December 23, 2023 · 5:28 pm

Christmas Eve

He was playing Schubert’s 14th piano sonata he’d bought the score for about a week back when it flew in from his set up portal, the 1st of 3 as it turns out. It clanked and rolled on the floor almost to the opposite wall, freezing his hands mid chord progression with the sound. He knew instantly what it was of course. He’d been here before.

It was minimally damaged in the transition thankfully. He brought it over to his work table, moving his trusty steampunk computer aside for the moment; automatically started to take notes on the thing. “Quasi-vintage Coko Cola can circa 1990s, lid unpopped with pop still inside,” he wrote,  unable to resist a ready pun. “12 fluid ounces; bar code 490690.”

Understanding the fractal nature of his universe, Newt brought the computer front and center again, googling the number. Through it he learned the product was manufactured in New York with a can manufacturer called Crown. Approx. date of creation: 1983.

https://www.cokecollection.com/index.php?lang=en&pageid=50&canID=11453

Those are the mundane facts. In digging deeper with the number, he soon found another New York connection here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_90_in_New_York

Within New York, I-90 has a complete set of auxiliary Interstates, which means that there are Interstates numbered I-190 through I-990 in the state, with no gaps in between.

Splitting 490690 in two and averaging the 2 resulting numbers gives us 590, which is exactly between 190 and 990 or exactly in the symbolic center of New York somewhere moving west to east, he determined.

Right about… here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_of_Worms_(interchange)

Can front and center once more, he figures the fizz inside has settled down enough to safely pop the top. But dare he?

Another can comes flying through the portal. Saved by the bell, er, *clank*.

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December 22, 2023 · 9:55 am

Raccoonsity

“Billie’s filling in for me at the bar while I make this call. She’s a doll, really.”

(reply)

“No. I mean she’s really a doll — mechanical.”

(reply)

“Yeah, they make them in this world too. This *Humansville.*”

(reply)

“Of course not.”

(reply (reiteration))

“I’m pretty much fully disguised now. I have a job. I have new, human clothes.”

(reply)

“Oh it’s what they decided to call an iron and red number, a retro dress.”

(reply)

“Oh I’m blending in.”

(reply)

“Eddie? He’s taking it in stride. He says, get this, it’s better than the cow outfit, haha.”

(reply (laugh as well))

“Listen I gotta run. Billie’s glancing over at me. Don’t want to make her suspicious. You know mechanoids. Takes them a while to get the scent but once they do they sniff and sniff–”

(reply)

“No, I have enough money, thanks. I’ll call you later.”

And with this she hangs up the retro phone into its retro receiver and moves toward the bar again, ready to resume her shift.

Just in the nick of time, phew! Suddenly busy.

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December 19, 2023 · 8:57 am

Black Ice

Just not rezzing in. Instead: a white spirit. Probable reality not realized. Dr. White.

“Not showing up tonight, not rabbit, not rab-bat,” spoke High Atlantis Priestess to Mouse over in the corner of the room, still not transfigured to a younger form of himself despite his best efforts. “We’ll just have to do without him.”

And I have a name for her. Bermuda. A triangle of utter non-coloredness, no TILE hues involved. Let’s make this shit *not* happen, I suppose.

“Fine,” he finally said in response. “I’ll begin.” And he followed with mundane statements aplenty, making her yawn and, I believe, fall asleep. She dreamed about past glories.

(to be continued)

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December 18, 2023 · 3:50 pm

00410401

“Who’s your house singer these days? Stacey.”

“Oh, some Irish lass named Rew…, um, Reem… oh I can’t remember her name. Anyway she’s from Cork. Plays some kind of cork instrument as a novelty act. A trom… a trum… oh I can’t remember the name of the thing. Anyway, she’s from Cork.”

“Right right.” Bots, Newt thinks here. Seems like she can pour beer well enough at least. “Cork, huh,” he says to egg her on again.

“She’s from Cork, right. Plays…”

“Never mind,” he waves her off. “I’m just going to take my beer over there. I’ll be back.” He didn’t plan to come back. No real information to be found here.

—–

From his new vantage point in Shenanigan’s, he looks over at the place in the street he watched her fall last night. And then vanish — after the message had been delivered.

Biff sitting along the side wall of the establishment was thinking along the same lines. Stood up on an arranged third date. Marsha “Pink” Krakow nowhere to be found in town apparently in any shape or form, Pinkie Brainerd or Berta Brainard or otherwise. Vanished.

Being the author of this whole mess, Newt understood he had to go over and explain the situation to him as much as possible. Best he knows he’s losing a secretary as well as a girlfriend so he can set the hiring process in motion (etc.).

(to be continued)

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December 17, 2023 · 7:01 pm

exit stage

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December 17, 2023 · 6:28 pm

stages

I awoke before the High Priestess of Atlantis an energy being, free of form unless you count Static. She paced on the small stage above me, the highest of 3 tiers. A vibrating Chlandi plate was immediately before my eyes. “You can come over here and fall like the crystal below,” she said in a bold, echoey voice, left foot currently dangling off the top ledge, her walking space…

“*Or*… you can join me over here in the unfallen zone.” She had paced to the back corner, hands steady inside her robe instead of moving about.

Tennesse or Kentucky, I understood, as she reassumed a front and center position, mirroring my own. I knew where to head next.

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December 16, 2023 · 10:27 pm

00410315

From the computer table in my apartment, I watched her stand between the two openings, scratching her head and obviously trying to choose which role to play tonight. Pinkie Brainerd, owner of Pink’s Pawn on the bottom level? Or Berta Brainard, secretary and girl Friday to private investigator Wendell “Biff” Carter on the 3rd and top floor of the same building? Nothing was in-between the two; there was no middle ground here, all intermediate floors vacant instead. Despite being the author, I suppose, I couldn’t make the choice for her. The pink color of the dress drew her toward the pawn shop, but the ribbon aspect of it made her want to type and organize files and such.

This was an important decision; this was a crossroads. I’d been here before, almost in this exact spot doing the same. Before the beginning of things in that case. Here: almost in the middle. Maybe there is some kind of middle ground to be found after all.

There. Down there. That was me at the time. Pepi “Can” Kolya was the name back then. Before Mouse fixed the holes in my head and gave me expressions and the ability to wear different clothes. I became non-mesh.

I started out wearing a beanie with a spinning propeller thingy symbolizing windmills but I quickly grew out of that early look. I gained the coat/mantle of Axis, but moved beyond the darkness of a second Great War as well. I’m not German, but I proudly wear the red, yellow, and black colors of the modern aspect of that nation to remind me of my origins. A small dog named Spider was around here somewhere in my Cass City apartment to remind me of the swastika (thanks Greti!). I cannot escape my start in holey darkness but I now strive toward holy light. Through me (the author again I have to assume), Marsha “Pink” Krakow is now doing the same.

The lights grown softer, more realistic. She turns toward me and even though she doesn’t make eye contact I’m pretty sure she recognizes I’m there — at the computer desk — typing what we’re doing in the moment. She suddenly staggers and falls, then brushes herself off and assumes an upright position again. She falls once more, but in a different way. Then another fall, a 3rd kind.

She doesn’t get up this time. She remains frozen in the same position on the pavement of Southside in front of the 2 doors she apparently can’t choose between. Paralyzed, I understand. Unable to walk toward either now. She eventually vanishes on the spot but I’ve received my message for tonight. There was more to be found here.

(to be continued)

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December 16, 2023 · 4:50 pm

00410314

Supergal Ruby had given up fishing but mate Greg Ogden hadn’t. He’d been lucky enough at the sport to distract them from the golden coins and other Corvo mysteries, sucked up inside the mundane for a while. “2 sharks, a mantra ray, and a swordfish in one day!” he exclaimed to Ruby over a fish highlighted supper, perch salmon or cod (another reader’s choice). It was only afterwards that Ruby recalled the coins, and the fact that they had missed the last ship out of Corvo until Munday. Oh well. At least *Greg’s* happy, she consoled herself. And it will give her time to talk to Mr. Gold.

But she never saw him again, nor his spinning wheel nor the big ball of yarn down the beach from him he was supposedly working on. Dare I say he was a figment of her imagination? Eventually the coins became that too, we can follow. As the island had planned all along. In the immortal words of famous philosopher and, later, box company worker John Locke: “It’s not an island.”

Supergal’s second album, “Atlantis Forgotten,” was fittingly titled. There were more things to dwell on than lost civilizations now, like growing fame, more immediate and materially tangible. The Portuguese government working through the music industry had a hand in that as well; suggested “safe” words to use in her lyrics to downplay the supernatural, “lost knowledge” aspects found on the first. The oh too commonplace selling of the soul.

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December 15, 2023 · 10:59 pm

00410313

The disappearance of the gargoyles on the return passage really started throwing her game off. She fell on some loose ruble in their former room, near the crosshairs where your hair and also head could get roasted and toasted. No longer. “Where *are* they? What *happened* to them?” she said in a panic as she brushed off her polka dot ribbon dress and attempted to stand upright again. “Am I even in the right room?” But she knew the steep stairs behind her could lead only to this place.

More obstacles were ahead, including an invisible barrier impeding her way where there was open air before. She felt like a rat in a maze, trying to find the cheese that is the surface of this Cass City town and the return to her warm, safe desk at the mayor’s office. She felt in her dress pocket — *curses*; never should have worn this cursed dress. But the coins (real? fake?) and the figurine of the statue were still there. If only she could find the way out.

—–

The Mayor checked the time on her watch, cursing as well. “Where the f— is she?” she said aloud. “And, more importantly, where are those coins and that statue?” Town Council meeting in 12 hours. She *can’t* postpone any longer (!).

She turns to the map on the display board. “*Corvo*. *You’re* doing this. Aren’t you, you little bugger of an island?”

“ANSWER ME!” And here I believe she started to sob inconsolably, remembering the Abyss again.

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December 15, 2023 · 11:26 am

00410312

“Bulby, do you think I’m… pretty?” She was on her 3rd wolfberry wine mug and starting to feel it. She needed a confidence booster from one not directly involved. In other words: the robot before her had no sexual desires to impede his judgement. She tugs nervously at the ribbon on her right shoulder while waiting, almost accidentally untying it. Realizing this, she quickly moves the hand back to her lap, locking it between her thighs with the other one.

Bulby’s eyes in his head pretend lit up like 2 golden coins themselves. “I calculate there’s a 70 percent chance that is so,” he rattled off, then stared into her eyes with his now dimmed ones to see if this pleased her. He spotted mixed results and decided to lite up again and change the calculation to 100 percent, defying his logic. He can override it like that if needed. He had evolved beyond pure mechanoid back in the days of the 1st Robot Revolution (= 1st Robolution), marching with his kind on Washington B.C. a little before the 1st Millennium. Certainly a long time ago by human standards but not so much for him. He’d seen the Carthaginians come and go but kept his mouth shut about such things. He thinks, as a robot infant, he may have seen Atlantean “non-men” at a birthday party for his 300 year old robot sister Brightie growing up fast in the eyes of their robot parents Wattage and Voltagia, both over a 1000 years old themselves by that point and just glad they were able to build two children inside a formerly thought of infertile inner sanctum.

“Thank you (*hiccup*). That makes me feel better.”

“You better go back to the surface before you forget how to turn off the gargoyles. I’d follow you and make sure you do but, as you know, I’m not allowed to leave my post here. Must guard the treasure with my robot life if needed.”

“I understand, Bulby. Just (*sigh*) nice to have someone to talk to (*hiccup*)… for a change.”

“How’s your sex life?” he thought to ask, then saw that mixed expression again and decided to add, “only if you want to share. Madam Mayor comes down here sometimes,” he explains himself, “and gabs on and on about it. She has a, ahem, *interesting* one.”

“I’ve heard,” Clare said back. “Welp, mine is not worth these 2 fake golden coins on the counter between us (*hiccup*).”

“Oh. These are not fake,” spoke back Bulby, a bit of surprise showing through his highly filtered mechanical voice. He was just that shocked.

“They *aren’t*?” said Clare staring down at them just as shocked. Something had to give.

(to be continued)

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