Is *this* how I wound up here? Fern pondered from inside the crate, back in her normal garb. Box drop?
Is *this* the true savior? observing Edward thought from his dimmer view of the world within the larger of the 2 shacks in the vicinity. Cube drop?
If only he’d seen her walk on water earlier he’d be convinced.
“Hello!?” he ventured from the other side of the window. “Can I help you!?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0306, Blue Feather Sea+, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City
“Try to open this door,” Silverhhand said as I walked up. Around the corner, just as Blue Moon indicated.
I went up to the keypad, noticed the thing was laid out like that of a traditional phone, 3 or 4 letters grouped under each number. This:
2 corresponds to A, B, C
3 corresponds to D, E, F
4 corresponds to G, H, I
5 corresponds to J, K, L
6 corresponds to M, N, O
7 corresponds to P, Q, R, S
8 corresponds to T, U, V
9 corresponds to W, X, Y, Z
“Jesus. We’re almost at the end. Hurry up with it, will you.”
And so I took Jonny literally and carefully typed in 53787, the numbers standing for the letters in the name he just gave me. JESUS. No go. Then I thought of the WOW signal that had replaced JESUS in Grand Theft Auto’s version of Richard Knight’s Salvation Mountain over in the southwest part of the state, and, suspiciously, containing some of the same letters. What was it? I thought. Yes, 6E, um Q, J, and, er, 5. U somewhere in there too. Right, 6EQUJ5, I put them together in my head. That sounded right. So I figured out the corresponding numbers for the included letters and then typed 637855, so close to the other number. The door opened after I punched in 8, so only 4 needed. Even closer, then: 6378 to 5378. Only 1 after if we count in 1000s. I walked inside.
Silverhhand manifested on a lighted table in the revealed room full of high tech equipment. “Well what do we have here?” He was staring at a huge projection screen on the far wall, maybe a TV. He picked up a conveniently placed guitar, started strumming a tune he said was called “Beast of Tousaint”. “Ring any kind of bell?” he asked after playing a couple of bars. “Say… a mountaintop?” Suddenly images began to form on the screen across from us, layered one after another in a kind of domino effect. All this confused me at first. The people in the images appeared… different than the ones in Nightsity. They seemed alien to me. Then I recognized one about 5 in, which caused a domino effect itself. From there until the end of the “presentation” about 30 slides later many if not most seemed familiar. I had indeed seen them before. On a mountaintop. In Tousaint. I told this to Jonny who had finished his song by then.
“Good boy. Good, We’re ready to go out to the Oil Fields.” And his 97 silver 911 Porsche manifested before the screen representing a quick way out there. Would take hours to walk.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0615, C2077, California, Kabusie, Witcher
She recognized him while he passed her on the mean streets of her beat, apparently holding an invisible phone. “Hey, you’re Frank’s friend,” she said to him, making him stop in his tracks. “The, what was it. Bank robber.”
He spun ’round, approached her aggressively. “How the hell do you know– about *that*” He was upon her, poked a finger into her exposed cleavage with the emphasized word.
“Relax, baby doll,” she said, playfully swatting the appendage away. “Soon the world will know. He’s writing a book about it. *Mikie*.”
No one had called him that since he was a kid. And lived. He instinctively pulled out a gun, trained it on her head. “Listen lady of the night, whoever you are–”
“I already told you,” she cooed. “I’m Frank’s friend.”
“*No*. You said *I* was Frank’s friend. And that you recognized me. And that I robbed banks for a living.”
“Simmer down simmer down.” She approached him this time, grasped the gun, gently lowered it to his midsection and slowly let go. “Men always acting through their penises mm mm mm.” Her head came close to his; she licked her lips a bit. “I didn’t say *banks*. I said bank. As in North Yankton. Or as Frank decided to call it in his infinite wisdom, Yankton. Just Yankton. No North.” Her mouth was about 3 inches from his, ruby red like her hair, her dress. “But it’s easy enough to translate. And then look up.”
Mikie backed away, shook his head, got animated with his hands, one of which still held that pistol but perhaps also invisible by this point. “You — don’t know what you’re talking about, lady–”
“Redd,” she inserted.
“W-what?”
“My name is Redd.”
He looked her over again, noted all the red. “Okay whatever. But you’re talking crazy lady. Frank doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And, you say, he’s putting this in a *book*?”
“Yeah. Chapter One. How my best friend and mentor Mikie Wikie robbed a bank in Yankton and then died but came back to life. Like Jesus. Are you… Jesus?” She cocked her head knowingly. “You still gonna shoot me… Jesus?” She took out a cigarette from her purse, lit it up, puffed. “Last cigarette, then.” She let out smoke. “Give me some time — Virginia Slim, you see,” she said about the brand, known for its longness as well as flavor and lasting power. She puffed and puffed while he just gawked; finally put away the pistol back in his pocket.
He woke up.
—–
He called his new-ish friend and protege after he got good and awake. “Hey. Listen, er, Frank. You’re not writing some kind of book or something by chance, are you?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0510, GTA
I came here…
… in a boat.
Cool! though Frank Lynn while encountering this object just beyond the edge of the faux sea and its partially sunk vessel. Maybe this is what my lost spool table has turned into. A model for a whole mountain of mystery! This made him even more excited to meet the creator.
He approached the truck not 20 yards away now that doubled as living quarters for the man both 10 and 85 at once. The one he would model, in his own manner, the character of Wayne Bruce upon later on. Builder of a whole city but derived from a mountain. This one.
“Mr Knight?” he called, not wanting to knock on the door or wall of the thing out of respect. “Yo, Mr. Knight. Big fan here. Just want a word if I could, dawg.”
Frank waited and waited. He heard sounds within. Someone was there (!). Being recreated as it turned out. Overt religious messages were fading from the truck as well as the mtn. behind. Everything was becoming alien oriented, JESUS, for example, being reconstructed as 6EQUJ5, “Love is Universal” turning into “Life is Universal”. Would he approve?
No. Mr. Night without the K emerged from the back, more devil than saint.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0401, Art 10x10, California, collages 2d, Greenup, GTA
“Do you not know me yet, Fern? I am the one you’re trying to forget.”
Fern wakes up, remembers everything.
—–
“Yellow Jack is where Philip Strevor turned back into Trevor Philips and resumed his Id role in the Grand Theft Auto game V,” explained Fern to Lichen later as the sun rose over her shoulder again. “Miss Janet was the key, and refusing to provide him service and saying he was still banned from the joint. He remembered his drug company, recalled his home in Sandy Shores. He was reassimilated, Lichen. Frank Lynn became the lead man after that, although we didn’t know it at the time. Frank Lynn, through Morro Bay, points to Nightsity. Did I explain the Morro Bay link yet?”
“I — I don’t think so, Fern.” Straw still not twirling. Still.
“But I have a new theory, Lichen my dearest,” she said, avoiding the temptation to spoon another pepper snake and mint ladder into her mouth swimming in what little was left of the now discolored milk in the bowl before her because of all the dissolved flavoring, the last of their kind. She wanted to speak as clear as a bell so that Lichen knew what was going down. “Aliens — now I believe it all points to the hippy egg camp outside of Sandy Shores and not Sandy Shores or Trevor or his trailer or business directly. A man named Night made it all — can’t be coincidence. But not with a K; with an N: the K person would not approve of equating his precious lord and savior Jesus with heretical aliens, you see.”
“I — see?”
“No, you don’t see, Lichen. But you will.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0312, California, Castle Town+, GTA, Omega
“Now stand back you dangerous lot, especially *you* Jittery Joe. NOW. I let Steady Susan and her twin Steadier Suzanna go because they were just up there trying to find a private spot to phone breakup with their boyfriends Bob and Roberto the Thompson Twins. But the REST of you are just as culpable as Joe in my police rulesbook. Jittery here is already on record saying he’s up to about 10 coffees a day, so its more understandable he loses control sometime in the afternoon. But the REST of you are somewhere between 3 and 8 cups a day I’m guessing.” General murmurs of agreement all around, even Jerky Jack in back who was actually up to 9. He didn’t want to highlight himself in the crime any more than the nickname already indicated. “So there wasn’t NO NEED for a mob scene… and a killing. No one knew that the late Officer Howard had the Jesus power to make many drinks out of one drink beforehand. And it was WRONG to assume he had that second and final Jesus miracle power to resuscitate himself after a snuffing to follow the first. WHO among you lousy lot thought that he was going to resurrect himself, hmm?” Hands went up one by one until all were raised. They’d read their Bible good. Only 2 miracles recorded and verified in all 4 Gospels. And the second logically followed the first they all assumed. They’d get the satisfaction of killing Howard, they felt, without the dire consequences normally associated with such actions.
“OKAY, then. Now here’s what we’re going to do. Tomorrow I’m going to temporarily let you out of this temporary pen,” and here Officer Brendan shook his head at the number of ’em, way too many to hold in their regular 2 cells which were occupied anyways. They had to be moved to the vacant house next door, guards at the front and back, guards to the sides. “Yes, you’re going home, then, and put on your Sunday best and we’re all going to march, together, down to the cemetery and honor the man whose life you took in the prime of his, well, life. Jittery Joe, you’re going to say some nice words in parting and I want each and every one of you to shake his widow’s hand and apologize for your dastardly wrong. Am I rigghhht?”
“Yes, Officer Brendan,” they collectively muttered almost in sync with each other. But also each and every one was thinking: when did Howard get married??
That morning is when. To Bermuda herself. She reached across the table to pick up a magazine to read while he kept processing her record and he stopping typing and reached with his hand to grab it. 5 fingers interlocked with another accepting 5 fingers. Since Howard was a Justice of the Peace alongside being an Officer of the Law, they could tie the knot then and there, before the mob took action on one of ’em, maybe both of ’em. Another logical progression, but one that turned out to be very right instead of very wrong. Bermuda was set to inherit everything, including the patents.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0502, Big Woods, Jeogeot
“We’re only rescuing you from yourself, ma’am,” spoke Officer Howard earnestly, responsible for the check in. “What if, say, I ran up to Starbuccaneers just above us and Barista Wanda — or whatever her name is; I just made that up — Wanda, say, gave me a free coffee this morning, on the house just for being a cop. And then let’s say I take a couple of sips and then give it over to Officer Brendan, and Officer Brendan gives it to Officer Ferguson, and Officer Ferg — well I think you get the point. Pretty soon there’s free coffee all over town and Starbuccaneer’s is not making a dime off of it, business closed. So you see it’s dangerous, really dangerous, to offer stuff for free in a capitalist economy. Say, if we were in China or Cuba it would be different.”
“But we’re not anywhere,” Bermuda (Atlantis High Priestess) countered. “We’re right here. In Aisle of Palms on the Jeogeot continent. Neither here nor there.” Kind of like the Azores, she thought to herself.
“Well,” said Officer Howard back, taken aback a bit, “I don’t know about *your* user but *my* user comes from the good ol’ red white and blue US of A up there in the Americas, no communism in sight. Er, except for Cuba as I think I mentioned before. Anyway–”
“*Anyway*,” interrupted Bermuda, eager to get this over with and be locked inside her cell, safe from what she senses might be a growing mob. “I believe I get a phone call?”
“Indeed, ahem, indeed you do,” said Officer Ferguson, suddenly tired of lecturing the virtues of trickle down economies. He indeed got his coffee free from Starbuccaneer’s this morning from someone named Wanda, indeed shared it with Brendan who shared it with Ferguson and on down the line, everyone in town with their required caffeine high and no one else visiting Wanda this morning. Like the Loaves of Bread story from the Bible, Howard being a modern day agogo Jesus. Yet he still didn’t know he had that power. Too bad he didn’t also have the Savior’s power to resurrect himself because, after the decaffeinated 3PM afternoon break mob led by Jittery Joe was finished with him, he’d need it to continue.
“Let’s GET HIM!”
“YEAAHHHHH!!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0501, Big Woods, Jeogeot, Starbuccaneers
She learned the truth about the chest that day. Octavia’s.
Borneo chest. Square. Iowa. Flying — planes (and lines (and points)).
He was… fascinated with that chest! she realized. What’s inside? Pictures of Octavia. Letters of love. Notes: “don’t forget to pick up milk at Speedy Mart before our rendezvous tonight” (etc.).
—–
She went back to her old home in (Paper-)Soap to check Mouse’s new info against her mother’s.
“Greene’s Motel,” she started. “That’s where the doctor — my father — said I was conceived.”
“Well there’s a green *door* inside. Along with a green phone. Maybe that’s what he was referring to.” Her Maw, Octavia Tart III, wondered if the old man perhaps was getting senile and confusing names with each other, overlapping colors where they shouldn’t be. Always fascinated with hues the good doctor was. Maw Tart wasn’t surprised that her old lover was involved with fellow doctors named Gray(son) and Brown, for example — fits the pattern. “Blue?!” he said one time to her, rubbing off the rouge she just put on that morning thinking it would please him. “I said red!” he said. Purple at the least, he thought to himself. She believed that was the day Alice came along. The door to her standard 104 room was locked for some reason — had to do it out back. Perhaps it was occupied, she realized now. Yes, Daisy was working that day as well. Made sense suddenly. Alice was conceived in the alley because of Daisy (she imagined). She’d have to mark it in her “Little Book of Vengeance” against the fellow hooker, now going on 12 (or 32) years at the Lucky Motel. 12 (or 32) years is too long — can’t call her Lucky now. Her: 6 (or 26). She still has some luck left but it’s running out quick. Mouse was a way out but wasted. No luck with Robert either, the owner of the swamp. Or so she thought.
“What about Claude? The golden robot?”
“What *about* Claude?” Maw Tart got tense all of a sudden, felt a surge of the unknown and probably unknowable coming, like in the Dark Days. Before the Coming of Jesus into her heart.
“Well… I mean, he — I mean, *she’s* in Cass City now. And he’s fiddling with her.”
“I bet he is,” spouts Maw Tart through the fear. Pleasure robots, *pheh*.
“No. I mean, he’s tinkering with her. Like in her parts.”
“My statement still stands.”
“*No*. Like… *reprogramming*. What do you know about the numbers 1886 and 1936?”
“I know they’re *years*.”
“50 years. Between them, I mean.”
“I’m counting, let’s see, 3822,” Maw countered, showing off her math skills and being difficult at the same time. The fear was standing just behind her now, threatening to reach into her chest with its shadowy paw and pull out her savior.
“He’s interested in hues. Red to yellow to green to blue. Or something.”
“Hues, *huh*.”
“He’s doing *something* to that robot. He’s spying on his prospective replacements, Maw.”
“HUH — wish *I* had a replacement. Then I could go work at the beer factory they opened up in Barrow County; become like Laverne and Shirley like I always wanted to.”
Alice didn’t have the heart to tell her mother. Barrow County was no more. She’d been sending her postcards from the Void.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0211, Iowa, Paper Soap+, Soap
The name of the city had changed from Cassandra to just Cass. What she knew as the Seraph Club was now the Serapis Club. She had to look that up. Old Graeco-Egyptian god associated with a Jesus-like cult. But in Our Second Lyfe, well, an interesting topic. Cult in that case headed by a doctor — looks like a Mouse. Make that: looks like Mouse (for a name (according to an attached notecard she found)). And this Cass City? Azore Islands alternate or parallel history. Pyramid, hidden from the public eye after a brief exposure. Atlantis at the bottom of everything and sloowly making its way back to the top again. She’d seen the Abyss inside. Abyss, she repeated in her mind. Dr. Mouse and his Serapis might have a point.
Better get some human clothes to go along with a human form asap. This situation needs investigating!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0204, Cass City+, Maebaleia/Satori
But he didn’t go home (Real Life/back to bed). Not yet. Instead we find him traveling through centers of sims (128/128), like here in Gaston, staring at the Dark Peak of two twins, the other topped by (a) white as hell Jesus (statue). Slavery inside the first. Black. And I found a black man in this very spot back in photo-novel 7. Perhaps staring at this very thing and understanding the truth. It wasn’t Duncan, but Duncan found out later that he was also there in hypertime. And he had red on his hands, which meant Indian and blood at the same time. What happened here?
The sim before this (Rhodenwald): also a Black man found at the center, 11 this time. But not an African-American. A man with the last name of Black, the same as his wife/partner who likewise owned part of this sim. Duncan also found this guy — normal time now — and thought he was AFK, but then he turned toward Duncan, proving his mobility and his significance (to the cause). We have mysteries, yes?
Interesting.
And, to add to all this, Gaston is just kind of an extension of Omega/Meat City/Rhodenwald. Of sorts. Both are Hidden Vilages, “l” purposely removed.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0302, Gaston+, Omega, Southern, The Cross, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
Sunklands 