We stuck around to hear Julee Cruise since, you know, when would we get the opportunity again? Since she was dead and all. Oft-times hubby Newt and I had polished off a couple of beers by then. I checked the watch now on my arm. 2:41 AM. Time to head home, though, I suppose. While we could make our way.
She sang one last time about the Tennessee dog and bird and we were away.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0110, Dokken Hollow, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Twin Peaks, Washington
“You’ve got to hide me, Roberts. Behind the secret wall with the dog. My girlfriend Tessa’s trying to kill me again!”
“Again?” questions Roberts, then uses her own magical 3rd eye to discover the truth. “Ahh. *Overlap*. Again — right.”
“Right?”
“Well. If you go back there there’s a fair chance he’ll absorb you, the 20 right and the 4 left, which are all wrong.”
“20 right and 4 left, er, wrong, yeah. Got it.”
“That leaves you with 5/6ths odds of your self surviving. I’m just telling you the risks up front.”
As an answer, Arthur Kill lays his own 6 shooter on Roberts’ desk, part of the deal. He’s desperate. He’s seen the Oracle map of New York into New Jersey, south into north. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance against *her*. These are certainly better odds than the Mexican standoff he’s facing otherwise. That damn eye (!). The only way to beat it is to find another eye. Thus: Roberts here.
Roberts inspects the gun and sees that it is the correct one. She presses a button under her desk. The door opens, Spider revealed to him once more. 2130, etc…
“You are free to enter, Arthur Stanford Kill.” She keeps staring at him intensely. He faced life and death if he didn’t do this but he also faces it here, just not with the odds stacked totally against him. Can he stay positive and not descend into negativity? That’s the ultimate question. His survival still depends on it.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0211, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, New York, Towerboro
“We can’t go back to Holland again?” he questions, staring at the newest image on the screen.
“Oh Eddy, we can’t even get to the top of Mt. Sandraman without being distracted, much less another place in another world. Be here in the here and now. Be Free.”
“Let’s go!” he urged. But he stood still.
—–
“Oh look, the image is changing into something else we know. Wallytown. On (nearby) Fishers Island. Remember?”
“Of course I remember,” responded Shelley, still standing behind him in her finest cashmere bathrobe, still waiting on a decision. Where to go, where to go? Somewhere away from *here*. Or at least go to that hill that likes to call itself a mountain *within* here, pheh. She tires of being chained as an object. 6 6 6 is over. It’s now 7. Freedom.
But they stood still.
—–
Too late, Eddy. Too late. The dream Spider has arrived.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0201, Europe, Holland, New Island^, Wallytown/Fishers Island^
“Why are you back, Arthur?” she says after he sits down. “Is it to see the dog? We’ve been through this before. You’ve seen me feed the numbers into the computer to produce the Red Row. And then The Atom, and an (op art) example of what you can do with it. There’s nothing more to see here. Nada.” She had another client coming in at 11:45. It was 11:30. He said he’d show up at 11 to talk to her about something. He was late.
“I want to go back,” he just blurted out, knowing time was short. “I want to go to… Red Row.” He figured there was something more to it. Too many rows named red for one. A 2 fer 1 (!).
“The only thing you’ll see there is proof that nothing is left. The dog is ours.”
“So I can’t even see it now?” He wanted to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. But of course he had his money, extra feathering for his retirement nest. *Something* had been exchanged.
“No,” she put it bluntly. “Not until the reopening.”
The numbers laden dog remained hidden behind the secret bookcase door, a 6×4 mathematical puzzle-lesson with 20 positive results along with 4 negative outcomes at its center core. Just taken by itself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0112, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
“The Atom is not just another pretty op art picture,” she said, manipulating and expanding the pattern until the above image was produced. “It represents a CONTRACT signed between you and the Universe (almost wrote *University* there (!)) to go out in the World and do and preach GOOD. If you can’t do this then someone else will. In fact, they already have.”
https://theredarrowgallery.com/show/red-arrow-brianna-bass-ex-nihilo
“Will you let it go?” she continued. “Or will you reclaim what is rightfully yours? Both can be true, you know. You and this other person are not the same. The child of the best friend of the sister of you and your wife’s best friend. Small world, huh?”
“Indeed (!)”
A character, I realized. I have to create a Classical God-Star. TILE must be involved again. And orange and violet, ERR, amber and magenta.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0109, C2077, Cable Isle, J-Town, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
Roberts takes the magical Chihuahua from my arms, removes the hover text style numbers from its head and feeds them into the computer through an input mechanism I can’t quite understand or explain. “Good good,” says the private investigator who also doubles as my lawyer while watching the monitor. “The Red Row is forming again… see?”
I see this in front of me: one red square appears to the upper left, then another directly to the right of it then another to the right of it then another to the right of it until the sequence numbers 13. But the 13th, she explains, is the same as the 1 again.
“What next?” she asks. I tell her I don’t know. “Zero,” she persists. “The interval is zero now,” she prompts. “What’s next?”
“Um… one?” I guess without much conviction.
“Yes!” And with the press of a key, a second row forms in a similar manner directly below the first. All the colors are different now except for the 1st square and the last square again. Beginning at the left we have red once more, then red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, blue-violet, violet, red-violet and then red to end. These were her words for the gradiated colors as she explains what happened.
Then she asks again: “What next?”
“Oh geez, I don’t know. I suppose: two?”
“Right-o!” Same kind of row forms immediately below the first two when another key is pressed. Colors now: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and then — repeating the pattern beginning with the 7th square — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, to end with red again.
“What next?” she then asks. I think I was getting the hang of this.
Eventual what was produced was this, which promptly went into Barry de Boy’s “Does This Look Square to You?” series at the end. Roberts called it “The Atom.” “This is where everything starts,” she said about it. “Can you see?”
“Here, back up a bit,” she suggests. “Squint your eyes,” she said after I still had trouble getting it.
I saw.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0108, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Mississippi, Towerboro
Pretty sure it starts with an Arrow somewhere in or near Nashville, Tennessee. Pointing directly to Red Row 1 mile north. Let’s zoom in (again!).
—–
It wasn’t a *spider* in Red Row I was looking for, despite these 8 shoes found on some hick house stairs. Red Row? Red *Herring* (!). No, it was a *dog* named Spider (thanks 4th human within with the remaining 2 feet, *POP*). Found just down the road — or row — being attacked by a bird. Bird dog, then? Chihuahua, I discovered.
“Get away from my dog, bird!” I called from the ’57 Chevy Kenny was driving. “*My* spider dog! *MY* SPIDER DOG, SHOOOOO!!” *POP*
Better.
I kill my now disposable chauffeur with my final bullet (*POP*) and take the wheel, leaving room for the dog in the vacated passenger seat, body dumped in some bushes at this conjunction of Red Row…
… and, er, Red Row?
Anyway, I stick Kenny’s body into the bushes better and head back to the lawyer’s office with the dog to collect my hard earned reward.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0107, Cable Isle, Jeogeot, Tennessee, Towerboro
“The only Theft name of *any* kind in the US according to the old GNIS database was ‘West Central Texas Auto Theft Task Force’, a building in downtown Anson TX. The new database contains no listings with Theft. The old location, the whole *name*, was *stolen*, in effect: theft of Theft. I actually visited the site and found no Auto Theft Task Force office, much less a whole building devoted to the matter. I looked all around the supposed address, with only a bricked up side door and an unmarked back door fitting the Google Map directions. My theory is that it only existed in the first place as an indicator.”
Petty was furiously taking notes opposite yammering June Bug Johnston at his small office in the so-called Cement Village, hidden itself from the surrounding town of Aisle of Palms. The discovery of the 2 matching Dennis’ issued forth a torrent of words. She was *so* close to the answer (The End). The sun having rising about a 1/2 hour back now, he was late for his other job at the Perch Restaurant. But Manager Percy would understand. Overlaps sometimes happen with such a busy soul. Many a night he postponed sleuthing activities when a late dinner party arrived, or a bus full of tourists pulled up 5 minutes before closing. Too bad Percy doesn’t believe in phones or he’d ring him up. Mother’s exploded after she left it ringing too long one day; killed her and mortally wounded Aunt Gertrude who was playing strip poker with her at the time. Blew off a valuable piece of her body but she survived. His mother Wanda Bertaaa Doris’s naked parts were scattered about like a broken Humpty Dumpty. Speaking of which…
“… Humpty Dumpty sea ship modified into a space ship,” June Bug continued in sync with my own internal dialog. “Jim the Bastard Pirate–”
“Wait. *The* Bastard Pirate? Jim Randolph?”
“The same. Anyway he was *suppose* to pilot the ship all the way to the Red Dead planet but he crashed in the sea. Thing couldn’t take the pressure of the strange atmosphere and anyway, he took the wrong ship indicated by his pirate pal Black Pearl, wise in such matters.”
Chef-Inspector Petty, still an inspector despite being on the clock as a chef (and a waiter), thought back to his giant self peering out over tops of internal Cement Village buildings to the new ship parked out back, ready for space exploration according to all the rumors and gossip about town. The *correct* ship according to Black Pearl. Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate had gotten the wrong vehicle from the right creator as we spoke about before.
Petty’s sharp ears then heard the ominous roar of a tour bus roll into town from the south. “*F -it,* June Bug,” he cussed, checking his nonexistent watch again. “We’ll have to resume all this in another post. Gotta get to the restaurant!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0706, Big Woods, Google Street View, Jeogeot
She found a half programmed “Victoria” — or what she knew back in Paper-Soap as a Claude (or Claudette) — in the old Big Dick’s Halfway Inn building next door to the diner, proof her father was up to something. Why bug a robot if you don’t have a purpose?
And then there’s the mutable wall glyph…
Based on what’s out the window, she thinks it has something to do with the movement of time. 50 years. What changes in such a span?
—–
“She’s here.”
“Damn cold,” *sniff*.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0209, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori
Some call them Clear Lake and Black Lake, although the 1st wasn’t quite clear and the 2nd wasn’t quite black. Separated by only a small dam, they were closer in color than many wanted to admit. And it is here our Annaberg story must continue, kind of a new development since my first visit to the place back in late ’21, just after I learned I could retire the following March. Which, I suppose, sort of makes *my* story the same as Jimmy Dieselengine, formerly of Ossemotor, keeper, at least for the morning, of grandson Pete Pistle, who may be the same as Pete Piper from other places. His African mansion was raized because of his political beliefs. Here:
square of misery
—–
It was 3:18 in the afternoon when he walked into the bank and took out 499,000, a whole Reno’s worth of money as they say in Sunklands speak. Cory Piper, father to Pete (perhaps), still looking for his maw, still banking on the state of affairs to improve and that the wall between Nevada and California would finally be ripped down. Fat chance, I say. Will free the tree people inside for one thing, who some, perhaps many, fear as green monsters. The ones who don’t want east and west merged will block it, I predict. Wally will live.
—-
10 months later and just below, a dog named Spider floats into the Cavern bar from the sky and orders 24 drinks, all with the same 4 numbers just rearranged a bit. All the bits, in fact — every possible permutation. Current bartender Edwin doesn’t know how to handle it and goes overload, which brings a small manager named Bach from the back for aid and assistance. Veiled, mysterious Alessandra looks on very interested, pretending not to be somebody else. But Bach notices before turning his back on the resolved bar situation and going back inside again. Whores of Babylon, he thinks, seeing a bit of black projecting from the white gown’s back, just enough to be tell-tale. What is *she* doing black, I mean, back?
Sunklands 