Tag Archives: Roberts^^++

December 26, 2022 · 10:50 am

place of honor

“You are heart, I am spade, I get it.”

“Balancing point,” replied Shelley.

“Liz,” said Arthur, making her nod. “Both polarities in one.”

“Decision time,” spoke Shelley. “Heterocera or Nautilus or even somewhere else.”

“Looks like Heterocera made a move.” He looked at the painting again, the signature. Selen. Like the sim Selenia they had been investigating before stumbling upon this gallery and this exhibit (“Junction Points”) through Minnow.

“And the Heart Line Jem has been inspecting,” reminded Shelley to Arthur, her former boyfriend, her current husband. In the vast majority of Our Second Life, if not Morgan. But the town of Morgan (Orient PO) was dead. Probably all for the best.

“Baker said he missed Rubi, the woods. This is kind of a way to go back.”

“Nautilus is it,” Shelley stood firm, not ready to give up her castle. She had invested a lot by now. Plus the link to Iowa. She said this to Arthur.

“No option for the rebirth of Collagesity in Fordham, I’m afraid,” Arthur continued as Devil’s advocate.

“No, Arthur. That probably won’t happen. Even though *I’m* still there.”

“You and Franklin.”

Shelley paused before replying. A package had come yesterday for her thought-to-be assimilated tall, green friend. Roberts — Christmas present. She reached for it across the tracks. It contain (as Franklin described it afterwards) the Gang of Willard that blog owner Baker had taken away from her, like a misguided surgeon. Roberts bought it back. And brought it back.

“Franklin is gone,” she said, making Arthur arch his eyebrow.

“Baker won’t be happy,” he said.

“Baker can go to f-ing *hell*.”

“Hmmm.” Arthur looked over. The Retro Backless Dress below the steaming face seemed to fit. *She* was a throwback, non-mesh to name one aspect of that. She was closer to the Lemony Past than most people would suspect if they took her in surfacely. This box has depth, this box has a top and a bottom. Okay, she said Nautilus — stay on Nautilus. Must get back to that.

—–

Yellowmoon, Corsica continent:

“Here, Arthur. This is about Nautilus and its lemony past. Just that easy.”

—–

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December 25, 2022 · 10:04 am

00360210

I occasionally stop by here, a house to the south of Chilbo on the Jeogeot continent, to check and see if my star is still there on the porch where I put it, oh, say about a year ago by this point. Owner of the house and attached property is a bigfoot researcher, like myself. 🙂 Guy named Snow. And the creator of the star is also a Snow — small world, or so they say. The first Snow is also co-owner of Roberts and Franklin Investigators in Towerboro on the same continent.

Has Robin Williams pic and quote in his profile, thus the decision to place the star here. Williams was a big fan of Firesign Theatre. And a couple of years back, in the sim of Moork, I found a small parcel owned by Uh Clem, a name derived from one on their “Bozos” album already mentioned in this photo-novel by Peter Ladd, nephew of Mr. Babyface. Tonight I found an Ahclem avatar in the same group as the person who owns the Ouroboros property seen in the last part of my last post here (and who has a Firesign Theatre quote in his profile). And, to remind, Shelley Struthers, an all important character now, extraordinarily so, is based on a Shelly I found in Our Second Lyfe who is also a big fan of Firesign Theatre (another one of their quotes in her profile; is, like myself, a member of the only Our Second Lyfe Firesign Theatre group I know of) and whose apartment she has owned for at least several years lies directly on the triple number of Hooktip, on the Head Line of the Heterocera continent. Keep in mind that we just found more oddities on the Heart Line, its matching diagonal from that particular continent. You can get a glimpse of what I’m working with, all the connections. It is, indeed, a Matrix.

But I believe I know what’s on top of the box now. And the bottom. Nautilus, my *home* continent now (not Jeogeot, not Heterocera) is at the bottom. Top is Reality: an approximately 10×10 mile square in the middle of Ringgold County in the south of Iowa. And then they begin to interpenetrate.

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December 13, 2022 · 6:00 pm

HARDR

“He’s quite a big bigger than her,” observed Baker Bloch or Wheeler Wilson, laying under another one of those umbrellas on the far side of the pool. “Your turn now,” one of them said.

“I didn’t know Mmmmmm’s came in different sizes like that,” said Wheeler (making the 1st speaker Baker).

“They seem happy,” spoke Baker. “For now.”

“Com’on. We don’t know how this species really interacts with each other.”

“I know they have an average lifespan of about 26 years.”

“26 1/2,” amended Wheeler.

“And the little one, perhaps even less.”

“Again… you don’t know that. You’re thinking of dogs or cats or something. Could be the bigger one, the male, who has the shorter life. Plus males tend to die earlier than females (in general).” She looks over at Baker Bloch, those dead eyes, and remembers he doesn’t have to worry about all that. Already deceased. Her? Could be immortal as well. We’ll have to make sure she’s archived if so.

“Notice the TILE floaties all around?”

“No I didn’t. But that’s more your thing. I have my own kind of TILE.” She wonders again about his missing piece, the thing that can turn from an I into an E given the right circumstances. Ones she controls: E; perfection. There’s a whole ‘nother side to the religion/philosophy/game that Wheeler could explain to us in great detail. If she were allowed.

“It’s something we could talk about in great detail (told ya). Me with my own more analytic take, and you with your more physical slant.”

“Hmmm.” She was drifting off now in the noonday sun, just downed Russian Roulette doing its work.

“Notice the Christmas trees,” Baker added about the props in the central platform. “Green and red (line). Being emphasized above the blue and yellow.”

“You’re talking about Roberts now, and what she might give Franklin as a present,” Wheeler replied without opening her eyes. She was seeing in the dark. “Franklin hopes, anyway.”

“Why… did we have to take that away from her?”

“I didn’t. *You* did.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, right. Think about that analytic boy. Why would I care enough about her Gang of Willard to remove it, like a surgeon. No, that’s intellect, that’s airiness. That’s…”

“Male.”

“Yes.”

“Me Tarzan, you Jane,” Baker spoke while pointing between them. Wheeler couldn’t help but chuckle a bit with this. If only.

—–

“I like this pool *much* better than the guitar one. Bigger!”

“Oh, Grassy,” said Sassy, his new girlfriend, perhaps his new wife. They may be on a honeymoon. Certainly not the first date at least. The other one fit me better, the smaller one, she thinks internally, not wanting to disappoint. She’d save up the grudges, spew them out later like an erupting volcano. A smaller one, but packing quite an internal heating unit. What attracted Grassy to her in the first place. Sassy indeed.

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December 12, 2022 · 4:25 pm

Ives got it

Just up the hill as it turned out. Former site of a little place called Collagesity.

—–

“What do you think it is?” said Franklin, apparently to the tall, hiding pampas grass in front of her but actually to fellow greenie mate Apples even more hidden within. The teleport invite placed her right in the center (good one!).

“I can’t see,” logically answered Apples, because of the grass and all. High it was, but not her. They hadn’t partaken in a week. This was all on the straight and narrow.

“Right right,” replied Franklin, still gazing upward instead of inward.

“Describe it to me.”

“I will.” And Franklin counted off the stories for Apples, 7 in number, summarizing that it looked like some kind of prison with its bleak outer facade, a tower prison. She was starting to get nervous, butterflies in her stomach if not upon it. Assumed to be assimilated Franklin had somehow escaped, thanks to this type of Central Park location, a hiding spot that, as I said, is the most-least obvious place to look for her. Little did she know. We, of course, let her go, let her be independent from Shelley once more, but at a price. Checking the downstairs works sometime after she arrived, she saw she didn’t have a Gang of Willard any longer. Roberts would not be pleased — if she could ever reunite with her again. Maybe *Roberts* has it, Franklin thought last night in her loneliness. She had the dog, she continued to rationalize. She has a history of buying unusual magical objects. Maybe this is something like, I don’t know, a *Christmas* present, red returned to what was now thought to be only purest green. Sins paid for by another.

“Any signs of life? Any signs of the light?” Apples broke Franklin’s reverie.

Still backwards guitar holding Franklin studied the faces, the windows. Nothing but plain surfaces, outer masking inner as well. “No.”

“We’ll wait it out until dark here. Then stealthily make our way back to Campground Central and Unch. He might have some ideas on this as well.

“He’ll probably just start blathering on about how Collagesity is bound to return, and that a Linden owns the prime part of the land now and that the buyer she’s specifically selling it to for one of her kind’s dollars hasn’t reciprocated yet.” It will come back on the marketplace, the sentient tree predicted with its rustling leaves, emphasized this time by a couple of falling limbs even. Unch was confusing offworld marketplace purchases with inworld land purchases, but they didn’t bother to correct him.

“Hmm. Maybe we should be quiet for a while,” Apples said within. And so they were.

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December 6, 2022 · 5:20 pm

in the most-least obvious place

“Oh, we’ve looked everywhere for Franklin. Franklin Hollow here. Hootin Holler just a holler away to the north. Nothing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’ll find her.”

“Absorption.”

“Yes.”

Afterwards, Baker Bloch, in whatever guise he’s in at the moment, thinks that he needs to set up extra protection around Shelley, convince her of her supreme long term worth, her *extraordinary* nature. He didn’t think Franklin could emerge back out of her but also might be wrong. Small chance, but there. Roberts cannot be underestimated.

—–

meanwhile, in *Fordham*:

“You stay here with me and play backwards-forwards guitar, Franklin. Us greenies gotta stick together. Right Unch?” she calls up, then pretends to hear a, “right Apples,” from the tree behind her in place of “mere” leaf rustling.

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November 1, 2022 · 9:02 am

Spider

The town was rather a jumbled mess of buildings, but Shelley didn’t stay there long, taking the path of fellow Klancasterians Dixon One and Dixon Two before her and heading to Omega mountain country for purity, cleansing, or so they attempted. One came back but the other one (Two?) didn’t. We still don’t know which, thanks to the built-in ambiguity of these here photo-novels, 35 in a series of 35 so far. And last we saw of bride to one of ’em, Snowwhite Well, a mutual cousin, she was living with giant chickens over on the Maebaleia continent, as old as her Maw now — the Dixons’ Aunt — and just as aged of skin. She thought visiting monarch Greyscale Kimball was a tithe collector and was going to sic Gander, the biggest of the fowl, on her. But turns out they had a common love for reading, and a special fondness for the epic novel “Moby Prick”, so famous in that land where it was set, uniting the highest and lowest of classes in this case.

Point is, the Dixons were searching in these mountains for treasure that was right in front of them all along, smack dab in the middle of their hometown: Snowwhite Well herself, as she tried to explain to them in Vain (a suburb). Now, I don’t think Shelley is looking for treasure as well, at least this version of herself, but she found some anyway, in a tavern in Morgan about as Oriental and far away from the Occidental West as you can get. This was the Tesseract, this was the Hypercube.

She turned away from it at first, not believing her eyes. It was dressed up like a circus dog and set inside a display cage. The 4 repeating numbers over his or her head had been removed. Why would Roberts do this? she thought. She had to get in contact with Arthur again somehow, make that Lemont somehow. She was not on The Cross but she was still trapped, East becoming West and North becoming South every other day and every other week respectively, as she soon found out. She had jumped from the fire back into the frying pan but it remained hot as hell in here. Then she began to hear them, soft and sloow. “Two.” “One.” “Three.” “Zero.” A human-like feminine voice, surprising her, with a bit of a hiss in it, like a serpent. No barking or yelping detected. Then it started again. “Two.” “One.” “Zero.” “Three.” A bit of a break and then again: “Two.” “Three.” “One.” “Zero.” And again and again. She had to listen to them all, the 24 permutations of those 4 cursed numbers. She finally turned after it was over, sweat dripping off her body, making her long shirt-blouse wet at the stomach, neck and back.

“What *are* you?”

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October 29, 2022 · 5:07 pm

different

“I really liked the old office,” she answered Lemont Sanford, playing the role of Arthur Kill currently, “but it was too laggy. Kept crashing. You know how it is.”

“Yes I remember.”

“You were there in the underground for a while. Training.”

“Yes.”

“After Wheeler raised you from the dead (nods from Arthur). After Tessa killed you. We buried you, the firm, but you wouldn’t stay down. You went to Tennessee.”

“Yes, Tennessee.”

“You were looking for a spider, an 8 legged being, but you eventually figured out it was a dog. Spider is a dog.”

“Right, yes.”

“You retrieved it, brought it to me for safekeeping.”

“Yes. (pause) Do you have it?”

“Of course I have it, Arthur. Would you like to see?”

“Yes, please. I mean, I have the money but… actually, nah, I’m good. You’ve given me the money. I’m happy. Wheeler and me, I mean *Shelley* and me, I, can retire in comfort.”

“Is she still wearing purple?” Roberts questioned from her opposite chair. “Or has she moved beyond that?”

“Moved beyond I think. Last time I checked.”

“Ask her to wear something purple and see how she responds.”

“She seems okay with it,” Arthur reinforced. “She’s changed, she said.”

“Are you convinced?”

Arthur paused just enough to indicate he wasn’t fully convinced. There was, well *Roberts* now, for one thing. How surreptitious they run into each other again (!). But, deep down of course, Arthur knew it wasn’t coincidence. The Gods have further plans for them, which means The Void has further plans for them. They work hand in hand on this.

Roberts leaned back, folded her arms behind her head. “So strange that Franklin was spared. I’m overjoyed of course, but whether Black Jack, Kentucky or Black Jack, Tennessee, the helicopter that acted as a plane in the moment purposely missed her, swerving to one side or another. If only Mantell could have done the same — I think he tried, I think he saw the, um, irony. Do you know the case, Arthur? It’s quite famous, at least in UFO circles. Cradle links to grave, creating an uroboros scenario. The Cross (in the middle) is eliminated. That’s the point. I’m sure you understand, Arthur, given that you’ve been there now — you rescued Shelley from there. The Cross can *trap*.”

“I think I’m still on The Cross,” Arthur admitted. “I never made it back to Nautilus. I never made it back to here, then, this office in Towerboro on the Jeogeot continent.”

“Oh you’re here,” Roberts countered.

Arthur saw a spider on the floor behind her. He then saw 5 others, 10 others maybe, all lined up like military rank or file.  Roberts didn’t glance around, seemed oblivious to them. But Arthur knew she wasn’t. What was this psychic-detective up to?

“This is where it starts, Arthur. The agency. I want to know who tried to kill Franklin. In a strong probable reality she is dead. Only the actions of a rebellious, artificial pilot, a Mantell wannabe, saved her. He broke the pattern. Cradle to grave was unlinked. You were there too. You saw — how close.”

“Yes.”

“It was either the boat on fire or the rose colored cottage on fire.”

“I remember the boat.”

“And I remember the cottage.”

—–

Now where is that receiver?

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October 29, 2022 · 12:15 pm

Shelley’s castle (Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?)

“You are me and I am you. You have a (phallus) and so do I.”

“Not quite,” I said back to Franklin, green legs still in the distance.

There. That’s better.

“Like I was saying before the interruption, we’re the same *core* but different up here. It’s Our Second Lyfe, not My Second Lyfe.”

“Let’s go to the (Roost Never Sleeps) castle again and see,” Franklin requests. I had no choice but to follow her because of the, you know, being one thing. I was starting to question our differences as well. One of us could get *absorbed* — didn’t want that. But I knew it would be Franklin if so.

And, true enough, by the time we reached that more central castle across the way, she was gone. I looked down at my man pants. Was it actually *real* now? I had to see.

[delete picture]

No, just a better fit still. My hair had a tinge of green in it but that’s all. Arthur/Lemont would be *so* relieved if he were here witnessing this. But he’s somewhere off with Roberts — said they also had things to talk about. I suspect: more absorbing. Maybe. Perhaps it will be different in their case.

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October 28, 2022 · 6:02 am

Franklin was shrunk down to size.

“We have a read on the shack, Control, over.” No answer.

“Repeat, we have a read on the shack, over.” No answer for a while again, then:

“Uh, copy that, Mission, do you see anyone down below? Over.”

Norris pauses himself now, partly out of spite. “Yes, we have green legs, repeat, green legs. Green as frogs, over.”

They could take her out now but it would mean sacrificing the pilot. Stan talked the possibility over with Tom. When will we get a better chance? rationalized the latter.

“Okay, Mission, we’re going to ask you to go straight in on her, repeat, straight – in – on – her. As in kamikaze, over.”

A longer pause. How much did Norris value his artificial life? Enough to break free of Control? He decided to sacrifice himself but go out on his own terms.

“Read that, Control. Going – straight – in.” And he did, except a little to the side, the left one I believe, hitting the boat. Or the right one, pulverizing the rose colored cottage. But not totally straight, thus most likely not wiping out Franklin under the Umbrella.

Roberts of course heard the crash from just over the rocks and came rushing, and Shelley and Lemont did too from their beach just beyond and did the same. Collision in a different way. Two arcs of a story not yet met.

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October 27, 2022 · 8:34 am

00350312

“Thanks for coming to rescue me, *Lemont*.”

“You’re very welcome dearest. But you can *really* thank your Venus Cage necklace, or at least the photo of it.”

“Right. Didn’t remember anything about the Umbrella Club until I pulled it out of my purse and took a look. Angles aren’t right in the black and white photograph. Can’t figure out where it is taken on the body.”

“It’s not a body.”

“Yeah, I know that now. But just the studying, the trying to figure it out, changed me. I can never go back now. I remain under the Umbrella. Figuratively, of course, because here we’re out in the sun still. Where is our umbrella anyway?”

“Stashed away for a rainy day,” he said.

She turned on her side. “And… I don’t think I desire to wear purple any more. That must go along with (the change). Or when I do it’s *my* choice. She shaked her index finger to reinforce her point. Shelley she was through and through, she thought.

But Lemont knew the situation could change. Good now for them. But George/The Musician was still out there somewhere.

And Roberts remained just around the corner.

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