Shelley 02 does indeed find something at the location of the red pin. A portal. 1st two offered locations through it seem to cancel each other out in importance: child vs. adult (Too Young vs. Too Old). 3rd location called Wake seems more central. TILE is here for one.
10:01 AM. Time to ball.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0209, Bellisaria, Hana Lei^^, Pickle 01
It’s a very blue place, she thinks. 10:01 AM. Yet she stares.
Wonder why Myrtle doesn’t like linden plants? she ponders. I’ve *always* liked linden plants. Maybe the only one she respects, the branchy winter tree with no leaves, is my *least* favorite, hmph.
Someone else should be with me here in this lonely spot, she ruminates. Someone else blue.
She suddenly has the urge to get up and dance. Must be the costume. And the place.
—–
“I see plumeria over there,” she spoke later to rail sitting Edward, her chosen beau for the day. She’d changed into something safer, something non-dancey, urge abated. “I see palm tree no. 1, palm tree no. 2. And then a cypress tree 1 just up the hill. What’s not to love?”
“Different strokes for different folks,” Edward offered to Shelley’s continued rant. She just couldn’t get the logic of Myrtle’s opinion.
“Very regimented. *No* chaos. No mention of mainlands. What a mess! she might exclaim. Yet… she’s there. On Constance.”
“*You* put her there. Even gave her that weird belly button, the on and off thing.”
“The Abyss must be a key. That’s where we meet, her and me. That’s where I can tell her off if she doesn’t friend me.”
“Drop it,” urges Edward to the girl, perhaps the love of his life. If Wanda doesn’t enter the picture again. “Let it go.”
“The *island* is all about that merger.” But as she spoke this, she began to doubt her words. It was more than just that.
—–
The next day Shelley replaced Edward with Arthur in the sim of Escanes and they studied the illegal TILE treatises of Bart and Lisa in a sand covered underwater room directly beneath a false island planted with those plumeria and palms, thinking their actions there were unexposed to the prying eyes of superiors on the FILE. They weren’t; didn’t call them that for nutt’n.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0101, Long Islands, Nautilus, Wild West
“Edward on the left, Arthur to the right. My two boys.”
“Yes, they’re very nice,” said Thomasina, staring down at them. “But… these are 2 boats, Jennifer. The same boat, in fact, by the looks of it. Just doubled up.” Thomasina wondered if she purchased them from the same place but didn’t ask this.
“Yes. My two boys.” Jennifer started to look confused. Why didn’t Thomasina understand this? 2 boats, 2 boys. What could be simpler? Takes two to know after all, she thought. Everyone knows that, every single person in the world knows that.
“Let’s begin again,” Thomasina decides while putting down the photo and re-scanning her notes on the table. She pounded her bat softly into her now empty left hand while she did, thinking mode on. Shortly: “You were born November 2021.”
“Yes. About.” She knew the exact date but didn’t like to show off her eidetic memory. Best to hide certain things from the world. She’s starting to rethink the whole Edward-Arthur reveal. And what is this batty outfit Thomasina is wearing? What did it mean? The obvious?
“You *were* Jenny Lane and then you grew all up, became weedy but not in that way.”
“Dabbled in some pot back in the days, yes. Plants were there so I took the opportunity.” Last time: July 10th 2007, she knew but didn’t say.
“Let’s not worry about the far past right now,” said Thomasina, sitting up and looking into her eyes again. “Let’s set some rules, or reinforce some rules. In the *present*.” She had several others in line at the gate already. Grammy was done (SODA addict — cured with a coke can filled instead with rancid urine) but more came. Guard Tank or Bazooka Ferguson had his hands full. Thank Gods for Steven, a needed distraction. But troubadour songs only go so far. “You tried Rank, now stick to File. Like here. NOd if you understand.”
Jennifer nodded. As long as her 2 boys were with her she’d make due. She could write her novels, she could live her lives. She would escape the column *sometime*. Thomasina seemed to read her mind here — probably was.
“As long as Constantynople is a thing, you must abide by this rule. Try the up and down, *stay* in the up and down. Not even right and left any longer — that’s gone.
Jennifer thought of the overnight disappearance of Nightsity. Fantasyland was still there, though, in Bionaz Gulch. She asked about it. And also Dottieback, the many individual locations there. After all, these were directly east and west of Constantynople.
“That was for the last photo-novel,” replied Thomasina to this. “You might have missed your opportunity. You are going very fast with your writing but maybe not fast enough. If you’d just… stick to the plan.”
—–
So Thomasina changed forms and took her to Kenosha, the top of it all, the eye of the pyramid. Her extra pair of eyes rolled heavenward to reinforce the deal. “Gotta get back,” she said. “I’ll leave you here to start.”
—–
10:01 AM. But she stared anyway.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0611, Nautilus, Nightsity, NORTH, Rank & File
“So how long you going to keep up this ruse? *Pitch*.”
“As long as it takes,” he replies generically, shifting his long legs nervously again. “Do (he indicates behind him), do these *people* have to follow you everywhere you go?”
“The Eightyeights? Of course. You know that.” She paused, thinking about what to say next. “Bad luck to stare at the ocean this time of day, though, they believe. Have to face away. Like the bear.”
“Ted?” He dares to glance back in its direction, centered in the sandy passageway that runs between the two halves of Sunklands Institute.
Another pause. “We can call him that. Or her.”
“What’s with this Tiki curse anyway?… riddling the town. Saddling it.”
Wheeler paused longer this time and decided not to even answer Baker Bloch, currently disguised as thought-to-be obsolete VHC City originating vampire Pitch Darkly. Married to Mary instead of Wheeler. The reason for his being.
“You can’t keep postponing the inevitable,” she said after staring into the hateful ocean for a while, bright in the fairy blue light. The light of the Devil, some say. 10:01. The Eightyeights couldn’t handle it, thus the turning. Wheeler was, in contrast, soaking it all in. Pitch was just glancing all around, shifting his feet and legs and arms. And glowing eyes. “You’ll wake up next to Mary one morning, perhaps one much like this one, and realize she’s just a symbol of something bigger. ‘Mary me,’ I said so long ago that I can’t recall where and how.”
“Boston?” Pitch said, and then corrected himself. “No, not Boston.”
“Not Miami,” Wheeler also offered. They both sat there, trying to remember the circumstances surrounding the event. It was also the day he met Mary; he did recall that. Reel reel reeling them in. Just like now.
“Caught another one!” she cried gleefully just over at the newly placed dock.
“Wonderful dear! A *whopper* this time!” he observed.
“Just like your story,” Wheeler hissed over through folded hands.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0507, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wild West
Sunklands 