She found a half programmed “Victoria” — or what she knew back in Paper-Soap as a Claude (or Claudette) — in the old Big Dick’s Halfway Inn building next door to the diner, proof her father was up to something. Why bug a robot if you don’t have a purpose?
And then there’s the mutable wall glyph…
Based on what’s out the window, she thinks it has something to do with the movement of time. 50 years. What changes in such a span?
—–
“She’s here.”
“Damn cold,” *sniff*.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0209, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
Berta was conveniently on her lunch break but Keith B. timed it that way. Drugs in Biff Carter’s last coffee and also last donut just to make sure — he’ll be snoozing for a while. Time to take a gander at that 3n1 file he knew Dr. Mouse dropped off just day before yesterday on a visit to his old detective pal. Said to him: find this girl, before she separates out again and all is lost.
Entering the downtown building, he couldn’t see the evidence right in front of his face. A spacer this one is, always thinking about the next operation in a broader sense of the word. He’d just met with Dr. Grayson uptown at his Serapis Club, a potential replacement. Dr. Brown is no longer an option, since he perished in that Millbank haunted house explosion back in the last photo-novel. By Dr. Mouse’s hands no less. Brown maybe knew too much about the 3n1 since he had the same last name as one of the 3 components (Frankie “Beige” Brown) — he couldn’t take a chance. And all that talk about preservation and Halloween being a perpetual holiday from him. Nonsense! That would cut out his favorite one of all which was of course Christmas, Xmas as he liked to call it, not being a practicing religionist. Science is instead his thing of worship. If there is a God, he’s determined, he’ll have on a lab coat when he meets him at the Pearly Gates, with a beaker in one hand and a test tube in the other. Maybe some kind of Adam-Frankenstein laying on a nearby gurney. And of course an Xmas tree in back adorned with more beakers and test tubes. He’s pictured the scene quite a few times now. Makes him merry.
He feels like he has control of the city but it’s just an illusion caused by a game. An in-disguise Marsha “Pink” Krakow enthusiastically claps from across the midtown diner after he breaks the jackpot once again. He turns.
In fact, I don’t think there’s any way he could have missed that Pink Pawn sign and made the connection. Marsha did that as well. She’s covering her tracks. In fact, this is what she looked like to Dr. Mouse when he turned from his still dinging and clanging and whooping machine.
“Alice??” he exclaimed. His daughter.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0208, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
He didn’t say much when he came into the office, just took a seat as instructed. The gray haired man kept looking at Biff, as if expecting the private dick to recognize him, he gathered. So he asked to begin — to get it out of the way. “Do we know each other?”
Keith B., last name revealed only as an initial for more protection, covers himself by saying he gets that a lot. “Dextre,” he said in an actor type voice. “You know, the TV show about the serial killer. People say I look like him and I suppose I do.”
“Dextre,” says Biff back, realizing the connection now. “You *do* look like him.” Another mirror, Biff noted, although he didn’t understand it was one of himself as well. Dex-tre.
“Well what can I do you for?” His standard opening line, just used on Wanda a couple of hours earlier in the dream about the dream. Pink again, he knows now.
“I have an interesting case for you if you’re interested. Pyramid. Off the coast of a neighboring island. Revealed itself last April’s May. Portuguese navy sent in to investigate. Determined it was the top of an underwater volcano. But why perfectly square and aligned exactly to the cardinal directions? We’re talking north south east west. 90 meters on each side, 60 meters high. Fisherman found it on sonar. As I understand, ahem, you have your own mystery here just off your coast. A monster isn’t it?”
“A whale of a monster,” Biff found himself automatically responding, thinking about the print of the photo for the last time before nightfall.
“Maybe… they’re connected.”
That’s the hitch, Biff understood. As in jolt. He felt as if he’d been electrocuted a bit on the spot. Or attacked by gargoyles — something. His hair stood on end, head to foot. No reversing course now. He had to head into this case with a full foot of steam. Thar she blows! A case as big as Nantucket coupled with an accompanying super-cape. He intercoms Wanda — no, Berta — to bring in some coffee and donuts while they talk, sugar and caffeine taking them further than either could have anticipated. The 2 cases were one beneath it all!
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0207, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
He was scrolling through Cass City photos on his computer screen while waiting for a client to show up, reminiscing about the old days. Ahh Pink, he thought while studying the 1st one that popped up. Rented the space opposite the town watering hole called Shenanigans. Reverse the colors and directions here and one could change into the other, he realized, as in an aftereffect on a sunnier day. Did Pink understand this when she chose the location?
And what about his office directly above it in the same building? Well, 3 stories above it, the intervening 2 floors still vacant. Have been for a while, so the padding might be permanent between him and his supposed true love. Yes, he determined not too soon after she arrived in town that he was smitten by the still youngish, almost child-like looking 38 year old “girl” from Nantucket with her semi-fiery blonde hair and her perpetual hot pink clothes and attitude. She told him one night at Shenanigans, the only “date” they went on if you can even call it such, that she use to not be this way. She was a 3n1 (or 3-n-1), a composite, she said, and cryptically left it at that. He’d studied the term since; hadn’t come across much information. Basically posts of this blog is all. Yeah, better make that he hadn’t come across much information period, blog still off-limits to him for his own protection. Pink, however, is a different story, par for her Nantucket golf course upbringing. There she was also known as: Wanda. Yeah, she was out there in reality but also in his dreams too, acting as a mirror to herself. He had to be constantly reminded that she could do those things, 4th dimensional tricks one could put it.
He kept scrolling through the Flickr pool of photos until the end, then tried a general search for “Cass City” within the popular image hosting service. Soon he came across this, the photo he’d hoped to find all along:
“Moby Prick,” he said laughingly. And everyone thought it was fable before he snapped the monster from Doug’s dirigible back in last April’s May. Of course some people, perhaps most, weren’t convinced, said it was a trick of the land and the light. He sends the photo to his printer, intending to have the evidence close to him this time. It seems to keep making itself scarce, much like the great whale itself, he realizes. He’ll print out 5 copies just in case.
Knocks at the door. His client. He only managed to print one copy out because of the interruption and then misplaced it before nightfall, hmm (more tricks).
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0206, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
He was dozing in the office per usual when the phone jarred him from his dream about hot tubs. Wanda? he thinks about the girl there. Who’s Wanda? He cuts off the rings by answering, assuming it was a wrong number. 5:30 in the morning. Who would be calling him now?
A dame named Wanda, that’s who. Or so she said. Probably the psychic police again, he thinks, hounding me until the end.
“Sykes,” she said about a last name when he asked her, poised for retribution.
“Is that with an i… or a y?”
“W-why (nervous laugh)… do you ask?”
“Because I was just dreaming about a dame named Wanda,” private dick Wendell “Biff” Carter admitted but cockily, “and I wanted to know how to spell her last name for the next time we meet up.”
“How odd,” the woman also claiming to be Wanda said on the other side of the line in a tone that Carter identified as sincerely surprised. Maybe not the psychic police after all, he pondered. Maybe one of those what you call *synchronicities*. He tested further. He realized she seemed to be talking to someone with the receiver’s mouthpiece covered. The detective was good at detecting that — had to be to survive, he said to himself as he honed his craft by trying out one muffled voice after another with his girl Friday secretary Berta. What kind of cloth or hanky or whatever was used for the muffling? Could be important. In this case he was thinking: cashmere. Slight bit of scratching against the receiver (wool) coupled with a Cape Cod accent. Rich dame, he surmised. He needed money. He’ll overlook the oddities to proceed forward.
“What can I do you for?” He tried to wake up as much as possible to absorb the stream of information he assumed was coming his way.
“I *was* looking… for a mirror.” That was it. Mirror. The dream, he knew. She found it. Click went the receiver. Took a long time to return to sleep after that. Wanda in reality, he thought, glancing over at the phone again. Wanda in the dream. Maybe if I return to the same dream I can get more info from the dame who lives, ahem, *inside*. He leaned back, hands behind his head just like we started with. “Wanda Wanda Wanda,” he muttered as Newton slid back into Jasper. “Wanda Wanda (snore) Wanda…”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0205, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
The name of the city had changed from Cassandra to just Cass. What she knew as the Seraph Club was now the Serapis Club. She had to look that up. Old Graeco-Egyptian god associated with a Jesus-like cult. But in Our Second Lyfe, well, an interesting topic. Cult in that case headed by a doctor — looks like a Mouse. Make that: looks like Mouse (for a name (according to an attached notecard she found)). And this Cass City? Azore Islands alternate or parallel history. Pyramid, hidden from the public eye after a brief exposure. Atlantis at the bottom of everything and sloowly making its way back to the top again. She’d seen the Abyss inside. Abyss, she repeated in her mind. Dr. Mouse and his Serapis might have a point.
Better get some human clothes to go along with a human form asap. This situation needs investigating!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0204, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
When they had finished with her hair, it had turned fiery gold again, with a corresponding change in clothes. Marsha “Pink” Krakow was back, baby.
Took a while to properly cool off, though. “Thanks guys!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0203, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
Mouse leaves the scene, happy with the results. “Taxi!!”
—–
“Someone’s coming,” spoke the top.
“Must be that girl again,” said the girl of the two.
The girl entered the chapel.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0202, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
The day after Thanksgiving. Normalcy returns to the small virtual village of Amiable with plenty of leftover goodies from the festival, a huge success. Corn shucked, weighed and balanced, and then baked into bread and other products; sweet roots based music produced aplenty; sweets and refreshments served all around.
—–
“Offer you a drink, Doctor?”
“Not now Victoria.” He wanted to keep his eyes glued to the front of the club, for Dr. Grayson was waiting on someone, another doctor he assumed. The place: Cass City, queen burg of Satori’s Deep South. The time: 1939 apparently. Just before the great war that never was. Thanks to the book.
Dr. Mouse walks into the Serapis Club. “Check your coat, Doctor?”
“Not now, Victor.” He had a mission to fulfill. Bring what he assumed was another doctor up to speed. And then have him take his place. Hopefully.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0201, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori, Teepot^^
Being Thanksgiving Day already, Marsha “Pink” Krakow started to husk corn for the festival. Now plain June joined her. Tom showed up and did a little work. Christina showed up and did even less, ranting on and on about her miracle recovery from polio as she does. And Stan never showed atall per team leader Donna’s prediction, over at Dick’s sweets and drink stand all the time drinking and sweeting away her worries. Team leaders never subbed for team members according to the rules — she at least had that going. But the corn was slow to be shucked and the cornbread needed to be served by 7, 7:30 at the latest. Something had to be done. Enter Andrew “Biff” Carter from the woods with a black and white shucking machine made from miracles, June’s beautifying witch power transferred to it instead. Marsha was suddenly free to do something else: either Reuben or Steuben, whichever one was the drummer, was lost in action (remember we’ve already heard from the horse’s mouth that one of the two wasn’t real). Marsha felt 2 drumsticks manifest in her back pocket, also part of the magic. She went over to warming up Batcorn beyond the corn and offered her services. She’ll play her way onto the band, she determined then and there, watching the machine spit out husk after husk, leaving naked white ears of goodness in its wake. All team members and all team leaders were happy. The 2023 Amiable Thanksgiving Day Festival would be a success despite the odds.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0117, Teepot^^
Sunklands 