An offshoot fireball of the explosion hit Strange Isle, destroying it in the night as the hamlet’s lone inhabitant looks on helpless.
Category Archives: X-City^
golden one
“It could have happened in King Post at Wendy’s new place, although that would be quite a long way off. Or maybe King’s Stone, since the name location is closer. Or (its neighbor) Druid’s Post I suppose. Hucka?”
Cackling from the witches. Baker had forgotten Hucka Doobie went to the White Palace in the skies about, I don’t know, over a single photo-novel’s length ago by now I would guess without checking. “Come with us, Baker B.,” they beckoned. “Come with us to our photo shoot. Kita!” He didn’t have much choice. That would set him back several more hours in his search for the origin of the explosion, but, as a bonus, they indicated the precise location when finished. Not Kita: Kitaro. So close to the Urban Ice Cream Parlor — just missed. Elvis Kannelvis’ coordinates were just a little off. He did better with sports in school than maths. Plus he had indicated the wrong McMillan: there were several in the area as it turned out, although all unrelated to each other. Just like the Urbans. A strange place.
Speaking of which…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0614, Continent's Edge, Gno Kingdom^, Maebaleia/Satori, Nascera^^, X-City^
TILE VILE
“Arrr. *There* be my three cornered hat. Thank yee for keeping it for me, Saucy Wanda.”
“Wendy,” she replied, use to the bastard pirates getting her name wrong. Especially this bastard pirate. Randolph was his name and magic squares were his game. Especially Jupiter’s right now. He be melancholy lately. Not just because he lost his hat — that was only several hours ago. This be days ago. The tinies on the exact opposite side of the Maebaleia/Satori continent took something from him, but something of much greater value (and he truly loved his hat). Not exactly his pride, although that factored in too.
—–
Elvis Kannelvis was back to training again. He wish someone would just blow up the Urban ice cream parlor over there across the sim line. 15 lbs.! He’d never fit in the hole at this rate. He’d have to cancel the event, lose all that potential money. No… NOT tonight. Back to the woods across the road from the *Active* Urban Mall. And why all those Urbans again in this one small space, he pondered while trying to run even faster at the first whiff of pineapple strawberry.
—–
“Here,” he said while bending over and starting to sort out the gold glass shards. Or was that blue. Red? “Maybe we can put it back together.”
Green now. “No way!” cried Tiny Wanda in her miniature voice to Blue Bear Y. Ginger would, of course, know the difference, despite the giant gummy beast’s fame with fusion energy. They couldn’t put the *colors* back together.
Gold again. Blue.
Red.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0612, Continent's Edge, Maebaleia/Satori, Outer Islands, X-City^
Wonky like Willa
‘Hey Hank. (pause). Can I crash in here again?”
(longer pause) “No.” Plain and blunt. He can’t crash in here again. Bad for the customers, Hank feels. Friday night: he stays open until 3 at the morning. He says this aloud.
“But… I’m Elvis Kannelvis. World famous dare-demon. I’d be a novelty item. Promote me, promote my jump into that gall darn hole the comet or whatever made.”
“No comet.” Hank was sure it wasn’t a comet.
“I’d sleep and people would come to marvel and perhaps lay coins on my eyes to pay for my passage to Valhalla.” He closes his eyes, imagining the tribute. For Elvis Kannelvis would surely die when he jumps, everyone will say.
“You will not die.” Hank: succinct again. He knew Elvis Kannelvis would not die jumping in the hole. He knew something else that most people didn’t. The hole has a certain depth, a certain width. He would not go far into it… unless…
“Unless…” he says out loud. He looks over at Elvis Kannelvis starting to stretch his pudgy, off-white garbed body across the vanilla white couch, like he’s settling in for the night, which Hank said he couldn’t. His eyes are still closed.
“Go ahead,” urged Elvis. “Say it.” He waits for the coins.
—–
He’d been running past the Urban Ice Cream parlor for several days on his route around the Active Urban Mall. Urban again, he thought the first day. But not attached to Active. What gives? But he kept going, not tempted by the ice cream this time. He had to get fit to fit into the hole. Valhalla awaits! But not the way most people think. He had a cunning plan.
The second day he slowed down a bit while passing, but still didn’t stop. The third: temptation finally got the best of the sweets loving dare-demon, most famous for jumping Lizard Gulch out in the Oregon back country. Before now.
What a break! The door unlocked, the owner away. “5 o’clock,” he says, checking his watch and the width and depth of his procured bowl and spoon. Must have left early, he ascertains wrongly.
High on illegally gorged sugar he lay down on the same vanilla colored couch he does now, awaiting the coins, the adulation, the *worshipping*. For Elvis had designs on being some kind of God, a medium major or perhaps a high major one. Up there with Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein to be sure. Trouble is, he’d gained back all the calories in his three hours of gorging from the three days of exercise before. And now Hank, who discovered him still conked out the next day when opening up, says he can’t stay another night, despite the promise of a big payment later after the event is over. He has no way to lock up the ice cream. But now he seems to have changed his mind. “Yes,” he says to the prostrate wannabe super-hero, buttons almost popping from stomach heaves. “You can stay.”
He has a certain special ice cream he’s tucked away back in the freezer for this very kind of moment.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0611, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
a way out?
Charlene Brown the Punk and Jeffrie Phillips sit in the car again in the center of Harbourtown, the twin city of NWES. “Rose Heaven seems to have closed up for us, dearest,” she spoke to him. “Gaston too.”
“Don’t go there?” asked Jeffrie Phillips again, to which she responded in the negative. “Too many ghosts,” she added, looking over at the Happy Travels Travel Agency, Harbourtown Branch, with its 3 featured portals.
“Karma,” he elaborated, or perhaps just added onto what Charlene said.
“We still have Guy. In the temple over there. Shall we go worship?”
“Sure.”
—–
Where a door closes a hole opens. Guy had protected one he knew was important, thus preserving the past as well. The past to the future. UNEXPLAINED ANOMALY.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0610, Gaston^^, Harbourtown, Jeogeot, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
Menace revealed
Herbert Gold brings April Mae flowers.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0605, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
moving forward…
Maybe I need to think about Blue Berry Girl more, since she perhaps has become more central. She’s not Blurmaid as I anticipated in this half shell at the X shaped crossroads in the heart of the Maebaleia/Satori continent, but maybe her story is more crucial. What do we know of her so far?
This is as good a time as any to create a kind of year in review post, short in nature. The virus is of course the big news in 2020, and everyone has been impacted to one large degree or another, including us. But we’ve also been more fortunate than most. We haven’t lost our jobs (knock on wooden head), we remain healthy (again with the knocks on the head), and, despite both working from home in the main, the wife and I are getting along swimmingly. I can’t imagine a couple being locked indoors together this winter that doesn’t like each other. Lots of divorces will come out of this. Loss of jobs, splitting up of families. What happened in 2020 will be impacting us for years to come.
That’s why it’s so urgent for Joe Biden and his administration to push legislation and acts through as quickly as possible to bring relief Americans so desperately need. Bring us affordable health care and education; reform the prison system and military-industrial complex. Enact *now*, as soon as possible, sweeping climate change mandates that will help us save the planet (we should be leaders on this!) and stop further catastrophes to heap on top of the ones we already face from other directions as a nation. I remain optimistic but also realistic, given the history of the Democratic party up to this point and the sheer lunacy, right now, within their counterparts, the Republicans, who remain an actual political party only in name, unable to help anyone but the rich and powerful who don’t need it. Trickle down economics is a myth by this time.
I know steps are being taken. I’m just not sure they’re enough. All great nations have their turn, then fall back and yield to others on the rise. I think this virus is exposing who we really are. We cannot be the leaders in the future with the present systems in place. We can’t just return to the “normal” of the Obama years. We’re falling behind.
OKAY, getting back to the blog and my safe zone (yea!), I’ve had a really good year there, along with lots of local hiking. I’m extremely blessed to be living in the community we do, with oodles of beautiful, protected park land very close by. This is something I’d also like to focus on this year, and years to come. Return to real life photos and art, and a bit more away from virtual stuff and My Second Lyfe. A bit — because both will continue in tandem with each other for some time.
Happy 2021!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0601, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
Strange Isle
thing to fear
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0517, Abbey^^, Maebaleia/Satori, Stranger Creek^, X-City^
X-City church 02
“A marriage,” A Mann suddenly said behind her, unseen before and sitting in the front pew. Duplicates again!
“Marriage to who?” Tessa ventured, getting bolder now. She could punch through his face and draw back a brain if she wished. She’d done it before with a coke machine.
“A Womann,” came the response. Kate, or the thing that appeared to be Kate, halted for a moment, hands raised from the keys. Tessa half suspected the singing would begin now, but it never did, the chorus remaining frozen in their spots, blue books still open. She could go check on the name of the composition in it, she realized. Kate’s too — from the score on the organ’s music stand; if there was one.
There wasn’t. The blue choral books proved more fruitful. Handel it truly was! But which part of the “Messiah” was Kate playing? Not the same one as this more familiar bit here. Maybe from the Easter part?
The marriage was beginning. A Mann united with A Womann in holy matrimony. But where was the minister?
“Madam, I’m Adam,” said A Mann.
“A Man, A Plan, A Canal…” said A Womann.
“Panama!” they exclaimed together. Tessa woke up.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0516, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
X-City church 01
“Kate! I thought I’d lost you forever.”
“No. I’m here.” But her voice was weak, far away. She waves half-heartedly. She didn’t appear to be herself to Tessa.
“I *saw* you, though. On the beach.” Tessa thought back to Kate face down in the sand at Elven Mist. And the perpetual atomic blast out over the water in the distance. Kate didn’t have on a mask. There was no way she could make it, which, given the ones who did and their actions, maybe was a good thing. Tessa realizes this wasn’t really Kate. Kate was dead. She turned to the other figure acting as a greeter in this X-City church, new in the last year and a half.
“And what is *your* name, sir?”
“Mann. Just call me A Mann.”
“A. Mann? A. stands for something?”
“No. Just A Mann.”
All 3 stood there for a bit, with awkward gestures from the 2 what Tessa now considered simulacra; forgeries of real people most likely; stand-ins.
Music was coming from the front of the church. Perhaps Bach but maybe Handel — Tessa couldn’t quite get a handle on it. She moved forward down the aisle to investigate more, leaving the two figures who she deemed useless for meaningful interaction behind. “Goodbye Kate,” she whispered to herself, not looking back.
But then in front of her appeared the figure of Kate, playing the organ and the classical tune she couldn’t figure out the composer of. Maybe not even baroque. But Kate again! Perhaps this was the real one this time.
“Kate?”
The tune of baroque or baroque-ish design went on and on as Kate didn’t respond to the outside world, engrossed in her playing, it appeared. And those mute singers with their blue choral books seemed so familiar. What was going on here? Ahh, Tessa realized. A dream!
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0515, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City^
Sunklands 