“User,” he said, pointing. He knew who I was. Did I? Am I still Baker Bloch in the game we play that is Our Second Lyfe? Is that my primary avatar still?
Anyway, thanks to Pearl Grey for including this work in her most recent Wanderlust Art Truck show! Pearl’s blog here:
https://millionhappyendings.wordpress.com/
And you can teleport directly to the exhibit here:
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0508, Ashenlave^, collages 2d, Corsica
“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 again 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.
And so they were wedded that June. Something about substance over style in the vows. Something about quantity over quality. Substance and quantity over style and quality? Something was wrong here, really wrong. What does this wedding have to do with Constantynople, our newly minted darling of the blog? And why do we have the returned, purple gowned Wheeler in Alpha with Baker Bloch? Marriage of convenience? Let’s back up, have them eat those words for now…
We are at the end of 32, sliding into 33. Wheeler wasn’t joking. She’d won the Tic-tac-toe game fair and square. “We will be married to each other and also the town,” he now recalled about what she said at the grated white table in Ontario above the completed board, food shunted aside for the moment. Town, he contemplated. Wrong one. *Really* wrong one. He was falling into a pit, deep and dark and dank and dingy. 4D. No returning to kaput Ontario to the scene of the crime. We’d have to resolve this situation elsewhere. He lost his hat.
Someone stirred in the blue and yellow glowing teepee.
Fall over, Pitch Darkly stepped out of his dark (etc.) house and into the blinding white light. “Hey you blippity bleep bleep kids stop playing around with that statue!” he cried from the porch.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, Nautilus, 0506, Wild West, Wendy-Ontario, 0038, Constantynople
It was a Warm Morning when the object crashed into the future site of itself. Early May I believe. THUD!!! The noise attracted the attention of a sore backed nearby hiker, walking in a different dimension but still able to hear because of the loudness. And then the straight line was manufactured backwards for close to a football field in length over 01 02 03 04 gullies. Alvin Straight. Motocyclone. Cylinder Rodman. We continued…
Warm Morning Crash Site: turn here!
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0301, Blue Mountain, County Park, Iowa
I think we have a new candidate for an alchemical experiment going wrong that you originally assigned to Bart Smipson here in photo-novel 09.” They were in the past. Which was also the present.
“Lemongrab, yes. I’ve heard,” the female Baker replies to the male Baker. She reads the blog even if she hadn’t appeared in it for a while. “Sink into Sunklands”. It’s taped to her bathroom mirror so she’ll remember at night. Just before bed. She understands they, the Baker family of avatars and friends, are struggling to establish Lemon Free State in the middle of Nautilus. Thus Lemongrab, who here goes by Mike. And Lemongrab 2 is his now female (?) mate Pat. Both found quickly on the Our Second Lyfe marketplace through a search for complete avatars using keyword “Duke.”
“Does that make you Princess Bubblegum?” He pivots his head, takes her overarching pinkness in. “You always wanted to be a mother, Baker Blinker. You always wanted… *boys*.”
“Not *those* kind of boys,” she shot back.
“Oh sure you do. You were jealous of Wheeler from the beginning.” He knew to let the matter drop after that. They’d been through the transference a 1000 times now, reviewed every aspect. In the early days of such analysis Baker Blinker was trying to assert herself as the queen ruler again, with Baker Bloch by her ever-side as Prime Minister. Like in the UK as opposed to the US, which had just gone to hell. Wheeler, early on again, was kind of like 2016 Trump happening at the same time, the new ruler, the wannabe *dictator* — obvious to them if not a big chunk of the country still surrounding their safe patch of virtual irreality up in the main world. Where Mike and Pat originally come from in Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee respectively. This was all fate.
And she’s still married to original “king” Karoz Blogger — that hadn’t changed, despite all the other stuff that has occurred since they tied the knot in photo-novel 02 and originally started dating in 01. It seems to be one constant of the blog and attached photo-novels. Perhaps the ultimate one. The ability of two to manifest at once and live and interact together as husband and wife. Then: Wheeler.
—–
She ditched the remainder of the crazy blue outfit, made the scars in her face deeper and more off-putting to fit into this world better.
“Last Drop, good,” she said, staring at the the sign of the place on the edge of the Fissure, which some call the Fracture just to be ornery about established protocol. “I have a place to eavesdrop on new gossip.” In particular, she was looking for Jed, who now seems to go by John (the Mind Reader) or perhaps Incognito, obvious enough nod to a disguise, a covering up of an origin rooted in one of those complicated North-South type disputes. And *Stitches.* “Ted,” she mouths his own new name aloud while thinking about all this.
“Yes?”
She twirls in her tracks.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0213, The Waste^^
It was so cold in here you could see your breath. But people didn’t mind. Celebrities in the audience!
“Good morning afternoon evening everybody!” Her standard opening line. “Welcome to the klub that’s going to put Kedas back on the map!” And then the requisite plug. “Brought to you by Sprite lemon-lime drink. The drink soo clean…” and here she paused to pull one of their sodas from her dress somewhere and chug. She retreats the can from her mouth, aaahs loudly, then: “…Grant *Hill* recommends it!” Cheers from the audience. Grant Hill is in attendance. He makes eye contact with me from where he’s sitting across the reflected green floor. Just briefly, enough to make me know he’s aware of what’s going on, if only in an unconscious way right now. Two Hills, PHEH, he may be saying internally. If he could only turn over the blueprint to his life he could see.
—–
“Dreaming again on that plank, Ted.”
“Just leave her this time. No need to tell Al.”
“I agree.”
“Got us into a lot of trouble before.”
“I remember.”
“Lot of paperwork.”
“I recall.”
“Anyway. Why don’t you enter her mind and see what’s going on.” So John the Mind Reader did. After a pause:
“Soo, what’s happening?”
“Apparently,” John surmised, “the past. Or a version thereof.”
“In-teresting.” They both had changed their minds about Al. The uppity higher up needed to be informed of this. New development!
(to be continued)
—–
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0207, Hana Lei^^, The Waste^^
Under a spell, a parade of words began to flow from their now unblocked mouths. Newt first. How he got his name. “Right *here*,” he said. Wheeler’s turn. She was Queen to Baker’s Prime Minister but this was not Baker; Baker was not the father of Shelley. “Unacceptable!!!” shrilled the fruit headed Mike, still at the center of it all, holding the lemon and lime in each hand, ready to stuff them back in if needed. And he did. He could get information through other means. He sent in Pat. They high foured each other while passing. Pat would get to the bottom of this, Mike thought. Female influence. Darker origins. Almost Knight but not quite. Getting there, though. He went out of the Cavern to have a smoke under the starless, moon filled sky. Or was it skies? A skiier pair of skis rider-less bike whizzed by, expertly weaving through the tall flowers and small trees despite no apparent guider. A man walked up as it faded in the distance: glasses, professor looking. “I let it go. I let *everything* go. And yet, as you see, it still knows the way home.”
The bike rode into the rising sun. Mike’s lemon head went away. They were talking man to man, human to human. Knight was over.
(to be continued)
Another ghostly Knight was showing them around. You can never completely escape the energy of The Father, the Dark Lord some call him. Red Devil in Xian terms. At his urging, they fed the function-o-meter in front of them with small copper coins — no change there — to watch TV. The ever-present ectoplasm did the work it was paid for.
“Very popular group in the 21st Century,” he rattled about the fuzzy figures on the non-machine, off by one century but only a fraction off the truth in present time, this 8008.
“Name?” tested Baker Bloch, moonburned from the larger space between the flowers. At 6’8″ he was taller than the trees. And even though bigger than birds, the bees offered minimal shade because of their speed. The present Knight again wrongly assumed he was embarrassed because of his lack of knowledge about, well, *everything*. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was just from the far far past. Like we talked about before. We apparently are still in Osse, motor dropped long ago. Like we’ve been driving around a car with no engine for forever.
Knight finally answered Beethoven, with Roll Over dropped early on from the name — even produced an early poster to prove his point. He should be the one to turn red, Baker thought.
early poster, according to Knight
Then while rolling back up the poster to put it away again, ghostly Knight, one of many in the clone hive, said he was joking and that their actual name was SODA. Another joke? Turns out: not. As Baker Bloch checked around, this SODA group seemed to manifest everything here, including the mica table (perhaps ground 00), the chairs around it, the Cavern itself, the *town* itself. Taking up the whole of a sim called Newt. Like the man, the father (of Shelley Struthers). This is, in effect, where he was born, or at least the name. And certainly the group name gives us an important clue about what happened to our society as a whole, the flip flopping of animals and plants and probably minerals as well (we’ll check the rounded mica table for more tips on that later). And the bearded and mustachioed Moon above it all. The Dark Lord. Without any possibility of escape via a satellite of its own, a Moon for a Moon. Bendy knows. He may be more than just a cameo figure in this here photo-novel, 38 in a series of a lot.
“We successfully,” continued Knight, “made the name illegal, *forbidden*, beyond any even seductive poser could get to. Even the pharmacists had the hoods pulled over their eyes, duck-like.”
(to be continued)
“At the cascade at the end of the stream that was his creek, Mike made peace with those he formerly warred with and screamed and hollered at. ‘Absolution.'”
“Cool, Hucka D. Thanks for showing up, by the by.”
“You can thank Barry for that.” She turns and plants a big wet one on her constant companion’s unyielding lips, surprised at the display of emotions from the usually placid, former bee-person. Insect no longer. No signs of antennae, even. Just woman.
She turned back, stared again. “Now you just have to figure out the Lyra connection. Prism.” With this, she and Barry took their leave of the place, my new-ish Nautilus property with 2 galleries now set up, Bogota and Edwardston. I had much work to do. Collagesity was *kind of* being reborn?
But I was also in Michigan. Let’s check in on Baker *Blo* there, where he spent his first night while distant relative Lottie McDottley was regenerating from a misplaced and mistimed hug, thanks to the ectoplasmic puddles that made sure all death, all disease, all foul play, was eventually cleaned up as in a refreshing fruit combo drink downed on a sticky ass summer day. Do you see how this keeps carrying over, Mike? The reverberations? Water would be best. Like from your stream. Absolution.
“Okay, alright. I’ll talk to Hill about it.”
“You do that.”
(to be continued)
He arrived almost 6000 years into the future, Osse having removed Motor from its name long long ago due to the end of machines, setting a trend. His great great great great (x332) grandchild Lottie McDottley with marking scarf awaited at the old timey Lake Hore Train Station, so named because of the abundance of such back in the day, along with the water. Including Lottie’s great great great (x334) grandmother, who happened to be Baker Bloch’s fiance, the late great Shelley Struthers Wilson Wheeler, er, Wheeler Wilson. Then known as Wilsonia (source: Henry and Shaeffer). Dream Train we have here; everything functional for travel having to be made of spiritual ectoplasm powered by collective brain control. And everything else functional for that matter. I did mention this was far far far in the future.
There he is, dressed for the future period in his, well, present garb. No need for change there. But, to blend in better, he omitted a letter or 2 or syllable or 2 from his name as was customary. Baker Blo he is while remaining in post-space age Michigan. Or Mich, I should say.
On the edge of reality, Baker kept spotting blurs and other weird fringe effects, making him aware that he was in a very different space as well as time. He dodged another ectoplasmic puddle to reach his far future relative and give her a big, 21st Century hug. Big mistake: she crumbled to dust in his grasp. One of the nearest puddles came over and sucked up the remains. She’ll be back tomorrow reconstituted good as new, thanks to the collective. But our newly renamed Mr. Blo now has nowhere to stay tonight. Big bees overshadowing small birds hover menacingly above the station. And the tall flowers and the short trees that grow under them now. *Everything* has changed. Including love. He looks for older Wheeler lookalike Lottie in the puddle, a face perhaps, a hand. Not yet. Tomorrow. Only the reflected Moon for now. Which has a mustache and beard, he notes. He looks up to see the truth of the place, everything arranged all wrongly. Far future, BEH.
Sunklands 