Safely sealed inside the spire, Dove in hand, Carrcassonnee begins her well deserved bath. *Now* is the time. Clifton “Carbon Glow” Mahoney quickly unfurls the track, rezzes the train on the other side of the castle, and sits…
… taking along a very special passenger with him.
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2022-2023 WINTER”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0706, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Towerboro
“What are all these… plywoods?” the struggling, swaying giant walker boomed down. 10 yards made, about 20 to go.
“Never mind that Carrcassonnee, we need to focus on that opening in front of us — the main entrance to the castle. You need to get low enough so that you’ll fit through that door. I know you can do it. Get a little closer then start bending down, bending down. Sloow and easyy.”
Carrcassonneee and her great olive body cooperated. 15 minutes later she was through the opening and out in the open, 7th spire straight ahead.
—–
“We’re going to have to do it again, Carrcassonnee. Bend down — get a little closer first again. It’s going to be a little lower this time — sorry. Don’t lose your balance. I’m right here.” A lot of good I’ll do, Mahoney thinks at this point, if she starts to topple. All he can really do is be a cheerleader, urging her forward and to the scene of the bath. The soap had all been prepared. Dove, not Ivory. Because Carr has to *see* it all. Ivory would just sting the eye. They learned that the hard way back in Rubi, way back in photo-novel 1. Because we’ve gone full circle.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0705, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Oklahoma, Towerboro
https://bakerbloch.com/2016/01/23/fourth/
When Karoz reached Baker Blinker’s porch, he heard running water. What he saw inside was also beyond his comprehension.
He found he could not move. Neither did Baker Blinker.
—–
Baker Blinker, put at least temporarily in charge of the new town upon the absence/disappearance of twinned soul Baker Bloch, looks over. “You’ve returned,” she said about the great metal being, only noticing him now after 5 minutes at the Blue Feather Table, as if he’d just been reglued to time and space.
He said he had a story to tell in his deep, robotic-but-still-warm voice, then paused. Baker Blinker feared another Big Freeze, like when she first met him (as Karoz relayed about the meeting later on — she, like now for a bit, was unaware of his presence in her “house” at the time). But then he moved his mouth around as if being oiled from within, then continued.
This is where Baker Blinker learned Tin S. Man was Tin, well and good, but he was also 11. She looked all around him like a cubist painting and then realized he was gone again. Portal. Like a winked off TV screen, shades pulled. Tin S. Man was in Soos no more. “Find me,” she thought she heard to end.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0703, Jeogeot, Middleton^, Towerboro
I’m going to beat the crap out of that girl.
—–
Before taking a shower, Shelley writes in her journal.
Day 2 in The Void.
I have determined that George, formerly Debbie’s George, is the same as my own.
We are destined to be together.
I don’t know where the other is.
She pulls away from the screen, looks at what she wrote. She knows there is another but can’t recall who. It is someone dark… black, even, like the shadow side of a planet.
Her phone rings. It’s Arthur. Arthur! she thinks while trying to figure out how to answer like in a receiver. That’s who I was thinking of. And he must have been thinking of me! She figures it out, puts the correct end to her mouth. “Hallo?”
“Are you ready?”
Ready for what? she thinks. Oh. The shower. Testing water pressure and all, let’s say.
“Yes.”
“Go ahead and I’ll meet you over there.”
“Oh.” Disappointment?
“Shelley?”
“Yes… Arthur.”
“Arthur? You haven’t called me *that* in a while. Do you, erm, do you even know where you are? Where I am? Where we’re going?”
She admitted she didn’t. She was in The Void for real. And she didn’t even have the necklace this time, giving it to a repairman in the garage outside in order to pay for her car. Broke carburetor. “It’ll cost you as much as the car itself,” Ken said through the window, watching her dig dig dig in her pocketbook for cash, red or green. But alas, the only thing of value she had on her was the Venus Cage. Of course, Ken, also working for The Void, knew this. After receiving it he made the proper disposal per instructions. Far far away from The Void. Lemont Sanford must not know how to get at her this go around. She will be truly trapped forever and ever. Swapsies.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0605, Little Hell, Omega^^, Southern
It was fun testing out boats before settling on the KittyKat one we eventually bought. Like this golden beauty found under an airport in Agrippa — on the Nautiulus continent ta boot. We’re kind of loyalists in that way: Mainland first, then Nautilus even in front of that. We want to stay close to Real Life through the Iowan hypercube, more Roberts’ thing but I get it. She’s explained it to me in layman’s terms.
But this one, whatever the other advantages, didn’t have a functional bathroom. What are you suppose to do, go off the side of the deck? You just dock a little more often, the seller tried to persuade. You’ll get use to it, she added. I don’t think so.
So afterwards we chose to look exclusively at the Bandit series, the ones with the cute little ducks on the shower curtains. All have a functional shower, a functional bathroom. And the KittyKat was well within our price range, being less expensive, for example, than the gold one pictured above, which was more near the top. Whatever disadvantages we have in bedroom animation we’ll make it up with imagination. And, anyway, you have to dock less for bedroom stuff than bathroom stuff. Everyone has to do their no. 1’s and no. 2’s with regularity, several times a day at least, right?
Truthfully, the first time I used their standard Flushmaster 2000 I was sold. Aim free peeing!
And I guess we were joking when we had Roberts tell her she hadn’t seen a man thing since she was 14. We’ll figure it out.
My name is *Franklin* and I approve this message.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0104, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^
Darn stove. Won’t heat up again. Oh well, they can eat at the cottage now. Hope it’s well stocked.
“Hurry up and brush your teeth, dearest.”
“Arr arr arr Arr arr arr Arr.”
“Have you taken your shower?”
“Arr arr ar — *spit*. Not yet. Arr arr arr.”
“Well hurry. Landfall should be in any (*hard clunk*) minute.”
She looks around to see if anything has fallen off the walls or appliances in the kitchen. Collision with the island obviously. They’re here, automatic pilot accomplishing its mission.
“Looks like we’re here.”
“No joke. I spit all over my jacket this time. My nice green Columbia.”
“Yeah, why are you wearing that thing indoors anyway? Must be 70 in here.”
“Thin blood obviously.”
“*Green* blood you mean,” replied Roberts to this. “Like everything else about you. Except your cash oddly,” she wondered aloud.
“Yeah, gotta draw the line somewhere. I thought I’d make it the obvious.”
“Well no one else I know has got red money.”
“Coins,” Mabel (Mabel!) replied to this. “I almost always pay in coins, gold and silver, true moolah.”
“You put you on the scale at any random moment in the day and your 25 over, ha. Just go all the way. A girl of Purest Green.”
“You know I can’t do that.” She’d finished cleaning the white off her jacket. “Time for a shower still?” she called over hopefully.
“Only if I can join you, tee hee.” F-ck the stove.
—-
20 minutes later they were staring over at their new home for a week. Martha had left a big pot of beans cooking on the beach. Good ol’ Martha.
“It’s small,” complained Mabel — we’ll still call her Mabel. For the moment.
“It’s cheap,” shot back Roberts.
“And that *thing* at the door.”
“Yeah, ha. I guess you’ve never seen one of those — don’t know what it represents.”
She took the joke in stride. “Oh I’ve dated men.”
“We started dating when we were 14. *When*?”
“Before you, sister. Jim. Yeah, that’s his name.”
“Another made up lover. A man this time. Ridiculous. You’re about as straight as the coins filling your pockets.”
“I paid *cash* for him. The straight stuff. The *green* stuff. Why do you think I’m so loathed to carry it now?”
“Jim, huh.” Roberts was starting to be convinced.
“Yeah. Right before we started dating. I ran from men to women as fast as I could after that encounter. And wasted my money as well.”
“How much?”
“Cash?”
“Yeah. I just want to know. How much would you have paid for *me*?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty. (pause) That’s all? A male hooker in upscale Wampumtown? What, did you go all the way down to the docks –”
Mabel turned and glared at Roberts with this. Enough was enough, line drawn (again). Docks it is.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0035, 0103, Nautilus, NORTH
A trio of men: Cowboy, Indian, Black. And behind them: still fuzzy. Maybe someone named… Frank?
—–
“I’m remembering,” spoke Jennifer “Shelley” Struthers, turning into that Lane, seeing further than before, beyond the edge of virtual reality itself. Stinkerfoot.
Roll him over, look into his eyes. MENTION that the gnome had disappeared. Someone purposely took it. I looked all around the rocks it once inhabited in its 2 locations that we know of.
CRUX — think of relationship with Apostrophe album, the apostrophe itself according to Frank.
Did the Tigers get to him anyway, despite being taken away from the more prominent rock perch and tucked, hopefully safely, behind a nearby tree? The story of County Park basically ends there, as another location I had my eye on for a toy happening was blocked — someone else was already present, a nice enough bloke but obviously living off the land. I knew where he lived; he was telling me that, albeit unconsciously in all likelihood, unless he was an alien himself, ha. He filled my space quite effectively. He, in all likelihood, needs it more.
Back to virtual…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0511, Blue Mountain, County Park, Paper Soap, Soap
“You need perfection. You reach perfection. You pass perfection on the other side. Of course Wheeler Wilson was going to defeat (and assimilate) the new Tina Turner.”
“Tina Louise I believe,” said the fainter voice from the side, another Observer. “Like Mary Ann except beautifuller.”
“All-American still?” the first questioned the second. “Ρùℜ℘Îē?”
“That’s the key,” said the second.
“Heart of the matter,” reworded the first.
Resurrected Arthur Kill had finished retrieving the “Spider” from Tennessee but he was around for good thanks to the mop, with its silliness reinforcing its power. So they — Wheeler and he — decided to form a band, creating an alternate reality where “America the Beautiful” replaced the “Star Spangled Banner” as our country’s great national anthem. First gig: Towerboro or thereabouts, playing to an audience half blue half red. Now to split the two right down the middle, form a third. Wheeler kept wearing purple.
Wheeler kept wearing purple.
Wheeler kept wearing purple.
It worked. St. Francis Scott, the key, was hatched at the beginning of the 5th.
dramatization
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0501, Big Woods, Gold City, Hana Lei^^, Jeogeot, Wendy-Ontario
“You’ve found the shower again, congratulations. It’s in the Oracle you know. Chicago.”
“I think you mean Illinois,” I replied. “As in: someone was bad and deserved to be spanked punished.”
“In the circle of the shower with the water on, all is good,” he replied confidently. The person sitting opposite of me. Triangle, I gather. Something about the stabbing of the duck obviously. I am now a resident. How did *that* happen?
“You are not dead,” I decided to say. “You were supposedly killed–”
“Look to the House on the Hill. All revolves around the House on the Hill. Just like before.” The apparition, so solid just a second ago, fades…
—–
She finally got out of the shower and put on some clothes, bound and determined to find the graffiti that would set her free.
“Scuse me, boys.”
She’d left the water in the shower running but it was on purpose: to prove a point. Or, better, to remind her of something. A key, 2nd shower really not needed since no poop is involved.
She was finished with her clients but there was more work to be done tonight before going home bed. Check on the Duck. Because she was about ready to kill someone…
… with writing. “Dear,” she called over to her ex but both still using Gold for a surname. “How do you spell asimilation? With that extra s I’m always mising? Dear oh dear. There I go again!”
“Answered yourself of course,” he responded, not staring up from the folded newspaper. 20 dead in Uptown this year so far. What is Gold City coming to??
“Yes,” she realized. “All I have to do is look down.”
“Or straight ahead…” *sip*
“… if a computer is involved, yes.” Which it wasn’t in this Gold City experience of hers. She preferred pen over keys here. Must be something about running away as fast as possible from the Ebony and the Ivory. Dove’s where it’s at now. She just used it in fact. In the shower. Which she needs to take another of. *No*. She has the key, she reminds herself again, still writing, still scribbling sideways across the yellowing paper, perhaps parchment. *Barry* is the one. He needs the shower. But where is Barry?
Still scribbling, still writing.
Newt sets the paper down. He’s had enough bad. Now for good. “I’m glad I found you again Eyela. Just mised you in the church, ha.”
She looked down, emitted a small laugh as well. Good one, Newt. Then she took the pen and struck out that sentence. Then another, and another until the whole paper was full of lines. Newt was gone. Newt, her ex, perhaps even still her husband since she’s reverted back to Eyela and/or they still share the same last name, was never here. Or else he left earlier. She writes alone.
Later she sits in bed staring at the sword, wondering how to turn it back into a pen. Looks like actual killing is in order if she doesn’t succeed with this.
Because the Duck is right beside her.
“Paul?”
“Yes?” he quacked.
“I think… it’s… time…” STAB
Sunklands 