“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.
She was on the retracted boarding ramp, looking toward the capsule. She had forgotten who she was again, sun shining brightly above her. She had her wings once more; she was ready to go. All she had to do was extend this ramp across the gap and walk in and sit down and hit fire. FIRE! She was up in the air, heading to Mars Mars. The one dreamed about by Bradbury and Dick and all the rest, but without the time-slips, the Fraudian ones. “Baloney,” she muttered, thinking back to her encounter with Baker Blinker who had left the scene, given up on AB for a spell. What I mean is that she went back to Meaux for a spell, so that AB would remember again. She didn’t have much time; fire would have to be involved, just as it was for her alternate (so far) persona of Jeffrey Phillips. The plan for Baker Blinker, who is, of course, Wheeler, was to go back to Meaux, like I said, and make the new fire spell so that when AB entered the rocket and hit “fire”, she would — again — remember who she was (core). Would it be too late if so? Baker Blinker, I mean, Wheeler wasn’t sure. But when she wrote thought it she knew that had to be the plan, canals be damned. A gap — AB *had* to remember. This was going from North to South, etc. etc. etc.
“Do *you* live here?” asked AB, trying to delay her journey as long as possible. Exploring more of the archipelago shaped like a giant 2 seemed the logical thing to do. Wheeler-as-Hidi followed her around. But I believe she’s shifted shapes again.
Yes, she’s our old old friend Baker Blinker, the female counterpart of the male Baker Bloch back for a moment to prove a point, I supposed. ‘Nother one.
“No,” she answers AB, then elaborates. “No one lives on this island, this archipelago of Misery, not Mystery. That is (only) reserved for the main one.” Her voice was pleasant as usual, not nasal atall. She showed no signs of aging but that wasn’t surprising. She did still have the gray hair — just like AB — but that was just youth again. They were a match in that way. Perhaps Baker Blinker was even AB in the future, much like Fern and Charlene. “The maker of the rocket certainly wasn’t around,” she followed.
“I know who that is,” AB declared proudly, as she’s wont to do. Wings again. Too much sun. “I went there.”
“I know you went there. I was there too.”
“I know you were.”
“I know that you know.”
“Well I know that you know that I know… anyway, you’re Fern. Charlene in the future.”
“I can be many people,” Wheeler stated plainly, who, like I said, was Baker Blinker in the moment. “Mostly women but some men. I back you up. You will learn these things, Jeffrey Phillips.”
But Astronaut AB had forgotten who she was at the core and stated she didn’t know who that was, taking Baker Blinker aback. She thought they were on the same page, with the hair and all. Turns out: AB was in trouble. “Don’t go on the rocket ship,” the female Baker decides to say. “Don’t go to that Mars with the 2 Saturns. Malefic,” she doubled down on her own. “Stay here on this 2, and, with it, Our Second Lyfe as a whole. “There’s no use rushing off to another planet when you…”
“… don’t know your own,” completed AB, certainly wise for someone so naive. She’d actually been having second thoughts — no joke involved this time. Look at the name of the rocket ship: Icarus. The Fraudian slip “wings” for “rings” acted as a tip. Suddenly she remembered Jeffrey Phillips. “Blue Rose,” she uttered, aware again.
—–
“I’m having second thoughts, Wheeler, er, Hidi. Get it?: *second* thoughts.”
Wheeler/Hidi didn’t answer. She was engrossed in looking at the stars and wondering if Grandpa Cliffs ever dreamed of frying.
AB continued on. “There’s nothing much else on this island, this Mystery Island. Basically it all revolves around the rocketship. And this planetarium I suppose.”
“2 Saturns,” Hidi finally managed from her likewise prostrate position on the cushions, still staring up. “I recall…”
“No, that was a mistake, Hidi.”
“When you get there,” Hidi, the more hidden and “evil” one in the moment, said, “you’ll see two Saturns. A second Saturn will be visible. Malefic will be amplified.”
“Ridiculous,” AB doubled down. “It’s just Jupiter with wings. I mean, er, *rings*.” She looks over, exposed for a moment; chink in the (golden) armor.
I was there. Up on Grandpa Cliffs. He didn’t like it as much tonight. I was a Bad Kitten.
She laughs with 4 vowels and skips the 5th.
Her feet got twisted up and she was somewhere else. Astronaut AB; First Woman. Hidi(ng) no more.
I knew what needed to be done.
Baker Bloch was not totally gone. He came back to help me with the Okinu glyphs. He was there after all, although he said it seemed a lifetime ago. “Pre-Hucka Doobie,” he offered while sitting across from me in the Table Room of the Blue Feather building, my home now in the heart of rebuilt Collagesity. “Explain Uniko,” I requested after hearing him talk about things not really relevant to the current plot for a while. That’s okay — he’s a lot more disconnected to the blog these days, so: understandable. I then listened with rapt attention.
15 minutes later I had most of the story. Okinu had been made over since the glyph days, with no glyphs found now. Maybe this was part of a cover-up, he speculated. He also theorized that the energy which created the glyphs in the first place was still present, and that led to the discussion of the archipelago shaped like the number 2. (Stands for) Our Second Lyfe obviously, but there was more.
—–
The new, remade over Okinu sim had a default landing spot now on an island which lies partly in its northwest corner, the largest in said archipelago. In olden days, the sim was only water with no land atall. Certainly this upshoot was a mysterious island (Mystery Island, but part of the Misery Islands?), and one which contained yet another golden machine. I couldn’t help but make an instant connection. Here was Icarus, the rocket ship that would take me to not Mars, but someplace else. Somewhere inferior.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0025, 0205, Lower Austra^, Nautilus^^, Sansara^^
A room with no door (Shop 10, Kowloon):
Downstairs:
“Come in, Fern Stallin.”
—–
“Yeah, I’m not Fern Stalin.”
“Ohh, but you *aare*.” Pause.
“Anyway…”
“Cornfield,” the Old Man in a Narrow Room interrupted crisply. “I’m sensing… Corrnfield, yess.” The place had lightened up.
Blue Berry Girl, 1/2way back to Rules of Rose by this point, looked around without questioning more. She vaguely recalls twins named Cornfield, born in, yes, Valentine. A place called Valentine.
“Youuurr… *rememmberring*.”
“Listen, um, Old Man. It was nice visiting you but I have other places to go tonight.”
“Youuu… will *returrnnn*.”
—–
—–
Walking the RR in the Inbetween World. Watch out from behind!
—–
“Yoouuu… havve *returrrnned*.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0024, 0602, Bellisaria^^, Kowloon^^, Purden/Snowlands^, Sansara^^
