“See? Right at the beginning of Frank Albert Rd. in Fife: a (robed) Freman. This is suppose to be Frank *Herbert* Rd., and perhaps in the future it will be. If the descendants of Albert agree to it. And why shouldn’t they? With some kind of compensation. We’ve been in Tacoma before? I know we have,” she answers herself. “Proctor St., I believe. Another road, a foreshadowing. Don’t you think?”
There were no blue eyes, but the resonance was still unmistakable. Speaking of which…
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0027, 0317, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^, Washington
“Tennessee, pheh,” she uttered, staring over at the fake, flat snowy mountains standing in for the real ones just behind. “Come on, George,” she urged to the meditating youth gazing out in the other direction. “Let’s go see what this *Abyss* is all about.” She starts walking toward the stairs, still talking. “Nothing to be afraid of, George. So says TILE.” Was Clare losing her faith? Now that she remembers the whole of the Wheeler existence? Do we even need to be asking this? I believe it is so.
“Come on come on come on.”
“Oh all *right*.” George was enjoying the meditation. He didn’t want to encounter the Abyss just now.
—–
“Well, here we are at the mouth of this thing. You-go-first.”
“Me? But I’m just a kid.”
“You’re no kid. *Go*. Protect me if you must.” She sweeps her hand forward. “Off you go,” she commands again. “Come on come on come on.” This was not like Clare Nova, who was sweeter. This was the orders of Wheeler. Fully clowned now, she needed to find out what she was facing at the end.
—–
“What do you see in there?” called Clare-Wheeler from just outside the mouth now.
“I don’t know,” replied George. “Skulls. Candles. Lots of skulls and candles.”
“That’s the Abyss part,” said Wheeler. “What else is in there? Look in the corners, along the walls. Look *beyond* the normal.”
“There’s nothing *normal* about this place.”
“*Try*,” she urged. “I’ll be right here, ready to help if needed.” She definitely wasn’t going to help. If the power behind the Abyss got George, then another one would fill his spot. Just like she did with Clare. George could die, yes. *Duncan* had already died, maybe several times — hard to keep up. But Baker Bloch will continue on. Along with herself it seems.
“Um. Oh yeah, Mother Mary. I guess that’s good. But then a, let’s see, Medusa Gorgon beside her. Not so good.”
“Great. Keep looking. Maybe something in writing?”
“Well, the Gorgon is holding a, er, book it looks like.” He stands on his tippy toes. “But I can’t see the cover… (strain) to tell what it is.”
“Get that book,” Clare-Wheeler commands. “Just *grab* it from her.”
Dare he?
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0026, 0502, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^
“A boy 13 to 10 and back to 13 and over and over. Obviously this is TILE, W.”
“(Small) ‘e’ to (large) ‘E’,” she agreed. “5 to 8, gaining 3. Years in this case.”
“Yellow to blue.” He looked out at the sky, the suns rising over the horizon. Horizings.
“But what of the step-down?” she continued in this vein. “The 12, then the 11, back to 10 and then back to 13, over and over?”
“Children according to the TILE documents and creeds. Red and green. Gred. Or Reen.”
“Redgreen. I remember that place. A place of war.”
“7 and 6. Mixed up. Which is higher, which is lower? Confusion in the middle. And by extension…”
“At both ends. Hi becomes lo. Hilo.”
“But one thing we agreed,” he offered as a compromise. “The Abyss plays no role in the end game. Because the Abyss has no real power. Only illusion.”
“Like static.” She squelched the urge to tack on the state names of Tennessee and Kentucky to this. It would all play out.
Tennessee. And Kentucky.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0026, 0501, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^
“I call this my pagan grotto. As far away from Christ on the other side of the property as you can get.”
“Houses?” young George guessed. Clare didn’t answer, turning more into Wheeler each passing moment.
—–
“It was the time for exchanging bodies to keep the enemy confused. Enem*ies*. Us Supernovas had to stick together. But then…”
“You were killed,” George said, following up on what was revealed just 15 minutes back in the conversation they were having in the “pagan grotto.”
“Well, the *character* was killed off, yes, or in danger of being so. The actor playing the role decided not to renew the contract. I was the understudy. I stepped in. Fortunately I grew into the part and no other, more established actor was sought for after a while. Stacey stood up for me and that was a big boost.”
“Summerhill… Nova?”
“Yes, my sister. In the role of course. I don’t have a sister in real life. Just Duncan.”
“How…did you become estranged? Is that the word I need to use?”
“Not quite estranged. Obviously he has a different body than he did before.” Pause. It was difficult for Clare Nova to explain to George the constant switching of bodies. Must be in the 1000’s now. “Let’s begin at the beginning,” she decided. “1st there was Baker Blinker, then Baker Bloch, then…” Another pause. “No, let’s start instead with me.” She remembers it all now, memories locked into place. “Wheeler. I took over. All except… for Baker Bloch, the 2nd who then became the first as Baker Blinker, the anima to his animus, faded faded faded away, Karoz along with her.”
“Who’s this Karoz?” young George questioned again, not having heard that name enter the story yet.
“A green being. Blue-green actually. Baker Blinker and he were married. I’m trying not to pause so much, George,” Clare-Wheeler admitted. “We’re getting close to the end; must hurry.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. I won’t ask so many stupid questions, pheh.”
“Not stupid, George. It’s just…” Pause.
“There you go again!” he pointed out.
—–
“Almost 5 years,” she closed the story for George 15 more minutes later. 5 years, she reflected. Time to end it? She looked over at the vast snowy expanse to the south of them, the distant white mountains. She could just walk walk walk until the cold took her in. Purification; cleanliness. She would be free, then. Just like Baker Blinker before her. Let another take over. She then looked down at her clown clothes and realized she was stuck. Oh Baker Bloch, she thought, seeing the man behind the man behind the child.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0026, 0417, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^
“So we’re just going to carve that dead pumpkin and eat it?” asked George, actually missing Duncan’s fish in the moment.
“It’s not dead, young George. It’s a snow pumpkin, a very special kind. It will melt in the spring. Luckily it’s perpetual winter here in the Snowlands of Sansara which we sit on the edge of.
Turning around, George looks out a row of windows facing south. His moral compass remains slightly askew. Snow — as far as the eye can see. Yet when he looks north: gray, with some green and also some beige. Edgeland: that’s what Aunt Clare had decided to name her home — *homes*. Because she had 2. For now. The whole parcel was up for sale on this landmark Fissure Mountain on the border. Just like a certain brain damaged man we’ve met more recently who sometimes goes by Can; prefers that name to the rest, which, in tandem, means he likes to hang around friends because they’re the only ones who call him that. Kolya, some strangers call him, Pepi others. It was war out there. Back to George and Clare.
—–
He tries a piece of white pumpkin just laid on his plate. Ice is all he can taste.
“Good, eh?” says Clare, munching and crunching down on her own.
“Sure, sure,” returns George, trying to sound positive. “Great. I can really taste the pumpkin.”
“Oh there’s no pumpkin in it.” George stares. “I’m just *kidding*, right Bell?” She shakes her other head now held under the table, which maybe indicates it is laughing along with her. They chuckle in tandem, if so, for a small while, then return to eating, or at least the head not on the stick does.
“How’s… Duncan?” she asks at last, broaching a subject laying before them like a deep chasm needing a bridge.
“He’s okay.” Pause. “He stares at tulips now. He says rats are in them.” Another pause. “He… went to Dixie.”
“I know, Bell told me.” Short shaking sound here under the table. “Very surprising. Dixie, well you know their former relationship. I can’t see for the life of me what he sees in her.”
“Then you rung up, or, I mean, Charlie… he dialed the number, all the numbers I guess, or so he says…”
“And you reached me,” Clare finished for George. “Well, tell me more about this Yelloo subject we were talking about before. Sure sounds like a TILE concept to me.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0026, 0416, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^
“You and I are a true team, Hidi. Tropp (he points to himself here), and Treelor (he points to Hidi).”
“What about the ‘I’,” Hidi mysteriously says over.
—–
“Something’s not quite right here, Duncan.”
“Stay in the car, George. In fact, lock the doors. This won’t take too long.”
—–
“I *hate* being told what to do.”
“Then stay here with us. At least for a spell.”
“Thanks, Aunt Clare! You’re the best!”
“Don’t forget Bell.” She shakes her other head with this, making it ring rattle. Something is loose inside.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0026, 0415, Lower Austra^, Nautilus^^, Omega^^, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^, Upper Austra^
“One of us is going to have to speak, twin of mine,” she thought into the other’s head. “Talky films are the way out, Oz be darned.”
“Someone,” the other furthered likewise, “is going to have to return to that three pointed hat bastard of a pirate over there with rising, snoozing chest.” Which is which?
It was quite a walk up that last stretch through the blasted cypresses but he was here. The Castle, but not Valeria as people said. That appellation belonged to the stone cottage where he started from on this baronial island recommended for purchase by none other than The Guy. It was just plain Castle before him, unless you attach Green to it, as some people did because of the forest all around. If only there were a few pines sprayed here and there, he lamented. He can’t change the landscape, he can’t replant the island’s forest. Cypresses in its two kinds, green and brown, it is.
—–
Well if it isn’t the silent film twins again.
He camped at Mexico Flats that night, fronting One Pink acting as a watch bird. “Sqwalk!” she erupted at half past 2. But it was only the Half Moon rising over a local stone hill. “Sqwalk!” she repeated at 5:45. Yes: The Sun this time, touching the tippy top of same hill. One Pink imagined herself burning on the surface, revealing her secret innards. Scorching Sun and Freezing Moon must be balanced, sqwalk for sqwalk. Otherwise: death. In time, Jeffrey Phillips would begin to understand the weird workings of the psychic, alchemical flamingo but not tonight. Instead he grumbled how just as he was about to fall asleep there went that bird again with the sqwalking, so not understanding atall the significance of the utterances. Sun and Moon; within and without us all; the great duality; mother and father; death and life; black and white of course; female/male all around. Silver and gold. Alchemy.
On to the Castle, bleary-eyed or not.
“A cypress forest without eucalyptus is nothing.” Jeffrey Phillips was trying to get a rise out of Randolph the Bastard Pirate and mate Wendy sitting down the table, but useless so far. “Orange is not a fruit,” he said, peering in their direction again for a reaction. Blank. Time to move on from this Valeria stone cottage on the north end of the island. Castle up next.
—–
“Cypresses. So many cypresses,” he grumbled, walking up the rise.
