“And so that’s how it all started, this story of FILE derived from TILE,” observing Nauty declared in his wise guy way. “We simply had to move Firey from 4th to 1st in this bottom group of 4 to spell out the word F-I-L-E with the first letters of their reordered names. F stands in for T because these are the 2 straight letters of the alphabet which can contain 7 sub-letters per the TILE game structure. The BFDI object-character colors here also match the 4 of TILE in red green blue yellow of course, although the individual letter to color correspondences are different from the game board. I could go on and on, but I’ll ask you the burning question that now presents itself up front and center alongside or even on top of repositioned Firey: What happened to the Dream Island all these characters were so fiercely battling over, often to their deaths? We know the answer to that too, given it presents itself as a constant in *our* world.”
“Constance,” I say to this, citing the name of the FILE sim that is also the name of the island in question.
“Correct,” he wheezes. “We should return but I’m not sure that’s possible given all else that’s happened in the meantime.” Since the demise of my attempted urban center there I dubbed Constantynople, I understood. Back toward the end of photo-novel 39 I believe. Checking….. checking….. Yes. 39. The island seems to have changed little in the intervening 2 or so years, indeed an aberration for such a large group of separately owned properties in the ever changing world that is Our Second Lyfe. It truly appears to represents some sort of sticky outie constant.
pin filled map of Constance Island with my former Constantynople at the top
“But we still have, let’s see, the rest of FILE,” I said, “the other 30 sims in this column that Constance more or less centers. Minus the hacked off 1 at the top.”
Constance Island in the middle of the 32>31 Nautilus continent “FILE” (purple column)
“Exactly centers including the hacked off 1 at the top,” furthers Nauty, knowing his continent better than me, since it is the same as his body in essence, pins stuck just there there there there, and so on and so forth. Constance is just a start. But also an end. “(The sim of) Ten Pages is 10 up from the bottom,” he continues with his FILE knowledge, “indicating that the 32 minus 1 (the top sim was wacked off in the retirement process), taken as a whole, are pages of a book, perhaps a chapter, perhaps more.”
“A section,” I say. But then I knew it had to be 2 if so.
“The… doorstep to the Temple of TILE was positioned right smack in the center of the 32 sim FILE,” he pinpoints while wheezing out.
Suddenly I knew what had to be done.
