“I must concur with Lieutenant Spocari, Captain,” pleads 1st Science Officer Dr. I.C. Yourinsides. “All data I’m recieving states that New Eden will be crushed inside the black hole. We must reverse, full speed!”
Tropp stays calm in his chair. “Call me crazy confident, guys, but I think we can do it. One day — Spocari, I.C. — you or someone else of your ilk might be in charge. But not now, not today. This is my decision to make.”
“For-WARD!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0011, 0410, New Eden^^
“Money, get back / I’m all right, Jack / Keep your hands off my stack / New car / Caviar / Four-star daydream / Think I’ll buy me a football team.”
The gala crowd erupts, to which Sprite adds on top: “Tear down this wall, Mr. Orange!”. The crowd continues to clap. A “Tear Down The Wall” chant begins slowly, then builds, until Alo Bama takes the mic and motions everyone to calm down.
“*Freedom*. (pause) It’s what everyone wants, everyone cherishes.” Alo Bama indicates Sprite sitting back in the crowd. “Like our tree friend Mr. Sprite, waiting to be unencumbered by the shackles of The Wall, ready to join Wallytown as a *full* *fledged* *citizen*.”
The crowd claps enthusiastically again. “With inalienable rights,” he says over them, calming them down once more. “And established levels of treatment honoring decency, character (pause), respect.” “You go Alo!” someone shouts in the rear, prompting him to reply, “I’m going, I’m going. ” Scattered laughter is heard. “I’m telling it like it is.”
—–
“I thought you were going to dramatically change into Green Squirrel or Roger Pine Ridge or something to show who you really are,” spoke Natali seated beside Sprite now, his date for the night.
“Ahh, it just didn’t seem to fit the bill. Didn’t feel right. It was *my* poem and that’s what counts.”
“I suppose… oh he’s starting to talk about the Bottle Mound indians now.”
—–
“On the one hand,” Alo Bama extends his left arm and opens his hand. “Orange. On the other…” Alo Bama extends his other arm with the mic. “Purple… Violet, some say, although they prefer the former and we should respect (pause) their rights. And they’ve fought with each other, fought, fought, fought, down through the years, the centuries (pause). And what’s come of it, hmm?” A “free the trees” protest comes from the same person as before in the back. Alo Bama ignores it this time.
“Death is what came of it. And *disappearance* (pause) in time.”
—–
“You know he really is quite the orator,” opined Dr. I.C. Yourinsides to Captain Spocari. But when he didn’t respond she found that he’d fallen asleep.
“*Really* Captain. But I guess you’re all knackered out from this afternoon, hehe. Twice a day keeps the doctor okay.”
—–
“And now. (pause) The Mound. (pause) Comes here. Leemon or Leeman standing on the beach just beyond 1/2 refuses to even admit it is there. He can’t fully *see* (pause) this *new* New Island. The Greys *descend*…
… and fall backwards, face down (pause) in the sand.”
—–
“When’s he going to get to Jimmy?” whispers Billy Bloodsworth on a back couch to Lavender. “I can tell he’s nervous up there, ready to come out of his shell like Alo Bama and Bill C. did before him.”
“Be patient,” replies his sister-in-law. “He has to get to the point in his own, circular way. That’s what makes him such a great speaker.”
“Jimmy was better.”
“Nice of you to say.”
“He *was.*”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0704, Alabama, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
So Spocari’s plan worked, Dr. I.C. Yourinsides thought. I can breathe freely down here! No tiredness after 3 hours. But I better get back for another regeneration session with Lt. Gunnhead. No use risking everything at this point.
California and Nevada.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0614, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
“Yes, thank you Penn Mann. But we kind of already *knew* where the mound was on this sim map.” Waste of thin space he sometimes is, she thought to herself, but only huffed outwardly.
Embarrassed, Penn Mann moved away from the map and propped himself back up against the wall beside Dr. I.C. Yourinsides. After considering the next step, he thought into their heads again. “Give me your idea of how Tronesisia — Sissy — and this Rocky being I hadn’t met until yesterday’s rehearsals — fine fellow, though — tell me how they knew about Billy’s secret hideout. Any clues?”
“We don’t *need* clues, Penn Mann. Mr. Director.” Dr. I.C. blew out air again. “It *happened*. Tronesisia and Rocky noticed that there were 3 extra prims on the property the other day. They’re very meticulous about counting, since they leave full building permissions on that property for the various entertainers passing through. They used remote viewing to pretty quickly find the cube, the most solid and rounded of the 3, just under the floor of the nightclub. This led (them) to the other two objects linked to the cube — the copy of ‘I, Robot’ by another Carter person apparently [sic], and then the Jimmy Carter cutout that represents Billy’s *real* brother, or what he takes to be his real brother anyway. It’s all brainwashery, though: the alien disguise, everything. He’s really human through and through in this production. But he’s not really a he.”
“So it *is* you.”
Penn Mann considered this as well. “What about the public urination, then, the pissing with the [delete name]? And Mr. Yellow. Or Yellows, 2 of ’em. He drank the special brew, but is then discovered pissing it back out at that public landing spot for Wallytown, all out in the open and all. But it takes two Mr. Yellows, combined, to accomplish this. What does that mean?”
Dr. I.C. threw up her hands, then figuratively punted. “You take it Spocari Nemoy.”
“Captain,” admonished Nemoy. “Use the title when speaking to me in this war room. I outrank you.”
Dr. I.C. blew him a raspberry with this. “Go ahead then, *Captain*. Give our Director Mann a dose of some more truth. He wants fiction, we give him reality back.” She turned to Penn Mann again. “All this *happened* to us — get that through your thin, ink filled head.” She looked him over. “Which side is your head anyways?”
“Biker Chick,” went Penn Mann on a tangent again in their heads. He had this in common with his Urbane Blue director doppleganger: Eraserhead Man. Without eyes, without mouth, he turned his attention to the black and pink clad woman sitting beside Nemoy, who was markedly leaning in the opposite direction from her, obviously uncomfortable with her presence here. “We seem to need a fresh perspective on this,” Penn Mann thought. “Give us what you think.”
Dr. I.C. Yourinsides spoke up again. “Biker Chick doesn’t know anything; she has just arrived.”
“Nevertheless,” insisted Penn Mann inside their heads. “I am *still* the director of the production, despite what you may think, Good Doctor.”
“Oh Lord,” she exasperated. “Go ahead, then, Biker-Chick-still-not-even-with-a-name-yet. Tell us what you got.”
“Heidi,” she piped up in a thin voice after a pause. “My name is Heidi.” But Nemoy and Yourinsides both realized it was actually Penn Mann speaking *through* this person. She looks down at her hands, wiggles them around. She reaches up and touches her face, her eyes, her mouth.
And then she touches something else. “How do you like *these* apples?”
Spocari Nemoy started to feel red-blooded again. This is what he didn’t like about biker chicks, among many other things. But this above all else. What would Marlon Brando do? he thinks for not the first nor last time.
He makes a mental note to schedule another regeneration session with Lt. Gunnhead asap.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0408, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
Picard’s voice sputtered over the staticy intercom. “Captain Nemoy?”
“Yes? What is it?” came the deep, level voice, doused with a good amount of irritation. Oh he truly *hoped* he didn’t have to go up into *space* again and deal with this or that. He so loved it here in his underwater lair. But Chief Communication Officer Justin Picard’s voice was almost always a harbinger of such things.
“Just a friendly reminder from Dr. I.C. Yourinsides that you have that debriefing with the new transfer in 15 minutes in the War Room. It’s on Deck 1 of 15…”
“Yes, yes, I *know* where the space station’s War Room is.” Dufus, he tacks on to himself. Spocari Nemoy had totally forgotten about the scheduled meeting. The fascinating topic of analyzing and then quantifying the possibility of sub-atomic sea horses will have to wait.
—–
“Penn Mann??” questioned Spocari to Dr. I.C. after teleporting directly into the War Room 30 minutes later. It was a red flagged landmark in his inventory: red for trouble. “What’s our director doing in this meeting? Was there a problem with the production? Besides the fact that we’re still in August and we’re almost halfway through this Collagesity graphic novel called ‘2018 *Later*’. What’s the next one to be called: ‘2018 *Even* Later’?”
“We have another, different quandry now,” Penn Mann thought into both their brains with a thin voice. “Mrs. Blue Jay Wade is 4 months pregnant but is perfect for the part. However, ‘Collagesity 2018 Later’ is scheduled to run through the middle of October, when the baby will definitely start to show.”
“Then just use camera angle trickery,” groused Spocari Nemoy. “Like they did with Lucy Ricardo in ‘Bewitched’. Hide her behind some grocery bags, etcetera.”
A pause of about 30 seconds. Then: “She has an understudy, but it is a biker chick. I know you hate working with those kind after that remake of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, Captain.”
Captain Spocari Nemoy’s face screwed up until he recognized the error. “It was ‘The Wild One,’ Penn Mann.” Pen*head* he thought inwardly, then said: “For a director you often don’t seem to know a lot about movies.”
“Marlon Brando in both, yes,” came Penn Mann’s voice again in their heads. “My mistake. But I will also correct you: you’re thinking about Elizabeth Montgomery in the ‘Bewitched’ show. Lucy Ricardo starred in that more famous tv trope ‘I Love Lucifer’.”
“Alright, enough of this,” Dr. I.C. Yourinsides spoke up. “We have to make a decision about Mrs. Blue Jay Wade. All she’s going to do is scream about her husband’s head being pulled off by Big Red. I’ve read the proposed script. Let’s go with the biker chick and save us a lot of trouble. This coming from a woman and a mother of 7.” Then she couldn’t help herself. “*Look* at me,” she offered, indicating her slim waist and overall figure. “Would you even know I had *one*?”
“Okay,” returned Penn Mann, not looking over at the many eyed alien beside him (since he himself didn’t have any eyes — no mouth, no eyes). “We’ll start Kelley DeForrest tomorrow. Sorry Captain Nemoy. Biker chick it is — the women have spoken.”
“Sh-t.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0309, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
“Bring me out of it in 5 minutes Lt. Gunnhead.”
“You – are – so – amaaa – zing, caap – tain,” the 12 foot tall robot beside him, with a “gun head” indeed, clunked out from a larger, stubbier nozzle that acted as his official mouth. “Soon – you – will – not – need – regen – er – aaation – at – aall.”
“Hopefully. I don’t know how Dr. I. C. does it. 30 minutes every 3 hours now? *I* wouldn’t even make it, perhaps.”
“Paaain – ful?” sputtered the robot. “You – said – beefore — no – paaain.”
“I lied, Gunnhead. I’m learning from you lot.” Cpt. Spocari smiled steadily at Gunnhead as the brief regeneration began, emphasizing how successful he was at hiding a wince now.
“Quaal – i – ty – over – quaan – ti -ty – yes,” nodded the watching, awed robot. “Greeeen.” I think we have a bit of a ro-bro crush going on here.
“Captain Spocari,” requested Dr. I.C. from the deck immediately below.
“Not – NOW. Regen – er – aaation.”
“Yes. I now see that process is occurring from my monitor, Lt. Gunnhead. Thank you for the explanation — and the warning.” Dr. I.C. had learned to be kind to the towering robot at all times. To save from rages; don’t want any more rages. No indeed. “But we have another transfer coming aboard. The yellow fog is forming even now.”
Lt. Gunnhead quickly calculated that it had been 3 weeks, 2 days, 4 hours, 37 minutes, and 53 seconds since the last such transfer. And this after they came so fast immediately after the catastrophe. Fisher, Bendy, Hector, Lewis, Gerry, but then no one until now. “I – wiill – bring – hiim – out,” he acquiesced. The robot knew this could be a very important, new development. The numerous guns making up his head would remain unfired for now. Retractors: on.
“Yes. It’s phasing in now — a woman. I think.” Dr. I.C. looks over, then checks the vitals again on her monitor. “Yes. Definitely female.” Yay! she celebrates inwardly. Finally someone to talk to.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0308, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
“What do you see outside the window?”
“Umm, a mound?”
“Good. That’s the mound where we lost Hector and Lewis. And two fine Russian Greys they were!”
“Yes. Sorry to hear about the loss of your alien friends, doctor,” Tronesisia responded.
“I.C., please. As in Ice Cream.”
“Yes.”
“Now turn to your right.”
“Hold on.”
“What do you see now?”
—–
“This is the night I’m going to do it,” Roger Pine Ridge mutters in the general direction of Natali/Molly. Another day off for the latter, but she was too interested this time not to care. Roger was going through the door, he said. She’d heard the story before — a choice between green and red. Which way to flip, etc. She only understood a portion of what’s been uttered by the sad former Floydian, but resonance was there. She too had made a similar decision. Her alter ego: Molly (Lustrous). Colors again; violet and orange in her case.
“The other wizard chose red,” she tried to help. “It turned out okay. Ultra successful film franchise and all. String of best seller books.”
“Yeah, but it may have turned out better if he’d been clad in green. Obscurity has its rewards. Hidden in the depths, the mud, the *muck*. A jewel in the rough. Not rough: just a jewel in hiding. Alexandrite, perhaps. Best of both worlds.” He sighed. “One way to find out.”
“So you’re going through with your trip to Corsica, huh.”
“Short stop on Jeogeot first, though — Dewey, weirdly enough. ‘Nother map synch.”
—–
True, pure water bubbled and splashed just outside the door.
“You’ve made a wise decision, Roger Waters, um, Pine Ridge,” spoke the green doppleganger standing before him. “Obscurity here we come!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0215, Corsica, Jeogeot, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
Poor, pitiful creature, Dr. I C. Yourinsides thought, returned to life from the ice cream truck catastrophe like the others. Only *one* eye.
Didn’t she read about a town over in the Atoll Continent that was ruled by such a being, though? She’ll have to look it up later on at her personal console.
—–
Ah yes, here ’tis. Collagesity. Class 2 population place, which is more like a village. The continent also contains a class 3 pp named Olde Lapara Towne — logically: a town, then. And, wow, even a class 4 city (!), just a notch below the Linden controlled class 5 superburgs of Bay, Nautilus, Kama. VHC City it’s called here in this Baker Blinker Blog. But it’s, hmm, bakerbloch.com. Two Bakers.
Wristband monitor alert warned that her energy was running low again. Only 3 hours since the last regeneration. Continuing effects of the New Island catastrophe radiation seem to be worsening lately for unknown reasons. Unable to go groundside until the situation stabilizes. Wouldn’t make it.
Two of those who didn’t make it.
But it’s not New Island below us now, she considers. It’s Fishers Island. She needed to study up more on the differences between the two, and what the consequences are for the SHIFT from one to the other. Given the shituation, this could obviously be bad news, at least for her as a strangely organed alien.
Another class 4 pp immediately below. Multi-sim. Dr. I.C. is manipulating the space as best she can remotely. Red and green banners indicating the continued presence of New Island witch Mid Hazel there. Bar Lemon, a link between past and present. Mr. Yellows too. Wrongful combination. Different kind of pp. A Moon rising against a far Wall, full of caged creatures as well. IT IS FULL. All of that last part due to the last true wizard possessing the Rainbow Sphere now.
—–
Roger Pine Ridge finally found a place in Wallytown where he felt safe to manifest the sphere. Cul-de-sac; no interior to the surrounding buildings. He burned a hole through the fabric of time-space with his cigarette and prepared to look inside again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0115, New Island^, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
Young Ruby looked far and wide for her missing friend Shirley Boot, starting with Yd Bay on the far side of New Island, hoping to hell she didn’t find another bobbing head there like she did before with Trashy the Clown’s (she didn’t).
Another place to visit was Faux Aunt Annie and Karl’s Gloomy Gus on the west coast. Now the last couple of times we checked in — well, actually throughout this *whole* novel, looking back — it seems that Annie was in a heap of trouble with all these pills and incessant dancing and, um, the other thing. And she was! But the death of Trashy the Clown, although extremely difficult to get over at first, was a blessing in disguise. She cleaned up, with aid from loving beau Karl — locked up in the Gloomy Gus for going on two weeks. She emerged exhausted and dehydrated and still a little nauseous, but ready to move forward into the future without drugs and the other, attached things. Karl was her focus now, her beacon of light. So we have a happy ending to that part of our story, and an important one it is. But no luck for Ruby this day — no sign of Shirley there.
Mrs. Fogg and Ms. Frame, now moved in together for mutual protection, food, and liberty, hadn’t seen her either. That basically took care of the whole northwest section of the island, so active these two women were with their sailing and beach running and frequent picnics to the top of Mt. Sondra where they had a commanding view of that part of New Island.
Blue Jay Wade was dead, and his former chum turned complete psychopath Big Red Butler remained incarcerated at the Gaston-Berry jail, at least for this week. But neighbor Zettie Lamont the zebra-ass, similar to Fogg and Frame, had a pretty good view of the lower western part of the island from his perch atop Pimushe Isle. He relayed to the disappointed Ruby that he hadn’t seen the young girl either.
How about one of the houseboats or yachts at the Diamond Sailing Club? Possibility, but since Lisa the Vegetarian Smipson left for Corsica, she has no contacts there.
No one lived at Artist Point in the southeast section of the island. The east was dominated by Mid Hazel’s compound of buildings. Ruby felt that if Shirley had somehow gotten stuck over there she was doomed anyway. Lost to a powerful witch.
Which left center: Mabel’s house (Mabel and roommates Fisher and Bendy had seen nothing), Eraserhead Man and his Rabbit Hole house (nada again), and Robot Derak Jones (who said, check with Eraserhead Man, which she’d just done). Hmm, she thought, standing in the middle of central Route 9 dividing the island almost cleanly in two. She looked down at the buildings: Elephant Club, Axis’ Castle, Flossie’s, a new place beside Bumpy’s Ice Cream Village. “*Wait*,” she suddenly exclaimed. “The Village! I could ask Lavern Glam. She has eyes everywhere.”
So we head back to the ice cream truck, the sole component of this so-called village. Use to be bigger in the day, as they say. But Mr. Glam sold part of his original land to the Elephant Club, who turned it into their western parking lot, and then part to Oranga Black who built the Arcade in back. He downsized from a double wide trailer with indoor seating to the small truck we’ve already seen in that last post, whose cab also doubled as his daughter’s bedroom for a while. She didn’t mind: she felt she remained in the center of it all that way.
Ruby approached the truck. “You’re not Lavern Glam.”
“Yet *you* remain oh-so-red Ruby Roo,” spoke the alien behind the counter. “Exactly 15 1/2 today, this minute, this, um, second actually. Your anti-birthday.”
The island blew up around them. To those on the outside, those who survived, they describe the sound it made as close if not the same as middle C on a piano. Queer, huh? Too queer? We’ll see…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0615, New Island^
Shirley Boot approached the ice cream truck cautiously. “You’re not Lavern,” she says while walking up.
“And you’re not Shirley.” Shirley Boot looks down.
—–
Dr. Ice Cream, as the many eyed being is calling herself now, serves Bendy a triple dip chocolate twirl. “So, there you go (!)”
Bendy gently but firmly grasps the loaded down cone with his metal claw and begins to gobble up. Soon he’ll have an ice cream headache, but that’s a worry for later. Cool, delicious triple dip twirl for now! Yum yum yum, nom nom nom.
“Heard you had quite the scare the other night,” the doctor says conversationally. “Thought Fisher ran off with a younger man on ya.”
“Woman, actually,” he manages between gobbles. “Yellow.”
Dr. I.C. stares at Bendy. “Racist?” she questions about him aloud.
“No… Lisa?” Dr. I.C. continues to stare, as if she can see his insides. Bendy then realizes she’s talking about him. “No, no, no,” he defends between nom nom noms. “*Actual* color. Cartoon color. And she’s got a missing yellow brother that I know on good word is still here… on the island. Just invisible to the eye unless you know *exactly* where to look.”
“Then he’s a butthole, an anus,” Dr. I.C. declares, thinking of the planet Uranus.
“He does have the degenerative male Smipsons gene,” Bendy offers, trying to excuse Bartholomew’s natural bastardliness a bit. Another delicious gob of triple dip slides down his gullet.
“Oh I think he has a choice,” counters Dr. I.C, wiping down the counter. “I see a lot. I know the ins and outs of people around here… people everywhere. He’s invisible because he’s a menace to societal law. Refuge. As bad as Big Red Butler if you ask me. Go ahead… ask me.”
Bendy takes 2 quick licks and does what Dr. I.C. requests. “Um, *is* he as bad as, er, Big Red Butler?”
“Yes. Now ask me something else. I have the answers to most everything if you pries around my corners.” Oh look, she then thought evily. What’s that just around the corner of my truck? Beyond the kiln mysteriously placed just in the way.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0614, New Island^
Sunklands 