“Brain Damage he had.”
“We’ve already determined that, okay,” she replied, planning her escape route. Starbucks should be open by now — 5:00. But Baker is trying so hard to understand. The 2 is impossibly in front of the boy-man, right where the brain was…
“Have him interact with someone in this specific location, so close to Collagesity. Alysha, perhaps. She hadn’t been in a post in a while.”
“Only if,” she compromised, “Kolya goes back to the airport and finds out more about the red book and the accompanying red light.”
“Deal.” He spits in his hand, which she naturally doesn’t shake. Such a goofy person (!).
—–
“See there? Mysten Underhill and Mysten, let’s see, can’t recall the other one. Anyway, those *2* squares, just there. Down toward the lower right corner; right in front of you, in fact. Do you see the houses? Of course you do. I rented one of those, or attempted to. And *Spongeberg*, yes, was there. I recall the number… 144. Table. We tried to set a table up. Didn’t quite work.”
Alysha let Kolya ramble on. He was a true friend and would do anything for her. He was attempting to explain the past of Mysten not far atall north of Collagesity through this old sim map they’d stumbled upon. He’d been here a long time. But so had she, just not as long.
“We owned just to the east,” he continued, remembering more and more about “2”. “But not in Siliconicus: that would be *southeast*. But the *Church* of the Silicon Soul was set up right on the border again. Right beside our own property.”
“The Table House.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “That was what it was called (!).” He paused, joyful in the memory. He could see vague faces around it.
—–
They had to go back in the past. And they could (!). Except only the darker side, the place of fumbles and bumbles. Spongeberg the Destroyer was still here, still lived in the general Collagesity area, but just more down in the east, beside Highway 14. He’d given up on 13 — moved on. The darkness beckoned. Christ and accompanying Christianity was not around to brighten the day any longer.
Mysten Underhill, 2015
—–
They both took another big lick of their triple scoop sorbet cones before continuing.
“Funny about places like this, Ayesha,” Kolya then said with cold mouth.
Alysha, she thought without correcting aloud, use to such things.
“Like they are stuck in time. Harder… more resistant to the general erosion… um.”
“… of Our Second Lyfe,” she finished for him.
“The 2, yeah.”
She looked at the top of his holey head, where the rain gets in. Simultaneously he recalls someone at the Table, as if they are linked by one user (they were). But he passes over the memory of Marty as if it were a letter gap. On to the next thought-color, green I believe.
Kolya realizes that was a lot of ice cream for a little girl. Because he could definitely finish it for her. “Are you done with that?” he couldn’t help asking while staring at the stack of mostly unlicked colorful balls in the cone in her hand. He was eager for more brain freeze.
