Sunklands

Cassandra City was certainly big enough. Difficult to take a long range picture of, though. Too much of the infrastructure not rezzing in properly with that draw.

Jenny attempts to draw parallels with ancient Crabwoo. “2 sims, not 1,” she utters to escort Todd A. another night, because their act had been so successful that they were extended for 2 more weeks. 2 weeks! Jenny would have plenty of time now to explore the burg. “Crabwoo was larger spacially,” she continued. “But perhaps not psychically.”

Todd A. was getting the sinking feeling that developing Cassandra City was just Pipersville heated over. Where’s the equivalent to the room? he wondered. Where’s the missing laundromat, record store, bakery? It all seemed overly ambitious. And, as we all know, Our Second Lyfe has definite limitations. Lag is always an issue in such crowded spots. And it’s just going to get worse as the city fills out more. Perhaps smaller Pipersville had it right, Todd thinks another time. Build around a lagless, forbidden void (Sink X). Crabwoo too in a way, since the 6 protected sims of the Blue Feather Sea laid just to the northeast. Waterless sink vs. filled sink: which was better? It was a debate that underpinned all life, all activity on the continent, really. This is where TILE comes from.

Jim A., of course, scrutinized the large Seraph nightclub at some length. Soon Pipersville’s Jim Club would be no more. He knew he couldn’t compete. And his house band was leaving soon — he could feel it in his bones. “Might as well rent the building out when I return,” he spoke to Keith B. after another successful gig here. Sweat was pouring off his body. What fun! The circle within the circle certainly did the trick. Keith commended daughter Jenny on the idea again and again. Until the end.

And Jim and Keith were doing maths together. Keep that in mind as we continue our story.

What about the others? Tillie and Tealy had finally arrived in town after circumnavigating the big lake just to the east of Cassandra City. In fact, that’s what most of the local yokels called it, simply enough: Big Lake. One of the problems with that appellation is that Northerners applied the same to their Blue Feather Sea sometimes.

Which brings us to another issue I wanted to talk about: the division between North and South on the continent, how it all got started. We turn back to the handy “Second Life Tourist Blog” entry on Satori/Maebaleia:

http://thesecondlifetourist.blogspot.com/2016/09/know-mainland-satori.html

To get an historical perspective: In 2007, when this continent was constructed, the media was full of articles about Second Life. It was less than a year since Ansche Chung’s picture had been on the cover of Business Week, and there were many residents wanting land. According to the old forums, the Lindens were auctioning off multiple sims at a time, and some went for very high sums….

It was not until late in the next year that the roads in Satori (Route 8, 8A, 8B, 8C, and the Old Wagon Road) were completed. Because some of the sims that were in the right-of-ways had been sold, many roads have dead ends and are connected by false tunnels with teleports, or billboards with teleports. The map kiosks along the road are a big help.

Bottom line: Roads were split between North and South on the continent because of bad planning. You can see the gaps on this continent map I provided before: Route 8b (blue) was suppose to connect to Route 8c (yellow), and so on.

Only the eastern part of Route 8 ran the entire length of the continent north to south. Not by accident, the most heavily bombed highway of the brief yet intense Maebaleia/Satori Civil War. They couldn’t even agree on a continental name. And, I think, this is where Real Life Bluefield also comes into play…

(to be continued)