“Lester, can you hear me, Lester? I’m seeing 6’s and 9’s, just like back in grade school. Where am I, Lester?”
“Oh God, Lester! I’m falling!! Falling into a pit, AHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” Splatt.
“Oh. That wasn’t so bad.” And Philip wakes up fully on his cushioning bed and remembers that he and Lexi have an important meeting with Princess Pinky Gumm at 10:15 over in Juho. Better not be late.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0608, GTA, Jeogeot, Juho, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS, Oooo
“So this is what it looks like inside one of these Sphere’s, huh,” Lester says with awe in his voice, amazed he could get a plane in this far. “Well boys,” he continues after admiring the glinty surroundings a bit more, “I guess we better get down to the business that brought us here.”
“No no no, Walter,” he says, watching one of his two hired goons move toward the fake loot. “Remember what we talked about, fog for brains. Just ignore those shiny, weighty, but, in the end, worthless bricks of AU. That’s just fool’s gold. Might as well be ordinary rocks compared to what we’re *really* after.”
“And — du-huh — what’s that again, boss?” asked even more ignorant Jason from behind, dressed up like a bug exterminator with Walter for a reason. A multi-armed reason. All had extra arms for one thing, as in fire. But that was all part of the ruse, the subterfuge, the diversion.
“Just leave that to me,” Lester answered cryptically (again), finding the right way forward. “Through here, yes. This must be the passageway to the climax we seek,” he said almost religiously. “Prepare yourself for fire.”
Lester punches the correct #s into the keypad that opens the sliding door. Arms drawn, they head inside — further inside.
In a parallel dimension, Philip The Other walks with them, Gus still perched on his shoulder and suddenly burning brighter than ever, ow ow ow! (pop pop pop!) But shouldn’t be long now. Just that final rise over there.
(to be continued)
“Ummm,” goes Philip.
“Errr,” goes Lexi. Rattled Philip moves on. Lexi decides to stay. She had a purpose now.
—–
Philip’s bike then gets destroyed in an unfortunate rail accident (see background below) so he decided to pause before getting another one and instead sell some fish from a street vendor kiosk for while. Just for fun. First customer: himself, who wandered over from the Red District, eager for a talk.
“You’re not green any more,” he began. “Last time we spoke… you were green.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, *me*.” He held up a freshly battered halibut he’d been bashing with a hammer. “Fish?”
“Fishy indeed,” The Other replied. “I want to see *you* eat it. I want to see if it will instead fall out of your mouth. Because of, I don’t know, lack of internal organs?”
Philip places a quick call to Lexi. “Hi. A little help over here? I’ll send you the coordinates.”
“I-I’m busy too right now, Philip. I found something. Golden. Auto.” She also stares over at herself.
“Well hurry up (!).”
Herself rolls down the window, starts hurling similarly based accusations as Philip’s double. “I heard, *me*, that you can’t even play the trumpet. No breath.” She held out a golden instrument from the car she’d been forging with a hammer. “Music?”
She also was a bit different in appearance from her other self, no tattoos in this case. Wi-erd. What could all this mean? both think separately and then together as they rendezvous at the Fuu Kee Chinese Restaurant, doubles tagging right along. As they do.
(to be continued)
I never left The Sphere.
I’m still in Holland!
Philip wakes up.
—–
“I have a surprise for you today, Philip,” spoke Lexi at the breakfast table set up between their two bedrooms on the upper level of her Nawt Vaya house. “I think you’ll like it.”
—–
“Holland?”
“Yeah, you said you missed Amsterdam. So: here we are (!).”
“I said I *missed* Amsterdam. As in bypassed it, or at least skirted it. I think.”
“Well… now you have a kind of second chance. A Second Lyfe second chance. We’ll start at the northwest corner here and make our way across. Just like old times.”
“Hmmm.”
“You… don’t like it?”
Yeah. Why not, he thinks. And they head toward the center of the mocked up, 2 sim city where Lexi has another bright idea.
“Let’s get bikes, Philip (!). Like that guy over there.”
—–
Riiing riiing. “Out of our way! LOSERS.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0604, Europe, HANA LEI, Holland, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya+, Nevada, NVFS
Just as she was watching someone, someone was watching her.
But she didn’t care. Currently she was spying on what she called The One from the branch of a park tree with Philip, certainly a detour from the town tour she promised. “*Edward*,” she spat out with some vile. “He’s suppose to be forbidden here. She’s *married*, hmph.”
“Lexi, I hate to bring it up but you promised me and Gus that meeting with Frank.”
“Oh Frank can go -f-ck himself,” she rudely declared.
“Oh. Okay.” Philip looked at Gus on his shoulder who, wide-eyed as always through the burning, just peered back wordlessly. Hard to tell if the little fire demon was shocked at the language or not.
“Soooo… who is this again?”
But Lexi suddenly became even more preoccupied. “They better not, no they better not, no no no no NO.” Shelley and Edward looked up from their attempted kiss and scanned the environment, trying to locate the source of the call. But they were deep enough in the foliage not to be spotted. The moment, however, seemed to be ruined. Good, thought Lexi, realizing the same. They’re wrapping things up, it seems, and Edward will go his own way and Shelley her’s.
“So, who’s this couple, then?” Philip tries again, watching them get up off the bench and start moving away from each other. “Edward, you said?”
“And *Shelley*. Yeah, run your cute little ass all the way home, you bitch of a girl. You temptress.”
Philip started to come around to the idea that Lexi and he would maybe be staying together but they wouldn’t be sleeping together. Not in that way. Because this obsession revealed a shells on the other side of the beach scenario. Shells as in Shelley.
“Time to go,” she then said, starting to make her way off the branch and into the park below. Philip followed suit, being careful not to spill Gus in the process. But she wasn’t quite done with Shelley today in April’s May.
“There she goes, Philip. Back into the Tunnel of Love.”
What does *that* mean, Philip thought, but didn’t ask this time. They’d been delayed long enough.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0602, Jeogeot, Juho, Nawt Vaya+
He came back to Nawt Vaya and the Jeogeot continent of Our Second Lyfe a changed man. No more monkeying around again. He read in the red book up to the present. Retrieved the fire demon formerly named Calcifer but now called Gus from the netherworld known as The Netherlands, check. Walked out of Vijlen and toward the Vaalserberg mountain that is the highest of that realm and just winked out. Manifested here. Sitting in front of Gus, now trying to communicate with the little flamey guy. Happened once before. He puts down the book. “Didn’t it, pal?”
“Frank,” it squeaked in reply, which it’d said previously. And like before, Philip waited for more which never came. “Frank, eh?” he finally said. The fire demon seemed to nod a little to this with his burny head that was also his body but that’s all. No more words for a while.
“I know who he’s talking about,” spoke propped up Lexi from behind the counter, tired from a full day’s work and needing a break. Coffee’s run out anyway, so’s the food. Only cigarettes and other burny things left. Nada New Year also at the counter had to settle for spicy gum, which she was about to pop when I took the above photo. Later she added more spice to the picture.
“Well,” said Philip Strevor. “Speak your truths, woman… girl. Tell me who this Frank is, where he is. Is he fictional or fact? Does he dwell in a house or apartment like the rest of us or is his abode that of the mind and that alone?”
“Oh he’s real,” perked up Lexi. “Came here with him, this Juho.”
“Juho?” So Philip had a name for the place now. And perhaps a name for at least one of the residents. He wanted more.
“What’s *your* name?” So Lexi told him. “And that’s Nada over there chewing away at the only nutrition I could provide at this late hour,” she added. “I’m glad you yourself are enjoying your cigarette.”
“*Gus* is enjoying the cigarette,” said Philip. “Helps keep him lit. Isn’t that right Gus?” No answer. “But pray tell, putting the caboose back on the track, where do I find this Frank if he’s real? Does he also exist in this Juho you’ve illuminated the name for? Perhaps he even lives with you.”
“I’ll take you there,” said Lexi to this, shaking off the living together part. “Quitting time in, let’s see (she checks her watch not on her arm, actually relying on an internal clock), 15 minutes. Nada, you’ll have to take what’s left of your gum and clear out too.” Nada nods in understanding. But not before doing a dance called the Johana.
20 minutes later:
“We’ll pass through Juho proper on the way over to Frank’s. I assume you’re staying a while. Got a place to live yet?”
“Well… I…”
“Then it’s settled. You’ll stay with me. One more question. What are you reading? What’s in the red book that has you so fascinated?”
“Well… *this*.” They reach a playground on the outskirts of town which Philip remembered from section 04.
He couldn’t resist recreating history. “Here, take Gus for a minute if you don’t mind.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0601, Jeogeot, Juho, Nawt Vaya+
“Quick, driver. To Vaalserberg. And hurry!”
—–
It was just a glimpse of green through the trees, but for the first time in his long journey across The Netherlands he found he had a legitimate rise in front of him.
The about 15 minutes later he climbed a rock face to get a much better view. Marvelous!
Yes, he was wise to jump off that bridge into the canal back there to avoid going home, he thinks while surveying the countryside before him, Lester and Mikie’s hard efforts be damned. And soon afterwards, he’d found that little fire in the road that couldn’t logically be there, also a first in his journey, and potentially much more important. He felt like a modern day Prometheus bringing humanity a gift from the beyond, proof of its existence and his own sojourn there.
Passing another kind of impossibility in this world, he imagines it riding on his shoulder to his final destination, the place of triple and perhaps even quadruple contact. And so it came to be.
Is that a red white and blue flag of The Netherlands up there? Philip thinks while passing, not use to such decorations in his journey.
At the same “time,” Fern, after having created her own, more limited Earth simulator along with her own bus for travelling through such, leaves Arnhem in the eastern part of The Netherlands, destined for Amsterdam more towards its west-center, a 98 KM trip. At Amsterdam she plans to take a specially rigged up gold car to the Ells Bridge and beyond, hoping to catch up with Philip before he reaches Vaalserberg at the SE end of the country. It will be a close race, she knows. That’s why she created her own simulator at a 1:10 scale compared to Earth instead of the 1:1 scale to same for Microsoft Flight Simulator. She’ll need the time saved, she figured.
—–
*Not* copper, she knew.
*Not* silver just up the road, which she also passes by.
But, dang, where’s the gold one that’s also suppose to be here? Has it already been *use*? She gasps. It’s already been used! she understands and starts recalibrating her goals and outcomes accordingly in her vast brain.
(to be continued)
“I’ve been struggling to complete this piece for a long while. Could it be you’re the assistant Jack Shepherde promised? I was beginning to think he’d forgotten. Let’s test your artistic eye. Where should my last portion of lime green paint go?”
—–
“I ordered my feets to stop moving but it probably was just an illusion caused by the higher ups, the powers that be. I was still in control by them, not of them. Not yet. And probably never will given what happened when I laid down on that green green patch of grass that so attracted me. I had to lay there, commanded to again, I suppose. I intended just to rest my eyes and body for a second…
“… which turned out to be another hour, the same period of time I spent on that Dry Rock back in, where was it — not Windytown but the town before that. A couple of towns ago. Anyway, I’ve told you the result. Was my period at hard Dry Rock negated by this square of soft, cushiony green, I have to ask?
“Then, after another hour — the place I would be, say, if I didn’t take that long nap, hmmm — I found the plane that I *didn’t* crash. I began to think I wasn’t alone in this netherworld after all. Lime green as I still was, I began to fear The Other.”
“Thank you very much for this information, Philip,” I said, seeing sweat bead on his forehead again. Time to stop for today. Maybe tomorrow we’ll continue. Day 3? I’m not sure if there is such a thing but we’ll see.
(to be continued)
He rolls down the window after pulling up. “Hey Philip, it’s me, Mikie! Get in the car. There’s room for 2 as Lester’s already told you. This is your chance, Philip. Get – in – the car.”
Without turning or acknowledging Mikie in any way, which was part of the plan so he wouldn’t get tempted and sucked in to the offer, he jumps over the rail he’s been waiting at for the longest time and into the canal below.
“You’re making a big mistake, Philip!” he heard from the bridge behind him as he continued to walk on water after landing with a splash. “Alright, gotta go! Loser! See you in the afterlife you SOB!”
And that was it. For Mikie.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 