And so we end in a bar, Wheeler serving herself with tag-along 88s keeping guard. Usually this is the way you can tell it’s Wheeler and not someone else, say, Baker Bloch or Bracket Jupiter (and so on). She realizes the resonance with the hat and increases its tips two-fold, least she can do for poor, dead Zimmy. Mr. Z. One and the same. Putting that to rest we can move on…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0416, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File
“I’m looking for information on Ted Bear, his current whereabouts,” spoke Suzanna Oh 2345 out of the side of her mouth which she didn’t possess. The little robot at the bar looked knowledgeable. And, most importantly, one of her kind. He probably wasn’t stationed here like that, at a centerpoint of gossip, for nuttin. He had dirt. Spill, she requested after sliding up beside him… or her, actually. Molly OU812. Make me at least one small mound at the bottom of a hill. Bigger than ant size, maybe anteater size. Something I can really dig into. But most of this was implied.
“Ted Bear. Just checking…” the smaller robot sputtered out.
“He use to own a small island in this sim. Say: islet.”
“Islet,” the small robot complied, still checking her database with a corresponding lowering of surface functions.
“No, I mean, let’s call it an islet. Very small.”
“Smaller than… me?” Still checking behind the scenes.
“No. Ted Bear is bigger than you so that does not compute.”
“You?”
“No, you. Ted Bear is bigger than you.”
“You?”
Pause. “Oh, sizes right. I’d say between me and you. Teddy bear size, but to the max.”
“Fit (still checking) into a 3 by 3 foot box?” She was just making chit chat really at this point while computing deep down, where it counts. 02345 x 812 files counted now. Only 812 to… *done*.
“3 x 3 box,” Oh 2345 pondered aloud, but then OU812 interrupted.
“I have all the information needed. You can stop talking now while I do. Ted Bear lived here from 2020-2022 on an 20 x 22 foot islet near the center of Moomit Bay. Conditions for entering: you had to bare something, could be a small article of clothing, could be all of them. Ted Bear was clinically insane. He was quarantined. I will pause now to let you ask questions if you wish. I have all the information.”
Suzanna Oh 2345 looked around. The music was blaring — no one else could hear them. No one even at the bar presently, not even a tender. Must be on break, perhaps a big bathroom one. With her supersonic ears Suzanna detected several flushes earlier and some other noises. An upset stomach could be the problem. The tender could have, yes, tended himself, imbibed himself, didn’t cut off himself at the limit normally assigned to others. He wasn’t a good tender to himself.
OU812 waited patiently, hearing the whirring of Suzanna Oh 2345’s inner workings indicating she was thinking. Suzanna Oh’s thoughts shifted to a question, changing the sound slightly, raising it up an overall pitch or two. More focused thinking here.
“Baker Bloch, the owner of the blog–”
“Yes,” anticipated OU812. “He was there. Took off his hat so he could enter. Wheeler Wilson or Wilson Wheeler too. She had to take off more. Ted Bear set up an islet next to his islet so that Baker Bloch could be with him forever and ever. He turned into a bobblehead, top making up 9/16ths of his body’s total mass. But then he was saved.” OU812 stopped here, calculating the many possible meanings of that word. Backed up? No, that wasn’t it.
“Describe the interaction with Wheeler Wilson more,” Suzanna Oh 2345 requested.
(to be continued)
1st: Robert Matthew. Or Matthew Robert, whichever. Like Shelley and her horse before him, came down from Beatrice, via a rowboat in his case but, later, some say a duck to match his yellow. Or a yellow horse, whatever. Anyway, here he is, arriving from the north. Invited by Constantynople Prime Minister Baker Bloch himself to solve some obvious town issues. Too much human stuff going on; it’s becoming a weakness, maybe even part of a curse. Like Robert’s old Soap swampland he fortunately sold to a gullible man from Mark Twain, Florida.
“Town hall, please.”
“Right, then left through the tree, hehe, huhu, hooo.”
He watched him walk away, then: “Did — did I do well, Tom?”
Reply in head.
“A white aggie, eh? Best one yet!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0307, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File
Thomasina said that whenever I need to refocus to come back to the FILE, so I’m here. In Tomasina — the center of it; without the “h” but obviously related — staring at what appears to be the ruins of a temple, and beside a shell representing Nautilus itself, my home continent for good it seems.
The beacon shows me how to walk the diagonal of the sim. Here I go!
Another oversized Nautilus shell encountered at 197/197 near the middle of this temple thing. By Shelley, mind you, once again, it appears, our heroine for the novel, especially since promising character Sarah from section 01 seems to be dead and gone from us. And also keep in mind she writes novels herself, and apparently is on the same number *I* am. We differ in content if not frequency. She’s found a pattern for writing, a system, and I have too. She is writing a different sentence as I am writing *this* sentence, for example. Parallel. Actually, in checking, she was writing the exact same sentence back there but it usually doesn’t happen that way. Moving on…
Unrendering water to look around better, we understand that that one temple, albeit the largest perhaps, is part of a complex of ruined structures spanning several sims east to west. I also found this among the ruins, although I’m not sure what happened here. Certainly makes for some interesting speculation, though.
We will probably return here.
exposed part of the ruins in Macavity
duplicate statues found just below and beneath
unrendering water again: all together now
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0205, Nautilus, NORTH, Rank & File, Rim Isles
One last look around…
… before heading inside the pyramid again.
“He left the marbles and globes, Hucka. Spheres all.
“The bees are gone, I assume — he covered their formerly very active hole with rocks. He was planning a fire pit before I came along. No more threats there.”
“No.”
“*There* you are.”
“This was important,” she explained, leaving out the, “unlike most of your chattering.” Thanks, Hucka!
“So… should I return the toys?”
“Dot dot dot,” she answered. I knew what she meant.
But did I *really* know what she meant?
Thing is, there was another toy at Aloha and it wasn’t my own. Singular, unlike my many. Toy. Was he embarrassed? The Son of God, the founder of a potential religion like Xianity, with *that*? It was a bizarre sight. I couldn’t figure out what it was, yet all my toys were all around it that I had to pick up and gather together for moving. I couldn’t miss it; it stuck out, see. It was lying in the sun, soaking in the sun. Siren. Muse, even. You make do with what you have to. You are all alone in the woods. Time to bring back Thomasina, the pyramid itself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0615, Blue Mountain, City Park, Lands End, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NORTH, Rank & File, Rim Isles, Toy Avatars
“So here it is, Hucka. The FILE. 32 sims lined up in a row — column, actually — running all the way across the 32 x 32 sim grid designated as the Nautilus continent. But I believe you’re going to tell me we should count starting at the bottom this time.
(no answer)
“FILE, Hucka Doobie (Baker Bloch continued). You’re going to tell me this is a 32 page file, one for each of the inclusive sims. 1-16, part 1 of 2 as it were, ends in Constance. 17-32 ends with a blank page, a missing piece of the file. The 32nd page is either missing or blank (he reinforces). Here’s the primary link for this idea: The page for (the sim of) Ten Pages is 10 pages into the hypothetical report, again reading from the bottom up instead of top down. The 9th page then would be READux. This conjunction seems to emphasize that we’re suppose to read the pages of the file in order to understand the content. Obvious.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0613, Nautilus, NORTH, Rank & File, Rim Isles, Southwestern, Wild West
“4 of 5 letters the same at the top. And crooked again, just like with the graffiti in, what was it, Hypolazy?”
“Hypoluxo,” she answered. “Hypoluxo, Florida. The randonaut’s intent was to find a remote place. Graffiti artists generally work in remote places, thus proving the synchronicity right there. The coordinates he summoned fulfilled his desire.”
“Cool. But the glyph — even the J fits in here, since the only other letter in it that tilts the exact same way is R. Switch out similarly turning J and and one of the 2 Rs, your choice, and you have the same 5 letters: KRMNL again. L for the R now to finish, if we assume it all rotates around and ending can loop back to beginning.”
“Truth,” she said. “This glyph is very important. TILE.”
“Of course,” I returned. “Same four colors, same (sub-) letters in the colors. Just in terms of KRMNL, the adjusted top row, MNR are blue and KL are green.”
“Nice.” Exhale. “Now what about the straight letters? HYCTY?” I didn’t have an answer.
—–
Interpreting Hucka Doobie (thanks Hucka!) later indicated that the J can be switched with the R of the same column — JASPR — simply by shifting the whole thing down one letter, assuming an infinite repeat of the 5×5 glyph in all directions again. This discussion naturally led back to Nautilus. Through Naughtilus, oddly enough, catty-corner to the Piccolo sim which the owner of Jasper Falls in the pivotal sim of Jasper featured in the next post calls his actual home. We teleport an investigating team down.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0607, Nascera
“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 ***collages 2d, **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0508, Art 10x10, Ashenlave, Corsica, Wheeler-Jasper
“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 ago 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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0507, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wild West
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 SL, 0038, 0506, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wendy-Ontario-, Wild West
Sunklands 