—–
“What was it about that jar?” Sister Martha Lamb wondered for yet another time concerning Falmouth 08, even going so far as to rez a small couch in front of it for further analysis. “Copyright protected image; inside but also broken through,” she continued thinking aloud. “A weakness but also… hmmm.”
She still couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0412, New Island^, Rubi^
“Give. Me. Some. PILLS!”
—–
“Flying high are we again tonight Annie? And we’re also joined by Young Ruby. Hi Young Ruby!”
“Hellooo,” the 15 year old replied innocently across the table. The Table. She was also flying high but in a different way.
“And of course The Librarian between you. But let’s go further up tonight, guys,” Axis suggests, retaining a small, mischievous smile upon his lips, Mona Lisa style. “To the Hitop Pool of Undifferentiated Lovemaking. Love, I meant there. 1/2 and 1/2. And I believe its Hilltop. Let’s top, er, hop to it!
—–
“Annie, you chose the red tube. That means you’re temperamental and undisciplined. Ruby you chose the blue one. You are even keeled and fun to work with. Your weaknesses are chocolate…”
“It is!”
“… butter pecan…”
“Right!”
“… and lemonade.”
“Sure ’nuff! Remarkable Axis.” Young Ruby was amazed over how spot on his on-the-spot psychoanalysis was. Axis was an evil genius for sure! And also: in that order.
“It’s time for me to turn into the dog.”
Oh goodie, both women thought as one. Their love of Tin Tin was only matched by their love for their weaknesses, but unfortunately he had his back to them tonight with not much to say.
The sun was rising on Hilltop Pool. The sun was always rising here, over wealthy and poor alike.
Sun Rose.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0411, New Island^
These days Young Ruby often sits atop the Rose 01 dune, aka the Blue Rose Dune, and meditates on her surroundings:
Eraserhead Man’s cottage to the south and its Rabbit Hole portal, now fronted by a small grove of palms…
… Axis’ supposed castle to the west…
… but then an even higher castle across Route 9 that Ruby speculates may be his actual home in a bluff, this Man in the High Castle, after all. But maybe both castles are bluffs…
… since we also have the moving castle, the island’s Monster as some call it, including her Aunt Annie. It almost invariably appears to abductees/visitors in or around the Wastelands. More on that soon.
Poor Annie, Ruby thinks. Lost in a quagmire of undifferentiated pills, dance, and sex now. Like being covered in bees with no whirlwind plan for escape.
She should go visit Karl over in the Gloomy Gus after this; get a measure of how he’s holding up. That way she can also stop by the duplicate Scarlet Creative Sylvia House and see if Mabel is, by chance, home. She’d like to catch up with what’s happening over in Heterocera these days. And her doppleganger.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0407, New Island^
But who’s Ruby? observing Ragdoll wonders.
Also new: binocular viewer atop Stairs.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0404, Iris^^==, Rubi^
“You should really get something for that itch, Shirley,” spoke Ruby to her new friend while posing on an effigy of island legend Jim Turtle at sunrise, not far behind Bumpy’s Ice Cream Village. “Sand fleas don’t really seem to be bothering anyone else around here that I know of.”
“I think it’s actually a sexual thing. I’ll be 13 in two week; coming of age you know. I look at men — differently now.”
Ruby decides to open up a bit more about a related topic. “My Aunt Annie is looking at men different now too.”
Shirley scratches her left underarm. “What do you mean?” The tomgirl was secretly wondering how old Ruby was and hoping she would tell her, along with also talking about how she feels around boys now. Shirley was guessing: about 15. Old enough to know a lot more than her on the subject.
“Oh… she just looks at them like, I don’t know, *objects* now. Pieces of art.”
“Like the stuff we just saw?”
Ruby considered this, thinking back to Smelly Santy, Tronesisia, and the rest at API. “Yeah, I guess it’s not too much different. No Hazel tonight thankfully. Thank you for coming with me.”
Shirley was scratching the top of her hinny now. “No problem, my fellow New Islander. *Lady* New Islander. We girls here must stick together. Against all those men.”
Ruby knew what she meant. Objects, hmph. Like we were made of plasticine or something. Movable, bendable toys. Annie was just joining the crowd, doing what Romans do or whatever the expression was. She was falling into the rhythm and beat of the land, Ruby then thought and was pleased she came up with the phrasing. “Do you think this island has a pulse?” Ruby tried to reword it in better terms. “You know, like a, um, fundamental *tone*?” Ruby rolls over on the turtle and looks directly at Shirley Boot now, gauging her expression, the green terrain of what would later be known as Pimushe Isle jutting out of the sea in the background.
“Sea,” Shirley then uttered out of the blue without consideration.
“C?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0315, New Island^
“Mabel, I mean *Ruby*,” Jay Woodhull suddenly uttered after Ruby got off the line with Shirley Boot (the API visit was on for tonight!). She was just about to teleport down and out of here. “We, Marty and I, have had a talk and we’ve decided to show you who we really are. Deep down beneath.”
Please don’t do that guys, Ruby thought to herself. Please please don’t.
“So deep,” Marty added, out of breath from all the moving about apparently, “that we almost *forgot.*”
He changed in mid rock, Jay along with him.
“Fisher and Lord Bendington?!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0312, New Island^
Young Ruby had fallen asleep at the dining table while reading Mabel’s Diary No. 3 again. Such fascinating stuff: Fishers Island and New Island are one! “3 palms and the truth,” Mabel kept repeating as a mantra within. And she *must* visit this Artist Point Interactive, where she left off reading before cutting the z’s. Maybe, perhaps… tonight? But Mabel also warned never EVER go in there alone. What were those two potheads thinking when promoting it as a so-called up and coming New Island art gallery, hmph? Didn’t they understand who was secretly the center of it all, this Hazel or Mrs. Hazelhurst or Mid Hazel? A powerful witch, and one not to f-ck with according to the book by any means. That’s yet another reason this place should be named Fisher or perhaps Fishers Island overall. Ruby was the chosen namer of Queen Mabel. She and she alone had that power, that ability. But when to affect it?
Ruby checked the clock on the wall: 11:46. I wonder if that interesting tomboy lady Shirley Boot I met this morning when she came over here to see the potheads might want to accompanying me? Maybe I’ll give her a ring. Yes, a ring.
Now where was Mabel’s phone in this place? Oh yeah, she remembered. Upstairs now. With the potheads — their new business line until they set up something on their own, out of *our* house, pheh. She hated going up there…
… because it was always something like this.
“A little to the right, Marty,” Jay was saying, engrossed in the moment and not paying a bit of heed to the suddenly materialized Ruby. “No, a little to the left now. No, back to the right.”
Annie spotted the phone. A quick call and she’s out of this madhouse.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0311, New Island^
“A SPHEROID BEING, Robot! Just in front of Ruby’s BLUE ROSE Dune! TOP SECRET STUFF, right Robot?!”
“I guess so,” his mechanical friend and neighbor replies. “It *was*.”
“Like LAURA from ‘The Return’! Like BILL!”
An awkward pause ensued. Robot Derak Jones was hesitant to correct Eraserhead Man played by the great David Lynch on the name of perhaps his most infamous creation. Eventually one of the cameramen spoke up.
“BOB!!” Eraserhead Man then echoed around a good majority of central New Island. “How could I FORGET THAT?! Played by the LATE GREAT FRANK SILVA! THANK YOU, JIM!” he shouted toward the cameraman. He then faced Robot again. “I’m now going to TURN UP MY HEARING AID so we can SPEAK IN PRIVATE!”
“All right.”
“REMEMBER,” he said before adjusting the dial, “speak at a WHISPER from now on!”
Sidenote: Eraserhead Man’s new palm trees seen in the background.
—–
“But that Eraserhead Man was halfway wrong about the situation. The sphere being lies *between* the two dunes, one red and the other blue. Both roses of course. We need to talk with whoever lives in that high castle in the background. He or she could have seen what happened.”
“Well…” says Annie to her faux niece Ruby. “*He’s* right behind you.” Ruby whirls. Axis waves innocently from the table.
—–
“If only we could hear what they’re talking about right now.”
“Hold on,” Axis then offers. “I’ll rewind it and then turn up the sound.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0117, New Island^
Annie sneaks up on Trashy the Clown from behind this time, surprising him.
“Gimme some pills!”
—–
“You’ll have to stay behind from this point on, Young Ruby,” commanded Annie, hands on hips at the entrance to the sugar house.
“I thought you were an *artist*, Aunt Annie.”
“I’m slipping. Karl is threatening to turn blue again. I need a cash replenishing. This will do it.”
“Don’t do it. Think of Tennessee. Would *she* stoop this low?”
“Many times,” countered Annie to the youngster, not her real niece but a faux relationship Ruby deemed necessary. And she had that power, thanks to Mabel. But she couldn’t take away her free will. “Many times with many men,” Annie furthered. “And their many parts.”
Ruby continued to pout outside while Annie signed up for her new business. “If you tell Karl, I’ll kill you,” she told Ruby later. Annie may have to have some therapy soon. I chalk it up to the recent pill popping. Red and blue are all mixed up for her, undifferentiated.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0105, New Island^
Young Ruby was the latest avatar to be sent through Eraserhead Man’s Rabbit Hole portal, direct orders of the new Queen of Collagesity who is Mabel. Get to *that* story a little bit. Being a natural explorer, Ruby’s interest was immediately piqued by two larger dunes to the northwest of EM’s property, just beyond where Annie famously painted her mate Karl as a smooth, bloated blue boy instead of his regular hairy, chubby self.
Ruby knew that naming had become important on New Island, thus considered the appellation of these two dunes carefully. That was one of her assigned responsibilities.
She stood there for about 15 minutes…
… while the sun rose to her east, casting the dunes in a rosy light. Rose 1 and Rose 2 they shall be, she determined, and then treats herself to a banana split float at nearby Bumpy’s Ice Cream Village as a reward for her naming success, the first of a good number she would apply to both the island’s physical and political geographies.
Later, another new character named Tin Tin would discover two roses in a New Island skybox and understand the synchronistic resonance. There was an important difference between the two dunes, just like there was for these roses.
One is more natural and one is less so. The digging would commence soon.
—–
Tonight Annie would refind these two roses for a better picture of them than Tin Tin’s but she’d have to fly beyond Mars to do so.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0104, New Island^
Sunklands 