She’d seen enough of Castle Town for now. She was buying a sky ferry ticket back to Kangerootown from whence she came. She’d heard through the grapevine that keyboardist/DJ Okama Majo had returned to his cat house there, taking his own break from Aisle of Palms and the Dream Emulator band he’s part of with classically trained guitarist No Lag V, hog calling kid Don without a last name, and animated singer Shelley Johnston Struthers who has 3 to make up for it and who specializes in Lennon songs like “Strawberry Fields” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and the like. But despite that, Okama named the band, not her. All because of his artistic hero Osamu Sato, so close to his own. Too close. Shelley’s found that out too. “You’re *him*,” she said recently during an acid drop sponsored by LSD, tripping the light fantastic and drawing truth from every corner of the universe, only to forget the vast vast majority of it later, of course. Gray Man works in all dimensions when you’re on that stuff; perpetual darkness. Must – stay – away, she thought to herself afterwards. No more sheets.
00420608 (kenbaiki (ticket to ride))
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0608, Castle Town+, Omega, RDR2
00420605 (immobile (paying the price))
Day 042:
I manifested on an island in the void I couldn’t move away from — no bridges — so I took a picture before the dream ended. Crystal (at the peninsula’s tip). Have to look that up.

Yes, there it is. I’ll just place a little (red) pin on that island to remember…
—–
“Remember what?” Wheeler tested later, looking at the pin with him.
“I… forget!”
“Gray Man, hmph,” exclaimed Wheeler to this. “Wiped you out again. You’ll have to start over.” She looked at him instead of the map to emphasize her point. “Stick to The Natural World as much as possible, Newt. He doesn’t go there. You won’t be as, um, *abstracted* there.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“Now sit back down here and let’s begin Day 043 while I watch and advise.”
“Alright.” He sits back down like a good boy.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0605, Big Woods, Bright Moon Cottage, Jeogeot, LSD, Natural World, Newtonia, RDR2
00420604
“Ain’t got time for you, boy.” But the dog had something to say, something to tell. For he was the animal that the fox had become… just after getting run over by that streetcar he was following too closely. Last gasp effort before death: switch to another body. He was surprised he still had the power. But he did.
“I said *git* Red.” The dog bit the bottom of his pants, tugged at them. Arthur was tempted to kick the mutt but hesitated. He looked down. Same red as the fox. “Bastard?” he tried, feeling himself foolish at the same time. The dog heeled, seemed to smile at him while wagging his tail.
“Bastard!” The dream finally ended, longest of the night. Back to day thinking. Newt was forgotten, night was over. He had to find Dutch and try to explain to him what happened. Would Dutch listen? Probably not in this day and age. The Age of Enlightenment, Arthur thought derisively. Fat chance. Where are the powers of the Dark Ages when you need them.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0604, RDR2
00420603
The fox is dead, Arthur realized while looking to the left on the same walk. Something had happened. Think Arthur, think!
He was in the tunnel again, light at the end once more. But different. White, not yellow. Different planet, he realized. Newt, he recalled. Something about Newt.
He turns left instead of right, thereby avoiding the dead fox.
Choices, he pondered. It’s all about the choices we make.
—–
Into the clotheslines!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0603, RDR2
00420602 (rockstars)
On his days off, Grant (aka *Fred*dy) Price likes to roam the streets of Lost Sanos, sucking up people’s dreams to replenish needed energy for his various security assignments. This unsuspecting guy walks right into it.
Meanwhile, on another planet altogether (most say), Arthur sees horses at the end of a tunnel.
“We got a second one!” shouts Newt from beyond the 4th wall as Arthur reenters the light.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0602, Big Woods, Bright Moon Cottage, GTA, Jeogeot, LSD, Natural World, Newtonia, RDR2
00420515 (centerpoint)
“Honey, get out of the shot. I’m trying to take a picture of that ghost over there!”
—–
“So this is where we’re going,” Mabel said to Teebestia, who had removed her mask since the facade was dropped, like water off a duck’s back.
“We *all* do,” the mechanoid rattled. “Eventually.”
“Riight.” Mabel was pondering how to get out of this. Really hard (!). “What happens when I wake up? I mean, when I get to the other side.”
“You’ll see your brother,” Teebeestia spoke plainly. “Reunited at last.”
I must be dreaming, thought Mabel. She goes to the edge, stares down into the hole, sees light at the bottom, way way down. She’ll be killed, yes. But the light will take her, swallow her. (Almost) all water removed. Just like a mechanoid. There will be little remorse for a life lived fully, quietly, in contemplation on the world at large. *Worlds*.
“Soo… this is how you got to be who you are.”
“Yes,” Teebeestia clipped rapidly. Death was good for her. She had a diseased heart, a diseased mind. The hole was a way out.
Mabel looked around the landscape for perhaps the last time. So much had changed about the Dawg Pound since their childhood, growing up with Winnfield — happy happy days. But the Cleveland Rocks up there remain. Perhaps, at least in part, as a memorial for Little himself, she imagined, the last place she saw him before he was taken. By the Universe. The mechanoids at least do that for him while shifting around everything else. She can’t really blame them, though. Climate change, she knew. “Oh, Little,” she lamented. “What have your Green-Gray Wars done?”
She shifts her attention back to the hole. Taking a deep breath… she jumps.
The bones rattle on.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0515, Google Street View, MARS, Texas





























