Safely sealed inside the spire, Dove in hand, Carrcassonnee begins her well deserved bath. *Now* is the time. Clifton “Carbon Glow” Mahoney quickly unfurls the track, rezzes the train on the other side of the castle, and sits…
… taking along a very special passenger with him.
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2022-2023 WINTER”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0706, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Towerboro
“What are all these… plywoods?” the struggling, swaying giant walker boomed down. 10 yards made, about 20 to go.
“Never mind that Carrcassonnee, we need to focus on that opening in front of us — the main entrance to the castle. You need to get low enough so that you’ll fit through that door. I know you can do it. Get a little closer then start bending down, bending down. Sloow and easyy.”
Carrcassonneee and her great olive body cooperated. 15 minutes later she was through the opening and out in the open, 7th spire straight ahead.
—–
“We’re going to have to do it again, Carrcassonnee. Bend down — get a little closer first again. It’s going to be a little lower this time — sorry. Don’t lose your balance. I’m right here.” A lot of good I’ll do, Mahoney thinks at this point, if she starts to topple. All he can really do is be a cheerleader, urging her forward and to the scene of the bath. The soap had all been prepared. Dove, not Ivory. Because Carr has to *see* it all. Ivory would just sting the eye. They learned that the hard way back in Rubi, way back in photo-novel 1. Because we’ve gone full circle.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0705, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Oklahoma, Towerboro
—–
“I think this case is wrapped up, Pretty. *Petty*.” He turns red again. “Pretty much wrapped up,” he tried to cover himself.
“Thanks Officer Glammerpuss.”
The place will have to be quarantined for a week because of the moondust but the business should be able to reopen then.”
“Cathy will be pleased.”
“Yes.”
“Did you get all the rocks?”
“We think so. There’s one that looks like Neil Armstrong, then one like Buzz, then the other one — I assume it’s the 3rd.”
“Collins,” answered Petty to this, due to go on his other job in 2 hours and don a chef’s hat while ditching the inspector’s coat, no rest for this busybody. He reached into it to withdraw a match, ready to relight his current stogie, 8th of the night. At one point there was even 2 in his mouth at once. so excited he was about the news. Queen! Coming to Hardrock. So says Glammerpuss, the big, well, he just loves Queen. They both do! Ah heck, might as well try. Officer seems to be hinting around.
“Listen, Glammerpuss… Chuck.”
“Tim. You call me Tim.”
“Listen, Chuck. I was wondering…”
“Queen?” It just came out of his mouth automatically. Petty turned to stare into his eyes. Chief Wigwam walked up, interrupting the moment as he was suppose to. He gazed at the ribbon on the wrapped up door, symbolic of the case itself. He thought about procedure, getting ducks lined up in a row.
“Better start the paperwork on this Glammerpuss while the memories are fresh. Petty — aren’t you due to present me with a fresh dove omelet in, say (he checks his watch), 2 hours?”
“2 1/2,” states the chef-inspector to this. “Gotta warm up the oven first. Say, Wigwam, can you give us a moment. There’s just one wrinkle on the case we have to iron out.”
“It’s Collins,” spoke Wigwam. “The one they always forget the name of.”
A small smile breaks on Petty’s face. “No, not that, Chief. Something else. Just… give us a moment.”
“Oh alright. See you when the sun comes up. Glammerpuss — paperwork.” He walks away.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0407, Lower Austra^, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus
“See the whirlybird, Tabitha? Whirl whirl,” she emphasized with a twirling finger. “Whir whir,” the toddler she was holding mimicked without the finger. The actual birds in the vicinity, doves, remained frozen between them, opposing frantic spinning with rigid stasis in protest of the “invasion”. Or so legend goes: frozen birds, later the inspiration for a frozen pie company.
Tar stepped out of the copter, followed by Guit. The experimental, guitar oriented punk-folk fusion band Tar Guit had landed in rebuilt Moray Docks Village, ready to put on a celebratory show for the ages. Trouble was, they sucked.
—–
I suck at this game, thought Liz. But I’m not going to let these bastards know it. Fiction power: on!
She expertly places the 1st black stone. Everyone had to play clean, the rules stated. So they washed them down before the match, these opposing horses or ponies. They couldn’t take a water or food break until it was over. The Watchers were going to have a good time with this. Because they knew Liz couldn’t resist. Then at the end they’d all give her a big Thumbs Down despite her seeming big win. “In reality,” they might chide, “you couldn’t beat Lichen with one hoof tied behind your midsection. White never succumbs to black!”
“Does so!” she might exclaim back, and end it all with a fall of cards, or, in this case, a shower of rocks, inharmonious black and white mixing together in a fused mish-mash all around.
Robot servant Ruttitutti shows up, ready to take food and drink orders. It was over.
—–
Thank God, most of the scattering concert goers thought.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0603, Little Hell, Nautilus, NORTH, Omega^^, Southern
It was the last outing with her friends before the big event. “George,” she called over, “do you… do you think I’m doing the right thing?” Funny how her best friend Debbie also married a George. Were they happy? Let’s just say there was always room to slide between the two. Like here.
“I don’t know, Shelley, sounds like a Debbie question.”
Yeah, right, Debbie thinks.
“But you’re a man. You know The Musician pretty well by now.” George again wondered why they always called him that. He plays an okay guitar, specializing in Lennon and Lydon, but he’s not a professional by any means. Instead he’s a cookie cutter at the local bakery. Why not Baker, then? Odd thought, he realizes.
“He loves you and that’s all I know.” George Smithson rattles his paper, a sign that he was eager to get back to it. Debbie was absorbed in her phone, checking the latest bets on the local dogs. One named Red Spider is 10:1 odds to beat another called Arrow. She might place a bet on that one for a particular reason we can’t quite reveal yet — perhaps never will admittedly.
Only Shelley is left without distracting entertainment right now. So she looks around the Real World, sees a woman selling flowers down the way, sees a fisherman standing behind her who had just pulled his boat into the docks, perhaps contemplating buying a rose for his sweetie who he left behind when heading to sea, maybe hours ago but maybe weeks, years even.
She sees a woman taking a selfie with her dog while a fish flops wildly on the back of the tricycle in front of her.
And then, further down the docks, birds flocking to a man reading a newspaper for some reason. Perhaps he just fed them in a pause in his reading. She wonders if he’s reading the same paper as George here, and then why George never seems to go out of his way to feed birds or really care about anything in the world at large, including his wife of course foremost of all. Does George — her George — care about me? she wonders once again. Will our marriage quickly — *devolve* to this?
She decides to test this George. “Looks like that nice man down the docks just fed those pigeons.”
George glances over. “Doves,” he says. “They’re doves, Shelley,” then back to the reading.
“Still, it’s a nice gesture.”
George doesn’t say anything to this. He’s checking the stock market. Maybe he’ll buy into this company called Red Arrow coming up fast, a crypto-currency organization specializing in tax evasion. Eew, a spider suddenly walks across the figures! He quickly swats it away in one motion.
Shelley looks from one to the other, having her answer. She needs to talk to her dad, maybe her mom and dad together, about this whole *arrangement*. She plots how to get out from between them asap. “Guys, I think I’ll go back to the motel. My stomach’s feeling a little queazy.”
“It’s those grapes,” Debbie says to her, placing the bet.
“Yeah, the grapes for sure,” agrees George, hitting the buy button on the screen.
“Grapes,” mutters Shelley. Where have I heard this before? she thinks.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0110, Nautilus, NORTH
“I am Pauline Silentghost with the g silent and the h — not silent.”
“Pauline Silenthost?” replied Wheeler phonetically.
“Yes. (pause) I am the wisdom of all things–”
“–Nautilus, yes. I gathered that.” Wheeler indicated behind the entity at the circular framed nautilus shell, obvious symbol for the continent she once again inhabits. Like returned Rust. “Thus, I suppose, your smaller property in Scroop.”
“Scrougeout, yes. We call it Scrougeout. Carrcassonnee has decided so.”
“The… Oracle.”
“Yess.”
It was here Wheeler understood that they were talking to each other in their heads and not bodies. It was also here that Wheeler realized she was floating in air as a disembodied head or sumtin before the Oracle. Silentghost *was* the Oracle, or a channeler of Carrcassonnee in the moment. “You know Spider,” said Silentghost the Oracle. Then she fired these numbers very rapidly, the first being the same as the last. 24 permutations in total. Like this: “2130 1230 3210 2310 1320 3120 3102 1302 0312 3012 1032 0132 0231 2031 3021 0321 2301 3201 1203 2103 0123 1023 2013 0213 2130.”
“I suppose,” replied Wheeler, remaining even keeled through it all. “We found him in Tennessee. A Red Arrow indicated his presence there. And 8 shoes. And a bird, a dove perhaps.”
“Ahh… *my* dove. Victor, short for Victory. And *Victoria*.”
Wheeler tried to absorb this seeming nonsense, knowing it actually wasn’t.
“Let’s go down to my treehouse and talk further,” Silentghost requested, and then they were there.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0507, AF Subcontinent, Sansara, Tennessee
“You need perfection. You reach perfection. You pass perfection on the other side. Of course Wheeler Wilson was going to defeat (and assimilate) the new Tina Turner.”
“Tina Louise I believe,” said the fainter voice from the side, another Observer. “Like Mary Ann except beautifuller.”
“All-American still?” the first questioned the second. “Ρùℜ℘Îē?”
“That’s the key,” said the second.
“Heart of the matter,” reworded the first.
Resurrected Arthur Kill had finished retrieving the “Spider” from Tennessee but he was around for good thanks to the mop, with its silliness reinforcing its power. So they — Wheeler and he — decided to form a band, creating an alternate reality where “America the Beautiful” replaced the “Star Spangled Banner” as our country’s great national anthem. First gig: Towerboro or thereabouts, playing to an audience half blue half red. Now to split the two right down the middle, form a third. Wheeler kept wearing purple.
Wheeler kept wearing purple.
Wheeler kept wearing purple.
It worked. St. Francis Scott, the key, was hatched at the beginning of the 5th.
dramatization
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0501, Big Woods, Gold City, Hana Lei^^, Jeogeot, Wendy-Ontario
“Looks like a Dove. Highlighted by white, even. Shadow against light.”
“Could be could be,” he relented. Spider. They’d found him! Carrcassonnee was overjoyed.
“Can I… see him again now? Now again him see… I can?”
—–
“Well I’ll just wait upstairs while you finish speaking with each other,” said Jamie, walking away and highlighting Sign.
The footsteps on the stairs ended and the footsteps on the top floor began. Roberts was more free to talk about what Tessa needed to know. She’d already apologized about before. She said it was the town and the lag there, made her appear… less clever than she was. Roberts actually meant Tessa here but Tessa thought she meant herself (Roberts). There was just that difference between the two. Now at least the difference is clear, because we weren’t in Cable Isle any longer but back in Towerboro. Which office was the branch of the other didn’t really matter. That would be revealed soon enough. I would assume (the branch is) here without knowing more, but I’m about as clueless as Tessa in the moment. We better get to their dialog.
“I’m sorry about before, Tessa. It was the lag and the town.”
“Yes, you said that before.”
“I was just checking to see if you were listening. Sometimes people don’t when I speak, but maybe I’m just use to Cable Isle and its issues. Maybe here will be different.”
So just listening in, it appears that there is only one Roberts and Franklin investigating firm and it has moved from there to here. Back to the interaction.
“I’m listening,” said Tessa, trying to do this simple action. All I need, she thought, is to wake up, not sleepwalk all the time. That’s what Roberts desires.
“Let’s just enjoy the here and now for a moment, shall we?” Roberts kept silent. Tessa kept silent. Roberts reengaged eye contact. “*Now*.”
A blue Martian appeared. “Who’s that, Roberts?”
“Laura, please,” requested the psychic-detective. “And that, my friend, is an Observer.”
“Hmmm. What is she observing?”
“You,” came the quick reply. Silence again. Tessa was trying to think of a next step — what Roberts wanted from her again. She was trying to be mindful. Roberts — Laura — was patient, she knew. There was something here to be revealed, she picked up, and not just the Observer. There was another *thing* involved, a (she gleaned) thing that is not what it seems. An animal! She said this aloud.
“Good. What kind of animal?”
“She immediately thought, dog, but discarded it as too easy, not trusting her gut reaction. Her thoughts drifted to horse. She could just guess aloud. “Horse,” she said.
“Mmmm, not quite,” spoke Roberts, face remaining neutral.
Alligator? she thought. “Alligator.”
“Again: not quite.”
Spider came to mind but she broadened it as insect. “Insect.”
“Yes.”
Tessa was pleased, thinking that was the end of the game. But then Roberts continued. “And?”
“Something else besides an insect?” Tessa tried to clarify.
Roberts gave up the game, opened the door with her mind.
“A… dog?” It was the first thing that came to mind and then it was the last thing that came to mind. Funny how things work that way.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0415, Cable Isle, Google Street View, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
“Okay Kenny, slow and easy. We know what animal we’re looking for now.”
“Dog,” Kenny said, repeating the last word of the old, confused man.
And then, just like that — so suddenly — there it was. “There!” Ken screamed almost as loudly as the killed lady in the house did before. Arthur squelched the desire to shoot him on the spot as well. Because he saw something too.
“Back up. I want to make sure.” Ken backed up one click.
“Okay, sloow and eassy — and no screaming this time.” He held one of his weapons to Ken’s head just to make sure. He could drive himself if push came to shove. And it might after this. One click later: still there.
“The bird is *attacking* the dog?” Ken said in as calm a voice as he could muster given the circumstances.
“One click more forward,” Arthur Kill demanded, not yet ready to answer any questions.
“Okay.” Click.
Arthur Kill looked at the spectacle that had moved more toward the back. The bird is far separate from the dog now.
“Indicating,” concluded Kill. “The bird was indicating the dog. We can go home now. But first…” *POP*
The dog replaced the man.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0414, Google Street View, Tennessee
She’d left the water in the shower running but it was on purpose: to prove a point. Or, better, to remind her of something. A key, 2nd shower really not needed since no poop is involved.
She was finished with her clients but there was more work to be done tonight before going home bed. Check on the Duck. Because she was about ready to kill someone…
… with writing. “Dear,” she called over to her ex but both still using Gold for a surname. “How do you spell asimilation? With that extra s I’m always mising? Dear oh dear. There I go again!”
“Answered yourself of course,” he responded, not staring up from the folded newspaper. 20 dead in Uptown this year so far. What is Gold City coming to??
“Yes,” she realized. “All I have to do is look down.”
“Or straight ahead…” *sip*
“… if a computer is involved, yes.” Which it wasn’t in this Gold City experience of hers. She preferred pen over keys here. Must be something about running away as fast as possible from the Ebony and the Ivory. Dove’s where it’s at now. She just used it in fact. In the shower. Which she needs to take another of. *No*. She has the key, she reminds herself again, still writing, still scribbling sideways across the yellowing paper, perhaps parchment. *Barry* is the one. He needs the shower. But where is Barry?
Still scribbling, still writing.
Newt sets the paper down. He’s had enough bad. Now for good. “I’m glad I found you again Eyela. Just mised you in the church, ha.”
She looked down, emitted a small laugh as well. Good one, Newt. Then she took the pen and struck out that sentence. Then another, and another until the whole paper was full of lines. Newt was gone. Newt, her ex, perhaps even still her husband since she’s reverted back to Eyela and/or they still share the same last name, was never here. Or else he left earlier. She writes alone.
Later she sits in bed staring at the sword, wondering how to turn it back into a pen. Looks like actual killing is in order if she doesn’t succeed with this.
Because the Duck is right beside her.
“Paul?”
“Yes?” he quacked.
“I think… it’s… time…” STAB
Sunklands 