Tag Archives: Harlie^^======

00350701

Harlie and friends head into the woods today for a little more inmate bashing.

—–

“So what did you hear over there?”

“The wedding is *definitely* off.”

“Good, good. So I guess we’ll be getting a little cake from all this.”

“Saved you a piece.”

“Mmmm *mmm*.”

—–

“No, this one’s not wine. Instead: Jeannie.”

“Genie, eh?” Derick was now more interested than ever. He’d always wanted superpowers of some kind. Hero School wasn’t hacking it for him.

“Yeah, but spelled with a j. And an extra n, And an a. Talking about a person… in a bottle. Found it on a beach where I crash landed in my Gemini or perhaps Mercury space capsule, we don’t know which. Could be a 2 seater, could be 1. A mystery, a conundrum. All for a nickle.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

Thinking of Lichen here, Fern said: “I never joke.” But maybe I should more, she thinks. The Claude-Fern combination was pretty funny though, or so Lichen told me afterwards. I have ultimate respect for her opinion on those matters.

“I’ll give you 5000 dollars, that’s my lowest offer.” Derick knew the bottle was probably cursed, didn’t want to insult the Gods of the thing by swindling this poor stupid lady who came in from the beach or wherever.

“Call it 10000 and I’ll throw in the mate,” Fern said, reeling in a fish. Now she can pay off her gambling debts from this morning.

—–

At the next table over:

“This wine has a finger in it.”

“And it’s mine!”

“Ah HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

What’s so funny over there? wonders Fern as Derick studies the second bottle.

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A way out (Back to Nautilus)

“I know this man!” says Martell Mandell out loud. She couldn’t help it. “Fieldon!” she tacked on, thinking about 300, thinking about a lot of other stuff. Like time and space shifts. She begins to prepare for telling her alien boss, Abbey Abdominator, about the discovery. “We *must* investigate,” he says back to her in a daydream. Hopefully her imagination turns out to be correct.

—–

“There! Told you!”

“Just because it’s a New Jersey substation of Nautilus and just because he likes to wear grey doesn’t mean he’s the same guy, Martell,” says Abs back to her upon seeing the “proving,” remotely taken photo in his mind. “I’m Grey. If I were standing in front of, say, a New Jersey welcome sign would you also think I was Harry, hmm? Besides, he denied he was Harry — said he was instead Jerry. I read the report you sent me. I’m not that detached from my position here at Star Team Interplanetary.”

—–

“If only Collagesity were still around,” she lamented while they looked at another photo she’d found in the Archive, hope waning.

“If only we could follow this probable route still up Highway 13 and down Highway 14 around and around…”

“Wizard,” says Abs to this. “Cube.” Her world turned inside out. And the Grey was the Man on top. Superior. *Not* a humbug.

“Look around, Martell. Where do you think you are? They are appearing all over the place. We have a way to go back *now*.”

“The… Void?” she answered, hallucinating the past. Shirley?

Still sharing her pictures, Abbey sensed a discrepancy between red-violet and yellow-green. These were not the same cubes. “No. Not The Void, Martell. I’ve changed my mind. We’ll go back to Nautilus… Jersey. But in that special way like we did before. And heading in backwards just for kicks.” Maybe that will solve the discrepancy I sense, he says to himself.

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00350608

“We’ll never get out of here, Vineyard, you know that. They’re not going to stop until we’re all dead.”

Wizard Wells’ fellow winged companion in the moment was staring at Shelley’s shirt, trying to forget his troubles. “What is… Pepper?”

“Old sham presidential candidate,” she answers. “Same with this.” She changes into another.

“Nifty,” says leafy, veiny Vineyard, also wondering about the black hands. Was she turning black overall? Yin (back) into Yang? Maybe its just the panic from the impending… doom. After a moment of lightness, his heart sinks again.

—–

“You’re next, Magenta,” guard Jettison called through the chain fence topped with barb wire. “You free ones can’t flitter away from us forever. We’re working on it, mind you. We’ll get there.”

It was a kind of threat Magenta heard every day around 2 o’clock. When she showed up to encourage her friend’s cousin Wizard. Hang in there, she thought from her tree. The outer one hadn’t given up hope even as the inner one resigns to termination.

But what was Shelley doing here in a fairy concentration camp?

Let’s try something else for more clarification:

Yikes, *another* one, thought Harlie, now up above it all in a large guard tower station. The purple cubes were appearing *everywhere*.

(to be continued)

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00350607

She thought of another answer while chopping pepper for the big meal. George was coming over! Or was it Arthur? Anyway, she thought of this: I *love*, that George’s backwards guitar was destroyed in the Moray Docks explosion when that new Tar Guit appeared over top of it. BOOOM! she recalled joyously. That can replace the “resourceful” answer, #4 I believe.

“She’s gone,” Baumbeer speaks later to Newt about the poor girl’s mind. “But I know where she is.”

“I’ll go see her,” replies the father not father-in-law. “No need to bring the boy in the picture,” he says half to himself. “He’s already heartbroken enough.”

“Let me know if I can help more,” spoke Baumbeer into the receiver to finish. He hangs it up. On a clothes hanger.

Newt rings Shelley up. I mean, he calls her. Since the wedding is off and he’s no longer the Best Man. Thus the meal.

“Newt!” she modifies again, moving to the cucumber or tomato next. “The father-in-law.” Her face squinches up. “Father *in-law*?”

They meet at the same gazebo in the sim’s corner. Property called Sim’s Corner. The Void’s energy was just loosened enough so he could reach over and straighten up the blouse on her shoulder. Pepper t-shirt no. 1 she wore now. Small successes before bigger ones, he thinks, staring at the daughter he didn’t know he had until the end of the last photo-novel, 34 in [delete rest of sentence].

“Wheeler says to say hello,” he starts again, trying to jolt more memories. Does she remember the spaceship? Of course not, Newt thinks. Too young. Shelley says say hello to Wheeler back, even though she doesn’t know who that is. She’s trying to mask her big big problem. And where’s George? Or was it Arthur?

“Your… *mother*,” Newt says to this, understanding she doesn’t recognize the name. “George — you know George, right?”

“Georges,” she says, which Newt lets slide.

“Anyway, *your* George says you look a lot like her. You even have some of the same tattoos.” Kind of odd, Newt thinks here but, again, lets it slide; chalks it up as another disturbance of The Void.

—–

“You’re batty I tell you. *Batty*!”

“Out of my way, whoever you are! *Whatever* you are!”

“W-where you going, dude? Nothing left but *me*.” She starts dancing and dancing with her weapon. Hypnotizing. Just like on the bus. It was her.

Shelley wakes up. What did I do to *Johnny*, she immediately thinks. We go back to that point. That’s where she began to lose it. The baby. My baby!

She was the baby.

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over the hedge

I’m going to beat the crap out of that girl.

—–

Before taking a shower, Shelley writes in her journal.

Day 2 in The Void.
I have determined that George, formerly Debbie’s George, is the same as my own.
We are destined to be together.
I don’t know where the other is.

She pulls away from the screen, looks at what she wrote. She knows there is another but can’t recall who. It is someone dark… black, even, like the shadow side of a planet.

Her phone rings. It’s Arthur. Arthur! she thinks while trying to figure out how to answer like in a receiver. That’s who I was thinking of. And he must have been thinking of me! She figures it out, puts the correct end to her mouth. “Hallo?”

“Are you ready?”

Ready for what? she thinks. Oh. The shower. Testing water pressure and all, let’s say.

“Yes.”

“Go ahead and I’ll meet you over there.”

“Oh.” Disappointment?

“Shelley?”

“Yes… Arthur.”

“Arthur? You haven’t called me *that* in a while. Do you, erm, do you even know where you are? Where I am? Where we’re going?”

She admitted she didn’t. She was in The Void for real. And she didn’t even have the necklace this time, giving it to a repairman in the garage outside in order to pay for her car. Broke carburetor. “It’ll cost you as much as the car itself,” Ken said through the window, watching her dig dig dig in her pocketbook for cash, red or green. But alas, the only thing of value she had on her was the Venus Cage. Of course, Ken, also working for The Void, knew this. After receiving it he made the proper disposal per instructions. Far far away from The Void. Lemont Sanford must not know how to get at her this go around. She will be truly trapped forever and ever. Swapsies.

(to be continued)

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Shelley’s castle (Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?)

“You are me and I am you. You have a (phallus) and so do I.”

“Not quite,” I said back to Franklin, green legs still in the distance.

There. That’s better.

“Like I was saying before the interruption, we’re the same *core* but different up here. It’s Our Second Lyfe, not My Second Lyfe.”

“Let’s go to the (Roost Never Sleeps) castle again and see,” Franklin requests. I had no choice but to follow her because of the, you know, being one thing. I was starting to question our differences as well. One of us could get *absorbed* — didn’t want that. But I knew it would be Franklin if so.

And, true enough, by the time we reached that more central castle across the way, she was gone. I looked down at my man pants. Was it actually *real* now? I had to see.

[delete picture]

No, just a better fit still. My hair had a tinge of green in it but that’s all. Arthur/Lemont would be *so* relieved if he were here witnessing this. But he’s somewhere off with Roberts — said they also had things to talk about. I suspect: more absorbing. Maybe. Perhaps it will be different in their case.

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preservation

My Lebettu Castle is still there in all its glory, seen here in a “Phototools — Still Life” environment. The library remains at its center, its core. However since I’ve been retired from same for *8* months now, it may be time to move on. I revisited the co-workers I was probably closest to a couple of weeks back and exchanged pleasantries and caught up with the latest. My old position had shifted into something new which helped the team, but also probably marked the end of a more interactive involvement with the overall campus in the way I fostered, a continuation from past practices. *Writing* is my job now, that and the accompanying art and photography. And also I view daily hiking as an extension of this, a needed opposite and balancing pole to virtual reality. It’s a good life. 🙂 I explore both.

Moving forward, I’m almost 1/2way done with the current Sunklands photo-novel, 35 in a series of “we”ll see”. Characters keep evolving. I am almost as much there as I am here.

I did not maintain contact with others outside my team. I was as much a part of campus as a whole as the library — theoretically. It was a perfect balance for a while, me acting as one man juggler. But it could not go on. I passed into retirement as naturally as about anyone could, thanks in part to the pandemic and the changes it wrought. It certainly contained echoes of actual death. I know better what to expect.

There have been other libraries in other times. Even now, in a virtual setting and obviously on a much smaller scale, I still have one, another echo. A friend died there.

I can still go inside the special part created by new-ish head Miss Ouri and read books, some of which are even my own.

Like this one.

There still exists a dividing point between Ordinary/Mundane and Special. It’s all in the pages.

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