Suddenly, miraculously, she had shrunk down, her weight even closer to Zero now as she’s checking. Crocogator watched from atop one of the floating ducks in the distance, somewhat disappointed the tale hadn’t gone on. But Story Room calls. Residents.
The world becomes solid. The curtain closes slightly more, just a slither.
Suddenly we are in a different place altogether.
Hmph. How’d I get over here??
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0513, Colorado, River, West Virginia
She was dressed for maritime fun, but her adventure on the seas with the 2 boats was over, landfall made. She was a company of one and Al was her boss, subordinate, in turn, to Thomasina, formerly Thomas Boyy. Or the same as Thomas Boyy — whatever. TOM, anyway, the archetype, the overarching thing. Back to Al: “We assemble here in the sim of Tigger, you and I, to end the threat of being cowed once and for all. The renegade treatises of Bart and his more learned but less psychic sister Lisa will not be tolerated here. Is that cleeearrrr!?”
“Clear sir,” she said crisply, eager to get on with the job. At least it beats cleaning up Dukie in Hypolazy, another part of the FILE. She could have remained there for a proper reboot. “Yes sir, clear sir.” Then she remembered to salute. Crisply again. She wasn’t use to a military regime regiment but surely she could get use to it (as her back began to ache a bit from standing rigid so long). Surely she could.
He looked her over good. “Did you bring any other *clothes* with you, er, private?” He lorded over her, acting like he controlled the many instead of just the one. He wasn’t Thomasina in other words. He’d have to report back to her soon. Weekly, instead of bi-weekly like Shelley in her individual one. Because more would be added soon, he knew. He didn’t ask to be head of a religion without a price.
“No sir, sorry sir.” She saluted, not knowing if it was needed again but doing the act anyway. “Maritime fun and adventure I was dressed for, nothing more… sir.” Another salute after a quick pause.
Al would turn and look at the boats she brought but couldn’t break protocol. Do we just stand here the rest of the day? Shelley-as-Jennifer thought on her part. And… she better select a name soon, or decide on a name. Probably Jennifer. All grown up from Jenny. Yes, I believe that’s what Thomasina would desire. And she’s the most important one now, the new big boss, same as the old big boss.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0701, Nautilus, NORTH, Rank & File
And so we return to the beginning of sorts, the grave of Constantyne, namesake (of sorts) to Constantynople.
Close. Very close.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0514, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wild West
And so they were wedded that June. Something about substance over style in the vows. Something about quantity over quality. Substance and quantity over style and quality? Something was wrong here, really wrong. What does this wedding have to do with Constantynople, our newly minted darling of the blog? And why do we have the returned, purple gowned Wheeler in Alpha with Baker Bloch? Marriage of convenience? Let’s back up, have them eat those words for now…
We are at the end of 32, sliding into 33. Wheeler wasn’t joking. She’d won the Tic-tac-toe game fair and square. “We will be married to each other and also the town,” he now recalled about what she said at the grated white table in Ontario above the completed board, food shunted aside for the moment. Town, he contemplated. Wrong one. *Really* wrong one. He was falling into a pit, deep and dark and dank and dingy. 4D. No returning to kaput Ontario to the scene of the crime. We’d have to resolve this situation elsewhere. He lost his hat.
Someone stirred in the blue and yellow glowing teepee.
Fall over, Pitch Darkly stepped out of his dark (etc.) house and into the blinding white light. “Hey you blippity bleep bleep kids stop playing around with that statue!” he cried from the porch.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0506, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wendy-Ontario-, Wild West
She checked the TV guide in this limited satellite viewing of a place but nothing else came on until the sun rose up at 6. 5 more minutes. Edward was finished with the 1st chapter of the book both in reality and irreality. They needed to unwind after all the excitement, thus the cartoons. Bugs Bunny, Ren and Stimpy, and then the most controversial to end. Adventure Time. “Too Young”. Lemongrab was a trip! He makes a mental note to look up more on the character after their excursion into the sea today. Goal: Galapagos Islands. Or Azore Islands, whichever appear first on the screen. If the latter, however, they’d have to watch out for Keith, make sure he didn’t see them together. Shelley was dressed in her usual sun blocking duds which were the same as scrubs. Loose fitting. Ducks all over the top. When she appeared in them after Adventure Time, somewhat nearsighted Edward thought they were lemons and that she’d donned the outfit as a joke. But it was just her usual for maritime adventures.
An image reappeared on the formerly static filled screen. Crack of dawn, yay! Now they can continue watching themselves. There they are out on the beach, choosing one of the 2 available boats, her “boys”. Edward or Arthur? she pondered in front of their noses. Both the same length if slightly different shades of gray. She could have both! She climbs in one then climbs in another. Yes, these will do fine.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0312, Amazon, Oooo
Another ghostly Knight was showing them around. You can never completely escape the energy of The Father, the Dark Lord some call him. Red Devil in Xian terms. At his urging, they fed the function-o-meter in front of them with small copper coins — no change there — to watch TV. The ever-present ectoplasm did the work it was paid for.
“Very popular group in the 21st Century,” he rattled about the fuzzy figures on the non-machine, off by one century but only a fraction off the truth in present time, this 8008.
“Name?” tested Baker Bloch, moonburned from the larger space between the flowers. At 6’8″ he was taller than the trees. And even though bigger than birds, the bees offered minimal shade because of their speed. The present Knight again wrongly assumed he was embarrassed because of his lack of knowledge about, well, *everything*. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was just from the far far past. Like we talked about before. We apparently are still in Osse, motor dropped long ago. Like we’ve been driving around a car with no engine for forever.
Knight finally answered Beethoven, with Roll Over dropped early on from the name — even produced an early poster to prove his point. He should be the one to turn red, Baker thought.
early poster, according to Knight
Then while rolling back up the poster to put it away again, ghostly Knight, one of many in the clone hive, said he was joking and that their actual name was SODA. Another joke? Turns out: not. As Baker Bloch checked around, this SODA group seemed to manifest everything here, including the mica table (perhaps ground 00), the chairs around it, the Cavern itself, the *town* itself. Taking up the whole of a sim called Newt. Like the man, the father (of Shelley Struthers). This is, in effect, where he was born, or at least the name. And certainly the group name gives us an important clue about what happened to our society as a whole, the flip flopping of animals and plants and probably minerals as well (we’ll check the rounded mica table for more tips on that later). And the bearded and mustachioed Moon above it all. The Dark Lord. Without any possibility of escape via a satellite of its own, a Moon for a Moon. Bendy knows. He may be more than just a cameo figure in this here photo-novel, 38 in a series of a lot.
“We successfully,” continued Knight, “made the name illegal, *forbidden*, beyond any even seductive poser could get to. Even the pharmacists had the hoods pulled over their eyes, duck-like.”
(to be continued)
And so they traveled from Mountainair down to Lordsburg, Hucka Doobie’s old stomping grounds. Before she died and was reborn again anew in her old bee form. Now she’s progressed far enough back to human to also more closely examine her human past, pre-bee. She retracts her antennae for good and dives in. Would they make it? Would Duck prevent the success of the journey? The point is that they made it. And Antony at the bottom again or at least Anthony, two of ’em in fact; double the fun. Border towns both. It was not all about Anthony — unlike that other claim — but at least the first 7th was (approximation). I don’t have many friends. Let’s call him up.
“I have to take this,” he said to visiting Hucka Doobie and Barry DeBoy. The Devil, he knew, because of the timing.
“Hallo?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0201, New Mexico
I arrived at the hotel and Duck was already there. I made peace with it. I tried to write but Duck kept quacking and shacking the floor. I took up read. The bag shushed loudly. It was tired of the quacking too. Nervous about meeting Mother.
The bed is a bathroom.
—–
A call interrupted my dream. I awoke in the same position as sleep, one seamlessly changing over into the other. Which was real I couldn’t help but ask. “Hallo?” It was Hucka D., wondering how I was. She wanted to join me as soon as possible, her other engagement ended. She wanted to come back home, if in a different part of the state. She wanted to reinvestigate… herself.
—–
I went back to sleep after playing “Gunn Mobile Home Trailer Park: Your Darkness” until 3 in the morning. Just to keep the boogieman away. I finally succumbed. Should have never played that game so long. I had another nightmare about The Void.
Only now I recall that Hucka D. will be arriving before tomorrow’s yesterday. And, yes, there she is. At the door. “Hallo, hallo?” she cried, knocking and knocking. I couldn’t get up out of the bed. I voided myself — disgusting. It was all over the place. I couldn’t let Hucka see me this way. “Hallo, hallo?” she cried, and then went away. I looked down. I was not disgusting. It was all a dream again. Caused by the Duck.
A call awoke me, real this time. It was Hucka D. She had been delayed by another project. She would instead be arriving Munday, a day which I knew didn’t exist — not one of the happy ones. The Duck quacked the bag shushed. Dreams…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0109, Alabama, Gold City-, Jeogeot, New Mexico
“Now this is what’s so fascinating to me,” spoke Baker Bloch, taking over his father’s talk show business. Just until he mends from that broken hip. Should be off the crutches in another day or 3. “So let’s review: you moved from behind the camera to in front because Ricky Cargo got shot in the head with a real bunch of lead — no death here!” he shouts toward the audience, which got a roar. “And so you played in ‘I Love Lucifer’, for 6 years as the male lead — didn’t say lead!” More laughs. “Then you quit that show after they moved the location from the city to the country (Sandman nods here with a soft “um hum”), then you decided to get that age operation to better exploit your chances in the then lucrative child acting business.”
“More money, uh huh. After you subtract all the cost of living stuff, the houses, the pools and cars and, let’s see, women I suppose. Women of the night.” He laughs a bit here and the audience too. They’re still with him. They’ve bought into this whole story. Baker Bloch almost has as much talent in the build up as his father. But still he hopes he gets well soon and returns.
“Let’s see, the next job is then little Richie Pettry in the ‘Dick van Duck Comedy Special’. Aired on CBS for 3 years.”
“Four. Counting the Christmas season. Ran for 6 episodes actually.”
“And I believe that’s the first Christmas season in television history.”
“Television *comedy* history. There was always Bing Cosby.”
“Right, forgot,” exclaims Baker Bloch. “But that started the whole Santa thing. Tell me about that — I know we’re getting off-topic again but the story is fascinating. We’ll return to the child acting soon.”
“Well, that was part of it. At Christmas a child needs, what? A Santa. To sit on his lap, tell him what he or she wants for Christmas.” He gestures placing an imaginary child on his knee during this.
“We all know that *now*. But back then — brand new! You invented the holidays, Sandman. Have you ever thought about that?”
“Well… I can’t take credit for St. Patrick.” Laughs from the audience. He stares out at them lovingly, knows they’ve footed the bills for his many yachts and mansions down through the years.
“Okay,” says Bloch. “Let me cut to the chase — Tommy’s telling me we need to go to a commercial break.”
“I sat on his lap,” says Sandman, getting the core of it. “I… told him… I wanted a duck for Christmas.” Chuckles from the audience, most of them not even paid studio laughers by this point. “I wanted to *be* a Duck (dramatic pause). So he ate me.” Stares even wider eyed at the audience, who have lost it. Everyone knows the story. It made broadcast history.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0503, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Squared Root City-
“Well, he makes a good point,” she tries to joke.
“He’s *pointing*… to his *name*,” said Marilyn to this, a what you see is what you get kind of gal. Unlike Sep here, who’s complicated. Marilyn was also reading her book upside down, which Sep didn’t bring up. No more pointing out anything. She needed to get to why she was here.
“I have a new gal in my life, Marilyn. I think… I’m in love. Yet she’s married.”
“*Married*?” Marilyn exclaims. “More like *buried*. I’ve been married 7 times and that’s just because I’m only 42.” She looks over, satisfied smirk on her face. “Okay, 56,” she relents. “Go on, change your expression to shocked. I’ll wait.”
Sep sits there for a second, then obligingly lets her jaw drop. “*Fifty*-*six*?” she meters out, knowing what Marilyn wants to have said to her. If she had to guess, Sep would have said 49, which is splitting the difference.
“Yes, shocking I know. Now go ahead and do the same for the 7.”
So Sep feigns the second shock as well. “*Seven*?” The information she has about the Heart Line here better be good. If only the duck were truly alive instead of just a dummy he could help instead or at least chip in. She makes a mental note to search out the real Professor Duck after this was over.
The alarm goes off. Sep wakes up. No Shelley beside her. Unlike last night. Must have taken a walk, she rationalized, not hearing anyone downstairs. Then she realized the obvious: she walked home. Back to Arthur. One night stand she just had here. Better write down the Heart Line dream before she forgets, what good it did her. “*One* *night* *stand*,” she imagines telling still couch sitting Marilyn, giving her back a dose of her own medicine.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0410, Corsica, Heterocera, Northwest
Sunklands 