“As you can see, young man, my black piece — the bishop I believe, unless it’s the rook — is turning into a white piece. This is how I propose to win the game.”
“Forfeit?” I guessed, knowing the overwhelming odds against him.
“Hardly. Look at your hands.”
“W-what the??”
“Your — move.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0208, Nautilus, NORTH, Slaashsides
It was chilly up on this ridge above Kings Bishop, near the lower end of Route 13 on the western side of Lower Austra. Not as chilly as Collagesity would be this night, Man About Time ruminates, glad for a little break from all the building and shuffling about in his home town just up in the mountains a little more. Town, hmmm. Man About Town —
Anyway, the relative cold makes him think about the distance formed between creators — artists — inworld and beyond, each in their own sphere of influence and interest. He needs to let go; he needs to forgive. He’s gone very far, the 32 being the latest number reached if not finished. He’s working on it, as always.
He usually calls in Wheeler to help him, in this instance because he’s simply too lazy to rise up from his comfy sleeping bag and look around. She may come as Miss Ouri tonight, or maybe not — someone else. Once she was Alysha. He sighs, thinking of his former girlfriend, like if Thelma Lou left Barney for Sherriff Andy Taylor, attracted to the shine of the bigger badge. Another King over Bishop (or Rook) situation, then. Or a King’s Bishop anyhoot.
—–
He hears the manifestation. 10 minutes — not bad for Wheeler. He looks out to see Miss Ouri, his latest crush, sitting on the chair outside along with that creepy prick doll of hers, the cactus creature. A mascot she calls it. For the library they’re building together as a whole. He thinks of the King. He thinks of the Bishop, the Rook at best. King’s Bishop (or Rook); that’s what he is now. He’s been adopted it seems. The black and white swan urged him forward instead of back, trying to escape her own shadow self. “See down there in the library’s floor,” she said to him as Ted one night, working late on his novel instead of his dissertation which he should have been doing, pheh. But Ukraine and the Delta needed him, another camper in another camping spot. “That’s *me*.” The white swan, out of her element in special collections, could not pass through the door to the library proper without causing a shadow. It’s an old story with a familiar ending. Entrapment, much like he can’t be bothered to get out of this tent and go speak to Wheeler. He summoned her after all.
Here goes nothing, he thinks.
“Nice morning, huh?”
“If you’re going to climb out of your tent, why did you need *me*?” She’d been busy doing other things. She had a lot on her plate: grapes, kiwis, bananas, oranges and apples from the looks of it. Kactus was hungry and requested permission to dive in, which was granted.
I could stomp on it and put an end to the thing, Man About Time thought, looming above. But what would be the consequences? He decided quickly he didn’t want to find out. Wrath of Ouri might not look as pretty.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0507, Lower Austra^, Nautilus
He continues to talk to his boss even though he isn’t with him any more.
“That boat over there in that bay, Jeffrey,” speaks Man About Time mildly. “Lower Austra. But just beyond, just beyond the bay: Wild West. That’s how they slipped away from Miss Ouri, Jeffrey. They outsmarted her, which is difficult to do. Someone must know the whole map to do this. It’s like they have the entire knowledge of Nautilus itself.”
“Think,” he could hear Jeffrey Phillips in his head now, which he often does.
“That’s right, Jeffrey. (The) Thinktank (sim) is just beyond the bay. The Wild West.”
“No. *Think*.” Jeffrey often emphasized words for Man About Time in his head because he misunderstands what he’s actually trying to convey. Because Jeffrey Phillips is still around, just not physically.
“Oh okay. Think, huh?”
“Think,” he finished.
—–
“We went out on the same date. March 1, 2022. Yet he was a King and I was a Bishop at best, a Knight.”
“9 to 5, yes,” stated Wheeler Wilson to Baker Bloch at The Table, which had moved from the Blue Feather up to the Castle in De Skies, although not out of Collagesity itself. It was a conundrum because (the castle) sat in 2 completely different places on the continent at once: Lower Austra’s Collagesity and North’s Rooster’s Peninsula, with the ultimate link being glowing MOA down in the basement of each. *They* sat in these 2 positions. “I think you underestimate *your* position, though,” she continued. “Rook… you were a rook; a minor rook but a rook still. And people around you didn’t like it because you had no ambition to further your place in life. You were happy as is, just riding everything out until The End. You were stuck on a 5 which was much closer to 5 than 6 and you were satisfied. That was the basic issue. That caused the distancing.”
“I started out as a Pawn.”
“We all do,” explained Wheeler. “We all do.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0506, Crisp Sea, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Wild West
“This board must be broken Debbie. I can’t get black to move first.”
It was over in 13. White (Dickie (Archibald)) had no more to say. Sister Debbie retreated back up the cave tunnel from the meeting in the underground game room to her Hobbit Hill rental, pondering what just happened and the true nature of reality. *Why* can’t black start? Who goes first, what goes second? She doesn’t know; can’t figure it out currently. There must be a game of chesskers where the rules are reversed, she ascertains later, but only after the mission is done.
—–
“We’ve just got the one piece left,” Rescue John responded to Rescue Joe’s question about the face. “But it’s a crucial one. Looks like, let’s see, we’ve got a green eye instead of a blue to match the other. Asymmetry: can’t have it.”
“Boss wouldn’t be please,” Joe said back weakly, and looked into the distance from the top of the Gap toward the Hobbit Hill rental, toward Jer and Jem’s Ragged Rocks abode, toward Tar and Jey’s watermill home, and toward the cottage on the perch currently housing interns (Devil) Dave and Karoz straight from fabled academic mecca Crabwoo after their final exams were done and over with. He knows the answer lies out there somewhere. But here… they can only insert the wrong piece for now; no other way. He says this to John, who agrees to “finish” the process with a big sigh. “Green it is,” and crams it in despite the ill fitting nature of the thing.
Wheeler can see again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0306, Wendy-Ontario
Original parents had plans for the Nautilus continent still. Diagonal.
And sneaking up on people.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0202, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^
“Your… hair. It’s very… blue.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0102, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Upper Austra^
—–
He recognized her immediately upon entering his pizza parlor, despite the black and white checkerboard makeup. Wheeler. She, of course, knew him as well. Knew he was *dead*: killed by a monster way back in VHC City in the olden days, before the coming of Mud and the parallel need for Soap. He took off his crown. He dared to sit down, confront her.
—–
“H-how?” she uttered about his resurrection. I mean, she’d seen enough of them in the meanwhile but still — a bit of shock. He was stone cold dead laying on the floor when she found him. Heart attack. Couldn’t reach the pills in time. Surprise crocogator appearance through a thought-of solid wall did him in. They’d walked through the Fate Gate together, even, she escorting him to the afterlife. This is what he told her; she wasn’t physically there at the time; left when she found the body; alerted the authorities; cried her eyes out way into the night, The Musician, her other boyfriend at the time, seething on the other side of the bed, green with jealousy. She loved *him* more than *me*, he thought, although she was still with him, didn’t run wee wee wee all the way back to Collagesity like a broken piggie, even though she had supreme power there and not in VHC City. And now — The Musician was long back in the rear mirror, yielding to Axis and Opp both, take your pick. And now her new husband, she as Wendy Wilson Wheeler that is. Not really Wheeler any longer. All the old avatars had packed it up and moved to the White Palace, as Hucka Doobie liked to put it. But really: storage. Old yields to new. Continually.
“Jeffrey — Phillips?” Old Man Allen Martin, the resurrected one, didn’t like the sound of it. Then again, he wouldn’t like the sound of any of Wheeler’s lovers past himself. “How many down the road from me (and The Musician)?”
“4 — something like that. It’s complicated.”
“I bet it is.” He blew out air. “Well, yeah, I *died*. But then Soap cleaned me up, wiped away all the grime of a dirty grave. Plenty of Suds and Bubbles did the trick.”
“They *are* uplifting,” opined Wheeler, having caught the vaunted dancing troupe’s act in Collagesity 02 not long ago, Peter Ladd on his soapbox between them. The contrast of talent almost balanced out to mediocre but not quite. Skippy Bittman.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0506, Paper Soap, Soap
It was raining when he got back to Collagesity and it made his depression worse. He decided to go to Vivian Blue Hair, the new girl — or one of ’em — for advice. She was a fire scryer, using candles for the most part, like here. He asked what was foremost in his mind. “Which… one?”
Vivian could have been selfish and said she was the one, but almost immediately upon staring into the flame saw black and white patterns all around. She slips deeper into trance, closing her eyes. “I see two countries — or counties — one black and the other white, but both named Austra.”
“Austra, yes,” Phillip replies. “There’s a Lower and an Upper — everyone knows that–” Phillip stops here, understanding that Vivian Blue Hair arrived off continent just day before last week. She was a friend of… he can’t remember. Maybe Man About Time, wherever the heck he is these days. Phillip is already itching to leave his Collagesity but has nowhere left to go, he doesn’t think. Not after Wendy.
Vivian Blue Hair changed into someone else, chessboard patterns moved to the face. “A promise made, a promise lost.”
It was the cards (!), heart upside down being a spade.
Jeffrie Phillips wakes up from the rabbit hole as the lot of ’em fall to the chessboard floor in a disheveled mess, like roses. He’s received his clue.
“Charlene,” he says to the woman beside him, the usual one, but probably not *the* one. This also stirs her.
“Yes, Mr. Jeffrie Phillips, sir,” she dutifully and groggily recites, automatically reaching for his red tie hung on the bed post but then realizing it was still the middle of the night. She returns her hand to his bare chest.
“That new girl in town…”
“Right… see where *this* is going.” She yawns and looks at her nails.
“No, no, I don’t fancy her or anything.” Jeffrey Phillips definitely fancies her as he does most women, but that wasn’t the point here. “She has black hair, correct? Not blue or anything crazy like that.”
“First off, blue *isn’t* crazy. My Aunt Zelda had blue, red, and green in a row before her death in the early 80’s.”
“She lived that long, huh,” Jeffrey replied, starting to contemplate time and the colors that one can change into at the end. “But to my point…”
“In a certain light,” Charlene said in answer, “yes, it could be considered blue. But the light has to shine upon her hair in a very particular setting, I’ve noticed. Early morning or late day perhaps: hafta check.”
“So: blue.” Jeffrey decides to lay the cards on the table, this time in an orderly manner. “I dreamed about her just now.”
“I bet you did.”
“Not that kind of dream. A dream of this whole continent, which (he then realized) broke down into a series of black and white squares — *sims*.”
“Fascinating,” she deadpanned, and put on her babydoll and got up to get some water. “Want anything to drink or eat while I’m in the kitchen?” He watched her move away from him in a satisfying manner. Nice to have compensation when he returned home. Charlene is a swell mate as well as lover. He’ll keep her around for sure; a short leash. Strange way to think about it, he realized. I don’t *own* her. Or maybe… maybe I do in a way. I pay her bills, I give her a place to stay here at the Blue Feather (building). She was rummaging around the kitchen now. “Are you going to answer me?” she called, hoping he could hear her over the static this time. “I’ll get you something anyway.” More noises, and then about 5 minutes later she returned with some milk and a plate of choco chip cookies. She lay down beside him, put the plate on his partially bare belly, and picked up the top one for herself, studying it. “Cow chips, they’re called. Saw them advertised on TV. Big beaver holds one up in his paws.” She extends her arms here and holds the cookie between them like a small steering wheel toward the static filled TV on a table just beyond the bed. “Like this.” In the snow, she imagined the big beaver mirroring this back to her.
He studies her, then he follows her arms to the cookie, realizing what this meant. “That’s disgusting.” He picks one up himself using just the one arm. Oversized and heavy on choco chunks, he sees, but otherwise just an ordinary cookie.
—–
In another dream that night, the cookie Charlene holds expands and turns into a whirling vortex, sucking up everything in the room including his milk. “And so on the 5th day…” he heard her say beside him as they fell and fell, blobs of white and chunks of brown all around. The rabbit hole seemed endless this time.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0208, Collagesity Fordham, GTA, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Upper Austra^
“What do you think?” the Bishop asked the King in the middle no more. Out of the way.
“Cool. Half and half, right? The store is half mine correct?”
Bishop turned to face the Gno King squarely. “What game do you think we’re playing now?” he replied sharply. “*3* dimensional chess?” He spat on the sidewalk with this.
—–
They took turns eyeing the building down the street. King went first. King also went last. Middle no more.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0014, 0503, Maebaleia/Satori, West Virginia
Sweet Alice’s father was King Null, obviously conceived before he became all jigsaw-y and stuff and was known merely as Richard (or Ricardo to some). This was the fault of Bishop, his closest companion now that the Queen was dead. Long live Queen Mae, fairest in the land, protector of the realm, instigator of none. But the Bishop — different alligator altogether. A crocogator, even. He pulled a Brutus on Caesar; took away his humanity; made him like he was. Sometimes likes attract as well, and this is the case here. King Null: only his now separated body pieces know the full picture. Let’s listen in…
“Move over,” Bishop commanded. “You’re in the center again.”
Typical.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0014, 0207, Gno Kingdom^, Maebaleia/Satori
Sunklands 