“Oh shoot, Hucka,” Marion says at the door, peering in. “No seats together left up front. We’ll have to sit on the couch further away from the stage.”
“Fine with me!” she responded, knowing the hips did their job on the way over. They’d pay more attention to cuddling than comedy this night fer sure. Besides, they watch this act every Wednesday rain or shine, know every line that’s going to be uttered. Firesign Theatre: the house group at Gaston’s downtown Rhino. Unless it’s uptown. We’ll see.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0115, Gaston^^
“‘How can you not hear it?’ he might say to me in frustration. ‘Are you *deaf*?'”
“I say, ‘your work is an impenetrable sphere, reflections all around but not from itself.’ Here:”
“That’s a great story, baker b.,” Hucka said, looking at the mirror ball he pulled up on his monitor. “It really is. But I must buzz off elsewhere to use the old nomenclature.”
“Okay, alright. *Bye* I guess,” I say as I watch her — or him — fly away into the blue blue skies. Hucka D. the Bee showed up again after so long only to leave so quickly!
—–
“He thinks I’ve reverted to bee form, Marion. I, of course, haven’t.”
“No you *haven’t*,” expresses Marion Star Harding, taking all her womanhood in from top to bottom from his seat opposite her at the Welcome to Mimosa tavern, sign lost in the Great Wind Storm of ’02 (“The Great Blow”). No antennae even, now. “Why?” he had to ask.
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s trying so hard to understand the various creators lining up around him now, sees the parallels to them in himself; alternate paths.” I want to keep him productive, was the underlying meaning.
“You’re a fine woman,” Marion said to this. “Very fine. Now let’s walk over to the Rhino and see that comedy group again we so love.”
“You first,” she said with a sly smile.
“No, *you* this time, he he.”
“Alright.” And she got up, wondering if she had the hang of swinging her hips properly. Would this be the last vestige of her bee self and the awkward duck walk showing up? Turns out it wasn’t — she did fine. Very fine. Marion looked on in pleasure and happiness the whole 3 blocks over.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0114, Gaston^^
“The 420 folder is getting too full, baker b.”
“Hucka!”
“In the exoskeleton!”
“The Atom is part of the CHRO system, which is pronounced like Crow,” she begins. “Someone had to exhibit at the Red Arrow for all this to surface again. And then there’s the ROCKSTAR direction — always the ROCKSTAR direction now.” She paused to wipe some pollen from her mouth. Hucka D. Was he even a she now?? “You went back to Red Row, found nada. Not even the bird-dog conjunction. Something had shifted. Something had, indeed, been removed.”
“The dog.”
“Actually the bird but we can assume that means the dog. As in, the dog was never highlighted (by the bird) in the first place. Nothing to be removed. No Spider.” She paused. “You’ll figure it out,” she reassured, a seemingly innocuous statement that surprisingly irritated me.
“Can I see you? Can I see where we are?”
“The maps rise up to meet you,” she then stated.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0113, New York, Tennessee
“Why are you back, Arthur?” she says after he sits down. “Is it to see the dog? We’ve been through this before. You’ve seen me feed the numbers into the computer to produce the Red Row. And then The Atom, and an (op art) example of what you can do with it. There’s nothing more to see here. Nada.” She had another client coming in at 11:45. It was 11:30. He said he’d show up at 11 to talk to her about something. He was late.
“I want to go back,” he just blurted out, knowing time was short. “I want to go to… Red Row.” He figured there was something more to it. Too many rows named red for one. A 2 fer 1 (!).
“The only thing you’ll see there is proof that nothing is left. The dog is ours.”
“So I can’t even see it now?” He wanted to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. But of course he had his money, extra feathering for his retirement nest. *Something* had been exchanged.
“No,” she put it bluntly. “Not until the reopening.”
The numbers laden dog remained hidden behind the secret bookcase door, a 6×4 mathematical puzzle-lesson with 20 positive results along with 4 negative outcomes at its center core. Just taken by itself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0112, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
“Jeez, Barry, I thought you were *dead*.”
“*I* thought I was dead. Inside the dream. Bass had a rock the size of a small schoolboy’s head. Hit me with it right in the kisser!”
“*3… hours, Barry. *Three* *hours*.” She sits back in the chair a bit. “Anyway, *why* was she trying to kill you? This Bass woman.”
“Man. Bass man. Ernest T.. Haven’t you ever seen ‘The Andy Griffith Show?'”
“Of course I have, Barry. I meant *man*.” Why did she say woman? she thinks to herself. But this is not about her. This is about *him*. She turns her attention back to the freakishly long dream which he for some God awful reason couldn’t wake up from. It was like some kind of temporary *coma*.
“I think,” he answers Wendy’s question, “he was jealous of me.” The laugh track ended there, he knew. Time for something serious; time for *death*. In the show!
“Why? Why Barry? Why was he jealous?”
A common love, he understood. Helen. Helen Pettry Crump, also known by the schoolboys and even some of the opposite shore experimenting schoolgirls as Helen Pretty Rump. And now Ernest T. was a 33 year old schoolboy himself. Always looking for a potential new bride. Watching her from the back with the others, he knew he’d found one!
“Ernest T.!” she called to him one day, whirling around from the blackboard, surprising him. “Solve the following equation.”
Suddenly there was no schoolroom, no teacher. Just a rock. He thought long and hard about what’s on it but couldn’t reduce it to nothing. This was *something*. His blood began to boil inside him again. I’m going to *take* this rock… or a smaller version thereof… Aaaaaaand.
“And that’s all I remember, Wendy. Swear to God.”
(to be continued)
“Saaayyy. You’re sweet on her too, Sheriff. Aren’t you?”
The moment rock throwing and all around Mayberry troublemaker Ernest T. realized Andy and he like the same woman. Teacher of Opie, Andy’s son, but also, now, teacher of himself (!). One of the two of ’em would have to go, he decided then and there. And he’s hoping it wouldn’t be him of course. So that meant, let me see (he thought, narrowing the options), it had to be *Andy*.
—–
“Barry? Barry?!”
“BARRY!!!”
“The Atom is not just another pretty op art picture,” she said, manipulating and expanding the pattern until the above image was produced. “It represents a CONTRACT signed between you and the Universe (almost wrote *University* there (!)) to go out in the World and do and preach GOOD. If you can’t do this then someone else will. In fact, they already have.”
https://theredarrowgallery.com/show/red-arrow-brianna-bass-ex-nihilo
“Will you let it go?” she continued. “Or will you reclaim what is rightfully yours? Both can be true, you know. You and this other person are not the same. The child of the best friend of the sister of you and your wife’s best friend. Small world, huh?”
“Indeed (!)”
A character, I realized. I have to create a Classical God-Star. TILE must be involved again. And orange and violet, ERR, amber and magenta.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0109, C2077, Cable Isle, J-Town, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
Roberts takes the magical Chihuahua from my arms, removes the hover text style numbers from its head and feeds them into the computer through an input mechanism I can’t quite understand or explain. “Good good,” says the private investigator who also doubles as my lawyer while watching the monitor. “The Red Row is forming again… see?”
I see this in front of me: one red square appears to the upper left, then another directly to the right of it then another to the right of it then another to the right of it until the sequence numbers 13. But the 13th, she explains, is the same as the 1 again.
“What next?” she asks. I tell her I don’t know. “Zero,” she persists. “The interval is zero now,” she prompts. “What’s next?”
“Um… one?” I guess without much conviction.
“Yes!” And with the press of a key, a second row forms in a similar manner directly below the first. All the colors are different now except for the 1st square and the last square again. Beginning at the left we have red once more, then red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, blue-violet, violet, red-violet and then red to end. These were her words for the gradiated colors as she explains what happened.
Then she asks again: “What next?”
“Oh geez, I don’t know. I suppose: two?”
“Right-o!” Same kind of row forms immediately below the first two when another key is pressed. Colors now: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and then — repeating the pattern beginning with the 7th square — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, to end with red again.
“What next?” she then asks. I think I was getting the hang of this.
Eventual what was produced was this, which promptly went into Barry de Boy’s “Does This Look Square to You?” series at the end. Roberts called it “The Atom.” “This is where everything starts,” she said about it. “Can you see?”
“Here, back up a bit,” she suggests. “Squint your eyes,” she said after I still had trouble getting it.
I saw.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0108, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Mississippi, Towerboro
Pretty sure it starts with an Arrow somewhere in or near Nashville, Tennessee. Pointing directly to Red Row 1 mile north. Let’s zoom in (again!).
—–
It wasn’t a *spider* in Red Row I was looking for, despite these 8 shoes found on some hick house stairs. Red Row? Red *Herring* (!). No, it was a *dog* named Spider (thanks 4th human within with the remaining 2 feet, *POP*). Found just down the road — or row — being attacked by a bird. Bird dog, then? Chihuahua, I discovered.
“Get away from my dog, bird!” I called from the ’57 Chevy Kenny was driving. “*My* spider dog! *MY* SPIDER DOG, SHOOOOO!!” *POP*
Better.
I kill my now disposable chauffeur with my final bullet (*POP*) and take the wheel, leaving room for the dog in the vacated passenger seat, body dumped in some bushes at this conjunction of Red Row…
… and, er, Red Row?
Anyway, I stick Kenny’s body into the bushes better and head back to the lawyer’s office with the dog to collect my hard earned reward.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0107, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
My old haunt NWES City: devolving and most likely soon ceasing to be.
For example, the interesting trailer park across the road from Moe’s old bar: gone. Moe’s former building with the red square now in front: empty. Probably has been for a while, rent due who knows when.
The 4 (red yellow green blue) into 5 butterflies (add: orange) weren’t fulfilled, pheh. Could they have ever been? I think in a probable reality this is so. Everything Collagesity went into everything NWES City, smaller to larger, and made a new whole. Subways were completed. The, ahem, downtown elements of the burg were better balanced by the cleaner uptown ones. A clearer core center was established.
Hehehe.
But I haven’t given up on it quite yet. Or at the very least Wheeler hasn’t.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0106, Apple's Orchard, Jeogeot, NWES Island^
Sunklands 