Category Archives: North

making hay

Her long journey over (thanks “Sing to God”, the double album masterpiece by the Cardiacs, for getting me there!), she pulled into a spot dotted with horses, real and plastic alike. Her Boyfriend’s XL flannel shirt she threw on in a rush served pretty well to ward off the cold; would have worked better if she hadn’t kept the windows down the whole way out here because of the music; had to play it loud in order to get the full impact of the event. And she didn’t forget her pistol — secured in a holster at the top of her stockings, along with some phony cash and some cheating cards, or so she told me earlier (4 “extra” aces). Hidden by the shirt, we’ll say. There was always something going on for this creature of the night. The Gates of Heaven were safe for some, probably most. But not for her, she reckoned. Heck, she may even have a shoot out with the Lord if she doesn’t watch out. Al, I think he goes by these days. Her new boss, one could say. The person she has to answer to. She’ll make sure she does it on her own terms. No need for him to know about the gun, money, cards. Not yet.

She had reached the end of the road if not the end of the line. Now where the heck does it continue from here, she pondered, staring at and around the red star. She was moving in a direction not many people knew even existed. She was heading off the map.

Rounding the corner of the sign and spotting the horse rezzer, she remembered. She could follow this wall all the way to the ocean and then just keep going: south. Shouldn’t be too much further.

—–

“Almost there, Sugar Cookie,” she reassured the water disliking horse. “Almost home.”

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, Nautilus, 0504, Wild West, ENIGMA, North, 0038, Rank & File, Constantynople

Nautilus/North/Rooster’s Peninsula

“Someone’s knocking at the door… Dorr.”

“Oh it’s probably just Shelley again. Ignore it this time. I don’t feel like walking down all those stairs again.”

“I hear ya.”

Dorr looks at her ordinary nails, at least compared to her companion Iss’ Edward Scissorhands like ones. She was thinking of her appearance from the last time. Crazy Blue outfit my ass. Drunk off her tits obviously.

“Maybe…” attempts Iss. “Maybe she really owns the place, like she said. Maybe… you should give it back to her. I’ve read the blog.”

“So have I,” shot Dorr back. She decides to end the suspense. She looks remotely at the visitor far far below, Azure a barrier between her and the inside.

But it wasn’t Shelley this time. Instead: Horns, Left and Right. What gives? she thinks. The Red Devil. Very unexpected!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0615, 0701, Nautilus, North, Rooster's Peninsula

Cheeks

“If you are red you rise up to meet blue in pink. If you are blue you rise up to meet red in pink. Peaks are where things do a flippy floppy. And in this case one is larger and one is smaller. Crazy Blue.”

“I’m going to wear my Crazy Blue outfit for the rest of this photo-novel, Baker. Just for a meditative device.”

“Then we won’t be seeing much of you beyond these points.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0503, Nautilus, North, Upper Austra^

but the trees are flaming too

—–

Well I can certainly see why he’s called the Sandman, she thought. Better find Arthur, I mean, ahem, *Lemont*, down at the beach. But first… hair.

—–

“Oh I don’t want it cut,” she spoke upward to the dark, animalistic face hovering over her. “Just washed. I can’t cut my hair. My husband would be so disapproving (!).”

“That’ll be 55 dollars either way,” hissed the stylist. They didn’t click, she knew. Best to cut ties early before more energy drain. She can find another stylist later on. Anyway, Arthur *would* be happy. “Don’t change a thing,” he often speaks about her appearance, always making her cringe inside a bit. He wants stasis; she wants change. Yet he kind of controls her, she admits. She’s aiming to change that. The stylist must be more of his working.

“Credit it to the house,” she said when leaving, which caused even a bit more confusion.

——

“Why don’t you get out of that duck outfit and put on that cute, black bathing suit I bought you a while back.” Or was it purple? he thinks to himself, not being able to clearly picture it in rehearsal for some reason. Dark, anyway, he resolves the issue for now.

“Ohh… you know how easily I burn. I’ll keep these on.” She settles back into her chair, pats her hands on her covered knees to reinforce her staying put point. Eating away at the control. One nibble at a time.

Arthur settles back too, resigned to their current attire. “Soo. Tell me more about this Sandman.”

“Oh he’s rich.”

“Yeah, I gathered.” He looks around. Sand everywhere… at every level. Desert oasis he has here. An oasis from… Second Lyfe.

“We met through Edward. At that party his friends threw. One of those nights you were away. How’s the quest to find the ultimate Shakespearian role going by the by?” She hadn’t asked before on purpose. Arthur trusted Edward, she knew. As much as he trusted Keith with her. They were wedded in his mind. But Edward was certainly different from Keith, despite the friendly neighbor persona. Edward had designs. And she was stringing him along. All for the art mind you, she thought. The newest romance novel. I want to make the 5th different from the 4th which is different from the 3rd, etc., improvements and refinements all along. Edward is my sculpture, my newest muse even. I’m still married to Arthur certainly, she keeps pondering. No change there, whatever happens.

It was here she remembers she was married to Lemont. Not Arthur. He stares over at her, waiting for her next lines. Control.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0305, Hana Lei^^, Nautilus, North, Sand Springs, Wild West

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I’m going to do things a little differently this go ’round. The focus groundside will be Sunklands Institute, pictured here. Up in the air is where I’m going to be doing some experimenting. Point is, I’m back on Nautilus, and maybe even a better place than Fordham, than Rooster’s Peninsula. I won’t give out the location because it’s all still being set up — may take longer to solidify this time, or at least that’s what’s in my mind right now. It all pivots around Sunklands. Another Table meeting could be happening very soon.

The big Nautilus map back in skybox 02 is lighting up again: location of Lemont Sanford and Shelley Struthers renewing their wedding vows upper center (Uberto); Burro Alley and attached Slaashides community where Johnny Cage came from just up there in the left hand corner. And more in the middle… not Collagesity. Pretty sure of that. It’s all an alchemical roller coaster of a ride I’m still enjoying, even after a decade an a 1/2’s worth of involvement in Our Second Lyfe. I have more to mine here.

Nautilus is a way station.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0303, Crisp Sea, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, North, Wild West

Lemon Cove

“I’ve been betrayed? By a *triangle*??”

“I can explain.”

—–

He often thought of that day he found Elvira with a shape. Three corners and the truth, he knew after that. So far did he run to square and the extra corner that he didn’t have time to stop. Until today. Decision. The portal would be open again to New Mexico: 7:15 this morning. He could take his bike and just ride ride ride, never looking back. Stupid second world, he thought and almost spat on the ground, at least imagined it. The powers that be had a plan. He would blend in with a pack of choppers heading south from Los Lunas, become part of the pack itself. “Do whatever you have to to accomplish this important important mission,” spoke his most immediate boss. And so he found Nikki at Silver City when the rowdies that had been hounding him since almost the beginning finally and completely dropped away (siren calls just here there and there), rode alongside her until the Shakespearean end. He didn’t plan to fall in love on the other side but love happens, as they say. Yeah, he also thought of the triangle as he made his plans for the future with her, used that negative energy to propel himself away away away from Burro Alley and the possibility of return.

He sat here like a lifeguard on that fated day, actually imagining blonde Nikki from the future before (and below) him. Across the namesake cove, not quite in the corner but getting there: the 4th, the future — without Elvira, Our Second Lyfe, his triangle of bratty kids, pheh. “Elvira can take care of them,” he said aloud, still staring down at the form that had taken shape. “They all take after her anyway; best that like stays with like.” He refused to see his own brattiness, the bully that he’d become in his negative thinking about this that and that. So if Nikki likewise betrayed him… well, it won’t end pretty.

“How pretty,” he said, oblivious to this possibility.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0212, Nautilus, New Mexico, North, Slaashsides

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When he shot out of the 1st to 2nd life portal known as Burro Alley, Santa Fe, New Mexico at 9:34 Mountain Time on Sunday, March 5th, 2023, he had a good idea this would be his last trip to reality reality. He’d prepared for this moment, said goodbye, in effect, to the virtual wife and kids — if it came to that. Because he didn’t intend to go back to playing second fiddle in a second life devoid of 3 of the 5 major senses, subtract psychic, which was in fact stronger over there. He cherished feeling the bumps in the brick pavement of the alley, loved the smell of fresh bread coming from the Burro Alley Cafe beside the stick laden burro statue at the entrance, reveled in the taste of their fish tacos for breakfast, dinner and sometimes lunch, if fish burritos, which he didn’t like as much, weren’t substituted on the menu.

—–

“The plot deepens.”

“Or thickens,” Hucka D. responds, taking another gander at the photo Barry’d produced from a facebook page on the ghost town. Can-can girls in Shakespeare, the past come to life. Both knew this was an important clue. They’d just produced the word “cancan” in a collage created by folding up the back of a 1923 German dance recital poster found in Hal’s saloon near the center of the resurrected village. Or altered village is perhaps a better way to put it, since both dead and alive versions are just as real as the other. Featured Isadora (or Isadore) Duncan and her daughter Irma, joined at the hip now through the collage fresh as a wet drink produced for a condemned bully whose throat was bone dry from defending himself and saying other locals had perpetrated much more heinous crimes. Didn’t work: hanged in the Grant Hotel Dining Room alongside a cattle rustler. Could have been Barry and Hucka’s fate as well except it wasn’t.

“And the Hills buried on a hill (above the town formerly known as Grant in a county formerly part of Grant). Don’t forget that — fits in with Grant Hill, who drinks sprite, both lemon and lime together to produce something not quite as good as either separately.”

“Another one to wet the whistle.”

“Yess.”

—–

The dog burrows deeper.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0211, Nautilus, New Mexico, North, Slaashsides

00370203

“I’ve *been* here for 2 weeks,” complained Johnny Cage, tiring of the assignment in Slaashsides. He was ready to get back home to his wife Elvira and kids Lester, Luke and Leonard Jay (Leno). But the problem was: Barry DeBoy was a quick healer, a *real* quick healer — like he stood outside of time or something (as his supervisor exasperatedly explained over the phone to him) — and that he may be needed for another one of those “accidents” again.

“We need you to stay close to that New Mexico portal,” he said. “That’s the only way we know how still to reach him. Work on your biking, work on your *bike*,” he suggested. “Slaashsides is fairly big — about a 1/2 sim as I recall. Just ride around and around, check your tires, check your gears, handle, seat — *everything*. Just don’t go groundside yet. And that’s an order, John, from the guys and gals upstairs that pay *both* our salaries and bonuses. You got a big bump recently. Don’t screw all this up. You need to start thinking about your pension — the future. Think of little Leno.”

The stinky green pocketbook displayed on the side of the news stand was starting to get overwhelming. “Listen, I have to go,” spoke Johnny Cage. “I’ll do what you said. I’ll keep them happy. But either get me back to New Mexico or get me back home pretty quickly. I can’t stand these halfway places, neither here nor there.” And with this he hung up the receiver, rather slammed it back in the carriage really, and walked up the sidewalk and turned left again. Back to Burro Alley, pheh.

10 days, he determined while treading carefully on its slicker surface — not daring to hurt himself as he would hurt others. That’s all I’m going to put up with it.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0203, Nautilus, New Mexico, North, Slaashsides

harnessing the energy

They renewed their vows before really, actually heading out into new life, her in black and pink this time to better match his blue and black. So speaks the magical Abra-cadabra laundromat, the place of the clothes. Cold, damp basement no more for Lemont Sanford, now truly in control and not subordinates Arthur Kill and his more sophisticated cousin Kill van Kull. At least for a while, for this morning, for the next hour.

Their new, good friend and 3rd wheel Edward Daigle performed the ceremony, since he was qualified that way, as he also explained in one of their basement escapades out and down on Cable Isle, the place Arthur Kill was buried, at least for a while, a morning I believe. About an hour. Before Wheeler went down in the grave after him and swished or mopped away all the heat and fire and brimstone with her magic swishy mop and told him to rise up and then go down. For a particular reason of course. “Basement,” she indicated, pointing toward the slanted cellar doors nearby after he unsuccessfully attempted to just dust himself off and exit through the front gate of the dinky cemetery with its one or two plots — wouldn’t work, Wheeler knew. “Await me and my orders. We have an important choice coming up. Which (she eyed him keenly) *cousin* will you be?” She knew it could even be both at once. The basement has that power.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0114, Nautilus, North

00370107

Janice spots a 15 speed bicycle hanging on an apartment wall upon exiting the Slaashsides subway, first of a succession of bad signs…

The stinking green pocketbook is still there, check.

So is Burro Alley.

—–

Johnny’d come back from a serious bike trek. He needed to replenish.

“New Mexico, pheh,” he mutters while gobbling.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0107, Nautilus, New Mexico, North, Slaashsides