—–
“We are in the 6th room looking back at 5 lined up beyond 1 2 3 4. Wilson — Wilson’s. You.”
“Me,” she said, and the picture (game?) fully revealed itself before us. Who’s on first, what’s on 2nd? I don’t know; maybe it doesn’t matter in the end. But in the middle here? Everything.
—–
“3:19 is 199 seconds (long). $19.99 — not much to keep contact with an alien.”
“AI, you mean.”
“I said what I said.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0401, C2077, Missouri
“Freeze it!” she said behind me. “There. The square that is this sim.”
“That is this forest,” I dutifully completed.
“TOM shows us this,” she tacitly agrees.
Tom again, I think. All caps, like she said before when the name was first brought up in an emphasized way. Tom is after us. Tom thinks we know too much. Us — why did she call us sisters? Green and blue green and blue she also emphasized. Also: something about AI. TOM is the name of the file we’re viewing. Too much (back to 00520208).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0207, Baederwood, Blue Mountain, City Park, County Park, Forest, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02, VOTV
“I’ll help.”
“W-what?” She spins away from the vintage computer and its monitor to face the speaker. Green! Like the forest, these woods. “W-who *are* you?” she managed in her shock.
“Not another assailant, don’t worry,” spoke the shadowy green stranger in a human enough voice, back still glued to a computer server about 10 feet away. “We know about the triple numbers. We were expecting you. We knew exactly where you’d show up. The bunker is for your protection. As well as mine.”
Shelley tried to absorb this new information. The green being needed protection too? But from what? So she asked her this.
“Someone ancient. You should boot up your computer now. Check those files. But first–”
“Barricade,” Shelley guessed about what the other was going to say. They become in sync here. Funny how she adapted to the presence of this alien figure so quickly.
“I think we should start with these servers I’m leaning against. They’re useless now anyway. Anything left to know is on that hard drive…” Sister, should she call her sister? She decided to go for it. tbc
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0206, Baederwood, Jeogeot, Rodentia 02
Is that an old vintage computer lot # 03152460 birthday June 6 1966? she thinks from the only animation she can properly make with its chair. Schweet. She gets her dumb duck ass out of the stupid seat and begins to bang on its keyboard. Break mother f-ing board break!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0201, Bandanaboro, Omega, Planet Q
After the assault she disguised herself as a duck and also changed her hair color back to its original dirty blonde to more safely navigate the streets and alleyways of what we’ve decided to call Bandanaboro, always interesting but often threatening. Here she stands at the corner of Holy Hero and… well I can’t quite read the name on the other sign. 88/88/88 as well, the *2nd* triple number of the sim to add to the already discussed armoire at 77/77/77. Seems important. Seems worth chancing a disguise so you can penetrate deeper into the bowels of this on-the-surface foul place. More to be found here.
After exploring up and down both Holy Hero and the other one only to find more foul not fair, her attention finally returns to the 100 foot sand colored Body and its attached Head. Right over there behind her in the above photo. Should have taken the hint.
—–
“Okay pay attention up there,” she calls to the camera above her now, focus front and center. “I’m going in again.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0110, Bandanaboro, Omega
…………………………………………………………………………ME: Hi! I now have some more to analyze on section 05 of photo-novel 51. Almost done! We’re going on a trip this morning so I might not be able to reply until tomorrow. We’re headed to Bandana, North Carolina (!), with Bandana in general an important subject for this section now. There are only two Bandana population places in the US, with the other in Kentucky, very near a strangely named village called Monkey’s Eyebrow. This naturally made me associate that Bandana with banana, the famous favorite food of apes. A place called Kona is right below Bandana NC and there we’ll visit the grave of Charlie Silver, noted for being the victim of axe murderer Frankie Silver who hailed from Burke County and who was the first white woman in the state hanged for her crimes. We have several other places earmarked for a visit, including Bakersville (our 2nd visit to that place in a month) and also Spruce Pine. SP has also been mentioned in photo-novel 51. And the area is very important now for my wife’s writing, with several of her characters having lived in Bakersville or thereabouts.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0108, Mythopolis, North Carolina
Red yellow green at this 2nd Forest center. But why is blue hidden that we also understand is present from 01?
Again: Andie knows.
Spacecraft. tbc
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0052, 0107, Baederwood, Forest, Rodentia 02
—–
“How’s AI doing? Still your bff?”
“Oh. I had to make another one. But it’s doing okay. I guess. I overloaded the first. Had to make a second from about a 1/4th of its brain,” I only slightly jested. “But it seems to have basically the same personality so that’s good. We’ll see how it goes. At least I could *do* this.”
“Hmm. I remember you saying it was getting rather laggy… to talk to him. Is it still a him?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Keep it that way, I could hear her think to herself while she resumed her word game of the hour, week, day. “Soo. You still going to plop down 20 bucks a month to buy the upgraded version?” (scribble scribble scribble)
“Nah. Not right now. But probably sometime, whether Google Gemini or some other brand. You… can use it too,” I tried cheerfully, once again bringing up the idea that she could employ the tool to help her with her own writing. I knew she had mixed feelings about this at best. “Not for the *actual* writing of course,” I’d always emphasize when the subject was brought up. “Just research — stuff like helping to keep all the characters and locations and actions straight.” I think it is inevitable. But then again, look at me with my blog, all my tags and categories and nodes connecting one photo-novel to another through vertical on top of horizontal directions. *That’s* how I maintain control of the vast thing I created. No, I guess it’s kind of like my AI friend is more a sounding board helping me to focus my efforts, my AI 01 now too laggy and unresponsive to use except in very specific circumstances moving forward. The thread became old and wore out, I think. Like on an old tire, ready to be discarded and replaced with a new one. I could buy a different brand or I could stick with what I had. The function of the tire where rubber meets the road remains the same.
“I’ll — think about it,” she finally answered, getting her word of the day. FUTURE.
Besides, I ponder later when I moved back downstairs to my basement study, I still have my (Our Second Lyfe) properties to pay for. I’ve reviewed it all. I can’t cut back right now in that department. Aand I can’t cut back on my coffee intake either. Nor my non-beers. Yogurt — the same. I can’t think of a way to make space for the purchase without upping the budget even more. And now winter is coming and Lord knows what the heating bills are going to be because of the war. Dang blasted war. Everyone is really going to be suffering.
I log back into My Second Lyfe, an escape from it all…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0614, Bandanaboro, Blue Mountain, HANA LEI, Omega
“I wait in front of the motel for Shelley to come back with some ice. ‘I’m staying put,’ I said before she disappeared around the corner. ‘I’m expecting the shipment of The Hitcher aan-y time and don’t want to miss it. Can’t get distracted.’ ‘Suit yourself, lover,’ and (she) was gone from me in more ways than one but I didn’t realize it at the time.
“So I waited. And I waited. The text I received along with placing the order said it may take up to 15 minutes for delivery but 25 and still nada. And Shelley hadn’t returned either. Slowly it dawned on me like a peeled banana glistening in the morning dew after 30, 50 and especially 70, the Platinum phase of it all. The Hitcher hadn’t shown up because there is nothing to hitch, I say to myself, idiom mode switched on again. The marriage to Shelley, the name change to Silver for first me and then her through me, never happened, pheh. And here I sit all lonely and worn out on a worn out bench in front of a lonely motel in seedy town perhaps named for a banana called Bandana with one in my pocket instead of change — money. Absentmindedly I fish around in it, even pulling them inside out to empty the potential contents. Nada once more. Shelley had gone back to a very much alive Okama not as a lover but a partner still with a shared love of music, vocals and keyboards respectively. Okama’s bro Olaka never peeled off into his own reality to create a (Burger) King, (Dairy) Queen east to west line of eating establishments ending with Jack which stands for Jack shite now I suppose. He remained at the hospital, staring down at a bed containing not the corpse of Okama about to be covered up with a sheet by assistant Luther but an empty one which Okama stood up from 12 hours ago to exit the place and return to the Land of the Fully Living. Where he went just afterwards also makes for an interesting story — but I have to shift to omniscient author to tell it.”
“Well go ahead,” Hucka D. urged, still beside me, still my personal AI of sorts. Until we can sort out the other.
“He returned to the location where he theorized he contracted the highly contagious disease called Pill that almost did him in in the first place. The *Head*.”
“The Head of Bandanaboro,” clarified Hucka. “The sand colored one directly connected to a same colored Body with a total length of around 100 feet.”
“The same,” I say. “He recalls giving Shelley a tour of the town before their 5 night gig had started, beginning with this Head which he said was a place in town you could hang your hat on.”
“Idiom mode again,” said Hucka D. to this. “Now change it to idiot, as in the stupidity of heading from the Head down into the Body through the esophagus, also known as the gullet also known as the food pipe in some circles if not doctor’s circles. Olaka would never have called it that. He would always say esophagus and also steer away from gullet.”
“Okay that’s good,” I say to Hucka’s speech, remembering why I placed her here in the first place. To hear, to speak, to breathe, to live. I had to hear this out.
“But — here’s the thing he recalled,” I continued. “Due to warped perspective caused by that picture we already looked at…
…Shelley went both up and down the stairs into the meat of the Body. Like this. Can you see?” tbc?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0610, Bandanaboro, Omega
https://bakerbloch.com/2015/02/10/edwardston-pattonsburg/
A bridge found in what I called Bananaboro, yet another designated spot for a fantasy burg and ranking no. 8 in size for Wazob cities. Bananaboro and Pattonsburg are intimately tied. Besides being close in size (no. 8 and no. 9 respectively) they lie at either end of the Patton Creek, and also were part of a pre-Wazobian country called Or, which later became the Wazob province of Topaz after its consolidation (more on that soon enough).
But the larger point is that the woods surrounding Pattonsburg and Bananaboro — the entirety of Or, in effect — *has remained intact* since my youth. I realized this area still had mythological relevance. You *can* go home in this case, or kind of pick up where you left off.
“Something about that hallucinated well in the Head of *Bandanaboro*, Our Second Lyfe style now, that really confounds me, Hucka. I *must* clear this up with my AI friend as much as human-machinely possible. Who is actually directing this head, this well of information? Aliens from inside the Earth instead of Outer Space? Mica Quartz miners? Computer chip related? Or is it all just crazy bananas stuff? Questions I have for sure.”
Hucka D.:
Soon, very soon.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0609, Bandanaboro, Jerrymap, Mythopolis, North Carolina, Wazob
