Tag Archives: Claude^*=^^=

March 17, 2023 · 1:43 am

00370306

“What are you guys fretting about? The fire? Did something burn down here?” Then she realized, in her intuitive way, that *they* burned something. Evidence, she gathered. What were these cactus fitted military birds on the edge of Lower Austra on about? Japanese, she understood. If only she’d remembered to bring her translator. Maybe next time, cause there can be. Unlike for Baker Bloch Keith B., who is, for some reason, banned from the premises. He got too close to the truth, she thought. They wanted me to see instead.

“So you *are* her,” she suddenly understood, tuning into the language. Took some time but she’s there. They think I’m someone else, she gathers. But I’m *me* — always.

I don’t think I like this pose but it’s all about balance, I then additionally gather. Someone else was good at that. “We welcome you (back),” she also translated. But it was only this bird; what about the others?

They’re burning something else now; a ritual.

A golden girl arrives, one that will lead them into the next millennium of great change and turmoil and, ultimately, complete harmony of opposites through love.

“That golden girl,” says the one, ” is you.”

Shelley wakes up.

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April 5, 2022 · 8:08 am

00320402

The first thing to be destroyed in the dismantling of Fordham’s Collagesity was the 128 meter long spaceship of skybox 03, intended to be used to pack up Collagesity itself in just this very event. It remains clunky and unpractical for its purpose. Gone after saving to inventory.

Baker also deletes the skybox 03 base cubes, including the teleporter needed to reach it, and drops down to skybox 02. More painful here: Baker is quite attached to this aerial town centered by the golden calf that is Claudette: the grassy arena where Peter Ladd performed his lame comic routine to an audience of his Uncle Babyface and perhaps others; the abbreviated Kidd Tower on the other side of town that acts as the residential unit; and then…

Baker Bloch can’t do it. Not tonight at least. He has several more to decide. The clunky spaceship was an easy choice. Now it gets more difficult when we move closer to the ground.

And then, heading down to skybox 01, there’s the problem of the Nautilus map and its over 100 strategically placed pins now. My idea: to transfer all this to the “Iowan hypercube” displayed in my GoogleEarth file (Oracle) but it hasn’t been successfully accomplished yet.

Seems like, to me, as I ponder this further, that Collagesity has at least another month to live. I’ll renew my membership on a month to month basis. Subtracting the rental connecting the two parts of Collagesity — the main 8 and the now disattached 9th representing the Temple of TILE and its grounds — frees up 15 dollars a month, reducing the total cost from 50 to 35. New decision date: early May, when novel 32 should wrap up. Synchronization remains important.

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December 18, 2021 · 8:34 am

another one?

“Why aren’t you guys sitting across from each other still? *Anyway*, we know the Anomaly is the same as this beanstalk being mentioned around this here town, Paper-Soap still, despite the attempts at division. It doesn’t jam our systems any longer — a situation we should toast to sometime (come to think of it) — but its presence is still around.” Goober gobble. “Reports now. Whatcha got Agent 47?” he speaks to the closest one. “Er, 23,” he adjusts, seeing a hair on the upper lip. Male this one is. The other: female, despite the baldness and otherwise seeming identicalness. More experiments of The Mouse.

“We’re monitoring situations of a bust,” he metered out crisply, almost like a robot but without the needed, metallic squeaking of the inner mechanics. Like with the Claudes. “A painter. Paper.” He glances over at Agent 47, noting the hairless lip and the current desire to kiss it. When did these feelings start for 23?? He guessed that birthday party. Where they summoned The Devil again, pheh.

“A ring,” continued 47 on the same case. “Within…” he looked back.

“… a ring,” completed 23 for him, contemplating whether to blow him (*a kiss*!).

“So you’re saying to me, people, that this bust involves a ring (*brinnng*). And not only that, another ring within that ring? (*brinnngg*). How deep are we?”

The phone rings for the third time at the far end of the table. It’s one of the Claudes, which is always bad news.

Jim walks in (*brinnng*). “I’ll get it.”

“NOOOOOO!!!”

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September 16, 2021 · 7:36 am

00280605

Afterwards, they went to Skysity and got milkshakes, a family tradition in this matter. “How’re you feeling, son?” he said, knowing Claude Jr. wasn’t really his son any more. Instead: hive mind.

“Pretty (*sip*) good. Hey dad?”

“Yes son.” Claude Sr. suddenly became sad. He was thinking back to the talk he had with his father, right on this very spot with the only difference being Jasper was out of vanilla that day. Had to settle for chocolate. This was better, this was more like it should be. Favorite for his favorite. He should have everything he wants this day. Because he’s lost so much.

“Are you going away again? To that place? Paper.”

“I have to, son. You know that. You’ll have to go too.”

“But I’m — *12*.”

“You’re not ready to go out into the world yet on your own son. Remember Uncle Peaches? Remember how he started too early? Got recruited for the war. Blew his head off in the end. Demolitions — it’s always demolitions for us; you remember that, son. You remember what’s happened to many of us. They — just don’t care.”

“Aw, *dad*.” Jr. was sorry he brought up the subject now. Sure he’d tag along with his old man a little longer. But not *too* long. He has plans — designs.

(to be continued)

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September 15, 2021 · 9:17 am

BoB

“I’m not dead!” he cried to all those sitting around the grave site looking down. “It’s *just* a ring.”

It all came together at the end for Mouse. Too late, of course.

—–

“So this is it,” Man About Time exclaimed mildly. As usual. “The thing that did him in.”

“LOVE, yeah,” answered Jeffrey Phillips, wondering how he himself could talk again. He died as well (!). “He… couldn’t pass through the O, got stuck in it. Spy Guy Benjamin tried to help, but…”

“… got stuck himself,” completed MAT for Jeffrey, having read the story up to this point too. What was the point? Just close the damn coffin lid why don’t you.

“He can’t die in Vain.”

“He didn’t,” answered MAT truthfully.

“Good for you, MAT,” said Jeffrey Phillips. “I didn’t think you would take this so swell.”

“It’s just a game. Endtime.”

“Yes, death will do that to you. Lure you in, like a fish. And when you land on the shore — it’s *only* when you land on the shore…”

“You see the water,” completed MAT again.

—–

Next door (sometime in the past):

They say the doctor before this new one, Jr. — he was married to an alien woman. Found her spaceship crashed up in the hills.”

“That’s — not — right,” the littler golden robot squeaked back.

“You’re right, Jr. It *wasn’t* right. He should have turned her *in*. And now he’s paid the price: banishment. *Now*, are you ready to go inside and let the new doctor, this Diper fellow, take a look at those gold plated tonsils?”

“Guess — so.”

“You guess so.” Claude Sr. blew out air from his mechanical lungs. “I had mine taken out about the same age as you are, in fact, the exact same age.”

“12 — I — know.”

“That’s right, Jr. 12. All mechanoids have to have their original tonsils taken out, then. Else: viruses.”

“I — read — the pamphlets.”

“Nice.” But Claude Sr. knew it wasn’t tonsils that were taken out. The pamphlets lied. He’d find out soon enough. Just like with Santa Claude.

They head inside for the operation.

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September 14, 2021 · 9:57 am

go fourth

The Paper Kings dropped a Big Baby behind enemy lines and Claude Sit-on got sat-on. His son Claude Jr. carried on the family name, obviously. In retaliation he tried to wire the school so that it would blow up at 4:20 o’clock on [pick any day], but the kids foresaw this and blew up Claude Jr. instead. With their minds of course, no primitive physics needed. End of mechanoid aspect of our story, but later the Claudes, jr. and sr. now conjoined and united as one Claude in the minds of people who couldn’t remember the originals, became martyrs to the cause. It was here that Dr. Mouse entered our story again. “He died for *our* sins,” the fanatic was telling him back in their secret basement lair underneath the mayor’s house, now run by Jim Turbine the plastic surgeon. He surged, he won. Former mayor Longnose went back to Yayaland where he came from and started wearing a different face (at times) and leading the resistance to his own cause, which eventually recruited Guy Benjamin from Kowloon who eventually was able to steal the little yellow fellow, the Rael McCoy, from the other 3 while they had their backs turned. And this is where Dr. Mouse enters our story once more (!), for he was asked to perform a special operation to straighten out the racist lad. *Not* remove the color this time, which should remain glinty gold or close, they insist, just like Claude down in Sittontown (Meatside renamed). “What, then?” demanded Mouse, afraid he would see a rat in such a remote place and eager to get outta here. “Turn him into an *I*,” they said, and left it with him.

Dr. Mouse went back to his basement lair, told the others what had happened. A plane crashed outside in front of the cave that sheltered Sheldon the Initiated, Fern Stalin in disguise once again — I believe this was 42 by this point. On the other side of Paper, Swamp Lake had been drained by the resistance *here* in an attempt to stifle the efforts of the kids. The Asylum was filled with those who weren’t really loonies but were deemed so nevertheless. And Dr. Mouse was the stamp-maker. He wore many hats, but there was only 1 he wanted to live under. Hatti’s.

“What do you think? First attempt, mind you.”

Greg Ogden was stymied. “Is that a… banana?”

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September 14, 2021 · 8:38 am

00280513

They had finished their burgers — vegetarian for the doctor; basically raw red meat for Wheeler, er, I mean, Wendy — and were sitting outside in what they called the kid’s area. Greg Ogden was riding a coin operated horsie across the way; no food for him, just play. The 2 “grown ups” took the opportunity to talk, core to core.  Mouse was asking a lot of questions, so Wendy plopped out her laptop for some quick google searches when needed. Or so she said.

“Claude,” he spat out. “Friend or foe?”

“Friend,” replied Wendy quickly. “But a mechanoid so basically useless. And he indirectly blew up our director so we’ll have to mark down for that.”

“Kids?”

Wendy stared at him. They weren’t suppose to talk about the children. He remembered that with her prompting and moved to the next.

“How about the swamp? How about the bars?”

“Bar None?”

“Um… not sure.”

“Both have black mold thanks to the you-know-who. Both lack bathrooms, hence Stu Umbriel in jail for the urination and such. But he just likes peeing in public, don’t get him wrong. He’d do it anyway. That’s just what his lawyers are going to say.”

“Kolya… seems to be missing.”

Wendy stared over at Greg Ogden still jiggling on his horsie. “Did you give him 2 quarters or 3? Because this could take a while.”

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August 15, 2021 · 11:22 am

third angle

Cory watched the flames licking out the top of the building, thinking it didn’t have to be this hard. Why I could have blown the place up with my mind easily enough, he thought from his position at the corner of the sandbox. All I need is a pretty good night’s sleep (for energy). Indeed, most of the kids attending Paper-Soap school, merged since ’71, were psychic to a high degree. They didn’t need primitive *physics* to destroy anything. Claude Jr. was behind the times, but he was a robot after all, mere mechanoid. The other kids tried not to make fun of his clunky, nay *dense* ways of thinking, but it was difficult, being kids too after all and not having the moral compass of a fully mature adult. One of their “sloooow” projects in class, as they called it, was the atrophying of the swamp down in the town’s southwest corner. In fact, Cory’s study group had brought up the swamp from lake to sea back down to swamp a good number of times now, and recorded the reactions of the residents living around it. The kids were experimenting on the adults. The kids were in charge. As a sea it flooded the sewer tunnels. Dinah’s bartender Stumpy wondered why he could never get rid of the black mold in the bathroom down there. He ended up just having to derezz the thing.

“Can you point me to the restrooms,” a somewhat tipsy customer asked him in tomorrow’s today. “Just go in the sewer outside like everyone else,” he commanded, wondering if he should bring the issue up to the town council, a council also controlled by kids of course. Their powers were ever-present.

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August 15, 2021 · 10:50 am

end of Violin

Sugar McDermitt should have seen it coming. In fact, he did. “Those *kids* are up to something over there,” he mutters to himself, standing outside the soon-to-be destroyed Lost Boys Bar and Grilling. “They keep glancing over here and snickering. Damn kids,” he cussed, sorry he had 11 of his own. He doesn’t even give them names any longer, just numbers, starting with Ten. “Ten come here and polish my boots; Ten come here and wash the dishes for your old man.” That kind of thing. He and the current missues (a number herself by now — five) told the prying neighbors who watched him toil and sweat away the day, unable to play with their own kids because of constant work, that he was named for an Aunt Tinny. But really it was just pure laziness and convenience. “Albert!” loudly insisted wife #4 before she ran away to join a circus for clowns. But then the 5th that soon followed on her heels didn’t care — preferred numbers for better tracking and convinced Sugar of the same. “Why don’t we just smack a bar code on their rears and keep up with them that way,” she suggested one day in early May after 2 breakfast daiquiris and 2 brunch tequilas. Prisoners, then, they really were. Number Eight (formerly Jack) would soon have his revenge. He had a robot friend whose father Claude Sit-on was an expert in building demolitions.

Meanwhile at the playground:

“By the time I get to the bottom of this slide,” spoke the friend Claude Jr., golden hued like the playground equipment he perched at the top of, set to go, “something will happen. Ready? One, two, and sliiiiiiiiddde”. BOOOMM!!

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August 12, 2021 · 8:38 am

personal assistant

He next decides to catch up with Hidi; show off his discoveries on the new continents of Bellisseria to her as well. He watches the glossy, shiny wave of Treeowatoor roll in while she speaks.

“How’s Alysha, Kolya? Have you caught up with her too?” Hidi knew he did. The two girls, *ladies*, keep in touch with each other as well. Both waiting. And waiting.

“Yes. I showed her some holes.”

“Ohh?”

“Yes. Glory Holes.”

“Realllly.”

“Yes, they’re down at the stilts continent, another new landmass made by the Lindens our overlords.”

“Not *my* overlords. But *do* go on.”

“3 bodies.”

“Yess?”

“Of water.”

“Oh.” Pause as the wave crashes both figuratively and literally.  “I guess you know, then, she’s on a spaceship. She’s a controller. She’s *the* controller.”

“Spaceship?”

“Yes, Kolya. What did you guys talk about on your visit? Just holes? Watery ones?”

“Basically,” he said, seeing nothing wrong in what he did. But: spaceship. That kind of intrigued him. He wished he’d asked about it now.

“She *may* have a boyfriend. Does *that* interest you Kolya?”

He looked over at her, wry smile on her cartoon-ish lips. But he knew she wasn’t a cartoon and this was Wendy before him, wife of Jeffrey Phillips, one he couldn’t have and couldn’t hold. Except in dreams. The dreams still came.

—–

“More paperwork for you ma’am. This comes from, let’s see, Merk over in Records. Quite a bit here, in fact.”

“Just put it with the rest,” commands Alysha, tired of working for the day. She starts to dream. She starts to envision herself in the square again. In space.

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