“Hold on to your heads, ladies and gentlemen. Here we go!” SCREEEECH.
—–
Well. It *kind of* worked.
—–
“We’re Saints fans,” introduced Dennis Martennis for his gang to hotel receptionist Donald Arm. “Badly in need of a couple of rooms after a long day’s journey.”
“Tourists, eh?” said Donald, noting the helmet. “Well, we get you types in here occasionally.” He glanced out the window at the “parked” streetcar. “Wrong town I gather.”
“Yup.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0605, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori, RDR2
“You don’t understand, Madam Mayor,” he spoke formally to his wife of 27 years. “I was soo tempted just to walk into those green green hills and never come back. I envisioned myself doing so. Still can.”
“So (the Our Second Life continent of) Maebaleia doesn’t stand a chance. If people here found out.”
“No,” he said plainly, bluntly. “Look at the depopulation of the once vaunted Hills of Bill in the central part of our continent here. Probably no actual spiritual energy left there by now. I’ve popped around there recently.”
“What of Horns of Hatton? Possibility still, you said earlier (in the week).”
“I-I don’t think so.”
Wheeler, presently playing the role of Mayor of this here Our Second Lyfe community that now calls itself Cass City, finally gives in. “Then we’ll have to block the whole area off. Our Second Life must be quarantined from Their Real Life. The link with the actual Azores will have to go away, like a beanstalk to Heaven being chopped down.”
“Suppose,” hubby Newt said back. They were in his downtown apartment at the moment, studying the corkboard Newt brought over earlier from her office in uptown where she usually stayed. More separate but equal stuff going on there. If possible, we’ll try to clarify the living arrangements — and the corkboard — soon.
“Another idea is to allow select members of our community to visit there, experience first hand the temptation just to chuck virtual in favor of real.”
“Keep the conduit open; don’t get rid of the, er, skybox. Heaven. Make it a religion instead.”
“Right right. Tell them they can go *visit* Paradise. But they also have to come back. They can’t stay there permanently. Or else–”
“They *die*, he he.” Newt was digging all this. Like a deep, dark grave.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0407, Cass City^, Europe, Google Street View, Hills of Bill^, Horns of Hatton^, Maebaleia/Satori
I teleport to what I understood to be a skybox, high above my Cass City apartment somehow. Heaven of sorts, or at least Reality. I almost walk in front of a car which, at the same time, is shooting at me.
“Watch it cork for brains!” the driver barked through the right side window as he passed, face screwed up like a walnut. “Can’t you see I’m trying to work here?!” Street View camera person, I realized later, probably stressed out from navigating all these narrow Santa Cruz streets and alleyways. Also noticed later that the job certainly seemed incomplete, and that the largest and most important Flores island town here was only minimally covered. I wondered how he slept at night in his various hotels across the world. Probably pretty soundly.
His incompetency would make my *own* work that much more difficult. To find a reason for the Cass City Town Council to spare this real and actual Santa Cruz and not replace it with their own alternate history version. For I was married to the Cass City Mayor. And, in an obvious, surface conflict of interest, I was the head of the council too. So I had to convince myself first before Tom, Dick and Harry would go along with the proposal. Two separate worlds. Two separate realities, virtual down there and real up here. Separate but equal. Didn’t work in post-WWII Jim Crow America, but here in 1939 Cass City it might have a chance.
gaining a higher perspective on Flores’ Santa Cruz with neighboring island Corvo in the background
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0406, Cass City^, Europe, Google Street View, Maebaleia/Satori
By Christmas morning he had collected 3 cans in total. The second that soon followed the first through the portal, some kind of product called Mount and Dwu (?), turned out to be pretty nondescript in his estimation outside the queer name — just a “can” if you will. The 3rd, arriving only a handful of minutes ago after a wait of hours, was more interesting; it was now front and center before his eyes. A soda filled aluminum cylinder labelled 12939 — no ambiguity here that the number was the most important element — with a descriptive line underneath: “on reflection, a better cola”. He’s stared and stared but can find no rhyme nor reason to it. If only he’d played an early, open world game from the 1980s called Mercenary he might have the opening he needs by popping the figurative tab off the top.
Newt’s literal creator Dr. Mouse showed up later in the morning with a present of Old Spice Showering Gel. He’d played the open world game Mercenary in the 80s and a bit in the 90s even. While in Spain in the 2010s he’d also seen a commercial playing on the reversing trick.
“*But*,” he said to his “son” Newt after revealing it, “the number translated through this can is not actually 12939.”
“It isn’t?” Newt said, staring at the central one with renewed interest. The overall meaning was starting to dawn on him as well.
“No. It’s 1939. The same year as…”
“… the year coming up,” Newt finished for him, suddenly wondering what he was going to do with his tree after New Year’s.
Mouse pointed his cane at the can. “This is (your predecessor) Pepi. My guess is that he’s indicating, from the Great Beyond let’s say, he wants to come back… in the best way he *can* currently, I’m assuming. Pepi ‘Can’ Kolya.” Here he points to the 3rd again, then the 2nd then the 1st. The order of the words in the person-in-question’s full name.
Newt reflexively stares out the window toward the crossroads he’d envisioned Pepi standing in the middle of just the other day. And then Mouse was about in the same spot last Tuesday’s Wednesday when he was flagging down that streetcar named Desire which goes all over town, uptown downtown sidetown (etc.). Could he have known even then?
Or was it merely another of one of those what you call coincidences? Couldn’t be, he thought on the spot. Couldn’t be.
On cue, they both hear the streetcar rumbling into downtown from midtown. “Gotta run and catch a ride, Newt. You know how scared I am of midtown, Chinaville and all. Merry Christmas and thanks for the slippers!” And with that Mouse was gone, moving quickly out of the apartment building Newt lived in beside Shenanigans and onto the street once more.
“Wait, wait, I want a ride!” he called.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0405, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
He was playing Schubert’s 14th piano sonata he’d bought the score for about a week back when it flew in from his set up portal, the 1st of 3 as it turns out. It clanked and rolled on the floor almost to the opposite wall, freezing his hands mid chord progression with the sound. He knew instantly what it was of course. He’d been here before.
It was minimally damaged in the transition thankfully. He brought it over to his work table, moving his trusty steampunk computer aside for the moment; automatically started to take notes on the thing. “Quasi-vintage Coko Cola can circa 1990s, lid unpopped with pop still inside,” he wrote, unable to resist a ready pun. “12 fluid ounces; bar code 490690.”
Understanding the fractal nature of his universe, Newt brought the computer front and center again, googling the number. Through it he learned the product was manufactured in New York with a can manufacturer called Crown. Approx. date of creation: 1983.
https://www.cokecollection.com/index.php?lang=en&pageid=50&canID=11453
Those are the mundane facts. In digging deeper with the number, he soon found another New York connection here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_90_in_New_York
Within New York, I-90 has a complete set of auxiliary Interstates, which means that there are Interstates numbered I-190 through I-990 in the state, with no gaps in between.
Splitting 490690 in two and averaging the 2 resulting numbers gives us 590, which is exactly between 190 and 990 or exactly in the symbolic center of New York somewhere moving west to east, he determined.
Right about… here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_of_Worms_(interchange)
Can front and center once more, he figures the fizz inside has settled down enough to safely pop the top. But dare he?
Another can comes flying through the portal. Saved by the bell, er, *clank*.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0404, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori, New York
“Who’s your house singer these days? Stacey.”
“Oh, some Irish lass named Rew…, um, Reem… oh I can’t remember her name. Anyway she’s from Cork. Plays some kind of cork instrument as a novelty act. A trom… a trum… oh I can’t remember the name of the thing. Anyway, she’s from Cork.”
“Right right.” Bots, Newt thinks here. Seems like she can pour beer well enough at least. “Cork, huh,” he says to egg her on again.
“She’s from Cork, right. Plays…”
“Never mind,” he waves her off. “I’m just going to take my beer over there. I’ll be back.” He didn’t plan to come back. No real information to be found here.
—–
From his new vantage point in Shenanigan’s, he looks over at the place in the street he watched her fall last night. And then vanish — after the message had been delivered.
Biff sitting along the side wall of the establishment was thinking along the same lines. Stood up on an arranged third date. Marsha “Pink” Krakow nowhere to be found in town apparently in any shape or form, Pinkie Brainerd or Berta Brainard or otherwise. Vanished.
Being the author of this whole mess, Newt understood he had to go over and explain the situation to him as much as possible. Best he knows he’s losing a secretary as well as a girlfriend so he can set the hiring process in motion (etc.).
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0401, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
I awoke before the High Priestess of Atlantis an energy being, free of form unless you count Static. She paced on the small stage above me, the highest of 3 tiers. A vibrating Chlandi plate was immediately before my eyes. “You can come over here and fall like the crystal below,” she said in a bold, echoey voice, left foot currently dangling off the top ledge, her walking space…
“*Or*… you can join me over here in the unfallen zone.” She had paced to the back corner, hands steady inside her robe instead of moving about.
Tennesse or Kentucky, I understood, as she reassumed a front and center position, mirroring my own. I knew where to head next.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0316, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
From the computer table in my apartment, I watched her stand between the two openings, scratching her head and obviously trying to choose which role to play tonight. Pinkie Brainerd, owner of Pink’s Pawn on the bottom level? Or Berta Brainard, secretary and girl Friday to private investigator Wendell “Biff” Carter on the 3rd and top floor of the same building? Nothing was in-between the two; there was no middle ground here, all intermediate floors vacant instead. Despite being the author, I suppose, I couldn’t make the choice for her. The pink color of the dress drew her toward the pawn shop, but the ribbon aspect of it made her want to type and organize files and such.
This was an important decision; this was a crossroads. I’d been here before, almost in this exact spot doing the same. Before the beginning of things in that case. Here: almost in the middle. Maybe there is some kind of middle ground to be found after all.
There. Down there. That was me at the time. Pepi “Can” Kolya was the name back then. Before Mouse fixed the holes in my head and gave me expressions and the ability to wear different clothes. I became non-mesh.
I started out wearing a beanie with a spinning propeller thingy symbolizing windmills but I quickly grew out of that early look. I gained the coat/mantle of Axis, but moved beyond the darkness of a second Great War as well. I’m not German, but I proudly wear the red, yellow, and black colors of the modern aspect of that nation to remind me of my origins. A small dog named Spider was around here somewhere in my Cass City apartment to remind me of the swastika (thanks Greti!). I cannot escape my start in holey darkness but I now strive toward holy light. Through me (the author again I have to assume), Marsha “Pink” Krakow is now doing the same.
The lights grown softer, more realistic. She turns toward me and even though she doesn’t make eye contact I’m pretty sure she recognizes I’m there — at the computer desk — typing what we’re doing in the moment. She suddenly staggers and falls, then brushes herself off and assumes an upright position again. She falls once more, but in a different way. Then another fall, a 3rd kind.
She doesn’t get up this time. She remains frozen in the same position on the pavement of Southside in front of the 2 doors she apparently can’t choose between. Paralyzed, I understand. Unable to walk toward either now. She eventually vanishes on the spot but I’ve received my message for tonight. There was more to be found here.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0315, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
The disappearance of the gargoyles on the return passage really started throwing her game off. She fell on some loose ruble in their former room, near the crosshairs where your hair and also head could get roasted and toasted. No longer. “Where *are* they? What *happened* to them?” she said in a panic as she brushed off her polka dot ribbon dress and attempted to stand upright again. “Am I even in the right room?” But she knew the steep stairs behind her could lead only to this place.
More obstacles were ahead, including an invisible barrier impeding her way where there was open air before. She felt like a rat in a maze, trying to find the cheese that is the surface of this Cass City town and the return to her warm, safe desk at the mayor’s office. She felt in her dress pocket — *curses*; never should have worn this cursed dress. But the coins (real? fake?) and the figurine of the statue were still there. If only she could find the way out.
—–
The Mayor checked the time on her watch, cursing as well. “Where the f— is she?” she said aloud. “And, more importantly, where are those coins and that statue?” Town Council meeting in 12 hours. She *can’t* postpone any longer (!).
She turns to the map on the display board. “*Corvo*. *You’re* doing this. Aren’t you, you little bugger of an island?”
“ANSWER ME!” And here I believe she started to sob inconsolably, remembering the Abyss again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0313, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
Sunklands 