Tag Archives: NODAL

00330316

She’d just popped down to the fire department to check her mailbox and now *this*. But she dare not remove the parking ticket and throw it away in disgust after learning it came from Zero, apparently a policeperson in this here town as well as the owner of that club. We have been reset.

Glancing over at a clearly distressed Elisa staring at the ticket on her illegally parked Mazda RX-7 sports car, Newt checks to make sure he’s off the street good and pays the parking meter before heading inside to meet the others. He understands parallel time as well as parallel parking. He’s seen three squad cars circling around the city now and knows the force is strong here, like Star Trek or Star Wars — he can never remember which one applies. Star, hmm, he then thinks. He swears this use to be Star Street instead of that long German name he doesn’t know how to translate. Why the change? He believes it may be a bad omen. Or a good one — hard to tell yet. Maybe the meeting with the 3 “witches” will clarify either way.

Uh oh. Likewise tardy Alysha coming from down the street. He pretends he doesn’t see her and rushes inside before she can catchup with him. He’d rather not have the meeting colored (red) before it began.

Just made it.

“You’re late,” black haired Fern Stalin says at the door. “And so is the other one.”

“Right behind me.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0316, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Squared Root City-

Newt and Eyela (one strange rock)

“No. You go first,” she requested, not being as prepared as I wished.

“I was just going to say,” he started, probably improvising, “that you look lovely tonight.”

“Thank you (!).” Cute tittering, cute covering of mouth. “Oh, I was going to check out *Whitson* tonight,” she realized. “*Sorry*.”

“Kind of your double, I’m assuming.”

“Kind of,” she agreed. “Um… uh…”

“Well,” he decided to insert in the awkward pause. “Baker Bloch still has ties to Lower Austra, *roots*, even.”

“In Squared Root City here, yes,” she said, remembering some of her lines now thanks to the prompt. Not all, but perhaps enough to get by if she can fill in the rest with filler.

“Zero Club.” He glanced over his shoulder at the sign; another prompt. “Just like Baker was looking for. A place Baker, the male one, could Zero Out and reset everything.”

“Good to know.” She was struggling. The Whitson gaffe threw her off her game. She decides to end the scene and do some research.

—–

“I’m going into space again,” she said after learning she was. Thanks once again wikipedia! You’re a life line. “It’s a joint venture between Axiom and SpaceX.”

“So… Axis,” he responded. “Like me.”

“Wellll.”

—–

“My name is not Axis any longer. My name is Newt.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t like to be reminded of my Axis past.”

“I… won’t say anything more about it, won’t bring it up.” She cleared her throat. The research got her into hot water (!). She said his new name to reinforce her conviction. “Newt, yes I like it.” She recalled a tree growing out of his head instead of the other place. She realized she had to part with Whitson on this, Mars or no Mars. She had to choose… well pump over spaceship.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0313, Iowa, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Squared Root City-

Hy-Vee

The wind blows hard as we enter the village.

Well pump replaces rocket ship on the next encountered welcoming sign. The pump is a rocket?

Ah ha. Well pump standing by itself in an otherwise vacant lot more on the edge of the tiny hamlet. Launching pad?

And then another one in the exact center, blue instead of white.

Visiting Roger Pine Ridge (as it turns out) waits on a bench at the store he saw pictured on that rock, the one that absorbed Marty. Maybe Marty is here, he reasons. Might make sense. He’ll give it a couple more minutes or hours or days at least. Years.

The flapping continues. Roger is unable to light one of his personally rolled white sticks because of it. Sparks too dangerous in a spot so wooden and full of history.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0311, Google Street View, Iowa

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.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0301, Dairocha, Nautilus, NORTH

dangerous

“It’s a beautiful land, this Dairocha. But ultimately it does us no good if the library still isn’t there. Central! Right Wheeler?”

Wheeler, having determined this some hours back, had already left the scene. She was ready to complete this here photo-novel section about the Nautilus North elsewhere. She was Alysha now, aka Helen aka a lot of other names. But especially Helen, she felt. The antique village of Lips or One Pink called.

Under the big cross at the top of it all, he too changed. Sheriff R.V. Trailer it is to end. Wait!…

Just below. Sweeping. Lots of it; multiple brooms obviously involved. It reminded him of another place he needed to go first.

Multiple sweepers don’t remain any longer at this southeast corner bar of Odie just off Route 12, to his disappointment. Then he met grown-up Tessa and things changed even once again. He was immediately attracted to her waist high tattoo of 2 six shooters. How clever, he thought. Pointer. She leaned over and said her new name in a low voice, obscuring the ink.

He automatically leaned in too (*kiss*), One Pink or Lips transformed.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0215, Dairocha, Nautilus, NORTH

controller (one nautilus is all nautilus)

“As you can see, young man, my black piece — the bishop I believe, unless it’s the rook — is turning into a white piece. This is how I propose to win the game.”

“Forfeit?” I guessed, knowing the overwhelming odds against him.

“Hardly. Look at your hands.”

“W-what the??”

“Your — move.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0208, Nautilus, NORTH, Slaashsides

00330202

In a place run by cats, there were always a lot of naptimes to get the information he needed. Like the actual scoop on the Poop Pool, as it was called locally, at least behind closed doors, often in the middle of the night when a faint whiff of the former smell could be caught by those who’re perceptive. Deputy here had been out since about 8 now, hugging her little froggie toy until the wee hours of the morning. Eddy Daigle, cousin to our Edward Daigle already met in part one and originally sharing the same name, sniffed the air. Faint but perceptible. He hit delete on the sheriff’s computer and the file about it was permanently gone, as if the problem never existed. Much like Edward from his name, revised and revamped to the more colloquial Eddy after 5th grade when he also switched first and last names to hide the connection even more. “Daigle, Eddy” he liked to be called after that, 2 steps or functions away. And he was from Montana, not Louisiana or Maine or, especially, Illinois. Unlike that John L. Brown we’ve yet to come across in the current novel but who played a part in the last one, small but effective, like a rat silently and stealthily tearing away at the insulation in your walls, leaving you eventually laid bare to the elements. John L. Brown was a bad one, and deserved to be behind the bars of this here law enforcement establishment.

Uh oh. Deputy’s rolled over and lost her grip on her little, favorite toy. Sheriff’s snores on the couch over there are getting a little shallower and further apart, REMs decreased. Soon dreaming will be over for the fellows, Eddy knew. But he still couldn’t find the second file he wanted. Best to pack it up, come back tomorrow. Or after, actually, the next town animal banquet when the ferocious gazelles would bring more fresh kill from the beaches and the water. Snorklers this week. Could even be some deep sea divers mixed in next. That would put them even more under for his clandestine night operations; would allow him to get more work done, dig deeper.

“Daigle, Eddy” knew he wasn’t kosher and that saved him many times from being on the wrong side of one of these feasts. 9 times he had been saved in fact, making him part cat himself. Thank you great great grandma on my father’s side! He licked his hand softly as he does instinctively every now and then and shuts the laptop off and heads home.

No one in the cell right now except a member of the Bad Katz Gang, who was turning her back to the illegal nature of his visit. He hoped to change that soon.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0202, ENIGMA, Illinois, Nautilus, NORTH, Wild West

00330201

“”What’s wrong, honey? (no answer) Oh dear, are you channeling again? (no answer) Is it… the triangles?”

She sat there all glassy eyed for a while like 2 marbles were planted in her head in place of eyes. Then…

—–

“What you cooking today Eddy?!” shouted the runny man, passing by.

“Hot dogs!” he called back. “But made with veggie stew!”

“Cool! Catch you later, then!” Tom shouted, his voice receding in the distance as he headed toward the far corner of the strange, rectangular green pool that centered the apartment complex they both lived in, this Paradise Town as it liked to call itself. The pool begs to differ, because it also has a name, usually unspoken. Tried to be forgotten.

—–

Common denominator: umbrellas.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0201, ENIGMA, Nautilus, NORTH, Wild West

Thirteenville

The infamous talking rooster of Towerboro, an obvious tourist attraction. Currently owned by Wanda Debbie Prichard. Prichard? Must be a last name. We’ll determine a first name soon enough for the purveyor of the lone antique store of town, another monopoly.

Jack doesn’t like the rooster. Jack heard it says his name. “Jack son special,” he crowed to elaborate just afterwards.

“He he,” his father laughed, “that’s *us* son. I’mmm Jack, and you’rree Jack, see? (he points to the respective parties here) Jack’s son, ha ha.”

“And you certainly *are* special, young man,” wife Debbie Wanda Prichard (Prichard again?) added while pecking his cheek with a couple of quick kisses. The rooster leaned forward, seeming to want to peck Jack Jr.’s cheek as well. “Special,” he clucked to reiterate.

—–

“Show’s over, Prichard,” said the purveyor at 5 o’clock while setting down his cage on the floor and opening the door. “Time to go home.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0113, Jeogeot, Towerboro

00330111

“It was the only place I felt really safe in all of Dodgey City: Charlotte’s dust filled attic with the telescope that she often pointed to the Moon, Mars and other heavenly bodies to also escape the stardust glitter all around.”

“Stardust,” said the doctor, now a therapist. “Interesting term. Can you elaborate further?”

—–

“They made… *cartoons* out of me. It was awful.” The sobbing began again. The doctor-therapist offered her another kleenex from the second box used today. “They thought it was *funny* (sob sob sob, blow nose, sob sob, sniff).”

“There there,” said the dr.-therapist. “Take your time.”

“I — (sniff sniff) don’t *want* to go back.”

“No one’s sending you back, Jem. Take your time,” she or he emphasized again. Probably a she… because of the nature of the events that took place there.

“Those cartoons you spoke about,” she started carefully once more. “Did you…”

“*NO*,” stated Jem firmly, guessing what the doctor-therapist was going to ask, an almost prescient moment. And perhaps it was.

The doctor-therapist decided not to bring John L. Brown of the Browns into the picture today. She looks up at the clock, pretends the session is over even though it is 12 till the hour. “That better be it for today. You can take that box home with you.”

“Thank you,” BLOOWWW.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0111, Jeogeot, Nautilus, Towerboro, Wild West