“I’m telling you, Mike,” Pat relays telepathically. “If the next box is one specific color, one *specific* color… then we can’t kill her. We just can’t.
“We can’t kill her brother of mine (sigh).”
2 boxes later, past the demonstration of TILE that placated the onlooking, desirous ghouls, she finds the key, the center of it all.
Switching from colored to black and white, she can now unlock the door with the Newton-Jasper cube indicating scale.
Damn, thinks Mike. 2nd one today.
She turns away from it and looks down into the Ratskeller. One of the Eighty-eights and town manager Rag Doll, also known as Evelyn Hart, are waiting. Dare she go sit with them? She could still run away. They seem to have not spotted her yet at the top of the stairs. But she’d been studying that painting with cashmere robed Shelley for a while. They could have looked up here when she didn’t notice. Can’t take a chance, she realized. That’s how town rumors and gossip get started. And she’d had enough of that already in this place full of time and space.
But it wasn’t just one of the Eighty-eights down there. It was 2 of them, Eight and Eighty together. She’d imagined seeing Rag Doll aka Evelyn Hart all along, all this time while both glancing down there and simultaneously studying De Boy’s painting up here with Shelley. What gives?
—–
“I’m here to see the manager,” he said to Sue Anne the counter attendant of the moment. She waves her arm in the direction of the only other person in the diner while saying, “How about the owner?”
Promotion, ahh. Rag Doll aka Evelyn Hart was not in the same position Alessandra (= white-clad Wheeler) assumed she would be in this town of New.
She dug right into him. “You were suppose to turn right at the can. What *happened*?”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0408, Blue Mountain, County Park, Haze County, Jeogeot, Newtown
SHORTLY…
Hmm, another owl’s beak along with a whole, attached owl, or a rendition thereof, he thinks. I wonder if Madge lives here? Maybe that’s why I involuntarily walked here after leaving the pharmacy. Those owl beaks sure have power (!). Couldn’t *wait* to nibble on one.
—–
But there was only ruins within. Madge, nor anyone else, dwelled in this spot in Newtown in the sim of Newt on the continent of Jeogeot, also the location of Newt’s “other” home of Nawt Vaya, the one he doesn’t hang around as much lately. He’s on too many trails here. But this one: dead end. Better get to the park and meet Wheeler, he thinks while looking around at the barren stone walls surrounding barren stone and grassy floors. Where one trail ends….
At the same time in space, Alfred Hitcher leaving the downtown grocer with actual soda also suddenly has the urge to visit the park. We know the soda will be gone by the time he gets there. Perhaps he drank it along the way; might explain the subsequent hallucinations. Teaming up with no good lie-about Fisherman Jim to fight for the right to own an imaginary island, humph. In his wildest dream! But that’s what the fold out part did to them, additional drug enhancement present or not. Power enough on its own. Remarkable.
(to be continued)
“Sir?” (pause) “Sir?”
“Oh yes, young Fink,” distracted Newt finally acknowledges his presence at the door to his study. “How’s it going? Everything alright with the computer upstairs and all?” He didn’t look at Fink Humann, kept staring at the screen of his own computer.
“Yes, fine sir,” said Fink. “It’s just that it’s 7 o’clock. Time for me to leave. I’m saying goodbye is all. Like, er, like I do every time I come over here… at this time.”
Newt checks his watch not on his arm, gives a little start. “Oh dear, didn’t realize it was so late. Better wrap this up. Well, er, thank you, Fink, for telling me the time and the lateness of it all. And I suppose I’ll see you again… tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is a big day, sir.”
“Please, Fink. You can stop calling me sir. You’ve come over, what is it, almost every day for the past 2 weeks?”
“Except that Sunday when Jack and I went plane flying, yes.”
“We’re friends now,” emphasized Newt from his chair. “Come over here, actually — I know it’s getting late and you need to get back to the treehouse but I — I want your opinion on this. I’m serious. Here.” And Newt waved him over, which he complied with. “What do you see?” he asked as Fink Humann also stared at the monitor with him.
“That’s er, your wife,” said Fink, seeing her image dominating the screen. Fink knew this was Wheeler now and not another form of their precious Princess Pinky Gumm. Wheeler herself told them that during a visit the other day to their treehouse.
“No, *behind* her. What do you see on the wall over there?”
“Um, JEO — GEOT,” he read on the poster. “Jeogeot,” he combined.
“Very good. The continent we’re now on.”
“Jeo-geot,” Fink repeated. “Jeogeot,” he collaged again.
“Yes,” said Newt. “Fine and dandy. But what else is there?”
“Um… people.”
“People, yes. And…”
“Dinos.”
“Dinosaurs, right. Aannd…”
“Um, an elephant?”
*Elephant*? Newt thinks. Does young Fink here not know what a giraffe is?? But then Newt realized Fink had inadvertently given him the answer to the riddle he’d been pondering so deeply about all this afternoon and early into the evening. The phone rang on his table. Wheeler obviously, Newt thought without checking the number.
“Thank you again, Fink. We’ll be talking soon.” He pats him on his shoulder to signal their time was done.
“But not tomorrow,” Fink says while walking out of the study, making Newt realize that tomorrow was the day mechanical contraption Bimbo was suppose to arrive from Fink and Jack’s native Oooo. Fink might not be coming around as much after that, and perhaps not at all. He’d miss the lad if so. Perhaps there was another way, hmm. He finally answers the phone that’s been ringing all this time.
“Where *are* you?” Wheeler emits.
Where are *you*? Newt wanted to say in return but knew it didn’t matter. Could be anywhere in the world… or nowhere. He’d find her whatever. Just up the stairs from down. “Be right there,” he said not into the phone but in the air all around.
Time to go see what the boys are up to.
—–
“Thanks for joining me on this little venture.”
“Sure,” he said. “Vegetable garden can wait. Besides, well…”
“Yeah. Potential company back there. You’re going to have to be careful.”
“*You’re* going to have to be careful.”
“Soo… (sigh) This is where it happens, the magic, the view of paradise that boy mentioned.”
“Suppose so, Wheeler.”
“I mean, we saw them head in this direction. No lights. Like now.” Here Wheeler once again wonders if Newt and she would ever be a proper couple. Probably not, she concludes once more, a broken record, a record missing some letters in the middle to make it real. Simply because he’s Baker Bloch and that’s not allowed. Not *here*.
“Right, right. Stayed there — here — about an hour. I suppose that’s enough for paradise.”
“Yes,” said Wheeler nonchalantly to this. “And over there too, that building over there.” Wheeler remotely opens the window to the shack, points. “A treehouse as I’m checking; ‘nother place they go now.”
Treehouse, she ponders. Like the boys live in, with a shared robot computer on the way from their home world of Oooo as well. Should be arriving by next Tuesday’s Thursday.
“Yes, I remember when we were young and full of energy like that,” says Newt. Now just old and tired? he thinks to himself. He’s 50 going on 67. And Wheeler… he supposes she’s at least in her late 40s. Doesn’t look a day over 25 (he looks over). Well, 30 (pause) 35. Body aging gracefully, though. And so is his, he realizes. This works down here and that works up there. Both can happen.
Plus there’s The Abyss to consider, the writhing. Not Hell, but a kind of prison anyway (like Shelley is in?). Newt’s seen glimpses when he drinks his two daily 4 shot lattes too close to each other. 319. Must think about that more. Nawt Vaya — 319, hmm.
“Wheeler?” He looks over, sees the eyes. “I’ve decided to give it a shot.”
“What shot?” she shoots back.
“You know. *That*.”
“*Here*?”
He thinks of The Abyss. So many writhing in The Abyss. Trapped. A date to begin, yes. Start over fresh. Hot dog joint out in the sticks won’t swing it. Something upscale, classy. Wheeler can wear one of those discount gowns she’s been collecting recently, hmph.
“Are you asking me *out*? Hubby?”
(to be continued)
https://bakerbloch.com/2022/07/30/00340113/
—–
“Soo, why are we back here again, Jack? Pink again?”
“Yeah,” responds Jack the Dogg, his 1/2 brother and also bestest friend in the world. Unless it’s Todd. “And you know what that means?”
“Errr,” went Fink, once more sloow to catch on.
—–
15 minutes later, after earning another F- on the new quiz.
“I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy!”
You certainly aren’t, thinks the newest iteration of Princess Pinky Gumm in Our Second Lyfe dominating above him but, of course, biting her tongue. Fink remains a powerful ally. And friend.
Now to deal with Art and Ed, she thinks; break the bad news to the duo so use to having their way up to this point. The buck stops here.
She looks to the sky and thinks of all the power she has. 319.
(to be continued)
That’ll be 4 bucks please,” said ramen shop attendant Jacwylin, extending her hand with the bill for the bills. She was also the manager of this small cyperpunk type shop, if it wasn’t Tammy (pause). No, I checked. Tammy isn’t projected to be in this here photo-novel, 46 in a series. So this remains Jacwylin. “You know,” she begins again, name settled on and free to dwell in the past now. “Blue Moon Kentucky sat on that very seat, ordered that very meal. Blue like you too.” She scrutinized the face more closely. “Nah,” she begged off. “You’re not her.”
“Of course I’m not her,” said the blue clad woman back. Still working for the Horns, the big bosses, although the boss boss Edward was the only one still around. Who was now also her boyfriend. Luckily for her, he doesn’t have a cleanliness obsession. He doesn’t mind a little dirty. “But,” she reconsidered, “that’s an interesting story, worth a follow up statement.” There. I just did it. Would she get the joke?
“Ha ha,” she started after a significant enough pause. “Hu hu hu, good one.” She got it. “But, *anyway*, Blue Moon… do you like her music? Do you prefer the Cracks or do you prefer her solo work? Some do.” She withheld the “like me,” part. Wanted to get the other’s opinion first.
“I’ve heard of ‘Keep on Shining.'”
“Yes yes. Good one.” Maybe a solo lover. Like herself. She’ll keep patient.
“And, let’s see, the one about suicide is certainly interesting. Can’t recall the name of that.”
Jacwylin couldn’t either in the moment. Oh yes, she thought. “Elvis Esley.” Or Isley — she couldn’t remember if the last name of the single started with an E or an I, our first mandela effect in this here post (pause). I checked to make sure and, yes, it is so. The name Tammy remains a mistake and not an alternate reality.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0046, 0108, C2077, Nightsity
She suddenly stopped the 1947 BLACK BEAN ROD 9 in the middle of the road and looked over. Pyramid. Just like pictured on The Bill. Gold tip at the top. Then…
…. Barry walked out of the Chinese restaurant on the other side with their take out orders, still looking for his. Dunce he remains; making a lot of D’s. Well: only 3 this year, an improvement. He obviously chose this location for Eyela to pick him up for symbolic reasons. Seeing the boy, Eyela forgets the before times, becomes absorbed in the Gold experience. She has the key still, hidden deep deep deep in her pockets. 319. Alls she knows now is that the room is somewhere around, and that Barry is with her.
He’s still walking in place, waiting for her to change into his Mom. Should be any second.
Aah. What the heck (door slam). We’ll just go with Eyela as his Mommy. But we may still change the name to Pink. I’ll dig up some more appropriate hair soon.
“Mmm. Smells good!” she says pleasantly, and then motors down the highway to parts yet unknown.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0308, Gold City, Jeogeot
“Why do you keep your bathing suit on (in the tub)? You understand we’re married — no need to be formal.” But Wheeler, I mean, Eyela knew it was necessary. Eyela Gold, her newest incarnation. She also understood she had to ditch the purple hair in order for it to work long-term. Newt would lose interest if not. He preferred the new now: Newt likes new.
“It was a successful party, dearest,” she decided to say, dodging a bullet. “Trouble is (she suds her suddenly aching head while also rubbing/massaging it) — I… don’t remember much about it strangely enough. Like it was all, I don’t know, a *dream*.” She produces something from her hair; instantly knows it is the key. She hides this fact from Newt. She quietly places the golden object on the floor behind the tub, waiting to be picked up later when Newt had gone to bed or else to his study, if he can find it. 319, Eyela Gold reads on the thing. She must cover this fact up.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0302, Big Woods, Jeogeot
Venus had finished her song. Wasn’t her worst but wasn’t her best. Lorster… Lester, I recall. Must get back to the purple door, another door to open if we now have the key. And we might.
“Well I’ll be,” he said, withdrawing it from sudsy purple. Not poop after all! Thanks Dovie!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0613, Nautilus, Retirement Islands, Wild West, Yd Island^
Sunklands 