“Black Swan Lake, Ringgold,” spoke Edward D’Aigle to the white hooty bird next to him who is also sometimes a hisser. Revelation! “And just beyond: the red-orange mahogany. We’ll know soon.”
Tag Archives: LIBRARY
telescope
“I need you to go somewhere I can’t go. Not quite yet. Another 2 or 3 months is all now.”
“Where?”
“Oh. Dear.”
“You’ll need to change into Miss Ouri (again). Disguise. (pause) I need you to tell someone they’re dead.”
“To you,” she attempted to clarify.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Okay.” She planned out the strategy. She knew who would approach her. She found herself becoming nervous. Okay okay, she calmed herself. You’re the head librarian of a mid sized University — (a library) trapped in a castle; that’s the twist. You were instrumental in bringing a special collections room there, red-orange mahogany in outer appearance. Inside: the Arkansaw monster book. Along with a lot of other books and manuscripts obviously. But the Arkansaw one is particularly attached to *you*, being Miss Ouri and all. One or the other had to go in your estimation. Wheeler, presently in the form of his 3rd cousin Tessa — or Tessie to him — said all this aloud.
“Good good,” he expressed after hearing. “I’m going to stay here and wait out the rest of my sentence. Chop wood at the cottage I’ve picked out, etc.”
Turns out chopping wood meant just that and not a euphemism. Good for Eddy (our Edward)!
“And stay away from that pot shop!” she said while walking away. But he didn’t.
—–
“Thanks for meeting with me, Jem.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“For the weed, you mean.” Because they’d been seeing each other lately, rendezvousing in clandestine places all over the grid. Like this.
“Yeah.” They’d only taken one hit apiece but they were out of it. Far corners of space kind of out. Jem could see Muff-Birmingham looming in front of her, the sphere that is also a cube. Light side and dark side; jungle and desert or at least plains. Plain to see, she couldn’t help add. “Where are you now?” she said, focusing on him instead of the inside. Trying, anyway. Best to communicate to the other when getting too deep. And where is there some wine around this place, the red to counterbalance the blue?
“Home,” he replied as simply as possible in order to communicate at all. 3D. 26 1/2 years it had been. He cried more when he gave it up than when he sold his childhood home, one replacing the other in a way, in a manner.
He looked over at Jem, held her hand, held it tighter. Because he realized she’d probably be dead before he went back. He’d make the most of these 2-3 months.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0603, Jeogeot, Towerboro
ocean view!
Things are still a bit up in the air as far as neighbors go but it’s official. I and my family of avatars live on Rooster’s Peninsula in a castle. I’ve given up premium membership and being a land owner, renting for now (4096). I was *very* pleased how much of old Collagesity I could transfer to the new property with it well under 1/2 the size. Thing is, no galleries are present, which means I’ve decided to to make it private. It is “merely” a place to hang my hat, along with acting as occasional “movie set” for the blog — and attached photo-novels of course. How’s that going? Quite swimmingly still, thanks; although the production of posts has slowed a bit in the last month or two. May be just the sheer weight/complexity of the project as it churns on and on, now reaching almost 32 1/2 individual works. Nautilus remains a focus, as I’ve stressed recently. I still live there, just in the North instead of Lower Austra. I feel the downsize is complete. I’m very satisfied. About 400 prims (land impact units) left to work with in a skybox, etc. I have room for continued experimenting.
My Nautilus master map with its 100+ pins is still around.
My Martian “city” centered by a giant golden robot statue remains (great!).
The library is still there…
… along with its Special Collections Room.
Dungeon, Table Room, Perch: all accounted for; all part of the castle.
Abbreviated version of the Kidd Tower: a little bit awkward in placement but necessary I feel to complete the deal presently.
Now… who still lives here?? Is Man About Time still in charge since Jeffrey Phillips went away? How about Mr. Babyface, Danny, and the rest of the identified Collagesity residents? Do they still have homes *here*? Good, solid questions to be answered soon enough, I’m supposing.
It’s a beautiful day in a wonderful world. As usual.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0308, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
00330301
She said she lived in a motel just up Highway 12. That was a lie. She said she was behind on her payments. Another lie. She said she had a great view of Big Cedar from her room’s window. Guess what: another lie, a fib in that case but still a lie. Pattern of a deceiver.
All she was after, all along, was the big monster book about Arkansaw, stolen from the Dairocha library in what’s-its-number novel (one of the more recent ones). The one Wheeler/Alysha was still after but couldn’t find, even when she tried the invisible realm. Still not on the invisible shelf before her, no matter what kind of light partner in crime Baker Bloch used to illuminate the situation. If the library had been removed, they determined, then there was no real center to the hollowed out volcano village that is Dairocha and thus no use in hanging around there and creating more little stories and whatnot. They and their now *huge* collection of attached avatars and characters had to move on, although a return is obviously possible. Nautilus keeps surprising and surprising. Must be the outside energy of our grand US of A penetrating the whole hypercube structure. This will continue for some time. I have time. I must have patience. Relatively unyielding and begrudging characters like grown-up Tessa irk me. What happened to her that made her leave her family nest and move to high and dry Nautilus, full of basically abandoned beige ridges and better populated but heavily banned green ocean front properties? The search for Lemon World? Traces? That must be it. Holed up in a mysterious hotel in the shadow of a beige mountain obviously linked to the real world (Lemon World?). Hiding secrets in order to protect her identity and purpose. It didn’t add up to her recently-united-with cousin D’Eddy, who she knows as Edward and not Eddy. Eddy was the other cousin who was playing that fated game of Alphabet Soup to her, the one introduced at the beginning of section 1 of this here photo-novel, 33 in a series of (fill in the blank). Edward — *her* Edward (our Eddy) — similarly shows up at the beginning of section 2. And now: Tessa — Tessie. The third cousin. The most mysterious of them all. What was she hiding? The 33 year old woman didn’t live at the motel, she just stayed there.
For starters, she applies mascara one eye at a time just like the rest of them.
Dairocha again (missing)
“I don’t understand, Wheeler. The library simply… *disappeared*.” Mainly. A couple of books left, but –”
“Quiet,” Wheeler demanded, who had turned into Alysha in anticipation of the event. Crestfallen! Yet she was determined to try. She thought the air felt a little different just over… there.
There!
“Am I holding anything, Baker B.?” she queried expectantly, palms getting sweaty even.
“Not a thing.”
“Rats!”
“Wait. Lemme try a little brighter light just to be sure.
“Still nothing.”
“F-ck.”
hollowed out volcano
Baker Bloch trying to love his new, temporary home and forget that his Collagesity rent is now 1 day overdue, pheh. PHEH.
He hasn’t quite got the lighting in here, he thinks. Trying out “Fairy dark blue (Paulina)” currently.
View of the place from the west. Complicated. Potentially many stories to tell within with the many dummies present. Just like Towerboro before it. Wonder how Towerboro is progressing — still a work in progress after all, according to the land description. But Baker shouldn’t be focused on the past. Instead: current. *Dairochia* — yes, that’s the name I concocted several novels ago now. Because we’ve been here before. Library. Looking for a particular book about monsters. Then: stolen.
And it has a secret core, Baker also remembers. Where the letter “l” was exchanged for an “i’.
Time to bring in Wheeler.
—–
“Morgan, eh? Just like Alysha.”
“Yeah,” Baker answered Wheeler. “I’m positive she’s still here.”
“She stole the book, she stole the letter. She won’t be welcomed in this here kingdom of several powers that be.”
“No,” agreed Baker.
the end of Duncan, A.
“He’s not coming out of there,” he says to me. “He’ll always be a part of the library.”
I knew I was weighted too much in the South. But that’s where he chose to stay. “Who will replace him?” I asked Buster Damm sitting across from me, an impossibly small vampire in such a big big world. Too small to fit in anywhere properly. But too important to die himself. He stared the answer into me.
“So they just found him there. Dead.”
“Gone to South America,” Buster elaborated as best as possible. Just like Sherwood before him, another Allen.
—–
Nighttime at the Castle in De Skies; fog getting thicker. Must think about heading home soon. North.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0516, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
misdirection
“Good, isn’t it?” she wanted to say in her Northern accent. “Comes in bottles in this county.”
“Jasper?” she could hear him say back, which prompted in her mind: “Bling, Diamond Cave, Arkansaw. CAN.”
“Are you a witch?” he actually said, sitting on the couch before her and knowing she was the one. Miss Ouri.
Of course I’m a witch, she again thought, but decided to answer otherwise. She went with the Arkansaw story. Can saw right through it.
“Take off your robe,” he tried, figuring she was a simulacrum. “I want to see.”
But she was no pleasure bot like Tronesisia still hallucinating that cactus plant over in the library. Her eyes were equal to each other, orange against orange. 2 + 2 adds up to 4 for her. She is rational, reasonable. “No.”
Well I tried, he thought. It was worth the effort. “Then… reveal yourself for who you really are.” It was second choice but maybe had a better chance to work.
Since she was a bot if not a pleasure one she had to obey this time.
“Satisfied?”
He was — 1/2 and 1/2. “Where do you come from?” Trick question! “Your Mama?” she played with in her head. She was from nowhere, actually. Outside *everything*.
“Chattanooga,” she decided, then ended with a weak, “choo choo,” and the appropriate pulling arm motions, like a conductor with his toots or whistles. Yes. Exactly like a conductor. Mahler.
—–
The next thing he knew he was in bed, drink still in hand which indicated that what went on before wasn’t actually a dream. Not really. Along with the 2 orange legs of course to match the eyes.
“You had to see, ow,” she said in her mind.
He studied them later and decided they were like 2 coke bottles while he finished his drink. Evil, they were. Not Northern atall.
—–
He went back to bed and had a different dream about the dresser and their wardrobe.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0513, Lower Austra, Nautilus
00320507
It was chilly up on this ridge above Kings Bishop, near the lower end of Route 13 on the western side of Lower Austra. Not as chilly as Collagesity would be this night, Man About Time ruminates, glad for a little break from all the building and shuffling about in his home town just up in the mountains a little more. Town, hmmm. Man About Town —
Anyway, the relative cold makes him think about the distance formed between creators — artists — inworld and beyond, each in their own sphere of influence and interest. He needs to let go; he needs to forgive. He’s gone very far, the 32 being the latest number reached if not finished. He’s working on it, as always.
He usually calls in Wheeler to help him, in this instance because he’s simply too lazy to rise up from his comfy sleeping bag and look around. She may come as Miss Ouri tonight, or maybe not — someone else. Once she was Alysha. He sighs, thinking of his former girlfriend, like if Thelma Lou left Barney for Sherriff Andy Taylor, attracted to the shine of the bigger badge. Another King over Bishop (or Rook) situation, then. Or a King’s Bishop anyhoot.
—–
He hears the manifestation. 10 minutes — not bad for Wheeler. He looks out to see Miss Ouri, his latest crush, sitting on the chair outside along with that creepy prick doll of hers, the cactus creature. A mascot she calls it. For the library they’re building together as a whole. He thinks of the King. He thinks of the Bishop, the Rook at best. King’s Bishop (or Rook); that’s what he is now. He’s been adopted it seems. The black and white swan urged him forward instead of back, trying to escape her own shadow self. “See down there in the library’s floor,” she said to him as Ted one night, working late on his novel instead of his dissertation which he should have been doing, pheh. But Ukraine and the Delta needed him, another camper in another camping spot. “That’s *me*.” The white swan, out of her element in special collections, could not pass through the door to the library proper without causing a shadow. It’s an old story with a familiar ending. Entrapment, much like he can’t be bothered to get out of this tent and go speak to Wheeler. He summoned her after all.
Here goes nothing, he thinks.
“Nice morning, huh?”
“If you’re going to climb out of your tent, why did you need *me*?” She’d been busy doing other things. She had a lot on her plate: grapes, kiwis, bananas, oranges and apples from the looks of it. Kactus was hungry and requested permission to dive in, which was granted.
I could stomp on it and put an end to the thing, Man About Time thought, looming above. But what would be the consequences? He decided quickly he didn’t want to find out. Wrath of Ouri might not look as pretty.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0507, Lower Austra, Nautilus
00320502
Listening through the walls and the coke machine is over. It’s time to find out who’s in the basement. Is it Rooster?
I think it must be Rooster. Smells like Rooster, even from this distance. We’ll see.
“Halt! (wheeze)”
It wasn’t Rooster. He backtracks a bit; forgets about the end of the tunnel for now.
“Who are you?” he asks mildly.
Squeaky voice, like a inflatable toy full of little holes: “I am (wheeze) the answer you seek.”
Significant pause as he takes the creature in. “Where’s Rooster?”
“He is (wheeze) not here yet.”
Smaller pause. “Will he ever be?”
“(wheeze) No.” Slowly and skillfully the seated small being then moves a chest pin down to emphasize his pricked nature.
“Funny,” is all MAT could think of to say.
“Is (wheeze) it?”
Voodoo doll, Man About Time mulled over. Obviously related to Kactus back in the library — up in the library, just above him in fact. He tries to see through the ceiling toward it. Doesn’t work.
“Ponder (wheeze wheeze) the nature of the peninsula, another (wheeze) sticky outy thing (wheeze wheeze). I am (wheeze) running out of (wheeze) air (WHEEEEeeeeezzzee).”
The final prick did him in. He shouldn’t have done it, MAT realized. Like Conception Concepción Conception, he’d made an error between his legs.
He moves on beyond the deflated being, encountering himself in the first of two cells off the passage.
“Hi me,” he said nonchalantly to himself.
Should he wave back? Or is that how you become trapped in the first place? Acknowledge that you’re here already? MAT decides to ignore him(self) and walks down to the final cell, the end of the journey that has become this post. Is he ready? After seeing himself down here, what choice does he have? No going back.
“What is it?” he asked, out of his cell and sneaking up from behind.”
“How–?”
“I think you should go back where you came,” the other requested, pointing down the passage over his shoulder while he finds himself waving at *it* for some reason. MOA he knew, but that was just another puzzle inside a riddle inside a cypher. The foul smell was starting to become overwhelming; not Rooster indeed. “Let me handle this now. I’ve been waiting for you after all.” STOP
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0502, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
Sunklands 