For Table Meeting No. 2, Baker Bloch arrived at the Blue Feather in his self named Spookmobile, almost running over Old Mabel and Hucka Doobie while humming down Old Cannon Road from his attic home in the western part of town. Baker apologized to the two while they were walking up behind him, nerves rattled.
“You know it’s only about 100 yards from your place to the Blue Feather,” says Hucka Doobie, still dusting herself off from diving behind Major Stone to avoid being hit. “You don’t really need to drive. What is that thing anyway? Where’d you get it?”
Baker Bloch realized Hucka Doobie wasn’t inworld all that much and hadn’t caught up with the news. So he caught her up.
“Fascinating,” says Hucka Doobie afterwards. Anson and Anton. Yet another one. *Must* be the work of Mid Hazel.”
“And we further speculate that Wheeler is trapped on New Island now, unable to escape. I’d take you there to see the broken bridge but the meeting’s starting up in a moment.”
“Without Wheeler?” Hucka Doobie scratches her bee head in confusion.
“I’m taking Wheeler’s place,” Baker declared. “Let’s head inside and get this thing started.”
“Cool, I suppose,” says Hucka Doobie, still a bit in the dark on things. Old Mabel remained silent, not liking where this was, er, heading.
—–
“As most of you know,” Baker began, “Wheeler’s wishes were to move forward instead of backwards. Toward ‘Pumpkintwisters’ and the future instead of ‘Billfork’ and its Northfork and Billville in the past. *But*… Wheeler isn’t here.”
Old Mabel suddenly perked up. Could it be? Could it be?
“So we’re going to talk about ‘Billfork’ tonight.”
Old Mabel actually jumped out of her chair a bit in joy. She had been preparing to discuss ‘Billfork’ for weeks now, listening to all the pertinent John Lennon solo efforts and reading up about the Ono debacle and so forth.
“Now I’m sorry Tin S. Man. I know this was your time to shine.”
“‘T’is okay, Baker Bloch. The Ray Davies inside of me can wait. I am sympathetic to the plight of Northfork and Billville both. Both flooded, both moved. A moving tale each.” He smiled.
“Yes,” agreed Baker. “So since we’re backing up from ‘3 Friends of Belleville’ instead of going forward, we can point out that *Belle*ville camed from *Bill*ville — and also visa versa since time really doesn’t exist. This is part of the overarching complexity of the Piera. Old Mabel, do you want to help me out and pull up some pertinent videos on the interwebs? Try ‘Northfork + Polish’.”
“Sure thing, Wilson.” Everyone stared at her. “I mean, Baker Bloch, tee hee. Slip of the tongue.” She went over to the suave chair she had sat in so many times now and did the appropriate search.
“So what is ‘Billfork’ you might be asking?” then said Baker Bloch. “Well, on the audio side it’s primarily ‘Boom Dot Bust’ by Firesign Theatre. On the video side it’s the movie ‘Northfork’ by the Polish twins, Michael and Mark. As Tin S. Man alluded to, both feature towns that have to be moved in order to be saved. The town of Northfork is being flooded by a new lake. Billville is threatened by tornadoes, and also, strangely and syncily, a flood at the end, where the mayor has to turn into a fish and ‘swim, swim, swim’ to stay alive. Tonight, to begin, we’re going to look at a number of clips from ‘Northfork’ which are available on the Youtubes. We’re just going to look at them as they appear in Old Mabel’s hit list here, and I’ll talk about the relationship with ‘Billfork’ afterwards — I don’t think we need to do them in order. So if you would just start at the top of your list, Old Mabel, and work down.”
“Yes *sir*”.
—–
2 1/2 hours later they had gone through innumerable Youtube videos featuring not only ‘Northfork’, but Firesign Theatre, Pink Floyd, and John Lennon and his Beetles. Even Old Mabel was getting a little tired. But they had learned a lot. They knew ‘Billfork’ contained some kind of code which Baker Bloch simply dubbed the Billfork Code during the meeting, having come up with that name several hours prior. Baker had passed out most of the 8 oranges Old Mabel dreamt about to participants at The Table this night, setting the remainder at empty seats while saying that each represented a whole track from ‘Boom Dot Bust’ used in ‘Billfork’. Old Mabel grasped hers tightly as Baker handed it to her, making sure she didn’t drop it this time (unlike in the dream). “Now I know we’re all tired,” Baker continued, “but we need to also talk about the 9th tonight. The 9th is ‘Doom Bot Dust’, the opposite of ‘Boom Dot Bust’. And that’s where we think the code comes from. A south by southwest direction.” Old Mabel nodded her head in agreement as she looked past Hucka Doobie in that direction.
Sunklands 