Tag Archives: NODAL

00460401

Another one looking for Roberts and Franklin, Officer Buford thinks, trying to distract himself from the carnage behind him. He can tell because she doesn’t seem to know her way around. Only regulars use the asylum, and noone goes downtown unless there’s legal or other problems or maybe to fix their car at Ben’s. This one doesn’t have a car. This one has some kind of legal or other problems, he’s determined by process of elimination. And so it is.

—–

She finally finds the right teleport spot and then walks over to the office, stepping inside.

“You!” says the receptionist, thinking she recognizes her either from print or film, reader’s choice. Probably print, though. Because of the not knowing the location here.

“Oh. Never mind,” the receptionist backtracks the reaction. “You’re not her. Can I help you, then?”

“I’m looking for Franklin,” Charlene The Punk Brown begins, taking all the oddness in stride. “Or Roberts — let’s make it Roberts,” she decides.

“Big House,” says Wanda (Wanda again?). “Investigating a Big Foot sighting.”

“Exactly why I’m here.”

“Not surprising,” Wanda quickly replies. “It will be a debunking, mind you. They always are. I’m just trying to save you some money up front. We have enough guillible people coming through here to keep my boat afloat.”

“Wondering about that.”

“You get use to it,” she says about the boat that keeps her afloat.

“Riiight, so… just use the teleporter outside again? One of the selections?”

“I’ll take you. I need to get out of here for a while anyway.” And so she did.

—–

Not so big, thinks Charlene, being behind Wanda a bit due to not quite getting the hang of these wonky teleporters still, pheh. But then she opened the front door to the house.

“Up here!!” Wanda calls from quite a far distance, quite a far distance indeed.

20 minutes later she was there after climbing up a rope from a trash bin.

(to be continued)

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00460316 (reversed course)

Charlene saw her coming up from Downtown and recognized her — like Wolvie before — from that maid cleaning video also available in Emily’s store. Despite the different hair. What gives?? she thinks, and stops in her tracks to find out as best she could.

“Wheeler, I gather,” she began. “The new town mayor.”

“Charlene The Punk,” said Wheeler, also guessing the identity of the person before her. Not a video this time, but print. She spotted the blue fingers left by the Ball.

“Where are you going?”

“What do you mean? I’m coming to see you.”

“I *mean*, the town meeting is in 15 minutes — I didn’t mean, come see me now, pheh. I was heading there myself. *You’re* suppose to be the leader of the thing. Not a new town name this time like for the first, but perhaps something even more important. And directly following up on the first.”

“Weelll?” said expectant Wheeler after a significant enough pause. Stop with the danglings and parts 01 of 02 and the to-be-continued and shite, she thinks.  Then she spotted other Downtowners moving Uptown too, understood that Charlene was telling truth.

“Just follow me,” Charlene said, and proceeded past Wheeler. “I’ll take control,” she hurled back. “*Maid*.” A now completely floored Wheeler didn’t think she had any choice; Charlene knew too much. And Wolvie! She picks herself up off the slanted Midtown pavement and moves back toward Uptown’s Town or City Hall like all the rest.

(to be continued)

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00460310

Wolvie investigates an old Bigfoot location and finds it intact.

Along with the associated Roberts and Franklin Private Eye Investigators Ltd. in not one but two locations.

He’ll have to make a choice soon. ‘Nother one.

(to be continued)

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00460309

It was like the old days for Wolvie (=Bert), staring at bamboo from the perfect spot 108 108 108, triply beautiful. Not Shelley any more doing her moves on the bamboo yoga mat but Wheeler, mother having reabsorbed the child in section one of this here current photo-novel, just this morning named for her. He’d seen her again last week at the convenience store he manages over near Juho. She knew that he knew and he knew that she knew. Then: winked out. Gone. Like she was never there. And perhaps she wasn’t (*knew* I was going to add that, didn’t you).

—–

“Wolvie’s gone. VHS tape still in there. Let’s just look at it. I want to know why Blue Moon wants to buy all existing copies so bad. How, aherm, *bad* could it be?”

“Double anal?” guessed Emily who didn’t even know if that was a thing. And I suppose she’d know, since she runs the store. So let’s say she was jesting.

“Could be at least double, as in 3some,” speculated Charlene further. Charlene the Punk. Not seen in these here photo-novels since (as I’m checking… checking…) 31 really, minus a cameo appearance or two. Pre-retirement, then. But we also know that Charlene is actually Fern in the past. Or another timeline — something. The two can be lined up and made as one is what I’m saying. If that, once more, is actually a “thing”.

They both crowded into the tiny viewing room meant for one, setting aside the chair to make space. Plus… well, neither wanted to sit in that chair now.

“It’s just static,” Charlene complained.

“Keep looking,” urged Emily, knowing secondary and then primary letters would form out of the nothingness. Because this was a special tape, very much so. I to E to T to L and done. You get your money’s worth.

“Yes, here they come.”

(to be continued)

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00460308

“Well. Here we are.” And then he went in.

I’m scared, Bimbo thinks, hesitant to do the same and remaining outside. Do I really want to know how this works? Will I look at Fink Humann in a different way after this, a different light? Maybe it’s best–”

“Are you coming or are you not?” Stanley poking his head back out of the store’s door.

Cooommming, she thought. That’s the problem. That’s not what her type does, she’s found out. Nor his.

—–

But for Blue Moon Kentucky, seen here searching in vain for anything else besides that one solo album a bit earlier in the day as record store owner Charlene the Punk looks on smugly: no problem as it turns out.

And that’s when the whole scene climaxed. At the video store. Special viewing room as the static on the TV turned into something else, something Bimbo had never seen. And never wanted to see again.

(to be continued)

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00460305

“He was just standing there when I looked down from the bird. You know, after the plane.”

“Then what?” Philip was into Frank’s story. For a change.

“Just for a second he was there. Looked like, I don’t know, *Superman*. All jacked up like a superhero, you see.”

“Like Impotent Rage?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Like Impotent Rage.”

“*Love* Impotent Rage. That’s where I hid my drugs!”

Took Frank a second to get it, then he remembered the figurine in Philip’s trailer with the hollowed out core and pop top head. *Old* trailer. “Oh yeah. Anyway, thought you’d want to know, since, you know, you saw the plane shadows that couldn’t be there too.”

“I *did*,” said Philip without a doubt. “I did indeed. Grapeshot.”

“Grape*seed*,” said Frank.

“Noooo. Grape*shot*. *Franklin*.” Philip liked to call Frank Lynn by his old name when he failed to properly translate anything to this new format they now live in, GTA V imprisoned characters no more. They were free. Thanks to the power of the Alamo. “Remember the Alamo,” Philip would also say to jolt Frank back to the current (virtual) reality. “Remember it and then forget it because we’re in a different place now,” he might follow up, “one that doesn’t stink like *rotting fish*, PHEH.”

Alamo inland sea of GTA V fully transferred over to Nawt Vaya inland sea of Our Second Lyfe. Like Philip before him, Frank was totally on board with it. After all, they always had the dreams and reminiscings to return if needed. Like now.

“Anyway,” Frank continued in that vein, “he was standing at the start of that jutting out place, you know, the, oh what do you call it? Not peninsula.”

“Pier?” Philip offered, trying to help the story along.

“No dawg, nothing wood or anything. A *jetty* — yeah, that’s it. A narrow piece of land jutting into the water in a straight line.

“Or crooked line,” Philip said, thinking of something called the Spiral Jetty. He can’t recall where.

“Okay, so, you know, the Superman person was gone — only appeared a split second like I said…”

“Yeah?” Philip said, egging him on again.

“But when I was walking down that, er, jetty, in a straight line, I also knew he was *pointing* toward something. Something on the other side of the lake as it turned out.”

“Sea,” corrected Philip once more. “Alamo Sea.”

“Yeah, Alamo Sea, then. So I stood near the end of the point, looked across the lake — sea, sorry. There was a boat parked near the tip, but that wasn’t it. Then I heard it. Little Hell, Philip. Place called Little Hell.”

Philip had heard of the location but had also heard it called Heaven and said so. Out of their dreams and back into the present, both looked across the moonlit Nawt Vaya waters and wondered what *that* meant. Little Hell and Heaven both.

(to be continued)

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00460210 (Boo!)

Sans Newt now, Wheeler was testing out more locals and taking more notes while also trying out new outfits, this one called Fern (dress) with kind of matching shoes I suppose.

“Excuse me, ma’am. The bathroom’s locked with no one inside. Do you have the key?”

“Bathroom’s *broke*,” exuded Gertrude Witherspoon from Grapeseed, a person dying on the vine.

“Well can you tell me where the nearest public restroom is? My husband and I were just passing through on the way to Chilbo (she lies).”

“Mmmmmmmmm. I *said*…. hmmmm…. let me…. think… ummmmm.”

“Well, never mind,” said Wheeler. We’ll just do it in the grass beside the road.”

“That sounds best,” the woman said with no irony in her voice. Did she really think this was the best solution? Would *she* resort to that?

Wheeler was about to walk through the front door in a huff when…

“Oh wait, young person.” Young person! Wheeler thought. The old hag had just redeemed herself, ha. “Bert’s in his office today for a change. Bert has an extra set of keys. Just knock on the door — ’round the poster there.” As if she couldn’t be bothered, Wheeler thought, watching her continue to just stand there and pose in various ways. Provocatively? Could be if she were, say, 60 years younger, Wheeler thought, and then also thought that’s not a very nice thought. *She’s*… well, she always says she’s 25 working on 39. But those days had passed. Just call it a Jack Bennyism vanity.

Going past Gertrude again — bathroom’s broke *pheh* — she gently knocks on the door.

Bert, or who she presumes is Bert, calls back in a pleasant enough voice to come in. She goes in.

But not before noticing what appeared to be Gertrude prominently appearing in that poster. Queer! she thought.

Then the same poster inside along with another surprise.

“You!”

And just like that she was gone.

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00460113 (letting the butterflies loose)

https://bakerbloch.com/2022/07/30/00340113/

—–

“Soo, why are we back here again, Jack? Pink again?”

“Yeah,” responds Jack the Dogg, his 1/2 brother and also bestest friend in the world. Unless it’s Todd. “And you know what that means?”

“Errr,” went Fink, once more sloow to catch on.

—–

15 minutes later, after earning another F- on the new quiz.

“I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy!”

You certainly aren’t, thinks the newest iteration of Princess Pinky Gumm in Our Second Lyfe dominating above him but, of course, biting her tongue. Fink remains a powerful ally. And friend.

Now to deal with Art and Ed, she thinks; break the bad news to the duo so use to having their way up to this point. The buck stops here.

She looks to the sky and thinks of all the power she has. 319.

(to be continued)

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00460107

“I see you kneeling behind that curtain in there,” expressed passing businesswoman Pamela Taut, no time for tomfoolery today. Zoom meeting with an important client at 3 about a property deflated in value because of a 1000 year flood. Must be sharp; she wants that sale! Then this. “I say: expose yourself you troublemaker, you… *tart*” Come out, come out!” She only thought of her own name’s similarity with this taunt later.  When she herself was playing a maid to a big wig male’s cleanliness obsession — for a sale again, of course. “Bathroom next,” he said, knowing it was a mess because of the chaos. “Now!” “Yes sir,” she jumped. But it was all fake, just role play. Same with the person behind the curtain. She’d been ordered to sit there by another. No difference really at all.

We’ve seen this person before. Many times. She tires of hiding, wants to come into the light. This is about as close as I dare, focus on the foreground in the shot below, on the face of conspiracy nut Wanda to be specific, still listening to the imaginary (imaginary?) chattering of the mechanical (mechanical?) fish behind the bar. She knows they’ll analyze everything later on. Her friend Jenny sitting across the booth here has started calling her Wanda Fish, another taunt. Where will it end?

Right here. (to be continued)

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00460106 (Tin at ten)

“Shelley?” Wheeler started to answer Lexi’s question. “I don’t know. Wandered off into the prison surrounding us; lost in the maze that’s suppose to be a labyrinth, one way in and out. Time to make a switch; free myself from *that* kind of cage. Do you realize, Lexi, that she hasn’t changed her hair style since she was a kid? And those shoes. Kids as well. Keds!”

“I don’t care,” says Lexi back, stopped from dancing for a second. She’ll resume soon enough. “I love her still.”

“You can’t have her, Lexi. She’s… not in your league. She’s in the American, you’re in the National. If the Cincinnati Reds could play the New York Mets in the World Series then you might have a shot. But no sin in Cincinnati, if you catch my, um, lob. Out at home before the game even starts. Back in the pocket with the Bakers badge and all. You’re Mary Anne,” Wheeler summarized before her, still still. “Panama’s Ginger. But Shelley’s different — *I’m* different. And I set the rules. I’m tired of being the mother to a child that never grows up from top and bottom. You notice the change in *my* hair — I’m ready to dive back into the fire from the frying pan just above. Back to the dance. But first…

“… I have to let the butterflies free to do their work. Starting with the midriff, mind you. All Orange.”

Without further words, Lexi begins again.

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