Even though it’s primitive in many ways compared to newer games like Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 02, and even the older Grand Theft Auto V from 2013, there’s still great beauty to be found in Our Second Lyfe.
I was not suppose to come here as the other one. I was suppose to come here as someone new, someone they didn’t recognize and perhaps could learn from. I was always positioned between the 2, I felt.
But Lexi kept thinking about Shelley — that’s why she was here. She was sent away to find the One.
She didn’t see the candy sentry until it was too late. “What do you want?” he rather boomed down at her. “We’ve had trouble around here recently. Creature named Lich. I’m lucky to still be standing.” Silence. Lexi was contemplating what to say to this being, obviously a transplant from an entirely different dimension, she sensed. “Had – TROUBLE,” he emphasized, still glowering down. She had to say something, so:
“Shelley Johnston Struthers. Or Johnson,” she cited the variable name for the middle. “Looking for her. Heard she passed through here.”
“*This* is the castle of the High Princess Pinky Gumm I’ll have you know. You will *not* come around here looking for another.”
“Hmm.” This guy was fronting a rather ordinary looking house as far as she could tell and not a castle. He’s mad as in crazy mad too? “Okay okay,” she relented. “I’ll bite. I’m actually here to see the Princess. Princess Gummy Pink.”
“Princess *Pinky Gumm*,” the candy sentry proudly corrected.
“Yeah, that one. She in?”
“Of course she’s in. She’s *ill*. She cannot leave her bed.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.” Lexi started worrying about communicable diseases more than finding Shelley, at least for the moment. But is this princess actually Shelley? Shelley’s royalty in her book but that’s just the hormones talking. And she’s kind of pink as well. “Catching?”
“Catching *what*?” he issued from above.
“Is whatever she has catching?” she rephrased, still staring up at his gummy ball machine head and wondering how all that worked for brains and all.
“Of course not. She’s *possessed*. By that Lich I mentioned before. You can’t catch possessed.”
“Soo… there’s something inside her? This Lich?”
“That is correct. Now — go along or I’ll have to alert the banana guards of your presence. They are positioned at the, ahem, basement doors just here… there… there… and there.” While speaking and whirling around in place, he points at what appears to be each side of the house behind him. He’d changed his mind about a visit. This person below him, this *cyberpunk* it appeared from the implants in her head, was simply too snoopy, too suspicious seeming. He decided to reveal that he was not alone in guarding the grounds; strength in numbers.
Lexi sees no signs of guards, knows that regular basements only have one door in and out. At least where she grew up in Horner’s Corners Kansas like the Mary Anne she is. Before it was flooded by the lake. That hellish, damned lake. More fantasy from this toy dude, she judged. Maybe the princess is made up too. She decides to question further.
“So the princess is actually not seeing people right now?”
“Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe yesterday but that is too late for you. Check back in a month. No: make it 5. 5 years, 10 years to be totally safe.” He knew that, in all likelihood, Our Second Lyfe would not even be around after 10. Safe indeed.
“Couple more things and then I’ll go on my way. I’m sorry: the person I’m actually looking for must not be here,” she admitted. She wasn’t dead sure of this but she decided to say it anyway.
“She is *not*,” the candy sentry emphasized. “Only the High Princess Pinky Gumm from Candyland. We’re all from Candyland here. *You’re* not. You don’t belong here. *One* more question and be gone.”
“Alright.” Lexi knew this had to be a winner. “This Lich. Anything to do with Fern?”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 