Not yet (*sip*).
00390212
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0212, collages 2d, Constantynople, Falmouth, Nautilus, Rank & File, Washington
00390211
“April May June passed so fast April Mae Flowers. Now it’s July…”
“And we’re resurrected, yes,” replied Herbert Glenn Gold’s wife of 47 (?) years. “Waiting for action. ‘Annnnnd…'” she attempts to joke like a director. “Remember what happened last time.”
“Um hmm,” Herbert murmured while nodding, wondering where his pudding is. How could he eat his pudding without his meat, though? Strange thought.
“So much promise over on the Jeogeot continent. So much disappointment. House *deleted* after, what was it, 1 month?”
“At that,” Herbert Gold replied, even a bit more disappointed than April Mae over the affair. Speaking of which; he should bring this up now, before we get too far into the story. “I saw Merry Hill Gouldbusk the other day. Supermarket,” he continued. “She had 2 apples and one banana and then excused herself to the cashier and got one orange and slotted it between the 2 foods before the whole thing was rung up, all the items in that order. She was trying to tell me something. She didn’t seem to recognize me, though. I was shocked.”
“Gold face still in place?” April Mae only asked with a little venom. She was use to such sidetracking. After 48 (48!) years you learn to put up with a lot. And fantasizing about a woman half your age is not at the top of the shit list, not any more.
“Yes. Red hair still too.” Herbert stopped here, thinking back, which April Mae spotted. Still worth a hundred dollars? she wanted to ask but held her tongue. Long time ago now. They had bigger worries now, like how to cope with growing old. They had to stick together on this one. She’d seen Mr. Platinum, she’d seen the future. They could not turn back the clock.
“When did you get so tall, dear?” she diverted. She looked right. “And where is our favorite painting on the wall, the Blue Panther? The one we stole from… oh, I can’t recall, hmph, I can’t recall them all.”
Herbert slouched down and then answered the second. “I believe the farmer boy is bringing it over later.”
“What farmer boy?”
Herbert reconsidered. “No, I think it was repossessed. By the Blue Panther and his, erm, agent. Back at the end of novel 36. They came huffing and puffing up the hill to the house. Hill House we wanted to name it. But not after Merry.”
“Of course not,” April Mae waved the idea off. She tried to remember the repossession.
—–
Later in his study he remembered it was a gardener and not a farmer that his wife had had an affair with.
Later on the john, April Mae remembered that the art was destroyed instead of repossessed.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0211, Apple's Orchard, Constantynople, Nautilus, NWES Island, Rank & File
00390210
Shelley finally got the rescue rope off the tree branch and moved closer to the edge of the thing. She was suddenly in a position of power and was taking advantage of it. “I *should* let you drown in there.”
“Me?” she struggled. “Why??”
“Because you were obviously meant to replace me. Now I’m expendable.”
“You tricked me!” The pepper on her shirt was gone. Next up the shirt itself, then the identical doodle-bug haired head blub blub blub. They were on a walk after playing basketball a while, Jennifer winning in a close match. Shelley spotted the sign which was closer to her, but didn’t mention it to Jennifer, her double, her doppelganger. Slippery on the far edge, thus: this. “Help!” she started. “Hellllp!”
—–
“And pull your shirt up over your shoulder like I do,” Shelley continued with the conditions after the mouth had submerged. “Just NOd if you understand.” This was the final one, the choice of destiny. The tank must be under the shirt, she decided quite a while back, actually. Viewing the exposed thing cost her a point or two in the basketball game, a seemingly small but important difference. The most obvious and distracting in the moment anyway.
Jennifer’s half submerged head managed a NOd. The rope came — just in time.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0210, HANA LEI
00390209
Shelley 02 does indeed find something at the location of the red pin. A portal. 1st two offered locations through it seem to cancel each other out in importance: child vs. adult (Too Young vs. Too Old). 3rd location called Wake seems more central. TILE is here for one.
10:01 AM. Time to ball.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0209, Bellisaria, HANA LEI, Pickle 01
00390208
Yet another pepper, a 3rd for the shirt and top covering up the exposed tank. Superseding the other two?
Big Stickout in MACAvity, another West Virginie resonance.
Meanwhile, the actual, non-merged Shelleys have started taking train rides with each other on another part of the FILE, but are kicked off before entering the water, marking passage into a different sim. Shelley, one of them, I suppose Shelley 01 which would be more appropriate, then spots a red pin on a map of Pickle 01 off the coast of the 1st Bellissaria continent, technically part of the continent itself since it was the first landmass to form there. Maybe this is our next lead, she thinks, clothes still a bit wet from the brief dunking. But she fared better than the one sitting more up front.
Pickle 01 and Pickle 02, then. Just like Shelleys 01 and 02, interesting. Also combining, and perhaps not in a good way as well.
A different location for Pickle 01’s red pin back in photo-novel 21 but too similar not to mean something, most likely.
So Shelley 01 stays put at the map while Shelley 02 checks out the actual location on Pickle 01. Real time investigating we have here. Exciting! Let me just close up some windows before actually logging on the 2nd Shelley, the now basically duplicate to the first minus some secondary cosmetic attributes along with the use of more demos to save money in the process… Okay, that should be enough.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0208, Bellisaria, Constantynople, Nautilus, NORTH, Pickle 01, Pickle 02, Rank & File, Rim Isles, West Virginia
2 I’s 02
A backup is needed in case of failure. A top is duplicated. Kind of. Close as I could get.
She approached the bar after checking out the back (noticing the tank, etc.). “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0207, Constantynople, Nautilus
X’s and
Mr. Babyface’s big mouth on his huge head forms an O. He realizes he’s been staring at perfection all this time, volcano at top, familiar green green Xilted and its now grassy fields at the bottom. All answers lie here.
Al temporarily staying over at the Temple of TILE until they get a true custodian of the place was thinking along the same lines. Paradise found. His itchy and scratchy down there has suddenly and, to him, miraculously cleared up, even though it appears to be exacerbated especially by heat and it’s now basically the middle of the summer. Subtract the bit o’ heartburn which he’s not worried about (he’ll adjust his meal again tonight to further pinpoint the issue), he realizes he hadn’t been this healthy in years. From this center of power combining present past future, he wonders what’s next for Shelley, for Arthur and Edward, for Mr. Babyface and whoever shows up to be his companion and sounding board for more Big E/Big Schwa theories in the Kidd Tower, perhaps old lover Greg Ogden (who can still change into green green Gregg Oden when provoked), or maybe nephew Peter Ladd, a cousin of Lamb’s Paul and thus from a different mother, even though they both call Babyface Uncle.
Mr. Babyface has the impression that Shelley and her boat boys will be moving out of the top of Kidd Tower soon, tired of the limited space there. Soon, then, his dining room and his staring chair will be backed by (the map of) Zebrasil not Xilted, as he moves out of W (lower) and X (upper) back to Y (lower) and Z (upper). That’s his hope.
In other locations, Mr. Z has dropped his backpack and its many masks collected over both real and virtual continents in the second floor of Crooked, determined to make it a home too, as well as a space to further the TILE study group he wishes to jump start here in town. The standing yellow ickle just below is sure to follow; another Lamb — and a needed 4th color to balance the other 3, red green blue. We’ll soon see.
But Mr. Z has a journey to make first. He additionally senses he must unite public north and private south into one to make Constantynople and Constance Island as a whole truly fulfilled; be made a *constant*. Myrtle Beech must be visited. And he needs to get the lowdown on the whereabouts of his own cousin Zimmy.
But I forget. Mary, the third member of Lamb to add to Peter (different from Peter Ladd) and Paul, is already here! And so is hubby Pitch Darkly. They’re established at Darkly Manor, their old home from Collagesity back in the days, back when it was set up right next door to the sacred Rubi Woods. Through a transparent upstairs wall they could stare directly into the many linden trees, the cypress 1’s and 2’s, the eucalyptuses, and, most mysterious of course but only occasionally, perhaps only that one time, Unch himself, the fabled 200th tree of the forest, the one that has the ability to uproot itself and go walking about the place. Being a Linden creation and thus supposedly permanent, the forest is still there. Just not Collagesity. The also sacred 97/97/97 spot that once united Collagesity directly with VHC City on the same continent of Heterocera is protected from alteration, i.e., terraforming from the outside, the thing which ruined the parallel 97/97/97 in VHC City, psychically uncoupling the 2 burgs.
And what of Shelley? *She* is from that same diagonal line crossing the continent, its very tip top in fact in Hooktip, a suburb of VHC City — 135/135/135. Another perfection, it seems. Mr. Babyface is huffing and puffing on his recently purchased Blue Pennant tobacco by way of Hana Lei which replaced inferior Red Dragon, still staring, still preparing in his mind. Won’t be long now.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0206, Constantynople, Heterocera, Jeogeot, Kidd Tower, Nautilus, Rank & File, Rubi, Temple of TILE, VHC City, Xilted
00390205
Thomasina said that whenever I need to refocus to come back to the FILE, so I’m here. In Tomasina — the center of it; without the “h” but obviously related — staring at what appears to be the ruins of a temple, and beside a shell representing Nautilus itself, my home continent for good it seems.
The beacon shows me how to walk the diagonal of the sim. Here I go!
Another oversized Nautilus shell encountered at 197/197 near the middle of this temple thing. By Shelley, mind you, once again, it appears, our heroine for the novel, especially since promising character Sarah from section 01 seems to be dead and gone from us. And also keep in mind she writes novels herself, and apparently is on the same number *I* am. We differ in content if not frequency. She’s found a pattern for writing, a system, and I have too. She is writing a different sentence as I am writing *this* sentence, for example. Parallel. Actually, in checking, she was writing the exact same sentence back there but it usually doesn’t happen that way. Moving on…
Unrendering water to look around better, we understand that that one temple, albeit the largest perhaps, is part of a complex of ruined structures spanning several sims east to west. I also found this among the ruins, although I’m not sure what happened here. Certainly makes for some interesting speculation, though.
We will probably return here.
exposed part of the ruins in Macavity
duplicate statues found just below and beneath
unrendering water again: all together now
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0205, Nautilus, NORTH, Rank & File, Rim Isles
00390204
“Good you came back from the 1/2 world by getting together with Sarah,” Thomasina reviewed. We were back in her old office, the hovel in the Waste, new one in Jasper Falls being redecorated perhaps. “How is Sarah?”
“She’s dead,” Al put it bluntly.
“Good, good,” said Thomasina to this. “Good that the manufactured ones are killed off when their job is done. Metaverse would soon get migh-ty cluttered if we had doppelgangers piling up all over the place.
“We could bring her back,” points out Al. “We have the seed.”
“Indeed we do. But your focus now must remain on Shelley, our Jennifer Lane, author of 38 romance novels to date and still pilling up all over the place. What was the name of her new publisher?”
“Shady Lane,” replied Al. “Just minted.”
“Hmm, we’ll see how it goes.”
Then Al shared some pictures of it.
“This is the beginning of it. Or end,” explained Al to Thomasina, holding this photo. “Notice ‘Lane’ had been cut off of the sign (leaving only ‘Shady’).”
“In-teresting.”
“And… this one indicates that TILE is strong on this road, this lane, this forgotten byway that even the town of Boulder seems to have trouble locating for trash pickup and so on, at least according to that woman I met. And it’s about a block from downtown!”
“No need to shout,” requests Thomasina. “I know this is weird, trust me.”
“And, then this one… a rock. Thought I’d include that– about 1/2 way up the lane. Do you think it has a wielding spell inside? Like that other one we found in that other 1/2 way spot?”
“Swordstone?” offered Thomasina. She nodded while still staring, still contemplating. “Could be.”
“Sorry about the darkness of the picture. Shady in there, you know.”
“Of course.”
“And then this one just looking up the lane from about the location of the TILE symbol on the side of that house. Obviously a TILE enclave–”
“Obviously,” quickly agreed Thomasina. She paused. “Will you go back today?”
“I guess so.”
“Remember to take your walking stick. The one with the eyes.”
“Always.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0204, Boulder, The Waste+
00390203
In a cage underneath the bed he waits his turn as reality shifts back into fantasy, virtual playstuff and all. It was always going to be this way. Once they returned to the top. “How’s your novel going?” he said over, blue rose decorated suit back on. “I’m really sinking into this one,” she admitted to her hubby who was still gone a lot of the time, acting in Europe, Asia and Africa currently, Shakespeare being a world-wide phenomenon. “Sinking as… how?” “You know, really getting into character,” she replied. He rolled over, stared upward. If he’d kept rolling he would be looking right at the answer. “So you’re Jennifer Lane, the writer who *writes* Shelley. But to me you’re still Shelley, since I’m not in your books.” “Oh, you’re in them alright,” she said, which was truth. Just not the whole. 2-4 percent, like incomplete milk for a half baked, choco chip cookie. And so, on the 5th day… “Explain,” he ventured, pressing further tonight, kind of hearing the muffled cries of help from beneath him but still kind of not. He could sense an actor in peril.
So she gave him permission to come back into her life, to live in this place with them as well. Her lovely Edward, fresh from a dog park over in Pickle 02. Someone else was under the bed now. He stared at the answer. “Jem, is that you Jem?” He rolled over, all the way. “Oh it’s *you*.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0203, Constantynople, Jeogeot, Kidd Tower, Middleton, Nautilus, Rank & File, Xilted
Sunklands 