Tag Archives: ACHILLES

new direction

She’d lost her spaceship. She thinks she may have left it back in what the locals called Mayberry, an airy mountain of a hill (or something). But she was too tired from all the walking and searching to get off these Lost Angel chairs right now. Maybe in a 1/2 an hour. But maybe: never. The many and the *done*. Truth be told, she was a variant character anyway and will probably not be missed.

—–

Troop was a truly important character though, and it’s baked into his name: True Opp. He started out as a “mere” toy, an Mmmmmm, just like his cousin Grassy from another mother who just happens to be sisters with his own. They don’t talk about Jerry any more. And Philburt is right out of any discussion between them. But Uranus… ahh, that’s a different topic and one that’s interested both of ’em for a long time, starting way back when Tropp, then just Opp or Campbell O’Pine, had his first (Sunklands blog) post dedicated to himself.

“Well it looks like I found it, Grassy,” he says 1/2 to himself, since the only other person in the room was only 1/2 listening. “Uranus; the blue planet.”

“There’s someone out there, in the dunes,” the other person spoke. “Someone… fidgety.”

“Okay, CUT! Let’s change fidgety to nervous. Is that okay, Campbell?”

In another scene later that day:

“Alright, then the crook comes in and you drop your gun and it hits the floor and goes off, hitting your right heel. This is going to be *hilarious*.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0312, Lower Austra^, Nautilus

freedom

“Did you hear what that alien said right at the last, before she… changed over? She said, ‘the heel is under the water, the heel *is* the water.’ Right with her then solid mouth she did, way up there at the 7 1/2 foot level that soon became the 0 foot level. Or became the same as the foot.” He scratched his heel on his crossed leg reflexively here. “Something.”

“Why don’t you enjoy the fireworks, sonny, and stop thinking about that day, that moment. She did what she had to do to escape us and I applaud her for it. I wish *I* had the gall to change into something totally different like that. Remember, heh, remember when Uncle Stan’s rodeo money turned into dust and blew all away, perhaps to California or even beyond? That kind of change.”

“And now it’s happened again.”

A particularly bright sparkler burst above them. “Yup.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0305, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^

halo for horns (4:20)

He sat in the Master House, contemplating how to get from here (Metropolis; pretty nice, pretty big; kinda sensual in an open sort of way) to there (Superduper City; huge/labyrinthian; filled with secret places of full-on sensual desire). He had plans; made paintings even, although he doesn’t really consider himself an artist and has no training in the field. He’s just that excited about the subject; will investigate any avenue of possibilities. The Oracle had revealed his path of destiny, especially in Virginia or thereabouts. Middletown. He had a name. Now he just had to make the megalopolis. He had a beginning, a toehold. But to create a Superduper City he must forge a Superduper Man to be at the heart of all things. He’s working on that as well. He’d sent the bug long ago to effect a weakness, an Achilles Heel. If only he could track down that renegade Martian angel angle that could ruin everything. On it (once more).

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0202, Metropolis, Nautilus, Upper Austra^

newest incarnation

She listened as they talked about her outside.

“Found her up in the hills,” Dr. Paul Mouse spoke in his now kindly voice, changed from before. Another operation, this one performed by a colleague, not that he was opposed to working on himself. He’d done it before, Las Vegas style. “Can’t say where, exactly. Might be a crashed alien spaceship involved, might not,” he cryptically added. Texarkana Ritter was mesmerized. She saw a prize winning surgeon before her and knew he would do the right thing. Turn the alien in! It was the unwritten law of these here parts. You turn the aliens in, you subjugate them to tests, and then, when you’re done, you turn them loose up in Upper Austra into the wilds where they and their kind belong. Let them run over some distant, kind-of-alien village of its own up there. The up, the north, the wilds. Lower Austra hated Upper Austra in general. Where did it all begin? Roads, most likely. Lower Austra had them, two of ’em in fact. Upper had none and that started the whole wild aspect, she supposed. Limited transportation, limited communication. And now *those* aliens had the real deal kind; our infestation becomes their infestation. She was saying some of this stuff aloud to Dr. Mouse as well, which young Ruby, still without clothes gosh darn it, overheard of course. Her sharp ears pricked up as she sat up. She better get use to being up, since she’s heading that way. After the tests. They might have brought her to the good doctor anyway of course, although he was new to this dealing of the civilized south, the down, the lower. All aliens go to the doctors for checking and inspecting and making sure they don’t have any tracking devices or internal, hidden babies or whatnot and then: let ’em go up north. They don’t usually make it back. The border patrol makes sure of that with their guns specially loaded with alien poppers, as they called them. That was a concoction they learned from the midlings, the ones between the human and alien avatars and had knowledge of both and could swing both ways. Well, the ones that swung toward the human side told them of the alien side secrets, the weakness, the vulnerabilities. Achilles heels. Right as advertised. The old myths and legends were based on truth, just *extraterrestrial* as it turned out.

Ruby reached down with her long arm and scratched her right heel anxiously. She could feel there were bad days ahead.

(to be continued?)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0026, 0604, Lower Austra^, Nautilus

rose hips

Sammie Parr visits the Red Umbrella and has a hard time understanding.

—–

“I do kind of like this piece,” she says to her devoted boyfriend of 4 years walking in from an adjacent room on the 3rd and last floor of the gallery, one Richmond Petersburg of Norfolk Virginia, out on leave from the navy.

“Art… like me.” She laughs at her mistake, perhaps a Fraudian slip. “I mean, *red* like me. The Art word.”

Richmond comes beside her and also studies from across the rail. He has an eye for detail. “Like the jigsaw piece as well, honey, the one at the top sort of holding the other 3 up.” He points. “The blue, the green, the yellow. It’s like they’re, I don’t know, being drug through the air. Airborn: yes, that’s it.”

Big nosed Achilles T. Pippins studying the next collage over suddenly sneezes and everyone in the gallery and more becomes infected. Stay safe out there!

—–

Later in the hospital, Achilles sees this same collage “open up” for him (as best it could) and he is able to pass the red woman attracting his attention so much before right up. Higher goals he has now! The gates swing wide.

Devoted wife of 40 years Mary Pippins is inconsolable (*sniff*).

Sammie Parr and Richmond Petersburg are fine and have forgotten all about meeting schnozzle cursed Achilles in the gallery. “I like your red outfit,” he said before parting.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0509, Black Ice, collages 2d, NWES Island^

the power of one

“It all ends with the chicken,” Grey Scale responded to the still defiant Queen before her. “No Mor,” she insisted.

“But…” She shook her head in continued defiance, “you’re no more president of this here South than I am. It’s a technicality you’re talking about, a *loophole*. It doesn’t really exist. It won’t stand up in a Court of the Land. Neither mine *nor* yours.”

“I am president,” put forth Grey Scale Kimball in a matching tone of finality. “The loophole, in my opinion — in my *decree* — was set up by fate. You state that *you* set up loyalist Space Ghost on that property called ‘Ghost land’ due to fate. I am saying to you in solid return that, although this is *technically* true — another loophole in a way — it was also fate that I discover the traitorous move. Trailer traitor,” she finished for now.

“So lemme get this straight,” the Queen shot back. “Lemme get this straight.” Her eyes were in the air now as she had assumed again a state of high haughtiness in line with her royal position. “*You* were elected head of the Council over in Regaltown.”

“Yes.”

“Then since Regaltown is the old capital of the South, before the coming of the grey and white elephants, then your power is transferable to Horns of Hatton because the Head of Council there was once the same as the Head of Council here.”

“Still is.” Grey Scale continued to mirror the fixed position of her foe standing before her. Her *defrocked* foe. She pointed to herself. “Me.”

The Queen waved her monstrous red hands in the air and stomped about the floor a bit, uttering cusswords I won’t repeat here with such words as “unbelievable,” “unfathomable,” “unconscionable.”

“Duly elected,” broke in Grey Scale in the middle of all this. “DU-LY…” She motioned for the Heart Queen to simmer down. “ELEC-TED.”

And that was basically the end of it. Space Ghost’s illegal trailer on the west edge of town derezzed and owner banished back to Regaltown. The Queen’s mutinous club gathering at Cpt. Americus’ Between Land cabin on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays dispersed. No scripts allowed to run at the King’s tomb; no more worshipping of the dead, of the past. Grey Scale had found an opening, an *Achilles heel*, and taken full advantage of it. She was ensconced.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0015, 0308, Horns of Hatton^, Maebaleia/Satori

truths

She wasn’t named for this gray scale alien. Instead: the gray scales of a fish to oppose the blue feathers of a bird. In toto: Grey Scale Kimball of the South pitted against Blue Feather Douglas of the North. Bird, sky, opposed by Fish, sea.

But in staring at the crop circle picture again hanging in the recently reconstructed House of Truth at the very center of Golden Sink, she’s beginning to think she *is* named for this famous, highly complex 2002 crop circle that miraculously appeared overnight in a field of wheat near Pitt, England (locally: Crabwood Farm). Both “grey scale”. Too coincidental.

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/anasazi/wormholetechnology.html

Crabwood of August 15 was one of the most famous crop pictures in modern history, but no one could really understand its message. As shown in two pictures below, the schematic face of a “grey alien” was drawn within a large “rectangular box” that contained 60 horizontal lines, just as for an early “mechanical” TV image, chosen in the 1930’s because we use 60 Hz AC power. The variable width of each line then creates different “gray scales” (modern TV screens use far more lines to give better pictures):

Next, that rectangular box with an alien face was carefully aligned so that it would point at two, nearby TV-radio towers. This was as if to say: “Yes, our new crop picture is really meant to represent the TV image of a grey alien.” In other words, those crop artists can only see the alien “from a distance”, where the word “television” means of course “seeing over a distance”.

Now in one lower corner of that rectangular box, the crop artists also drew a “spiral disc” which contained an elaborate, ASCII-coded binary message as shown. I have omitted all concerns for punctuation or capitalization here, for increased clarity, especially since the last five bits of an ASCII code give one of 26 letters in the English alphabet.

In summary, the crop artists sent us a brief “computer recorded message” on CD or DVD, to accompany their TV-type image of a grey alien. Was Crabwood really alien-made? Many investigators thought so then, and continue to think so now….

And then there’s *Maebaleia’s* Crabwoo, she ponders further, another rectangular box (2 side-by-side, square shaped sims) whose northwest corner just touched the eastern edge of the Blue Feather Sea.

Original capital of the North before its decline and eventual death circa AL 1812-1814. Ur home of Blue Feather Douglas who derived his her name from the sea. Her arch-enemy. Her… sister? Doppleganger? Is he even a she? We’ll most likely find out soon enough.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0015, 0205, Georgia, Golden Sink^, Maebaleia/Satori, Maine

arrival 03

It took them half a day to reach another of those clear spaces where they could make enough sense to each other for more of the story.

“A railroad oval. An engine runs into a caboose. Tale before the tiger,” Marion explained. “A race between beginning and end, she said. Tale wins.”

“Maybe tails win,” Billy Jean King said while sitting on a small bed in the corner of the otherwise almost unfurnished and undecorated cabin. “As in a coin. Flipping a coin — heads and tails.”

“Maybe.”

“What else?”

“She said to always pay attention to the blue roses. They always indicate something. We looked west now. Two thrones — blue roses to side. She said these were the Prince and Princess of Rosehaven, but only when Caledon is Caledonia.”

“See?” BJK nudged Philip sitting beside her in the ribs. “I *told* you it was Caledon. Maybe we were in the wrong place to start with.”

“No,” insisted Marion. “We were definitely in the right place. Caledonia. And then — get this — they removed their, er, masks. Actually the Prince had on some rainbow swirly globe or something — over his head. The princess just shed her golden skin, like a snake. ‘Let the waters rise,’ they said in unison, then. I looked around but didn’t see any water, let alone water rising. But something had changed. I could feel it.”

I also noticed there was a tiny bit missing from the Prince’s fin-foot, like it was bitten a little bit.”

“A little *bite*,” BJK insisted. She turned toward Philip knowingly. Philip just stared back blankly.

“The Princess’ shoe was right there.”

“Achilles heel?” BJK offered, visualizing it backwards in her mind.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0615, Caledonia^^, Rose Heaven^^

Achilles

An invisible cartoon boy, Martha Lamb thinks, studying Falmouth 36 once more on the 4th floor of the Fal Mouth Moon gallery. Hugged and loved by a visible cartoon girl with red shoes. Perhaps they are future lovers, or perhaps brother and sister. Maybe he has a defect that hides him from view — a malady — but is loved by his sister still. Odd that I think this, she ruminates.

Then over here, further away in a field, the inversion: girl invisible and boy visible. The “E” on the next collage over blinks on and off. This *is* love; mutual exchanging.

If I could just *reach* into the collage… somewhere about… here.

Or is it here?

Here?

—–

So close yet so far. How to get from there…

… to here. Swish away the pain into the ice and snow and make it all go away. Football successfully kicked.

—–

“‘Copyright Protected Image’,” she read from the picture in front of her. “And to think I was going to get rid of all this in Collagesity, Sid my dearest. But now I think it is a gateway to the Great Beyond, fries and liquor be damned.”

“You shouldn’t say that about your church,” Sid offered. “You were so devoted to it before.”

She turned to him. “The Diagonal changed me, made me into a true woman. I was like two-dimensional before. *You* changed me.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that…”

“All that’s left is the hand and how to break through. Without pain. They say that there’s no gain without pain, but I’m thinking of something else.”

“Yeah, Martha. I need you to listen tonight.”

She went on. “It’s the 36th collage of this series all right. I’ve been studying it nightly for going on half a week now. The Diagonal is giving me energy to understand.”

Sid grabbed her hand in order to stop her. “Listen, Martha. We need to talk. About The Diagonal.” He let go of her hand. “We can’t use it in that way any more.”

“No?” Her voice was suddenly far away, as across a field.

“No,” he said firmly. “I need to tell you the story of who I really am, how I really got here. It all started with the firing.”

“Firing?” Tears formed in her eyes despite her efforts. “What firing?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0608, Rubi^

Underground 01

She stands up and gets her directions straight. Yes, to the right should be the safe plaza, or underneath it. She’ll head that way first. Taking a deep breath, Wheeler begins her exploration of VHC Town’s vast underworld.

Just past the doors to the basement of [delete name], she found this: what appeared to be a water filled opening with an actual stream flowing behind it. Boldly, she strides inside…

… to find herself not underwater atall, but instead on dry land beside the seen water flow. She looks upstream. “Is that a coffin?”

Yes. A coffin. And room for two on top, it seemed.

Why not.

Oh, this isn’t good. She stands up and tries the other poseball.

Yes, not as bad. What *is* this place? Is it the River Styx? Certainly seems like it. Heels in water — she remembers something from grade school about a hero being dipped in that river for protection, but he was, yes, he was held by the heel and that remained unprotected. Hercules? No, Wheeler didn’t think it was Hercules. Paris sprung to mind. Then the correct one: Achilles. She decides, just because it can’t hurt, to immerse herself in the waters. But underneath was dry. Uh oh. A red door. She scrambles upwards over rocks to reach it.

Are these the *same* red doors? The ones accessible from the safe plaza that are locked?

She tries the doors: indeed locked. A passageway just beyond draws her attention. First she checks out the pipes that this River Styx emerges from. All closed off in this direction.

To the passage…

… a twisty-turny affair, and pretty long.

Another reddish door at the end.

Wheeler can open this one, but can’t pass through. She even tries to remove her tiny hat to see if that will help. Still no luck. Seeing no other means of egress, she’ll have to turn around and retrace her steps back to the river.

—–

She then realizes there’s another opening the river flows through on the lower side. She jumps into the water again and walks foward.


Looking back.

She’s out again! And right behind the building where she started, sitting almost directly west of the Graphic Artist portal, she reckoned.

Wheeler walks to the north side of the building and makes a phone call to Baker Bloch. Wait till he hears about *this*!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0004, 0114, Heterocera, VHC City^