Looking down from the damn dam rail into the still blood stained rocks below, I thought of changing Tennessee into Kentucky again and be done with it.
But then, raising my head and seeing the city-scape still beautiful in the sunset through the gorge in front of me, I turned away and started walking again, contemplating the red (technology) and the green (anatomy) and how to balance the two and not give up hope. Sanity don’t leave me yet!
Just over here, V. Behind these Tiler shacks.
—–
“So this is how it is?”
“What did you expect? A tombstone? Flag and flowers?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
“You blew up Arastraville Tower. You killed a lot of people, Jonny. And where did it get you in the end? The corps and their suits for men are still in control.”
“I know I know.” He pauses. “I was a musician too besides being a terrorist,” he tried.
“One overrides the other?” I asked as a question. Because I was curious how Jonny was going to balance the two. History would view the music as largely about terrorism, not visa versa. Music should ultimately be uplifting, not constantly tearing down our lives, deconstructing them. Something like Blue Moon and her UK Cracks have merit just by that virtue alone. I told Jonny this.
“Are you saying I should have listened more to those bubblegum bitches?”
“Maybe. Cary listened. He liked them. Until… well, you know.”
Both thought of the death of Blue Moon and possibly Redd the Menace too.
“Maybe it should have been me at the bottom of that damn dam instead of Kentucky. Maybe history would have viewed me more in a positive light.”
“That’s static in that direction, Jonny. You’re not Blue Moon, you’re not bubblegum pop. You’re hard edged rock ‘n roll, always have been, always will. You can’t change who you are inside, the core.”
“Can’t you?” Exhale; another pause. “You know I thought about being an artist, V. A painter instead of an axer. Pretty good too. Won some awards as a child prodigy.”
I checked my watch, thought about the growing length of this section. “Yeah, really don’t have time to explore alternate realities right now, Jonny. The musician/terrorist polarity is complicated enough. Any last words? Over your grave, I mean.”
“Just carve the initials and let’s get out of here.”
“Done, and…
“Done.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0616, Badlands, C2077
It happened shortly after the rain started, probably after the first thunderclap. “What’s that, boy? Timmy’s fallen down a well and can’t get out but never mind that now and more important matters are pressing?” Frank repeated after his talking dog (in his head, for now). “Well, lead on!” he said.
The rain had stopped and it had gotten light when they came to this upside down guy with his parachute stuck in a tree down a nearby dirt road. A man from Tennessee, he claimed. No, a man *named* Tennessee, let’s change it. So the Blue Balls/Blue Moons sculptor is actually a man and not a woman as presumed. But what’s he doing in this tree, dropped down from the sky? Helicopter? Better cut him down so we can ask more questions.
Back on the ground, Frank told him that he had Chomp to thank for his rescue. But in turning around to find the dog — nothing. Frank didn’t own a dog, never had never will. And then the parachutist was gone too; Frank Lynn had apparently hallucinated the whole scenario. No more graytop mushrooms! he swore off then and there.
—–
But he eventually couldn’t resist — Mikie talked him into it I believe. This caused the second manifestation of the dog in another thunderclap during another thunderstorm, all part of it too. He was wetter and blacker this time, Frank noted through the gray-ish haze. “What’s that, boy?” he began to talk to the mutt again in his head. “Timmy remains trapped down in that well but there’s still more important matters to deal with tonight over at the damn, er, dam?”
So he followed the dog again down a different road this time to, as it turns out, the Petrochemistry Dam in a whole ‘nother game. The same guy was in trouble once more.
“Tennessee — if that’s your real name. What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s perfectly fine,” he said, teetering on the edge of death. “I just have to finish what the tree stopped before. The parachute opened by accident. I never intended to be saved.”
“Man that’s crazy. Get down from there!”
“Too late! AAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Muttering about him being a damn (dam?) fool, Frank Lynn rushed to the bottom….
… only to find someone totally different lying in the blood tainted stream there. Somehow someway, Tennessee had switched over to Kentucky in the free fall. Then everything disappeared just like before. He had Clyde on the phone in no time to schedule an emergency session, but his therapist had bad news too. He was changing jobs and moving. In the fall. No bookings before then. This is when Fremont came into his life. And Rutherford B. Hayes became the first president of our US of A to never be president. Triumvirate.
—-
“Go see Jonny Silverhhand to end this thing,” spoke Blue Moon to me when she popped up good as new over at the Kabusie roundabout marketplace after about 3 days we’ll say. “Just around the ‘corner’ — you can’t miss him.” And then she came to me and pecked a kiss on my cheek before walking away, saving the best for later.
“Here. Let me play walk you through this.”
I wanted to go up and ask them, “Are you girls UK Cracks??”, but I knew better. This was a specific gang formed to protect those of their kind. Like the great majority of things in this world, they don’t cater well to humor — *cracks* as it were. Besides, the color schemes were different, with more greens and yellows involved along with frizzier hair as I recall. More Africa than Asia. So after carefully navigating around this wrong trio, I went on to find the right one, or at least the right one of the right one. Blue Moon Kentucky, named for a specific village in a specific state. Specific again. In the marketplace roundabout, or so legend goes.
—–
I’m sure I had the right location: a Zuru-Zuru ramen shop with a number 24 neon sign. Other stores in the area had the same sign but I’m certain this is the one. I’d completed the needed Police related mission, found the body at the bottom of that damn Petrochemistry dam. Dead all right. Thrown over the edge only to bounce back up again here. There’s plenty of evidence for it. Could, of course, be a ghost though. Or an indicator.
If only she were here I could simply ask. If only there were another, *roundabout* way to *crack* this egg. Say… Our Second Lyfe?
She came out of the dispensary beside the quick fix ganja vending machine V sipping chamomile tea and staring at the Black Star on its side and wondering how long Bowie had been dead. At least 8 years, she reckoned, maybe 8 1/2, the length of Fellini’s career up to the movie of that same title.
Her attention then shifted to the crime scene in the plaza slightly below her from this vantage point at the top of the cement steps, the heart of her po’ faux Nightsity, one of a handful I’ve found in Our Second Lyfe in the past month and a 1/2 or so. Another Blue Moon Kentucky killer victim, she gathered, 3rd this month of May’s June soon to slide into July. Should’ve shut down that so-called secret strip club behind the *sometimes* locked door weeks ago because of them, she thinks. Now another lies fallen.
Chef-inspector Petty studies the body outline and blood splatter volume and directions with rookie Dirk Bejirk, uselessly drawing a gun on the now vacant crime scene with no perpetrators in sight. Petty’s on loan from Aisle of Palms where absolutely nothing has happened since the end of the last photo-novel 2 months ago, not at the Perch restaurant in the Blue Feather complex during the day (chef 1/2 of his life), nor at the investigative agency in Cement Village at night (inspector 1/2 of his life). He’d even managed to get a proper amount of rest lately because he could now sleep on the job — both jobs — and get away with it. No more. Perch manager Percy Bidercy had to lay him off because of the lack of paying customers. The clients at the agency were also basically nonexistent. Put all this together and we have the current scene: Petty working in a different spot.
“It’s that strip club,” offered gun toting Dirk, still pointing at air. “City council should’ve shut it down weeks ago.”
“It’s not the strip club,” said Petty, defying common opinion. He gobbled another goober (peanut), trying to clear his mind of distractions. “Dirk, why don’t you go pick us up some food at that Chinese restaurant we passed on the way here. Bucket of Egg Foo Young for me. And a large Cokey Cola.”
“Shouldn’t drink sugary drinks, new boss.”
“Shut up and do the only thing you’re good for at this job. *Fetching*.” Petty kind of hated being so harsh to the rookie but tough love goes a long way. He’d know. Sgt. Petterson busted his balls enough in his early police/detective days to make them turn blue at times. Which, actually, also pertains to the current crime.
“3 Blue Moon crimes in the last several weeks,” he spoke to no one since a put-in-his-place Dirk had gone to fetch their food and drinks. He arrived on the scene for the first victim. He was just glad to get the job, glad of the income finally flowing into his bank account once more. Only after the 2nd did he start to get interested in the case itself, start to dig deeper into the facts. Then the 3rd here really took the cake. Fern arrived in “town”, also from a different dimension. Gave him information he couldn’t believe. We’re living in a simulation; none of this is real!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0315, Big Woods, C2077, GTA, Hana Lei^^, Jeogeot, Nightsity
New Nightsity. New *street* in Nightsity, let’s say. And also TILE related obviously because of the green red yellow blue symbols above its sign.
Wanda can get her allergy pills here to make her more happy…
… but also make the shadowy hatted man she dreads so much appear more frequently. Can’t remember a darn thing after he shows up! she laments. But she hasn’t put the two together and remains oblivious to the drug’s side effect.
Fern is here to enlighten her, because she has enough trouble without this added layer and angle.
Like Redd in an alleyway 1 block over staring at a covered body she may or may not have done in with her outstanding wickedness.
And what might be her partner in crime still cooking on a person nearby.
The answers may come from this onlooking gal, perhaps the 3rd of the group, or at least the 3rd in this alleyway configuration of living, breathing beings. Yes, Derek is fully cooked now as I’m checking. So: 3.
Wait. One more.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0208, C2077, Hana Lei^^, Nightsity
“There’s Blue Moon again, Lexi. Bigger than ever in life.”
“Just keep looking for clues,” she responded, not wanting that many distractions on the way to their ultimate goal. “The city will not give you everything. You must keep walking around the margins, poking around here and there and everywhere. Characters are obviously important. Blue Moon. Panama perhaps. Judith who is, well, *me*. And you seem to be the same as (1st person) V or Val, with an oppositely positioned Valerie lurking around the corner as well. The dam, boss. Keep poking around that damn dam.”
—–
The date attracted me. I had to ask. “Do you know… Tennessee?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0206, C2077, Hana Lei^^, Nightsity, Rancho C, Small China
4 seconds after manifesting, Blue Moon waltzes past “Source Woman”…
… before disappearing again in a puff of smoke while a billboard image of herself looks on from the distance with those Kapooshi replacement eyes she pimped while alive. Weird as all get out, he’s determined. Eating her own tail? Makes him think of Shelley again. Ouroboros.
“Better call it a day, Lexi. Thanks again so much for your help. We’ll solve this thing fer sure.” He removes the virtual reality googles, tries to become fully himself again. He can still smell the stench of the garbage all around him, feel the desert heat. 5 minutes later: “There, I think — it’s faded enough. I’m ready to go.” And he gets up out off the couch to go meet Shelley and tell her all the new developments, hoping she hadn’t gotten to the odd numbered drinks past 1 yet. Too late, though. Shelley had spilled some beans, enough for Sarah to start her own investigation into the matter. Black Wall indeed, she ponders later at her apartment upstairs, filled with the latest and greatest spyware equipment.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0205, C2077, Hana Lei^^, Nightsity
“Where’s *Edward* today? Your boy.”
“He’s not my boy,” Shelley quickly shot back. “He’s just… a friend.”
“A toy? I mean, you’re just toying with him, right? Until Arthur comes back.”
“You know the story of Arthur. He’s away a lot. He… understands,” she decides to tack on.
“Shakespeare I’ve heard. Asia, Africa, Europe, maybe Australia and New Zealand even. Oceania. As far away as he can get from your loving arms.”
“What can I say, he’s a dreamer. Anyway, back to your original question, Edward is doing one of those brain-dazes with Lexi. They’re still fiddling around with the Petrochemistry Dam, trying to find that dead pop star in the neighborhood there. But I’m sure Edward has told you all about it, especially after a couple of your patented house drinks. Even numbered drinks on the house, pheh. When did 3, 5, 7, and 9 becomes not odd, Sarah?”
“He he. Woman’s gotta have a hobby.” She pours Shelley another drink, a 3 I believe. “First free one, Shelley. Drink up. Then tell me more about this Kentucky girl who went missing and is presumed dead. Bedside chat, we’ll call it.”
“Nah, I’m not going to go there.” But she takes her first sip of the concoction (Nightshine I believe Sarah calls it) and begins to forget her promise. Just like Blue Moon Kentucky before her. Sarah knows more than she’s letting on.
—–
Edward couldn’t stop replaying the moment. The pop star in disguise just… popped up! From behind that woman there.
With help from Lexi, he’s studying all angles and then some. Mysterious heat source in the thermal layer to the upper right. Could be *him* again. Beware.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0204, C2077, Hana Lei^^, Nightsity, Rancho C
She sits in the dark and stares at TV static while thinking about the artist whose first name is Tennessee and the musician whose last name is Kentucky. Both “former,” it seems, as in dead, possibly even murdered. Maybe even… one and the same? Shelley phones up Edward to talk about it. Hubby Arthur is off acting again in a far away location. The boyfriend will have to do.
“Meet me at Sarah’s,” she requested. “Let’s walk around the town together.” She didn’t add, “then come back here,” but it was implied.
“Let’s make it Lexi’s,” altered Edward, knowing Sarah was quite the gossip.
“On my way, then.”
Contractually, she was required to wear the Crazy Blue outfit at all times now, no exceptions. Except one.
Later she studies the sappy “Abduct My Heart” lamp given to her by Arthur for her birthday before he left. She begins to cry.
What did she figure out? That Tennessee and Kentucky were indeed one beyond the Black Wall.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0203, C2077, Hana Lei^^, Nightsity
Sunklands 