Category Archives: X-City^

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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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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00440404 (An Emily for Rose (The Zombies got it backwards (or at least that’s how it was sold to her)))

Well, she thinks. I believe I’ve waited long enough. Sticky Rose name problem solved, there’s no excuses left. Time to go into the hole. Just a short gondola ride away via that cable line over there.

—–

Soon she was in the gift shop, not very grossed out atall so far. She, like many others before her, found the fleshy environment, let’s say, kinda comforting actually. Like crawling back into the womb or sumtin. And there’s that hum, like an abstracted, dumbed down lullaby. Some find it unsettling. Not her. She’s one of the gifted ones; one of the people that could succeed down here (the pit thinks for her). She purchases a small yet expensive book about one of its many “grotesque,” flesh dependent creatures and moves on.

At the end of the 4th and last corridor to this entry level: dead end, with ominous tones beyond even for her, the gifted and perhaps the damned if she proceeds. Dare she jump over the barrier and experience the flesh directly beneath her feet, squish squish squish? Tempting… tempting!

Then she thinks of the deaths, and wonders why they don’t get that much publicity beyond scattered reports here and there in the media, seeming to almost treat them like jokes when they do pop up. The cover-up must go way up, she realizes, all the way to the president perhaps, a man soon to be named G. Cleveland if things go terribly wrong and time loops back on itself, mirroring what happened in the late 1800s. Best to stay down here until it all blows over, she decides. If she jumps over this barricade, maybe she can find a safe place to hide deeper down in the pit.

And this, of course, is where everything (first?) goes terribly wrong. For Rose Emily.

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00440316

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00440315 (“*Montana*”)

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00440314

When they reached the top of Birdtail and looked over, a surprise awaited them, like a field manifesting between the two matching, pencil shaped (ached nipples?) projectiles sticking up there, except in the distance. It shouldn’t. The cursed thing known as The Flesh Pit, mystery no more, would follow them wherever they went now — since they were a part of it, *inside* it, actually. To the edges of the Earth and beyond.

Then they found it back down on the plateau over an edge as well, reinforcing the insidedness. More projection.

Back in *our* reality (Our Second Lyfe):

“Damn thing wasn’t pushing through here yesterday!” Leroy Jackson Jones Johnson reported back to A. Pond over the incessant, evil humming. Uncle Barnacles’ replacement. A fellow Northerner ready to be replaced himself. ‘Bout time for A. to finally head down south to the “Slums” to pick up some new recruits, fresh meat matching fresh meat.

(to be continued)

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00440312

“Montana!

“And 4 buttes.”

“Lemme see!” “Lemme see!” “Lemme see!”

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00440309 (Rose T.)

She resided in Dairy so she thought it was appropriate to start her long delayed *diary* here. To begin: renaming the place after the book. Aisle of Diary it is from now on in the writing. Or Isle — either one perhaps, depending on, let’s say, the weather. Sunny right now. Isle, then.

Dear Diary,

Today I begin my life anew. Beautiful day here in the Isle, let’s call it. Edward D. is cooking up breakfast, no dairy. I’m allergic to dairy now. Milk, cheese, all of it. My diary makes it so.

I want to first talk about Dr. Kelp and how the two timing f-er stabbed me in the back and replaced me with A. Pond. I want to talk about the lie that is Edward D., because I made him up, name just off the the top of my head back there. Let’s see, 5 sentences back now. Oh here he comes now, breakfast in hand. “Thank you dearest!” I say to him, putting down the loaded down tray beside the keyboard in front of me, planning to nibble on it for the next hour or so. Writing and dining, two of my favorite activities. 5 sentences, 5 bites (so on). I don’t do dairy. I sip on the glass of milk he also provided (“Thanks again, dearie!”).

The breakfast turns into a sandwich loaded down with at least peanut butter as the sun becomes square and black, Skippy and Jiff both chipping in (skip). Aisle it is.

I think of po man’s George Washington (Carver) not for the first time today. Nor the last.

(to be continued)

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00440306 (Jesus Lake, etc.)

Is *this* how I wound up here? Fern pondered from inside the crate, back in her normal garb. Box drop?

Is *this* the true savior? observing Edward thought from his dimmer view of the world within the larger of the 2 shacks in the vicinity. Cube drop?

If only he’d seen her walk on water earlier he’d be convinced.

“Hello!?” he ventured from the other side of the window. “Can I help you!?”

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00440305

She woke up on a white couch in a strange white building. She checked the map. Still AISLE, good. Her seedier outfit still on, check. Something happened, she knew. She met Tin Lizzy and then everything blacked out. It had been (she also checked the in-world clock)… almost two weeks?! Drugged, was the first thing that came to mind. And what about the other, 3rd Aisle, the Aisle of Palms? Probably destroyed, she thought, since her rent was overdue not by one but 2 weeks now. And she was in the primary core avatar of Baker Bloch who had all the money — Mr. Moneybags all the other cores called him, in an affectionate way of course. She’d know if it had been payed. And the total in the account was the same as when she met Tin Lizzy. A disaster, she realized.

Something, *something* had happened.

The environment was so laggy she had trouble walking without getting ahead of herself and then having to jump back. Personalized graphics set to high, she realized, but that wasn’t it. She knew what caused that; was use to moving around in it when she, ahem, woke up here, there and everywhere, AISLE being just the latest in a long line of locations for that type of stuff. But this sleeper was a doozy in comparison.

She turned when she found her way outside the building, spied the emblem. Not Arasaka again, thankfully. But maybe a kind of present time equivalent.

She took a left on the two lane paved road outside the facility which soon led her to the dunes.

(to be continued)

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