I am wearing a red cap for some reason. The skeleton opposite me has just flipped over the Ace of Spades from his own deck, the death card. But I have an ace to counter from mine. But my ace is red. I lose (*SLICE*).
MAT (Man About Time) wakes up with a gasp. He knows how the vote about the town vs. city moniker is going to come out. Good news! He can’t help but feel his neck, though, to make sure it’s on nice and tight (phew!).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0613, Marwood, NWES Island
“Shop’s closed,” Judd offered from the stairs, staring at the back of his sister Eldwina, who was dressing more and more like a little hooker each passing day, he thought. Maybe she would join the City Squad soon.
The coffee shop just down the walk was most assuredly not closed — perhaps the kids were talking about another place (they were). Charlene Brown the pseudo-punk was washing her hands when I came in, looking for stories.
“Be with you in a minute,” she calls as she counts. 16 Mississippi, 17 Mississippi… almost done. 19….. done. She turns.
“Oh it’s you. Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“Yeah. Almost forgot how to get here. And then those kids…”
“Aw, jeez. Don’t get me started (about those kids).”
“Yeah, the one on the stairs…”
“He’s *always* sitting on those stairs.”
“Yeah, he said you were closed up.”
“Nope. As you can see. Maybe he was talking about the old Same Coffee Shop. It’s a basic duplicate of this one. Except: closed. That must be it.” She studies him more. Maybe a little grayer around the temples. Maybe a new wrinkle here and there. But not much change. For all the passing years.
“I’m here again.”
“Oh?” A twinkle in her eye. “She’d just dumped her 5th boyfriend in 5 months. There was the age different but… he was still attractive. She liked the gray. Distinguished, as they say. “In Black Ice?”
“No, but just up the road.”
“Apple’s Orchard?” she guessed again. “Neptune?” She paused. “Marwood, even?”
“Marwood, that’s it,” I decided. “Up at the new temple. I stay in an apartment in the air.”
“I don’t get up there that much — the northern part of the city.”
“Now now,” I reprimanded. “You’re not suppose to say that word any longer.”
“City?” she provided and then smiled. “It’ll change. We just have to get rid of the *other* cities clinging onto the main one. Like…”
“Meat City,” I proffered. “Zen City — well, that’s *already* gone, poof.” I threw up my hands in a poor imitation of a miniature atomic blast but she smiled all the same. Always laughing at my mainly lame jokes. Good ol’ Charlene. I decided to ask about Charlie. I wish I hadn’t.
—–
“It was Halloween night. Just day before yesterday, then. Out in the pumpkin patch. He didn’t listen to his pseudo-girlfriend’s brother about the demon that always showed up there that night. Neither of them made it. Just a blood patch now.” She starts to cry again, tears dripping into her cup and on the tablecloth. I didn’t know what to add. I’d said I was sorry several times now. I desired to leave, frankly — this wasn’t the story I was looking for. Oh look, though, she’s holding my hand now. She’s looking deep into my eyes with that twinkle again. Maybe this will work to my advantage. The last time we saw each other I was obsessed with another. But I’m older now; she’s older, although you’d never know it. It’s like time stood still for her. And maybe it had. Did she make a pact with someone, ho?
And what about that ill placed vending machine over there we got our hot beverages from? That’s new. Just then, Jeffrey Phillips’ cup vanishes into nothingness but Charlene’s remains. She knew how to replenish it automatically and bridge the gaps.
—–
In the closed duplicate coffee shop, Apples 02’s chair turned sideways and she knew lover Appleyon’s plan had worked. Now to get back to Somerset and try it on Apples 01. The bastard.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0612, Apple's Orchard, Black Ice, Marwood, Meat City, Mississippi, Neptune, NWES Island, Somerset
Okay I’m here watching the Mercury capsule at Neptune Bay like Buster told me to, Duncan pondered. But I don’t think anyone is hiding there — I’ve been watching for hours now.
Just keep her inside, he requested. Don’t let her drown or anything but just keep her inside until the shoot is over. “Okay,” he said. Anything for a role other than prison.
—–
“There she is in person(!)” Kick Ass 01 (Boos) said over to Kick Ass 02 (Bogota) about Elberta standing at the bar in the background. “I gotta hand it to me, pal. I sure can pick ’em!”
Bag wearing Kick Ass 02 was not staring as much now. “Yeah, but she’s not exactly what I expected. I remember, well…”
“Prettier? Don’t say prettier, pal. Because she’s a knockout(!)”
Kick Ass 02 looks over again. Were they talking about the same chic?
“Hello boys!” she calls over, drink in hand. But which one? One way to find out.
—–
“Good job,” he pats him on the back while they walk over, but for reasons other than congratulatory, ha.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0611, Neptune, NWES Island
Clued in by his recent dreams, assigned artist Barry DeBoy searches the *city* for inspiration. Neptune, a central city sim to be reckoned with again!
Uh oh. Dr. Baumbeer out for one last spin in the batty-mobile before he has to put it into storage. Watch out!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0610, Neptune, NWES Island
“Remember? I asked you to select a pencil to begin. Pull one of the 4 pencils out of the desk, I said to you that day long long ago. 30 years?”
“Maybe.” He recalled the desk of course, the pencils, the *dunce cap*. Always making D’s he was back then, until Suisan got her learned hooks into his hide.
“And low and behold you pulled out the 4th, the hardest to do. I knew you were special then. Do you still have the pencil?”
Barry DeBoy stared at the desk, indicating the 4 pencils. Suisan understood.
“Yes, you had to give it back. You couldn’t take it with you all of your life. Instead you received the *tie*. You traded the pencil for the tie. And so here you are.” She indicated, in turn, Barry’s omnipresent tie, at least in Dream World, La La Land.
—–
“Do you see all the planets, Duncy? *Sorry*: Barry. Old habit.” She turns slightly red here. “But you’re only suppose to see one.
“*There* it is. Appearing from a hidden place. Neptune. The icy planet. I.C.U., hehe. Remember we played that game with Neptune? You learned about the solar system and eventually the milky way and the whole cosmos that way. Nothing was hidden from you any more. Thanks to that pencil.”
“I recall.”
“Mr. Johnson came to call. He’d learned of a special boy in our class who could alter dimensions and make the 3d appear 2d. A special gift indeed. He wanted the boy for himself. And it was Johnston, not Johnson.”
“I remember.”
“We almost made the mistake of sending you away, Barry. We would have never found you again.”
“I’m Neptune.” He points to the now fully exposed blue planet slowly slowly revolving around the sun. Slower than any of the rest, even stinky Uranus, which will eventually catch up with her. Because Neptune is a she. He’d seen her once in the high grass beyond Le Mars. But he didn’t want to think about what she was doing there just then. In the moment.
“One more,” Suisan requested.
“Okay.”
—–
“The bomb, Barry. We never finished our childhood puzzle so we could move to the adult ones. But now you’re…”
“An adult,” Barry surmised. He understood the message. He must awake and get back to work. Zen City was gone, but there was still Meat City, Collagesity. CITY must be purified of all these hanger oners. Suburbia must be cleansed.
—–
Goodbye, er, The Waste. For now.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0609, The Waste+
It occurred to him tonight while wandering around the old Same Place that he might be going slightly mad, kind of like Mercury X. Rising toward the end of his shortened life. In real life there is no such thing as a dulciwheel which plays a tune of complex design before him. He’s notice some time slips lately, and duplications. Heck, *he’s* a duplication, since there’s another Barry of similar, complex design in these here novels, art and writing in one. But after thinking about it more, he’s determined this is mostly projection from others. He *appears* mad but he’s not. No ghost variations here. And he’s been studying Robert Schumann, another dude who famously became mad toward the end of his life. Maybe he should stop listening to his music. In fact, that tune…
He quickly exits this portion of La La Land, needing some air. He walked right past Suisan sitting at the door, not noticing her presence. “I heard you were back in town.” Muffled talk through an omnipresent mask. Same old Suisan. The old Same Suisan. Suisan Same. Daughter of the owner of this here place. Makes sense she’d be here, then. Barry turns.
“Suisan! I’m glad to see you. But you scared me in the moment!”
“How come? This is the old Same Place. Makes sense I’m here.”
“Yeah… suppose. It’s just.”
“You’re *not* going insane.”
“But…”
“No buts. I’m here to talk to you. About your mother, heck, anything you want. Even, dare I say the name, Pansy Mouse?”
“Let’s take a walk,” Barry DeBoy urged to his old friend, one of his oldest. She was there even before the beginning. Before the tie.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0608, The Waste+
“A message from Elberta,” she chipperly chirped to begin.
“Oh yeah?” He’d been waiting a long long time. He’d cross his arms and tap his foot to signal impatience if he possessed any. About all he had left were some basic facial features and his gruff, booming voice, now reverberating across a sickly, cold, monochromatic basin.
“The deed is done. The Smipsons bartender is gone, perhaps even dead.” “Like yourself,” Bethulia the messenger chicken wanted to add but stopped herself, ending instead with: “You can move in.” Shakily, one might put it, as she continued to stand in its shadow and stare at the dark, foreboding spheroid, the realization of what actually happened dawning on her. This was not warming sunbeams, light. This was the opposite. The cosmos had been swallowed whole, starting with the pole.
“Remind me: which of us came first?” Yes, Karl wasn’t quite ready yet to return from the Land of the Dead, the Land of Jasper. He remains a zero, a null, a void — for now. Not a true hero any longer. Bethulia relays this observation back to Elberta and gets fed lots of feed for it. She’d almost made a vast mistake. She didn’t realize Karl and Moe’s deadly Egg were the same.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0607
Barry was sleeping on a different couch but in the same old place: the old Same Place, a restaurant adjacent to the Pink Motel that had a duplicate or doppleganger in Tinseltown. This is what happened to him as an acne spotted kid when he and his mother had an argument, often about grades and schooling, sometimes about church and religion, occasionally about the status of the world in general. Marsha “Star” Pink was an optimist, Barry a born pessimist. Or was it the opposite? Heck, let’s jettison the whole idea of discussing the world in general. Let’s focus on local. Barry was sleeping on a different but familiar couch. It reminded him of the one in Norm the Cashier’s Flower Shop but that’s a future memory instead of the past.
He wakes up remembering something awful happened. Bullfrog, a friend of the family, had been killed over in NWES City, known then as New WES City before the shortening and way before the CITY decided to remake itself as a town to counter all the copycat but obviously inferior “cities” spring all inside and around it. Like Meat City, like Zen City before (destroyed by an atomic blast much like the one pictured on that vending machine in the above photo). Like Collagesity, with sity equaling city. You know. These are not Collagesity photo-novels any longer, but something else. Sunklands for the moment because that’s where *my* home is. Not Rubi as in the past. Not Fordham, or Urqhart over on the Corsica continent.
Pink knew Bullfrog from her mother who was green Green. An EEL of a man is often how her mother described him, but she was conservative leaning. Bullfrog was progressive and that’s a fact, and that fact which got him killed by a red headed and red hatted evil entity known as Lu Ellen Hutchison (or Hutchinson) played by actress Alice Frame in Act II. And now she’s back as similarly red topped Wendy. Barry DeBoy knows nothing of Wendy now, or that he is directly sleeping with a mortal enemy back in Black Ice in the present. He is ensconced in the past, in the dream. Bullfrog has just died by gunfire and his mother Marsha “Pink” Krakow, not yet a Star — neither Trek nor Wars — remains in shock, and Barry along with her. This was Uncle Bully to him, a friendly not hostile moniker. How could this happen?
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0606, The Waste+
Aah, the old sign remains.
And the cats! So many cats. Now to dare try the manager’s door. Hell’s Here!, though. He attempts to ignore the warning and return to his childhood. Hello There! instead (!).
“Hello there!” he finds himself automatically uttering as he passes from outer to inner.
To his great disappointment, he just then wakes up for real, the presence of his mother unresolved.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0605, The Waste+
He awoke again a little later on in the day, not having moved from his spot in front of the Raccoon typewriter. Nappy the cat stared directly into the camera, aware of its presence. Eraserhead Man even dared to wave at it, thinking the noticing was funny. Barry DeBoy was not aware of it. Barry DeBoy was in character. He had awoken again, in the same spot as before. Someone, perhaps himself, had turned off the lamp. More clarity all around this time. Wadded up papers on the floor — was this something *he* wrote, perhaps a future or past version again? He picked one up, unwadded it. Something about a place named Gaston. Later he found parrot droppings on the floor of the shed and put two and two together to make four or five. A pirate with a parrot had been here, and he thought he knew which one. The dream controller. The one who brought the virus in his pirate ship for communities that didn’t heed the warnings. Like Maw’s Storybrook. Like this place. DeBoy tries to remember the name, the most obvious thing he should recall. But all he could come up with was The Waste, which he knew wasn’t quite right. Something about a number. Or numbers.
He unwadded more; tried to piece together the story being written. Gaston had appeared in something called a photo-novel in versions 6, 11, 16, 21. Through this, the bastard pirate had concluded that it was related to something called a Magic Square of Jupiter, a 4×4 glyph that appeared, perhaps most famously, in Albrect Durer’s print “Melancholia” from back in the 15th Century or something — this from the pirate text again.
He finished unfolding the papers, shooed the conscious cat from the table, and tried to align them in correct order. 70 pages total, he understood from the numeration. But only 4 present here: bits about the magic square and the overall theories but no meat, no details. He would have to shift his attention elsewhere for more answers.
He turned to the stool and the easel holding a canvas on the other side of the screened in shed. Painting. Barry DeBoy realized he had two functions in life now. He was a writer. He was an artist, if not a painter then the equivalent. But in this moment: painter. He had work to do… he remembered that too. The CITY design. Black Diamond. He must get to work soon.
He wasn’t a writer in this incarnation. He was an artist. He wadded the papers back up and threw them in the trashcan underneath the desk. The true story of Gaston would have to wait until another day, another dreamer in another day perhaps, or one who dreams he is real even though he is just another character, one in a long long line now. Maybe he will share a first name with another of his kind — quite likely, given the sheer number. But before DeBoy gets to work — this is *his* work station now, not the pirate’s, not anyone else named Barry — he must explore the neighborhood. Find Suisan if possible and get the story about his mother. Maybe even — Maw? He had to look. He had to know. Suisan would know. If she was available.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0604, Gaston+, The Waste+
Sunklands 