Tag Archives: Jonathan Cage^*======+++

March 14, 2023 · 1:37 am

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I’m going to do things a little differently this go ’round. The focus groundside will be Sunklands Institute, pictured here. Up in the air is where I’m going to be doing some experimenting. Point is, I’m back on Nautilus, and maybe even a better place than Fordham, than Rooster’s Peninsula. I won’t give out the location because it’s all still being set up — may take longer to solidify this time, or at least that’s what’s in my mind right now. It all pivots around Sunklands. Another Table meeting could be happening very soon.

The big Nautilus map back in skybox 02 is lighting up again: location of Lemont Sanford and Shelley Struthers renewing their wedding vows upper center (Uberto); Burro Alley and attached Slaashides community where Johnny Cage came from just up there in the left hand corner. And more in the middle… not Collagesity. Pretty sure of that. It’s all an alchemical roller coaster of a ride I’m still enjoying, even after a decade an a 1/2’s worth of involvement in Our Second Lyfe. I have more to mine here.

Nautilus is a way station.

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March 9, 2023 · 12:30 pm

death at the saloon

He stands in the 4th and stares out at a Hill fronting another hill in the distance. He knows the mystery of the Silver Nuggets is buried along with her blurred given name — he can’t make it out on the queerly angled monolith before him. “Jnlo,” he tries aloud, a mere slur of the truth. Sirens, then, in the distance; dust trails along the road below him from this vantage point, the one belonging to Shakespeare and not Lordsburg, but not for much longer. The present is about the breach the past in order to find him, the perpetrator. The bully of the town and then some. True murderer we have here, two times over. Nikki and Hal. Who could have seen it coming, except everyone who had ever read the Bard.

—–

“Blurred”, speaks Barry DeBoy about the pale face in the center. “I’m afraid we’ll never know.”

“Truth,” says Hucka D. to this.

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March 8, 2023 · 9:35 am

Lemon Cove

“I’ve been betrayed? By a *triangle*??”

“I can explain.”

—–

He often thought of that day he found Elvira with a shape. Three corners and the truth, he knew after that. So far did he run to square and the extra corner that he didn’t have time to stop. Until today. Decision. The portal would be open again to New Mexico: 7:15 this morning. He could take his bike and just ride ride ride, never looking back. Stupid second world, he thought and almost spat on the ground, at least imagined it. The powers that be had a plan. He would blend in with a pack of choppers heading south from Los Lunas, become part of the pack itself. “Do whatever you have to to accomplish this important important mission,” spoke his most immediate boss. And so he found Nikki at Silver City when the rowdies that had been hounding him since almost the beginning finally and completely dropped away (siren calls just here there and there), rode alongside her until the Shakespearean end. He didn’t plan to fall in love on the other side but love happens, as they say. Yeah, he also thought of the triangle as he made his plans for the future with her, used that negative energy to propel himself away away away from Burro Alley and the possibility of return.

He sat here like a lifeguard on that fated day, actually imagining blonde Nikki from the future before (and below) him. Across the namesake cove, not quite in the corner but getting there: the 4th, the future — without Elvira, Our Second Lyfe, his triangle of bratty kids, pheh. “Elvira can take care of them,” he said aloud, still staring down at the form that had taken shape. “They all take after her anyway; best that like stays with like.” He refused to see his own brattiness, the bully that he’d become in his negative thinking about this that and that. So if Nikki likewise betrayed him… well, it won’t end pretty.

“How pretty,” he said, oblivious to this possibility.

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March 7, 2023 · 12:06 am

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When he shot out of the 1st to 2nd life portal known as Burro Alley, Santa Fe, New Mexico at 9:34 Mountain Time on Sunday, March 5th, 2023, he had a good idea this would be his last trip to reality reality. He’d prepared for this moment, said goodbye, in effect, to the virtual wife and kids — if it came to that. Because he didn’t intend to go back to playing second fiddle in a second life devoid of 3 of the 5 major senses, subtract psychic, which was in fact stronger over there. He cherished feeling the bumps in the brick pavement of the alley, loved the smell of fresh bread coming from the Burro Alley Cafe beside the stick laden burro statue at the entrance, reveled in the taste of their fish tacos for breakfast, dinner and sometimes lunch, if fish burritos, which he didn’t like as much, weren’t substituted on the menu.

—–

“The plot deepens.”

“Or thickens,” Hucka D. responds, taking another gander at the photo Barry’d produced from a facebook page on the ghost town. Can-can girls in Shakespeare, the past come to life. Both knew this was an important clue. They’d just produced the word “cancan” in a collage created by folding up the back of a 1923 German dance recital poster found in Hal’s saloon near the center of the resurrected village. Or altered village is perhaps a better way to put it, since both dead and alive versions are just as real as the other. Featured Isadora (or Isadore) Duncan and her daughter Irma, joined at the hip now through the collage fresh as a wet drink produced for a condemned bully whose throat was bone dry from defending himself and saying other locals had perpetrated much more heinous crimes. Didn’t work: hanged in the Grant Hotel Dining Room alongside a cattle rustler. Could have been Barry and Hucka’s fate as well except it wasn’t.

“And the Hills buried on a hill (above the town formerly known as Grant in a county formerly part of Grant). Don’t forget that — fits in with Grant Hill, who drinks sprite, both lemon and lime together to produce something not quite as good as either separately.”

“Another one to wet the whistle.”

“Yess.”

—–

The dog burrows deeper.

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March 6, 2023 · 1:16 pm

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They’d prepared 2 nooses for “folding f-cks” Barry and Hucka down at the dining hall of the Grant Hotel, named after the president and not visa versa. But that’s when the choppers arrived from the north, disrupting everything as stated. Johnny Cage was hiding amongst them, blending in as best he could, speed included. Around Silver City, Nikki (that’s it: Nikki; not Penny, not Wanda) slowed down enough to ride alongside him for a while, enough to strike up a friendship, enough to open doors for the potential of more. By Lordsburg, Johnny had made up quite a number of scenarios in his head, all involving Nikki and marriage, some with babies, some not. In some they just ride and ride off into the proverbial sunset, the wind in their hair and the moon at their backs. Others they use to the top 5 gears of their 15 speed mountain bikes (which Nikki had bought in the meantime, ditching her motorized version) to climb the highest peaks of each of the 50 states, Florida and its puny 345 foot high Britton Hill included. “Well start with that,” he said in one version. “Just to get you acclimatized to mountain air, ha ha.” And then he laughed a bit in reality at his imagined joke. Nikki motoring to his side noticed. “What’s so funny, Johnny?” she asked, but before he could answer they were upon the sign. Shakespeare thata way, ghost town no more. The Void saw to that. He could feel it deep in his bones now, starting at his modified neck and working down. If he could just figure out a way to steal it outta here he’d be a rich rich man, set for life in whatever form it decides to take in his future. Babies? Sunsets? Mountains? One way to find out. They followed the choppers that managed to beat them down the now dusty road, beside the water tank with the town name emblazoned on its front.

As they passed, the LORD on it sank below the horizon with the rest, history come back to life.

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March 5, 2023 · 11:14 pm

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He pulled up to the station even though he didn’t need gas, just to look like the rest of the crowd. Despite being unmotorized, he’d outraced half of the choppers here he blended into around Los Lunas. Rowdy crowd — didn’t take to his showoffiness. Tried to shoot his tires out a couple of times but he just weaved and bobbed his way to safety. At one point he had to ride through the desert for a couple of miles to avoid bullets. Finally around Silver City enough of the real troublemakers had dropped out so that he could feel at ease with the rest — attached to one bar or brothel or another along the way — siren calls. He’d actually made a friend, he felt. More on that later: an escape hatch from a lifetime of crime and corruption otherwise. Penny might be her name. Wanda?

—–

*Meanwhile*, on Nautilus…

Shelley Struthers got her wish. We, the Baker family as a whole, have returned to the Nautilus continent, which she’s decided should remain an Our Second Lyfe focus. Now the big Nautilus map in my skybox becomes very relevant again. I bought waterfront property quite cheaply, so I can, in all likelihood, recoup my money and then some from the purchase. Not far from the old Collagesity location in Fordham. More details soon!

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March 2, 2023 · 3:20 am

walking, stopping

“So you see, the railroad came through *here* instead of Lordsburg. The village thrived — in the ways it could. You have saloons, you have hotels, a mercantile store, a brothel of course. And actual *residences*, not just tents thrown up on a hillside. A living, breathing town, like it should be. All powered by The Void over there, tucked safely away in a barn with a big sign warning everyone away like a nuclear accident. Better outside than inside — right Barry?” She laughed, remembered his dream of her arrival before it actually happened. The bed was a bathroom.

“Yeah, right,” he said, somewhat irritated that was brought up but also still in awe of what Hucka D. had achieved. Bringing a whole ghost town back to life. She was indeed a spiritual warrior.

“And here, my dear friend, my dear *lover*, is *our* residence. I hope it’s to your liking.

Calm before the storm we have here, because bikers would arrive soon. And amongst them, disguised as one of their kind but definitely not: Johnny Cage again. He’d tracked them down, thanks to the voidometer he knew would come in handy one day despite the prohibitive cost, bankrupting him at the time, even. He decided he wouldn’t eat for the next year, and, voila, in the black again by March April’s May. And then he’d been bought out by a bigger and crookeder outfit because of its presence upon him, implanted in his neck as it were so no one could get at it without death. He’d booby trapped his whole body to make sure that didn’t happen. If he went, so did the surgeon trying to slice it out of him, so did the *device*, more importantly, which was growing in value by the weeks, days, months. Enough of that… back to the story.

(to be continued)

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February 28, 2023 · 9:26 am

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“I’ve *been* here for 2 weeks,” complained Johnny Cage, tiring of the assignment in Slaashsides. He was ready to get back home to his wife Elvira and kids Lester, Luke and Leonard Jay (Leno). But the problem was: Barry DeBoy was a quick healer, a *real* quick healer — like he stood outside of time or something (as his supervisor exasperatedly explained over the phone to him) — and that he may be needed for another one of those “accidents” again.

“We need you to stay close to that New Mexico portal,” he said. “That’s the only way we know how still to reach him. Work on your biking, work on your *bike*,” he suggested. “Slaashsides is fairly big — about a 1/2 sim as I recall. Just ride around and around, check your tires, check your gears, handle, seat — *everything*. Just don’t go groundside yet. And that’s an order, John, from the guys and gals upstairs that pay *both* our salaries and bonuses. You got a big bump recently. Don’t screw all this up. You need to start thinking about your pension — the future. Think of little Leno.”

The stinky green pocketbook displayed on the side of the news stand was starting to get overwhelming. “Listen, I have to go,” spoke Johnny Cage. “I’ll do what you said. I’ll keep them happy. But either get me back to New Mexico or get me back home pretty quickly. I can’t stand these halfway places, neither here nor there.” And with this he hung up the receiver, rather slammed it back in the carriage really, and walked up the sidewalk and turned left again. Back to Burro Alley, pheh.

10 days, he determined while treading carefully on its slicker surface — not daring to hurt himself as he would hurt others. That’s all I’m going to put up with it.

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February 27, 2023 · 2:16 pm

Boothell

The Void had come to Mountainair in January 2008, drove right through the middle of the town *basically* unnoticed. Probably on a bike. Probably unmotorized so as to cut down on the attention. Barry found this out on his computer back at the hotel, only 2 blocks away from the passage. The Void was making a statement, he knew. Best to get out of town before “accidents” happen again. The Duck was presently gone but for how long?

“The bottom of the state,” he urged to Hucka Doobie that night. “That’s probably what it means.”

And indeed Shakespeare is to be found there. Hucka D. knew the area well.

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February 21, 2023 · 11:55 pm

broken cowboy

So here it is, thought Barry DeBoy, out of the hotel and its Duck and back on the plains, thankfully. To find the actual Void.

“On your right!” shouts passing biker Johnny Cage. But there was only left. Collision. KaBAMM!

Mission accomplished well enough, as he checked. Johnny will be able to afford pheasant tonight. Barry: back to Duck.

—–

“It hurts soo bad, Hucka Doobie.”

“There, there,” she consoled, reaching over and patting his remaining good arm. “The doctor said it will take days, even months.”

“Must… get… back, ahh.” He collapses in pain. Hucka D. knew The Void could wait. But she had to stay with him now fer sure. She looks over. That darn quacker! I’ve got to do something about it once and for all.

There was always… Maw.

—–

She picked up the receiver of the green phone, dialed all the numbers except 4.

“Hallo?”

Turns out she was just downstairs, what are the odds?

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