story can continue!
And her own, she realized.
END OF “COLLAGESITY 2020 EARLY”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0018, 0705, Ashenlave^, Corsica
“I keep telling you Wheeler, er, Venus, that Corsica is an elephant. It keeps coming up again and again. And by this I don’t mean Bracket’s foolish Comma Islands. The *real* Corsica. The one with crates with meaningful content.”
Wheeler/Venus waves her hand dismissively toward the thing both blue-green tinted beings were staring at: the, um, *object* in the middle of the room. “Continent… content. What’s the difference. Just open it will you. Get this photo-novel done.” And I was *so* looking forward to playing Venus Flytrap, she seethes inwardly. Axis is just going to nip it in the bud because he thinks we should refocus on Red Star, blocking up reality like, well, like *Seven* never existed. Seven Across, 7th seal, whatever. Seven is gone. Five is apparently where we’re at and where we’ll stay. Square of Mars.
“I have one more mission to accomplish before we can wrap things up, open the crate. Hucka Doobie is set to go to the northeast corner of Jumboro, right beside your New Orleans Blues Little Rock club, to revisit the *Jumbo* Core related skybox that Baker Bloch got, er, blocked from several days back.”
Wheeler would have had a glimpse of hope for Seven — the lives and potential deaths of Chry State’s Thomas Main and Chry U.’s Nick Barkley, etc. — if it weren’t Hucka Doobie heading the mission, because, from what Baker Bloch told her recently, the bee person seemed to hate her now. No way is she going to produce evidence for the continuation of Venus Flytrap, pheh. Is she?
One way to find out.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0018, 0704, Ashenlave^, Corsica
Axis’ wife Wheeler, who was turning into a new character called Venus more and more every day, piggytailed blue hair correspondingly lengthening and cartoon aspects enhancing, decided to put on her investigating feet as well and head to Seven Across, a sim a little north of Fearzum which she knew had relevance now. Perched on a hilltop at its southern edge, she pondered on a new last name to go along with the first. Flytrap, she decided, after remotely peering around a corner.
Her Second Lyfe was just that syncy these days.
—–
Waiting in a nearby New Orleans Blues Little Rock bar for the inevitable next storyline to appear, she decides to focus on the 5-6-7-8 beyond her usual 1-2-3-4. TILE, in other words. She’d learned about the wannabe religion from Thomas. Who was Thomas? I hear you asking, perhaps with a sigh. Well he’s the Main man around these here parts, a Chry State graduate designing separate fall and winter landscapes over in the northwestern part of the sim. He knows nothing about shields and psychics of course, but physics — he’s a wiz! Venus may need his help in that department very soon. Because she’s had it up to her blue keister with Nick Barkley, who just happens to be Thomas Main’s arch-nemesis and who, 7 days and 7 nights later, has a gun pointed directly at his head by the former. And on the 8th day they rested — one of ’em, perhaps both of ’em — in a freshly dug grave.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0018, 0702, Ashenlave^, Corsica
Dennis Jarman knew that someone important lay dead in 7 that came from previous numbers. He ran back the reel of time.
“Nick Barkley of Big Valley,” he spoke aloud, observing the past from a relatively safe distance. “Should’ve known: Big Valley was always pumping out the big V.’s (Villains). Graduate of Chry University like me. Or was it Chry State — never can recall. One’s team wears yellow-green and the other red-violet. Barton — that was it. Nick’s opposite at, yes, Chry State. Ned Barton I believe. Unless it was Nick and Nick was Ned. Barton-Barkley, though. Pretty sure I got that right at least. Better check. If I shout loud enough he may hear it as a tiny whisper. But also, better get ready to amscray if he’s the wrong Chry. He must not know of my past present future in any way. I’ve talked enough; time for action. Time for *time* action. Nick Barkley!!” he cried across the gap of space and time. Barkley lowered his gun and looked around on the ground, as if for a mouse. Good, thinks Dennis Jarman. He doesn’t know where I am. “I’m glad you lowered the gun!! Now lower your *shield*!!” This would be the proving test, because Chry State graduates don’t know what shields are, the tool of a soft and not hard scientist. One who believes in psychics as well as physics. Nick Barkley, who was truly Nick Barkley, lowered his shield. He looked in the direction of Dennis Jarman, saw an outline forming. “Good, good,” spoke Jarman over to Nick and walked toward him, form becoming corporeal for the latter. “Now give me the shield and let’s go home. We have a lot of tape to look at.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0018, 0701, Ashenlave^, Corsica
Sunklands 