She watched it from afar…
… and then found herself inside…
*POP* (manifestation noise).
“Wendy?”
“Why are you dressed like that?” is the first thing she said to me.
“I was told” — she looked over at Wendy, wondering about her own blank attire — “it was cold down here.”
“Well you were wrong!” She changed into who she really was.
“Who are you?!”
“Who are WE?” the small mountain boomed back. We’ve seen it before. It was once called a butte. Turtle.
“Yes!” shouted Fern up again, wee in perspective.”
The two eyes of the “creature” which was apparently the same as a mountain looked at each other, as if conferring. “YOU first,” they seemed to decide.
“My name is Fern!” Fern said. “I was on my way–!”
“We KNOW where you’re going,” the mountain blasted again. “We just didn’t know who YOU are.”
Silence for a moment. The two eyes looked at each other again, then back to Fern. What to say next? she pondered, then decided: “So you know about the island?!”
“YES,” it boomed without much hesitation.
“Dullard?!” she faked, testing the small mountain before her.
“BRILLIANT.” So *that* didn’t work, she thought.
“Little Ritchie?!” she then tried. “Taken over?!” It was a theory she had about the wee ones (to her own stature) of that particular island. But how would this mountain–
“YES,” it responded anyway. This big hill was old, indeed like a turtle. Before terraforming it was even shaped a bit like one. But the Lindens decided not to protect this most central of the Hills of Bill and suffered the consequences. Civil War between the split apart north and south parts of the Maebaelia continent, also known as Satori. Now it seems they are attempting to repair the damage. By terraforming it again and even providing it with a face this time to speak to, along with building a new, bridging section of formerly divided highway 8A next to it to showcase the effect. Fern is merely taking advantage of the moment, but she truly needed to get to that island, her goal tonight before this “distraction” came along.
“I’m going to go check!” she said up. “I’ll be back!”
“WE will be here.” They knew she would return. If only because of the prim atop the northern one’s eyebrow, just out of sight from her ground perspective. A special plywood cube that Fern needed to know about and understand the meaning of. And why it had a dent or hole on one side. Oh, and also to learn their names.
But for now they could sleep while waiting. “Night night BAL,” said the first eye that closed. “Night night WIN,” said the other, then shut as well.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0105, Hills of Bill^, Maebaleia/Satori, Outer Islands
I picked him as my next NPC to follow because he was red and thus easier to spot, I figured. On my motorcycle, I hid in the flowering bushes, stifling the urge to sneeze while watching his every move. I thought of red striped shirt wearing Waldo who’s always hiding in those famous puzzle pictures, except the shoe’s on the other foot here since I wasn’t wearing red. Red shoes too, I suppose (he checks his feet). Hard to tell from this distance.
He was on the move again and so was I. I looked around for just a second…
… and he was gone! Disappeared as if into the proverbial thin air.
My determination from the overall study: NPCs, even the ones that stick out like a sore thumb, are ultimately impossible to follow in Lost Sanos. They just eventually make themselves… lost.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0044, 0104, Arkansas, Google Street View, GTA, Kentucky, Tennessee
Gerald woke up in some flaming bushes of the royal greenhouse and tried to remember what happened to him during his latest (and greatest?) graytop trip. What’s this bloody mask? he thought to begin, flinging aside the feathery, white thing. Ahh yes, Princess Annabel’s masquerade ball down at the palace, pheh. And he’d flirted with… how many women? But why didn’t he sleep with any of ’em? Ahh, said he had a date with the *bushes*, he recalls. Thus: here. Hmm, *why* did I have to go to the bushes? The flaming ones? Think Gerald. Think! Something about… cubes.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0103, Heterocera, Iris^^==, Witcher
“So we’ve gathered here at the cubes to save the planet. Are you with me?! Okay, great,” he said, listening to the enthusiastic response of his small group. “Cause if *not* we’d have to kill you because you’d be a continued *whore* to this world, equal or worse to those litterbugs down at Burger Shot. Am I right?!” More enthusiasm; no one dare let up. “So let’s move just down the street a bit and go clobber us some litterbugs, fellow Planetarians!”
What planet actually *is* this? she thought while putting down the futuristic book in a pause. Uranus somehow came to mind, maybe because of this so called superhero’s blue face color, she rationalized. Such a funny name. The discoverer must have known it would be the, ahem, *butt* of a 1000 jokes down through the years. Been almost 65 years since its discovery, she knew. She intuited on the spot that we’re about due for another one. So this puts the year at 1845 or so. Handy to understand.
Claude stared at her with a bottle in front of me, she thought. Better than a frontal lobotomy, she completed the joke from that old sea shanty, carried to land locked Tousaint by roaming rug merchants long ago. Just had to develop some feet. “Claude, bring your keister and your bottle over here and make yourself useful for a change,” she said to her admirer since Tuesday. “I have a question for you.” Claude was good with geomancy and astrology, she knew, so probably also geography and astronomy, their more modern, more mundane counterparts. “Come here and sit down beside me.” She didn’t sit up to give him more room. He’d have to perch on the very end of the bench she lay upon like a useful big talking bird in the moment. Control.
“So, *first* off, what planet are *we* on?” she said as he wiggled about on his cramped little spot, too close to her head with its puffy bonnet hat for any real comfort, physical or psychological. “I have to get my bearings here before I can grasp another one. Futuristic writing is *confusing*.”
The question certainly came as a surprise to the man, learned in so many ways if not comedy. “Well,” he started, thinking of history more than astronomy or even geography, “we live, let’s see, on the world of the great North-South conflict. To the North are an assortment of many republics, led by Reddania, Kaed–.”
“*No*,” she interrupted Claude. “I mean, what’s the name of the *planet* we’re on, not the names of the lands of that planet. I know what you’re talking about here. I’m an educated woman — can read and such as you can see.” She holds up the futuristic book to his nearby face, returns it to the bench. “Don’t treat me like some kind of doofus, pheh.”
“Right, mum,” he quickly responded, still hoping for that date to come out of their conversation. If he steers it well. “Well, as you know, we have the Sun of course, then the Moon… of course. Then about 75 years ago–”
“*65*, Claude.”
“Beg pardon?”
“65 years ago. You were going to say we discovered Uranus and the known Universe expanded quite a bit. The blue planet. We know this from our more powerful binoculars and monoculars. Yes, I know about the Sun, the Moon, Uranus. But what is *this* planet? I repeat for your ears. Think about it before answering.” She became somewhat more seductive in her laying pose, or at least tried — hand on hip I believe.
“Well,” he said more carefully, glancing over at the head, the body, those hips (a celestial object herself, he considers). “We know that the Sun, the Moon… Uranus, are *spheres*.”
“Okay,” she said expectantly. Don’t go weak on me, Claude, she thinks. I haven’t had a man in weeks.
“So logically you would think we’d deduce that we too, us Touisanters and all the rest, live on a sphere as well. But this isn’t so, dear lady. Scientists — you know, the geographers and the astronomers that counter the oft termed fantastical studies of geomancy and astrology–”
“Just thinking about that,” issued, er, forgot to give her a name! Let’s call her Miss S.
“Well, *they* think we actually live on a cube. Not a sphere. Have you… heard that… theory?” Would she make fun of him again? If so, she’s making fun of the scientific community he considers himself on the fringe of as well.
“Cube,” she considered, turning around the word in her head, examining each side. “And, let me guess, the *known* world only exists on one of its sides, the Northern and Southern countries you started listing out before.”
“That’s right, mum.” He points to the east from their bench. “And beyond the Blue-ish Mountains over there lies another *side*, the start of one.” He points west. “And beyond the Grand Sea lies another — we haven’t been out there either, as a people I mean, or at least returned with any real, useful information. And to the north and the south — more sides. And then the back–”
“Dark side,” interrupts Miss S again. “Our opposite.”
“Correct. So that would explain the monsters. We’re a lighted side surrounded on all sides by chaos coming from this back. The theory’s all the rage in scientific publications like the Long Lane Journal, the Redd–.
“STOP, listing things,” she barked. She’d had enough information. Time to shoo this bird away, too bird brained for a love interest. Cube PFIFF, she fumed. Not a sphere. The idiocy of these *men*.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0044, 0102, GTA, Witcher
“Damn cube, OW! Why do they have to be so many damn cubes in my dreams lately, pheh.”
“Ow ow… ow. F-cking toe.”
“Hmm. Looks like Franklin was wrong. Nothing here, huh. Dead end. Nothing left to do but wake up.” He relieves himself on the canal wall even though he’s underwater. Then, getting down to the business at hand, starts slapping himself. Takes a while, but he enjoys it all the same.
—–
“Why is your face so red, dawg? You get slapped up by a woman or something? Speaking of which…”
—–
“Where’re we going Franklin?” he said, looking back at the coffee shop from whence they came.
“You’ll see. Just down the block.”
—–
“Are *these* your damn cubes or something? We were just here Tuesday after all. You were complaining about the art, and how simple it was and that you could knock up something like that — your words — after 12 beers and one hand tied behind your back. ‘No,’ you said. ‘Make that two. 2 beers and *12* hands,’ you tried to joke, but you were already pretty drunk at the time. Should have been drinking coffee back then too. Or eating… something.”
“I-I don’t know,” he said about Franklin’s theory about the cubes and the dreams, then looked around, actually still in a dream… something. “Hey, where’s Mike? Did we ditch Mike somewhere?”
“Dawg, where’s Mike??”
“That’s what I’m asking *you*. Dawg.”
“Mike?” Franklin calls in one of the bushes around the big red cubes. “Mii-ke?”
“Well he’s not in *there* for Christ sake. He’s not missin–” Trevor stops. He remembers… an S. An S in a bush. Flaming (SWITCH).
Part 2: Mikie, not Mike
That night he goes back to the dead end canal ditch and sees something after hitting his toe once more on that in-the-way big goddamn cube, ow ow ow! 1st monkey mosaic. “Frank Lynn was *right*!” he said before starting to slap himself red again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0044, 0101, Back Rooms, C2077, GTA, Kabusie
“Never forget. Our purpose is to secure and serve (soive), brothers and sisters. We’ve closed a portal but opened a dimension jumper. Be strong in our quest. Remember to sign and endorse your checks. Because coffee is more important than food itself because it provides food for thought. I’ve gone on long enough. I’ve provided you with enough clues to start your own search for the truth. Don’t listen to just me. Listen to your own thoughts, your own beliefs on the subject matter. Draw your own conclusions. Use the brain you were given. Rock* demands it, the Gods of the God himself or herself or itself. Anyway, good luck seekers. Baker B. outta here.”
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2024 MIDDLE”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0703, GTA
So they took him back to Fern’s restaurant, opened almost two years ago. Took a booth in the rear for more private talk. Fern and store manager Lichen weren’t around, having remained in Washington state to explore another lead. Another Soo(e)s waterway had been uncovered, the more correct one as it turned out. And at the conjunction of it and tributary Kabusie Ck., they’d found their Inner Place with the Indians. I’m not sure if they’ll ever get back.
“Soo. Tell me *exactly* how you got here… arrived in this world? I can’t believe I’m asking this,” Mikie said, shaking his head.
“Weellll, I went into the Yellow Jack. You know the joint below Sandy Shores, kind of near the alien…”
“For Pete’s sake, we *know* where the Yellow Jack is, Trevor.”
“Strevor. Philip Strevor,” he repeated once again.
“So you walked into the Yellow Jack, yeah,” questioned more convinced Frank. “Then what?”
“Well, Miss Janet, you guys know Miss Janet I assume.”
“Of course we know Miss Janet, Trevor,” said Mikie. “She’s the one who set us up with Grant Price. For protection that time.”
“Well. She told me who I was. In this world. I mean, she didn’t *tell* me tell me. But just by her words.”
“*What* words?” asked Mikie.
“Well, she said I was still banned.” He leaned back squeakily in his vinyl booth seat. “And that did it.” Suddenly Strevor was fading. Trevor was finally returning, coming down from the mushrooms. “And then I was…”
“Trevor,” guessed Mikie.
“Yeah.” He looked at each one, as if he hadn’t seen them all night. “Trevor.”
He was back.
They went out of the building and turned around. Fern’s restaurant was gone. The old Crucial Fix coffee shop had reappeared in its place, alternate history erased. Fern was never in this reality, nor gal pal Lichen. We can move on to another story in another place.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0702, GTA, Washington
“Hey, where’d you get that t-shirt, Frank?”
“I got it from–”
“HEY guys, what’s up? What’s next? Rob a bank? Steal some jewels? Beat some alien loving hippie to a bloody messy pulp, ha ha? Just kidd’n guys. I love you two. Big fan actually.”
Frank Lynn couldn’t look. “Jeez, Mikie, I thought you said he was *dead.*”
“Well. Apparently not. Hi Trevor.”
“*Strevor* to you. Philip Strevor.”
“Of course. *Mr.* Strevor.”
“Seriously. I’m not… me. I was acting all the time. You knew that, right? You knew that all along?”
“Riiight,” the other two said almost at once, then stared at each other, a tiny bit of doubt creeping in because of the book. “Strevor, you say?” said Mikie, taking him in again. Seemed like the same old psychopathic idiot on the surface. Tattoos checked out, shirt, pants, shoes, hair, crazy wild look on his face. Always looking for trouble this one.
“Not Trevor,” Philip Strevor repeated anyway. “No need to be killed off. I’m from a different game.”
“Well what f-ing game is *that*?” issued Frank, fed up with this fiction already. He’d written the character off in his novel. This is his novel. How the heck did a character manipulate his own storyline?
“Um, I don’t know right off. Something about second. Another life maybe. Second life, I suppose.”
“Alternate life, right right,” said Mikie. “Convenient name, then, just your real one kind of reversed.” He stood up more defiantly. “So tell us about yourself. Strevor.”
Philip walked up to him. They were almost chest to chest. He resisted the urge to poke Mikie’s bulging bosom with his finger. That would be a Trevor move. He’s not Trevor, as stated. “Okay okay,” he tries, backing off a bit. “I was part of a gang. Like us three. I mean, if I was *Trevor*. Guy named Marion.”
“Um hm,” said Mikie. “Like *Maid* Marion?”
“Um, kind of like that yeah. Except a man. Then there was little Heidi but don’t let the size fool ya. She was a woman through and through as we found out later. Shapeshifter.”
“Shapeshifter huh? Got it. And tell me about these… shapes.”
“Well,” Philip said, looking down, trying to recount them all. “There’s the woman, like I said. The *wife*. And, uh, the older woman, the mother I think we called her. Then the girl, the little woman. Then the *dog*.”
“Dog?” questioned Frank, resisting the urge to run over and smack him, hoping he’d disappear again with the action. Never returned — remained deceased. “What’re you talking about Trevor?”
“*Strevor*” he repeated. “Strevor Phillips, I mean, Philip Strevor, pheh.”
“What kind of dog, fool? Not that I’m believing any of this.”
“Oh, I don’t know. A black one. Maybe a white one. Little… littler than the girl. But not by much. *Not* a poodle. I remember that much.” He looked around, as if the answer was physical and in the immediate area. Was he looking for the dog? Frank thought. Like the dog appeared to *him*?
“What you looking around for, boss?”
“What did you just call me, huh? HUH?”
“Boss… hoss. Just a name.”
“Oh it’s much more than that.” Then he began to whistle loudly, like calling for one.
“Oh come on, Frank. Let’s get out of here and let *Trevor* finish his trip, whatever he’s on, mushrooms I’d say by the size of his pupils.”
Frank remembers his last mushroom trip. The last time he saw the dog. “Listen, Mikie. I know this sounds crazy. But… I’m starting to *believe* this fool. I don’t think this is Trevor!”
“Say whaaaat?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0701, GTA
Just over here, V. Behind these Tiler shacks.
—–
“So this is how it is?”
“What did you expect? A tombstone? Flag and flowers?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
“You blew up Arastraville Tower. You killed a lot of people, Jonny. And where did it get you in the end? The corps and their suits for men are still in control.”
“I know I know.” He pauses. “I was a musician too besides being a terrorist,” he tried.
“One overrides the other?” I asked as a question. Because I was curious how Jonny was going to balance the two. History would view the music as largely about terrorism, not visa versa. Music should ultimately be uplifting, not constantly tearing down our lives, deconstructing them. Something like Blue Moon and her UK Cracks have merit just by that virtue alone. I told Jonny this.
“Are you saying I should have listened more to those bubblegum bitches?”
“Maybe. Cary listened. He liked them. Until… well, you know.”
Both thought of the death of Blue Moon and possibly Redd the Menace too.
“Maybe it should have been me at the bottom of that damn dam instead of Kentucky. Maybe history would have viewed me more in a positive light.”
“That’s static in that direction, Jonny. You’re not Blue Moon, you’re not bubblegum pop. You’re hard edged rock ‘n roll, always have been, always will. You can’t change who you are inside, the core.”
“Can’t you?” Exhale; another pause. “You know I thought about being an artist, V. A painter instead of an axer. Pretty good too. Won some awards as a child prodigy.”
I checked my watch, thought about the growing length of this section. “Yeah, really don’t have time to explore alternate realities right now, Jonny. The musician/terrorist polarity is complicated enough. Any last words? Over your grave, I mean.”
“Just carve the initials and let’s get out of here.”
“Done, and…
“Done.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0616, Badlands, C2077
Sunklands 