I spotted the cacti I spotted the cops.
Then all became blinded.
Tag Archives: NODAL
big red machine
“Lou, be a dear and buy your old man a drink while he’s studying, would you?”
“Dad-dy,” Lou replied, arms still crossed. “We’ve been here *3* days.”
“Keep it down, keep it down,” father Osborne Well says over more in a whisper. “Other people are here too.”
Lou Well stays quiet this time.
“Weelll?” her father prompted, a typical reply and a play on their last name he loves to utter when he can. He beams a wicked smile. She still doesn’t return the smile but rises from her chair with a small huff and does what he asks. She inserts a quarter, hears a bottle drop. Or is it a can? — she can’t tell if the sound is more glassy or metallic. Queer, she realizes. And — great — she can’t get the door to open at the bottom of the thing. “It’s broke, daddy. We’ll have to go into town for your sody pop.” *Finally*, a possible way out of this prison of books for her.
“Then leave it,” he decides, learning winning over thirst and sugary desire. He’s about to uncover the deepest, darkest secrets of the great tentacled one. He confers this to his daughter.
“MOA,” she replies without thinking. “We’ve been there already. We *know* what it is.”
“Shhh,” he reprimands again about her raised voice, but then realizes she’s right. It *is* MOA he’s searching for: Most Old Ancient.
Man About Time wakes up but remembers what they said behind the wall. He’ll return another night in another dream to this spot. This portal is *key*.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0410, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula
the Long and Yd of it
It was a particularly clear day at the library castle in the skies, kind of completed tonight, or as much as I want to flesh out right now. You see, this is a window into the past. Or the future. Man About Time stands before a portal. He’s on Rooster’s Peninsula. Several other castles *could* be seen in the distance — both west (the titular Roost Never Sleeps) and south (Arkaig) — if only the fog were just a little less thick. It never is; this is as good as it gets. And so Man About Time — MAT — enters the castle to oblivious folk who don’t really know where they are, and, by this point, don’t really even care. But one thing’s for certain. It’s not just a library any more. It’s a fortress, a Center Point that Collagesity desperately needs in the present. Because the Temple of TILE just wasn’t hacking it in that role.
MAT’s looking for a particular entity, let’s say, a Man who is also a Rump, and a big one at that, really big. His Huge Ass plane almost grazed the top of the temple after he moved it from lowest to highest in the village about, oh, about 2 months back I suppose (CHECKING). Yes: a little over 2 months. He wants to give him a piece of his mind if he can find him. He understands he could be locked up in a key-less cage because he is the key himself. But where?
Back to the library to start his investigations, he decides on the spot. The castle gate raises in response.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0408, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, NORTH, Rooster's Peninsula, Temple of TILE
special
He’s done as much work on the library in the skies as he needs to tonight. Now to crack the back of the book before him while Swanie’s on lunch break.
Chapter 1: “Marbles Fall, Marble Falls”. So much to learn. Oops. There goes the other marble, rolling away almost through the wall. Swanie will not be pleased; have to try to stick it back on before she returns.
Maybe I can just use one of my own eyes, he thought crazily, but then did just that. He stuck the blue eye marble in the now empty socket and started to see the future, the North beyond the South. Miss Ouri! This must be kept top secret.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0406, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus
bon appétit
“Thanks for coming over from Wendy to meet with me, Wheeler. I know you’re mighty busy over there.”
“I am (!).”
“Anyway, I see you brought your bodyguards.”
Wheeler looks at one Eighty-eight at the table in front of her, and then glances over her shoulder at the second one sitting at the table behind. “They’re still needed,” she summarizes. “176,” she totals up.
“Fascinating,” says Baker Bloch, still in sarcasm mode. They have important business to discuss tonight and better get down to it. Baker has been waiting for over 30 minutes now while Wheeler lounges about the castle library. I thought we were done with all that. He condenses these observations and says them aloud for her.
“Yeah, not quite (about the library). We have more issues to work through.” She looks around again, quicker this time. “But good we are in Ontario. I sent Dickie Doom over. He is my (original) burger.”
“You… as Wendy.”
“Yeah.”
Baker looks down at his hands through the grated table. “Center Point,” he blurts out.
“Yeah?” Wheeler waits for more, hands still in lap. Her food and drink are getting cold.
“It doesn’t come up in the Oracle. The one in Kentucky, probably the most important one. It brings to question…”
“… the Oracle itself, its veracity,” she finishes for Baker Bloch. Because they are one beneath it all as well. Just like Baker Blinker and Baker Bloch. Just like *all* the cores. There is no real separation from The One. In the end.
He produces the tic tac toe board from his inventory; is kind of irritated that Wheeler doesn’t move her dinner tray so it can be positioned more in the center of the table itself.
“So this is the game, Wheeler. Who moves first, what moves second? We don’t know. But *whoever* it is, they win.”
Wheeler takes a sip of her coffee, takes a bite of her plumeria sandwich, getting under Baker’s skin again. He doesn’t like people eating when he’s explaining something and Wheeler knows it. “This is,” she says with mouth full and muffled speech, “Collagesity.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0401, Collagesity Fordham-, Kentucky, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Wendy-Ontario-
charmed
“Find out who is in that 9th spot and find out if black or white went first,” Agent 47 orders in his dream to Joey Avatar while hovering above it all. He doesn’t realize the impossibility until the next morning while eating his 9-sided Toasty O’s and remembering the game. But the tree is 9; the other vendor is 8. Time to head back to the plaza for some nitty gritty research. He takes a broom and knocks it against the ceiling, knowing Joey would understand. 3 times. 9 times. Magic Square.
He wakes up for real this time. He turns to Bart on the couch, cleaned up at last and looking like a little cartoon boy again, perhaps 9 himself. Saturn-9. But at what price? 1,000,000? Just then, Bart begins to glow as if radioactive. He’d been exposed, he knew — tricked even. He’d have to deactivate himself. Joey won this time. But there’s always regeneration.
He wakes up once more.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0317, Wendy-Ontario-
102
He was called in to replace Agent Joey Avatar. Or help her — he wasn’t sure. Anyway, he was here, aiding her to begin, not mentioning the replacement part, although of course she suspects. Purple hair, he ruminates. Symbol of suspicion. Just woke up like that the other day, she says. Fat chance.
*There*. John or Jim — one or the other; doesn’t matter. Here’s where he comes out of the portal. Now to pinpoint the center. “What you got?” he asks Joey through his walkie talkie wristwatch after John/Jim moved down the road a bit, out of earshot.
“2 seconds,” she responds from her position on the other side. “He went into the closed up subway at exactly 11:37:07. Did he come out with his sub?” she tried to joke. Agent 47 was a serious type, she understood. She was attempting to loosen the armor. But she knew she was in trouble. First things first, though. They had to figure out the mystery of this plaza that stood in the middle of it all. Umbrellas, they had determined. But which one?
“Let’s let him go in one more time to make sure.”
11:38:37:
“Too foggy in this gal blasted town to do much more tonight,” Agent 47 said after the double check. “Let’s reconvene at 08:00. I’ll stay with Black Bart downstairs from you guys.”
“Um, I wouldn’t do that,” she responds, shaking her head for emphasis.
“Elaborate.” It was one of the most common words these agents used. What he got back surprised him. A shadow being! And all because he was being tracked by The Mouse. Weelll. He’ll fix *that*. Shadow beings have no place in the land of living breathing Second Lyfers. All of Wendy would be for naught if so. Nautilus, hmm, he thought. That would come back shortly. But first…
“Bring him out in the light,” he rather commanded to Joey when they returned to the Underground Apts., 3 in number but only 2 viable in the moment. Because of Bart.
“Told you,” Joey Avatar said to Agent 47 after he opened the door, standing back a bit from the spectacle.
“Clean him up and bring him out,” he doubled down. *You* clean him up! she thought, but then did what he requested. She was only 45. No way to jump two numbers in a fortnight. She’d have to wait til Tuesday.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0316, Wendy-Ontario-
Center Point
Debbie Doom left in a huff, tea cup and saucer broken beneath her on the reckoning couch. The powers that be had deemed her replaceable. She made error 01 in the playbook of love. Falling for a relative. Taboo. Pot-D or Pan-Z couldn’t put up with the bad press. Leforest Bresford was sent in. She’ll make shit happen, Erik Jones Johnson said in the office of the Big Wig, delivering the pitch for his ex-wife. “Do you love her still?” he asked back. He knew this could be a deal breaker. “No,” Erik lied, which is exactly what the higher powers wanted him to do. Lie between and out his teeth. “Okay,” the bigger said to the smaller. “*One* shot,” he warned, and then handed him her gun.
Her mission: to find Black Bart and put a bullet through his lead head before he becomes fully shadow and *all* are doomed. The renegade manifesto must not be written.
From the couch in the secret meeting place, she aims for first one then the other in the short distance, watching them sweat and swear. “Choose him!” the red cried. “No, her!” the blue screamed back, eager to save his own skin even though it was the same “skin”.
The shot whizzed between them, somehow missing both. She had been trained well, and now had not one but two allies by her side, both male and female powers. She incorporated them into her being, even though no one could see the can except herself, when she wanted to. Like now.
The mist cleared as she exited the ruins, confusion over.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0313, Wendy-Ontario-
00320312
The lake is just silver shores now. Debbie is gone; the situation had changed. He had Joey now. Time to head back to the underground, check on Joey, check on *Bart*. If he starts to stir again he should be there. Too bad Debbie can’t help since she’s better at recording. But she has the library gig now, she explained a bit earlier, before the mist moved in and turned everything metallic. “I… love…” he confessed, and she just POOF: gone.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0312, Wendy-Ontario-
00320307
Face stitched up as best as possible, rescuers gone, Wendy finds the portal to neighboring Ontario through a void sim thanks to the help of Dickie and some indicating, howling wolves. Delight! Maybe there’s hope for the chesskers situation after all.
“Iowa,” she spoke back to Dickie while feeling the cold wind of reality blow on her wounded face, stinging it a bit. Close!
The library can finally be left behind. Dickie waves goodbye as the darkness envelops her, wolves silent with their task done.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0307, Wendy-Ontario-
Sunklands 