“I’m telling you, Mike,” Pat relays telepathically. “If the next box is one specific color, one *specific* color… then we can’t kill her. We just can’t.
“We can’t kill her brother of mine (sigh).”
2 boxes later, past the demonstration of TILE that placated the onlooking, desirous ghouls, she finds the key, the center of it all.
Switching from colored to black and white, she can now unlock the door with the Newton-Jasper cube indicating scale.
Damn, thinks Mike. 2nd one today.
“Done in by (the Nautilus continent region known as) the Wild West,” thought Can, drinking from a bottle inside the dresser that was his Dream while glancing left at the dangly orange legs that match her eyes. “*Not* a witch,” she begged just before the ironic crushing. Of *course* she was a witch. Just like…
… oh no, he thought in a panic, position suddenly reversed from before. NOT a witch. A decent person overall. Just…..
….. separate.
What has he *done*???
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0409, Jeogeot, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Newtown, Wild West
Miss Ouri looks to her right now with her matching orange eyes. “Come out, child,” she urges manifested Shelley. “Come out from under the lamp and become big before us so we can properly see you.”
“No.”
Good girl.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0401, collages 2d, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Perch-Mistletoe, Upper Austra^
Voodoo doll holding Miss Ouri observes Pietmond Boy patiently waiting outside SC’s Secret Door for a father who seemingly never shows. Wait for it… Wait for it…
There.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0317, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Perch-Mistletoe, Upper Austra^
“I really like it here, Eddy. The motel, the view of the Ichelus Volcano over there. Look! It seems to be erupting again.”
This made Edward, her Eddy, think of another eruption earlier. Couldn’t wait. “Hmm,” he said, also looking, also pretty impressed.
“Have you had a chance to crack the book yet, Eddy? I know we’ve been awfully busy,” and she winks here, “but I did go to a lot of trouble to get it for you.”
“Tessa,” he replied, starting to think of his cousin, 1 in a set of 3. The other…
“Yes.”
“I started reading the first chapter,” he said, which was truth, or at least he checked the title of the chapter to make sure it was the right book. ‘Marbles Fall, Marble Falls.’ He could have swore it was the other way around, but probably just a faulty memory. Close enough — it was the same, he determined.
“Newton,” she said, recalling her own reading of the cursed thing. “Physical world, mechanics. *No* dreams. Right there in the first chapter, stating it all plain and simple up front. We *live*… in Newton.”
“But we need Jasper,” he completed her thought. He tried to recall his dreams from last night, after all the frantic activity was over, like a volcano shutting down. Took some time. He remembers the lava turning cool and changing colors from orange to blue. Ichelus in reality, but in the dream it was something different. Itchy? No that wasn’t it.
“Be careful of the marble rolling off. We’ve already lost one.” I was just kidding about the cracking, she wanted to say but didn’t have the chance. Open *gently*.
We? Edward thought on his part. Why did she say that? “Right, I will.”
“Miss Ouri has it.”
“Yes. I recall.”
“We don’t want Miss Ouri to be involved again. Cactus doll.”
“Yes,” he replied. That ravenous, mutant cactus doll. Brought to life by library voodoo. No, we don’t want that (again). Stick with Nauty if you want pincushions. *Under* the library — around it but not inside.
“I would really like to see the volcano today,” Jem requested. “I mean, up close and personal,” she clarified while looking out the window again. “Not like this — from a distance.”
“I understand,” and then another memory locked into place. He was tubing in the lava that wasn’t lava any longer.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0205, Florida, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Xilted
My Lebettu Castle is still there in all its glory, seen here in a “Phototools — Still Life” environment. The library remains at its center, its core. However since I’ve been retired from same for *8* months now, it may be time to move on. I revisited the co-workers I was probably closest to a couple of weeks back and exchanged pleasantries and caught up with the latest. My old position had shifted into something new which helped the team, but also probably marked the end of a more interactive involvement with the overall campus in the way I fostered, a continuation from past practices. *Writing* is my job now, that and the accompanying art and photography. And also I view daily hiking as an extension of this, a needed opposite and balancing pole to virtual reality. It’s a good life. 🙂 I explore both.
Moving forward, I’m almost 1/2way done with the current Sunklands photo-novel, 35 in a series of “we”ll see”. Characters keep evolving. I am almost as much there as I am here.
I did not maintain contact with others outside my team. I was as much a part of campus as a whole as the library — theoretically. It was a perfect balance for a while, me acting as one man juggler. But it could not go on. I passed into retirement as naturally as about anyone could, thanks in part to the pandemic and the changes it wrought. It certainly contained echoes of actual death. I know better what to expect.
There have been other libraries in other times. Even now, in a virtual setting and obviously on a much smaller scale, I still have one, another echo. A friend died there.
I can still go inside the special part created by new-ish head Miss Ouri and read books, some of which are even my own.
Like this one.
There still exists a dividing point between Ordinary/Mundane and Special. It’s all in the pages.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0315, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
I have been welcomed by neighbors on Rooster’s Peninsula more than I could have hoped for. I have a new home.
Many more stories to tell here, but perhaps not in this current photo-novel, 33 of a set.
Except maybe the library, the center of it all for me. Use to be anyway. Frozen center now. Controlled by MOA down in the basement. Let’s take a look through head librarian Miss Ouri who comes to us by way of Illinois-Kentucky. Characters are compacting; memories condensing. Soon 6 will be the same as 9 and visa versa. Compacting, compacting. Where’s 7 and 8 (and so forth)?
I told my similarly castle dwelling neighbor to the south that there used to be a 3rd castle in the area, largest of all and most unique. Never Sleep it was called, which I’ve translated into my own peculiar Our Second Lyfe mythology as Roost Never Sleeps, a corruption of Neil Young’s 70s album title “Rust Never Sleeps”.
Right over there on that leftmost, now barren beige peak it was, highest of the peninsula. Dominance in former days. The legend lives on.
http://www.neversleepvisions.com/about/
And now me in the middle of it all. Back to the library…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0613, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
“If you just *become* Greenleaf for a while — shedding your wings when needed — then maybe we can figure out this whole Ebony-Ivory confusion. I recall the salt and pepper shakers at Starbucanneers.”
“I’m going to stop you there, Baker Bloch,” says Wheeler from her opposite side of The Table. “I have to go see how our Miss Ouri is doing.”
“Oh okay,” he complied, knowing how important all that was (as well).
She moves just across the green.
—–
“Dad-dy. We’re still *here.* And there’s not even a town to escape to now. The castle is isolated (!).”
“Shush babydoll,” he whispers, also placing his finger over his lips. “Daddy’s trying to read.” He returns to such. Almost got it now. MOA is…
—–
She’s heard enough for now through the coke machine. Kactus too. MOA… right down the stairs beside her in the basement of this very building. The key to rebuilding the town itself. Files inside, he said. More buildings. Many more.
Locked away until the right time to spring forward again. Maybe next spring, then.
Unless she destroys it first.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0609, Jeogeot, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula, Towerboro
He’d finished reading the paper (finally!). The phone rang. It was so old fashioned he didn’t know how to answer it. “Jem!?” he called. “A little help here, Jem!”
Afterwards, Jem returned to the computer. No progress on the Miss Ouri front yet, with Tessa failing to turn into the appropriate form outside the library according to her call. She forgot to bring the needed cactus doll! What an oversight, pheh. Back to square one almost. They’d have to erase her presence there from everyone’s mind and basically start over. Would take a couple of days, days she didn’t have much of, she knew, sand running out fast in her beautifully figured hourglass of life. If only… NO. She can’t go there. The cartoons were *lurid*… *nasty*. John L. Brown couldn’t save her and she knew it, despite the promises, despite the plotline of the comics.
And yet… she had Dafney, who may have been named after a duck. Ducks were her salvation according to John’s stoopid, lurid *junk*. Yellow, just like her friend. She decided she needs to phone her up, see what she’s up to after the wedding to George. George, ha. So funny. Always misplacing his clothes. Dafney never seemed to catch on that he was doing it on purpose, just biding his time until the end of the war when his uninjured comrades would come home to roost. They took out a knee but at least they were able to grow his finger back. Good ol’ Dr. Diper. Diapers, she then thought, free associating. *That’s* what the guardian needed.
The phone rang in her pocketbook. She pulled out the banana, put it to her mouth. “Hello? (pause) Hello??” She remembered to put the other end to her ear and then heard this:
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0606, Jeogeot, Towerboro
“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
Sunklands 