… from a nearby, safe dune.
Tag Archives: Shelley Struthers^^++
00440304 (Contemplation of an execution…)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0044, 0304, Blue Feather Sea+, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City
00430608
“Found her, Lichen!” Hiding behind that flamingo, pink for pink. Another revisit of an origin story you’ll notice: Voyageurs, where we all 3 started from. Remember you did that fabulous cow gag where you had me believing Wendy had 4 stomachs when we began studying her? Wonderful!” Fern wanted to encourage and bolster Lichen’s sense of humor as much as possible since she was slated for a stand up gig at Bull’s Bar on the 9th, setting aside her natural sharpness. Or trying to.
That checked off, it was on to the next task. In Washington state. “Keep your eyes peeled for anything giving hints that the energy of Black jumped over here after drying up to continue its existence.” And eventually be shown to the world, she realized while starting up the SIXMILE trail on her bike and thinking about the camera, Lichen right behind her. I’ll remember to give her some lines the next post she’s in, maybe dealing with her bar act (Sorry Lichen!).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0608, Google Street View, HANA LEI, Kangerootown+, Omega, Voyageurs+, Washington
00430607 (archipelago?)
“As you can see when we change the map into something more modern, Feedem becomes Freedom. This is probably a mistranslation, then, but significant still. Because it indicated where Arthur and Shelley should go to rekindle their marriage. And with his money from all those roles in all those Shakespeare plays — worldwide, mind you — he bought a top of the line yacht to celebrate the find. Actually he found the yacht and pretended to buy it but never mind that now. So there they are on this hot tropical island, complete with a dog named Chomp who keeps chasing his own tail. Twins.
“I’ll open up the Table to questions.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0607, Big Woods, HANA LEI, Jeogeot, Voyageurs+
00430602 (shining)
Baker Bloch stares at Ring Lady in Falmouth collage 07 and decides he must call a town meeting before things progress further. He *rings* up Wheeler, she rings up Hucka who still isn’t really talking to the male Baker. He rings up Newt which is kind of himself — in the same room. He rings up Baker Blinker his original female counterpart and still is in ways. And last: Grassy, representative of all things toys. How exciting to be getting the cores back together, chatting with each other again.
“Status report, Wheeler,” he requests to his right from his seat of power at the Blue Feather Table. “How’s daughter Shelley doing over in Heterocera?”
“Hooktip, right,” Wheeler clarifies. “Well, she’s going back her roots. And, no, before you say it it’s not brunette.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” says Baker Bloch, serious for tonight’s meeting. Tonight’s important important meeting. Because all of Collagesity Aisle of Palms is at stake.
“Newt. To my left. Hi, first.”
“Hi.”
“We haven’t talked in a while.”
“Since Friday.”
“A year ago, yes.”
“Approximately.”
“How’s *your* daughter doing? Jennifer isn’t it?”
“Shelley,” answers Newt the same as Wheeler. For it is their child. We went over that in novels 34 and also 35. And some in 36-39 as well. Before the Big Change in 40. When Newt points this out, talk shifts to this change.
“40 is where I started reading Dolores Cannon and her Convoluted Universe series,” begins Baker on this new theme. “40 is where, through (the conduit of) Bellissaria, things started to head offworld. And then Aisle of Palms was founded (in 41). Current base; for 1/2 year now. About the last time we talked, Newt.”
“Approximately,” he said again. But what’s time in a town like this?
“So this brings us to the question: What if we just head offworld *permanently*? Exist in Youtube videos about Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Cyberpunk 2077? Before getting a better computer and purchasing all those games and being able to walk inside them with an actual avatar, mind you. That could take another year. Years. Newt, we may not be talking with each other again until after that decision is made.”
“Fine,” he answered, knowing it didn’t matter in the long run. Baker was him and he was Baker. *All* were Baker. Besides Wheeler, besides Hucka, besides Baker Blinker, Grassy and some other cores. But mainly Wheeler. She was the new female to Baker’s male, the queen to his prime minister (of Aisle of Palms). He holds the power but she holds the jewels. They must be a balance. Newt doesn’t really play a role in this except as an exteriorization of Baker, a way for Wheeler to have a husband and so have Shelley as her child. Married to Arthur Kill still, yes (novel 35), but flirting around with Edward Daigle (37-43). Can the horses keep moving together in the same direction?
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0602, Big Woods, Jeogeot
00430601 (going home…)
… before it’s too late.
She timed the exit perfectly. “Oh. Hi Shelley. Seems we’re going out at the same time.”
“Hi Lexi,” Shelley said while stopping her walk, letting her neighbor approach. “Where’re you heading?”
“You first.”
“I thought about shopping down at the mega-mall today. Boot sale at Fairies.”
“Hey, me too! What are the odds?”
Too odd, Shelley thought, but went along with it good-naturedly. She was use to attention like this, could handle the needed distance. She walked her own beat. In her own shoes. Keds, soon to be more she hoped.
But the boots didn’t suit her and she emerged from the Hooktip mega-mall still with Keds. Keds for the kids, she figured, to go along with the hair style she hadn’t changed since childhood. Lexi said she couldn’t find any boots to suit her as well, so retained her own shoes too, black cosplays I believe.
As they arrived back at their apartments, Lexi invites Shelley to help her unpack the big plywood cube from Montana that arrived yesterday’s day before (Saturday). “Get this,” she said. “There’s a robot dog in there just like from my childhood. Can’t *wait* to put it together.” But then Lexi remembered the likewise plywood colored pictures on her living room wall, the shells and, especially, the keyhole with the beautiful girl inside, Lexi’s representation of Shelley as Fern had already determined during her visit several posts back. “Uh, just remembered my apartment is a mess,” she backtracked. “Need to clean up. Maybe tomorrow, he he.”
Shelley stuck out her hand to shake. “It’s a date,” making Lexi actually blush a bit. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long. Date, but not what she hoped. Still the word was out there, ready to be molded into something different. She envisions a happy ending. And she’ll have that robot built by then and they can play fetch with it or something. It can be *their* pet. Together (sigh). She finally remembers to let go of Shelley’s hand.
“Laters,” Shelley says, using that same hand to wave brief parting in one, graceful motion, like a dancer, Lexi noted. Soon she will be dancing to a different beat, she hopes, watching her walk away.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0601, Heterocera, VHC City
00430513
“Hmm, interesting picture over there,” Fern said, noting that it was on the wall shared with *Shell*ey’s apartment.
Lexi wanted to get to the main point. “So what’s this… cube all about? Why is it — why does it look like plywood? *And* (she looks around)… where the heck are we? What happened to all the, er, shading?”
“Good question. And the answer is: we are in an old place now. Graphics improve with each new game generation. We are not in Nightsity any longer. Not really.” Fern turned to her traveling companion, the one she nabbed from Kabusie which is actually Kabuki (as overarching Nightsity is actually Night City). “You’ve been here before. You were a brain-daze editor here as well as there. I’m going to surprise you, Lexi. This may have come first.”
Lexi stares at the cube, trying to remember. She reviews what she knows. Fern, or a miniature version thereof, a robot or doll or something, found the cube in a ditch and took it in for evidence. She disappeared again and then came back larger (normal); said she was going to take it to a friend’s apartment and that Lexi should join her. So: here we are, teleport between dimensions successful. Fern had been wanting to try it out for a while. But the friend’s door was locked and the security orb was on. So she had to bring it here next door. As close as she could get. Owned by a girl from Montana of all places. Just like where Lexi got the kit for the flathead style robot she built specifically to explore the Kabusie ditches, where my train of thoughts end.
“Oh.” Fern realized, helping me out and allowing me to continue. “This is *your* apartment, Lexi. You live next door to Shelley.”
Lexi remembered.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0513, C2077, Heterocera, Kabusie, NIGHTSITY, VHC City
00430508 (inversions)
“Of course I’m not going to take that playdoll on a world tour, Mysti. You *are* Mysti? Aren’t you?”
“You can call me that if you wish,” V admitted. She’s become the person she should have listened to and heeded most. The Devil is in the cards. She glances over at the golden gun beside her again, knowing it was almost the end.”
“No no, I’ve put that bogus world behind me, that bogus adventure. Like I said, it looks nice in comparison to 1998 and Omikron and all, but–”
“Jonny,” V Mysti requested, wanting to enjoy the cityscape from the rooftop while she could. “No more talking please.”
And shortly after that it was over.
—–
In another ending, she appears before non-suicidal V as normal as normal could be in this dark dark world, tribute to “Bladerunner”‘s Pris played by Darryl Hannah back in the day put behind her as she moves to an ancient forest region of Poland to start a new life, ditching Nightsity just like Lexi wanted to. Before she found the Ditch. Was this the right thing to do?
—–
“Something over there to the right, Lexi. Can you see it?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0043, 0508, C2077, Kabusie, NIGHTSITY, Small China
00430506
“*Hey look*”
—–
“Something about that magenta paint, Lexi. Magenta in general.”
“Of course,” she said, glad to have him back in her chair, whatever their ultimate status as a couple. The actual Dizzy Lizzy’s now and not just a facade in Our Second Lyfe — just beyond this paint actually. And the Magician graffiti with Silverhhand manifesting underneath it. He stares at the pink from across the road. Might as well be the universe.
—–
We go back to Our Second Lyfe for the next scene. Shelley is trying out Jonny’s famous Mars cyberpunk guitar in his apartment set up in NWES City where we last saw her and beau-friend Edward reading dusty books on a flamingo pink bed appropriately enough. Yes, I’m trespassing again for the sake of a message. Prop is 500 lindens, pretty reasonable for the detail and animations, but I’ve just paid 1120 for the Silverhhand avatar and I have a monthly cap on such things. Or so I say.
“She’s pretty good for a novice,” Jonny begins. “Are you going to tag along when she goes on her world tour?” he quips.
“If it comes to that,” Edward replies in stride. “Question is: are *you* going to take her on tour? Mars guitar.” He glances over at her, rocking away to a Tin Can tune, “Baby Universe” I believe, 1 after the song about a talking horse.
“Listen,” Jonny breaks character. “I’m going to have to get up. This animation is killing my arms.” He gets up, looks down on the silver chair that matches his hand. “Great world, by the way. Graphics are *way* better than something that came out in, say, 1998.”
“Hmph,” says Edward to this. He has Shelley. He’s happy with the graphics as is. “Sooo…” he prompts.
“Sure, sure. Let’s just get out of here and back to a *real* world.”
Nearby Curt Korbain jumps for joy at the news. “World tour, world tour!” he chants over and over while Fern watches on, fascinated like Art before her.
We’ll get back to him and her soon enough.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0506, C2077, Jeogeot, Kabusie, NIGHTSITY, NWES Island
00430414
They were out of horse so they had to get dressed and read one of their many dusty books for entertainment. 5 shots you’re dead, but they weren’t there yet. Edward selected an ironically colored blue book about Mars he’d stopped in about 5 months ago, when the shipment came in and the dishes started to pile up and the water started running out the door. Shelley was reading this blog, in fact this sentence. She speaks as if channeling.
“I hear Baker Bloch is thinking about shutting down his involvement in Our Second Lyfe. We’ll, *I* won’t let that happen.” She pivots around to Edward as instructed, who she can tell isn’t listening, absorbed in his guided dreams about the red planet. “Will we?!” she shouted over.
“W-what? What are you on about now?” he spoke, not prying his eyes from the letters and words and sentences and paragraphs before him but thinking about something else now. Horses — wish they still had some of that shipment left.
“I *said* — dreamer — that we won’t let Baker give up on Our Second Lyfe.”
“Oh.” He settled back, ready to return to his book. “But that won’t happen. As long as you’re the third…”
“… which is actually the first,” she completed. He was reading again, not worried atall about the matter. After a minute:
“Edward?” No answer.
“*Edward*.”
“W-what is it *now*?” He looks up from the pages. A foal was about to be born. He was very involved in the details, wondered if he should try his hand at running a farm himself. Red dirt turned to red dust. But no electricity, he remembered. Shelley must play her guitar.
“I’m ready to go back.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0414, Black Ice, Jeogeot, MARS, NWES Island
00430304 (Page?)
“I tried to lighten the mood early in our friendship by showing him the Tire Nutz juxtaposition, Lichen, which he didn’t know about despite being local too. You’d be proud of me that day. Two big tractor tires on top of an auto repairs shop just down the street from my dealership, with a phallic water tower in back if you look at it straight on. Obviously done on purpose. Can you picture it in your mind’s eye, Lichen my partner? Do you even remember what those things look like, how they’re configured and such?”
“The tires are nuts, right,” says Lichen, serious in the moment while trying to figure all this out with her lesser brain power. “And the Blue Balls were nearby?”
“The Kentucky sculpture, yes, with three balls instead of 2, so: moons. Made by Tennessee. This was the fulfillment of her unfinished Mars project, poked through into another dimension. But Asylum was behind all of this still.”
“So we’re beyond… the Black Wall?”
“I’m not ready to go that far, my blonde buddy. It’s beyond me right now. And you know how I don’t like limitations of the mind.”
“Dangerous,” responds Lichen to this. “Keep ’em at bay with jokes.”
“Hmm.”
—–
One sector over, Clara Bellissaria is keeping tabs on tobacco selling Redd back at her station, noting that she is a 2n1 now and that the new left is different from the old right. The white horse leads, the black horse steers. Hasn’t gone off the rails yet. But soon she knew there would have to be a decision made, and Fern through her.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0304, C2077, Castle Town+, GTA, HANA LEI, MARS, NIGHTSITY, Omega
Sunklands 