… the man with no eyes…
… for he is death.
—–
“I’ve used the gold coins for what I feel is a good purpose, Mssr. To honor the dead.”
“Good, good. And so now you know who Bulby is.”
Supergal Ruby paused, then: “Davey?”
“The same.” He kept spinning his spinner but there was no yarn involved. Only truth.
His job here done, Herbert Glenn Gold soon returns to the sea from which he came, Special Spinner still in hand. He’d finally caught the Big One or, should I say, it caught him.
“So tell me more about this young girl you met. Corvo, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, well you *know* her name. Supergal Ruby. And you know she’s engaged… or reengaged to be more exact,” he tried to reassure his wife. “Her and Greg Ogden had been married before. But…” Herbert Glenn Gold wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up the death of Greg’s interim lover Mr. Babyface in that Korean Channel water funnel. Simply because he wasn’t sure he was really dead.
“But what, dear?” April Mae said in the gap. “Is… is there a problem in paradise?” This was what she sometimes said when she sensed trouble in a relationship. And this one, she felt, threatened hers. She had been quite insecure — and understandably so — since the Merry Goldbusk debacle over in NWES City. And now they’ve returned to the same continent of the indiscretion — probably adds to the paranoia a bit.
“I don’t think so. Anyway, that’s why I invited them both here,” he followed up on earlier conversation. “Greg is happy painting so I provided him with models.”
“Models, hmph. Is that what you call them?” She was usually more tolerant of Herbert’s eye wanderings but her biorhythms were on the downswing today. Perhaps too much tea lately. But Albert makes such a fine pot!
“Now now, April Mae. They’re only cheap mesh statues really. Like all those ones standing outside Baker has lined up for potential use later on.” They were on the wrong side of the house to look at all that mess so April Mae didn’t try. Flesh and mesh, she thought here. Unreal but still tempting, she felt.
“Soo… she was just here to pick up the 2 coins and then leave. And you said she knows what to do with them.”
“She knows. But she just has to remember. There’s 2 directions here,” he says as he cuts another piece of pizza and gobbles it down. “She can pawn off the golden coins for quite a small fortune actually.”
Unwise, April Mae thinks here about his earlier actions. Risky and unwise.
“*Or*,” he continues, “she can use them as *evidence*.”
“Atlantis, right.” She cut her own piece, she accomplished her own gobble. “And what about Bermuda?; you mentioned a Bermuda. From the way you described it it sounded more like a person than a place.”
Thinking of her newest dress with all the parrots, Herbert Glenn Gold decided to deflect here again. “No, it’s a place. A triangle, actually.”
Another funnel, he then realized.
—–
“I’ll take everything you have,” she said shortly after entering the store and the introductory chit chat was over with Hector Big Parrot Bird Guy. “Including these 3. Including *you* if you wish, she thought but didn’t say out loud. There had to be limits to all this silliness.
“Molly, Polly and Folly are *not* for sale,” he returned in a haughty voice more human than bird. “They’re my friends. They keep me company. I can’t be entertained by reading all the time.” He finally looks up from the book about non-parroty things, stares into her eyes. “But the rest are yours. Take them, I don’t care. I’m just an unpaid employee minding the shop while the owner is away. I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s been gone for days, maybe years even. I don’t care,” Hector reiterates.
“Free?” she said.
“Free.” I can replenish the stock in a blink of an eye. *Those* parrots aren’t real; mere 2d replicas. Only these three here are real. My friends, as I said.”
Molly emitted, “You’re darn tootin,” to this.
Polly squawked loudly as if in agreement.
But, without chatter herself, Folly just looked around from her own perch at everyone involved. She personally had her doubts that *any* of this is real, pet shop and all. And where was Victor Ratt the owner? Rumor has it that he’d been kidnapped by pirates.
Only the unreal parrots in back knew for sure and they weren’t talking either.
(to be continued)
He paused in his magical spinning to admire the ocean view. Back on Jeogeot, he thought with satisfaction. It seems we just left.
A knock at the door. “Dear,” spoke over interwebs watching April Mae Flowers, the wife of many years, “are you expecting someone?”
Actually, he was. She’d caught up with him, just as he’d planned. He said to his wife: “Yes. It’s an acquaintance from Corvo. She’s cool with the gold. Go ahead and let her in.”
“Albert, if you would,” requested April Mae to their Selenite butler behind her, always at ready by the fireplace with whatever the elderly couple needed, mainly tea but occasionally other tasks. Like now. “Certainly, mum,” he said in that trilling, alien voice of his, laying down the tea tray on the, let’s see, fireplace mantel and proceeding to the door.
“Welcome,” he issued to the stranger outside. “Mssr. Gold said he’s expecting you.”
“Indeed he is,” she said.
“Hi Supergal Ruby!” he called over in the waning light after opening the other door remotely. Time to turn the lights on in this interesting new development.
Supergal Ruby had given up fishing but mate Greg Ogden hadn’t. He’d been lucky enough at the sport to distract them from the golden coins and other Corvo mysteries, sucked up inside the mundane for a while. “2 sharks, a mantra ray, and a swordfish in one day!” he exclaimed to Ruby over a fish highlighted supper, perch salmon or cod (another reader’s choice). It was only afterwards that Ruby recalled the coins, and the fact that they had missed the last ship out of Corvo until Munday. Oh well. At least *Greg’s* happy, she consoled herself. And it will give her time to talk to Mr. Gold.
But she never saw him again, nor his spinning wheel nor the big ball of yarn down the beach from him he was supposedly working on. Dare I say he was a figment of her imagination? Eventually the coins became that too, we can follow. As the island had planned all along. In the immortal words of famous philosopher and, later, box company worker John Locke: “It’s not an island.”
Supergal’s second album, “Atlantis Forgotten,” was fittingly titled. There were more things to dwell on than lost civilizations now, like growing fame, more immediate and materially tangible. The Portuguese government working through the music industry had a hand in that as well; suggested “safe” words to use in her lyrics to downplay the supernatural, “lost knowledge” aspects found on the first. The oh too commonplace selling of the soul.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0314, Hana Lei^^
With her relatively newfound fame, it seems that our Ruby Supergal was always traveling these days, living out of her suitcase as it were. She was on a mission: to spread love and peace and joy throughout the whole of Portugal and maybe even the western parts of Spain, depending on how much she can grow her fame. She felt she was a light of the world, showing the way to a brighter future out of the dimmer past. And the Atlantis revelation was one step along that path, perhaps a pretty important one, up there with any musical decisions she might make.
She let one of the colorful butterflies circling around her shimmy through her outstretched hand, enjoying the sensation.
She knew the butterfly enjoyed it too. Hope, she decided to name it. Hope for the future.
“Soundcheck on the set in 10 minutes!” her manager barked up some nearby stairs. “Goodby Hope and the other 2,” she said as she moved away from them and back into reality.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0303, Hana Lei^^
She put away the guitars and got serious. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she practiced, not having an audience yet. It was only 5 in the afternoon and her gig wasn’t until 8. She’d have to eat first of course; make it a past participle before the actual playing began. At the same time, the audience should begin dining on sole food, that particular fish being the catch of the day here in Portuguese Hill village formerly of Illinois, US of A. Where they found *her*. “Ladies and gentleman, simmer down,” she continued imaging the applause coming her way after the song “Rockaway Beach,” a crowd favorite as usual. “I have an announcement to make.”
—–
“Your painting looks very pretty over there, dearest. I see you haven’t used any green yet. That’s good. Stay away from green. And oil. Stick to watercolors.”
“Of course my dear. Those times are in the past.” She apparently couldn’t see the bit of green he used in the couple of village trees from this distance — good. This made him think of Mr Babyface, his old flame. Lost at sea in a craft of too small design. At least he went doing what he loved. Sucked up by a rare water funnel in that area, they said. Glug glug glug, he imagined. Glug glug glug — GONE. The boat was later thrown up on the shore of Kenfield but the short man with the large face was no longer with it, fishing off the port side, fishing off the starboard side, fishing off the bow, the stern. He loved fishing in all its positions. He’d eat his sole later on in honor of him, he decided.
“Did you like my speech at the end? Too serious?”
Yeah, past and also present lover Greg Ogden had reservations about all that. “Don’t you, I mean, what if a member of the Portuguese navy is part of your audience? Gets back to headquarters, say. You could be in trouble (!).”
“I said what I had to say, though. Atlantis is rising in that part of the Azores. All the locals know it, the *government* knows it. They just want to cover it up, the hierarchy. The locals won’t stand up to them either, at least publicly. *Someone* has to take a stance. Might as well be me. I have a platform.” She briefly indicated the stage behind her. The former cover band cover girl now striking out on her own with strikingly original compositions popping forth right and left, backwards and forward. The announcement fits right in with all that, he realized. Unique, he summarized it in a word. Like a perfectly square pyramid perfectly aligned with the 4 cardinal directions, waiting to be revealed in all its past and also present glory.
“*And* — I think we should announce the news of our re-engagement if you don’t mind; make that public as well. Hand in hand.” She takes his hand from beneath the table, holds it tight. The double announcement was a go.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0041, 0302, Hana Lei^^, Illinois, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Xilted
And then Ruby finds maybe a final, major landmark of the island: the almost football field long Wall Street also known as Long Lane.
We can continue.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0517, Constantynople, Missouri, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wild West
“I found something,” im-ed Wheeler, disguised as ice cream dress wearing Ruby again. “A second memorial. You can mark it on your map from my position.”
But Baker, disguised as Newt, had found something too. A working portal. He clicked one of the balls and it took him directly to ML Gazebo 91, a miracle. Just where he was suppose to be.
“Got it!” he im-ed back after the pin placement, not daring to tell his new discovery to the young, impressionable Ruby. Wheeler later, maybe.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0516, Constantynople, Nautilus, New Island^, Omega^^, Rank & File, Wild West
If there’s anything to this *line* she must start here, she feels. A woman named Constantyne, memorialized in the sim of Constance. Too close to be accidental, she understands (the only other Constan/ sim is Constantine, etc.). This is ground 00 — ‘nother one.
But what was this place, actually? She and her ice cream eyes longed to explore further.
—–
She found something. A man standing on the beach, as if looking for someone. For me, she thinks? She zooms in. A black man, tall, maybe 6′ 5″ or so. A guess, but she’s good at such. A man, yes, named Hill, Ruby’s psychic senses tell her beyond the ice cream eyes and lips and everything else. Hawaiian style swimming trucks. Odd goggles — lighted. The man wants to dance but can’t. Someone is stopping him from doing so. His partner cannot arrive without the balls, red and blue. But, she also senses, *both* balls are blue, one upright and one reversed. Sex, male and female. A decision must be made.
This man, wishes to be a father.
The man can grow 3 inches any time he wants to and become 6′ 8″, another Hill. Two Hills in one, then. But it means giving up the product.
The man is both blue and yellow. Think that’s it. Better get back and report.
—–
“My boys!” Mike exclaimed back in Annaberg in the sim of Newt, sitting around his mica table again, yet another ground 00 but perhaps the first. “Poison!” he shrilled. “Poison!” his mate Pat duplicated beside him. They thought this part of their story was done and over with and that they could freely and easily move to the center of Lemon Free State, good over here and bad over there, just a small fraction of its former power. Almost nonexistent. But, turns out, it may last above all the rest.
“No, don’t worry on that front,” explained Ruby to the excited couple. “He didn’t have the product. I looked all around. No lemon, no lime.”
Fruit headed Mike and Pat, being who they are, became very confused with this. Eventually they just disappeared in front of her. She had a new boss to report to. Al.
“My name is Al,” he started, “but you can just call me X. I am the founder of a new religion. Died not by the cross but the desert. Did I say that right this time? Yes. Desert. Died.”
—–
“Hello,” it said between two Tiki totems, making him turn. Ruby was wrong.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0503, Constantynople, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wild West
Doc Brown had about given up. He just can’t quite get this whole alien pregnancy in a ball concept down. He’s tried basket, he’s tried soccer now. He wanted a blue one but couldn’t find it in his inventory. Blue would set the correct position, right-side up instead of upside-down. This wasn’t working. He needed to get some sleep. He dozes on the spot. Right next to his creation. The girl from Venus, maybe Mars, with Jupiter and especially Neptune a much longer shot. He wanted her to be from a planet you could see and observe and not hide from. So Jupiter still in play. Even barely noticeable Uranus. Here he is, spacing out about space again, he laments. Can’t… sleep…
But he was.
He wakes up next to his wife of 17 years and stares over at the expanded stomach, the child they made together. Finally, after so many attempts. He’s going to teach him or her how to play basketball or soccer, his or her choice. Then he remembers the plug, the thing you’re not suppose to see but somehow he can. Just like Ruby. This indicates the alien nature after all, his greatest fear.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0038, 0415, Nautilus, Rank & File, Upper Austra^
Sunklands 