“I’m telling you, Mike,” Pat relays telepathically. “If the next box is one specific color, one *specific* color… then we can’t kill her. We just can’t.
“We can’t kill her brother of mine (sigh).”
2 boxes later, past the demonstration of TILE that placated the onlooking, desirous ghouls, she finds the key, the center of it all.
Switching from colored to black and white, she can now unlock the door with the Newton-Jasper cube indicating scale.
Damn, thinks Mike. 2nd one today.
Things were a bit different on Nawt Vaya Free State land when Biker Mann returned to the revamped, reopened Hole in the Wall several days later in the month. And he hadn’t even met the red tie man within.
He looks out at the water, notices more different. A big, orange tile roofed building sticking out of the Nawt Vaya Sea. Related to the ties? he thinks. Turns out it’s related to the also new ties, yes. Red tie man hopefully will explain.
And what about the poor robot in front of him (!). Kicked out of the bar, but why? Inside now.
—–
“Biker, meet Barry. Barry, Biker. I think you two have a lot in common. Tell him, Barry.”
“We’re dreaming.”
Biker wakes up. He wouldn’t actually revisit the Hole in the Wall until day after today’s tomorrow. No ties will remain, but Barry is still inside. Daisy Flathead restates her introduction from the dream.
“Biker, meet Barry.” Biker gasps, only recalling the dream at that point.
“Am I dreaming again?” spoke Biker.
“Wait a minute, Biker Mann. I haven’t finished my lines. “I think you two have a lot in common,” she continued as before. “Tell him, Barry.”
“Not this time,” he answers Biker’s question, indicating both are awake now. He’d checked before he left the cottage to the left, up on the hill. No tie, unlike before.
before
Barry’s live-in girlfriend Wendy suddenly appears at the door, out of breath from running over. “I got here as fast as I could. Wake up Barry!”
But it was she who was asleep this time. No clothes.
“I have a spare dress in back, sweetie,” said sympathizing Daisy, who’d had her share of naked-in-public dreams. “Just for this kind of occasion.” TBC
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0413, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya, NVFS, South Lake
I stumbled out of the Athens restaurant, trying to get away from the doubling and the confusion as fast as possible. The tape wouldn’t work, the tape wouldn’t *work*! And I didn’t know where I was; it was all a maze of streets and jumble of people, people everywhere going in all directions at once. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I felt I was going to scream. I did. I wake up.
—–
He’d heard about a bar up the coast under new management and decided to check it out. “Pirates,” he muttered while pulling in and seeing the treasure map graffiti on the outer wall. But some of them are okay, he remembered. Like Randolph, which started him wondering where in the heck *is* Randolph the Bastard Pirate? He hadn’t seen him in years, it seemed. Anyway, he thought, better head in. Gotta get past that outside pirate first, he he. I’ll bump him real good to make sure he knows who’s the boss. “‘Scuse me fellow.”
Hmm, just passed right through the guy. One of those lifeless flatties, he thought.
And then, inside the bar, more flat, a haircut this time, apparently ongoing judging by the proximate hand with buzzing razor.
“Corona Ultra then, lady,” he ordered after picking his seat and getting the name of the house brand. He needed more alcohol to deal with the strangeness here, but then was greeted with: “We only got Non. No actual booze here, not after the attack by the alcoholic sea monster. Don’t want a return,” she said flatly, as was her overall style and the overall style of the bar as a whole, starting with the flat treasure map, the flat pirate flattie leaning against the front door outside.
“Oh. Okay. A Non, then, I guess. Do I still have to–?”
“Yes,” she said, anticipating the end of his question about paying for the thing he doesn’t desire. She’d heard it before. Several strangers coming here and asking the same. Like Peet Pelican over in Juho. Like Sachie B. from Vortexville, Raymond from Redwoods, Stillman from Stiletto Heels Hills. Drinkers like to drink what they call the real stuff, the real thing. But she’s aiming to change all that with a Non brew that will knock them off their heels, especially Stillman with his stiletto shoes I suppose.
While he was waiting for his drink he didn’t really want to pay anything for, the man simply known as Biker further inspects the place. “What’s with the robot?” he queried.
“Oh, came with the place,” she said while pouring. “I guess that it dropped down from the hillside above sometime during the renovation and just got lodged inside. So I set it upright, let it walk in place again. He’s harmless. I think. Anyway, I haven’t decided if I want to keep him or not. There’s another one, another robot — smaller — still up on the hill about to tumble over the side too. Maybe he’ll join him soon. Dunno, in summary. I call him Clocky but he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t have any soul that I can tell. Maybe he just needs reactivation.”
“I see.” (TBC)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0407, Europe, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya, NVFS, South Lake, Vortexville
He told me to back up a bit more and I finally saw it, the double vision he spoke about before locking into place like a renegade magic eye. 2 halves of the restaurant directly overlapping each other through a crossing, slots in one seeming to be perfectly filled by the other.
The ears of the mirrored central woman with the flaxen hair is whispered into by the dark hard woman on either side, perhaps the most obvious communication between the now combined spaces. I could even make out the hushed words they shared: “I am instant.” With this, the two instantly became untangled, the special vision was over and the restaurant returned to mundane, like a master magician snapping one out of hypnosis. Albertville Mercury Spaghettiboro was back at his noodle cooking station inside the customer encircled kitchen, unable to be spoken to any longer. He was never here in the first place. But what was said before the transfer knocked me on the floor, kicked me in the shins, insert whatever idiom for shock and awe you wish here. Fortunately I made sure I recorded at least the meaty part of our imaginary conversation. 🙂
Looking around to doublecheck everything remained stable, I went into the men’s bathroom to play, making sure noone else was in it; just couldn’t wait. I killed two birds with one stone (another idiom!) while sitting on the commode. PRESS
ME: Yes, now it’s on. Continue… (pause) You were talking about the origin of the restaurant’s name (I prompted). (longer pause) Albertville?
I cut off the machine along with the pee. Something went wrong! (TBC)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0406, Europe
Well it was absolutely the worse place Lexi and I could have gone. The slurping the slurping! We could only stand it for a second then had to mute the whole location. We’d have to read lips from now on. Luckily lips are like one pink and we had no problem with it. Carrcass+1.
“About the dandelion!” I said if only to others, the words understood as mere vibrations to myself physically and in my head mentally. Lexi couldn’t take any more and exited the scene stage left, not even being able to stand just visual. Those mouths those mouths!
“Yeah, what about the dandelion!?” responded the waitperson closest to me, 2 plates in his hands and one spinning on his nose, just kidding about the nose. But as deftly as he was handling those plates with 3 bowls apiece full of steaming hot noodles he might be able to pull it off. I could tell he could pause only for a second, which was reinforced when he said, “Hurry up, man!”
I hesitated again and he was gone. Waitress I’d had my eye on next. “Miss, oh miss!?” She presently had 3 drinks in her two hands and one arm, that 3rd tucked behind one of the ones in the hands, reader’s choice. Not a nose once more but pretty impressive still. “Hurry it up, bud!” she said, kind of mimicking the man. “The dandelion… what is the signif—!” But she was gone with the “…”. I had to learn from past mistakes! We’ll… 2 of them. Dammit!
Next: the ramen cooker. Albertville Mercury Spaghettiboro I learned, an Italian by way of Stockholm and Lima. I had to lean in real hard from my stool at the crowded counter to get his attention back in back. “About the dandelion!” I pointed almost straight up now to the most significant card picture (to me) attached to the metal partition encircling the kitchen at the center of it all instead of forward like before. “Significance?!” I uttered as simply as possible but still with perhaps too many syllables. Caught him right at the start of his break. And, big break, he was a big fan of restaurant lore. *My* big break.
15 minutes and 15 seconds later, we got to the mention of “tartar mosquito” in that badly translated Tripadvisor review which led me here in the first place. Success! (TBC)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0405, Europe
And so we begin at the end, 561 steps from. Walking down, we’ve returned to the ONE but with nowhere to go but back up.
“NEXT!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0404, Heterocera, Jeogeot, NWES Island^, Rubi^
And so the real world smacks us in the face, the ear, turning it blue. I said it’s a lobe cyst and the doctor said I could have it drained or just — his recommendation — leave as is. It still itches. The man before me doing the metaphorical slapping seemed a nice enough fellow otherwise in an odd way, but maybe an odd good way? Intelligent for sure, but does he having a beating heart, a true conscience? He *couldn’t see the pond*. I’ve been studying his choice of profession this morning a bit, what I can understand of it. Works to streamline the health care billing system which drives down payments on both patient and provider sides. What a mess this country is in. Would his business suffer if we, as a whole, moved into some kind of universal health care model following all other 1st world, high income countries, simplifying the process? Probably — unless this potential change is baked into its plan. I try to put myself in his shoes, see affordable health care for all while keeping the business side solvent as an attainable goal and not a pipe dream some make it out to be. Socialism — worse: communism. Do the majority of people in his business see it this way? Or is this just a pure capitalist, profit making affair? I don’t know. Again: the mess. Nothing is pure capitalism, nothing is pure socialism. Neither can work alone. That’s why we have government bailouts at the inevitable recessions, and so on. But I’m not a businessman. I think it starts at the top and works downward. If businesses are to be treated like individuals then they, too, must find their heart, the conscience — the caring for the others and, turning to actual individuals again running the businesses, not just some immediate family situation; preserving the bloodline. Taking care of those who are like you and have chosen similar paths in life and are doing well in the current, top bloated economic situation. Trickle Down doesn’t work without checks and balances to power-grabbing. You can’t keep giving people at the pyramid peak all the breaks, the piled-up advantages.
My whole way of life has been upended — NOT. I’m in excellent health for my age. I can walk up and down and sideways on hills with no problems now, unlike this past winter with the hip issue. I can go go go and I’m taking advantage of it. But… has it finally caught up with me, this boundary stretching lifestyle of mine? I have problems with them. That’s why this blog has been labeled purely educational and out of the profit loop. We have pensions and other retirement incomes, especially when we’re both past 66 and ss fully kicks in, which will happen soon. We’ll be okay. I’m thinking more of others. I pity the younger folk of not only this country but of the world. I’m bouncing around, I know.
Boundaries — I want a world where ALL generated societal information is free and open to use. Creativity ultimately lies in the psyche of the collective and not the individual working within it utilizing smaller goals. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. We build up from the past, coral-like, to make our future to be continued. We are never alone and never have been. We are all ONE.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0403
Okay so let’s talk about the *original* Game of Life, the one that ends in RETIREMENT.
Well, as I’m calculating, if you retire at 62 or 63 and live to be 100, that’s more time spent *living* on the other side of the date subtract all the work work and then recovering from this work in your afterhours, needing more time to buy proper work clothes, and so on. And also assuming that you’re still pretty mobile at least some way into your 90s. In this scenario, it’s really more fitting to say the 2nd half of Life — beyond the Game — only starts when you retire and not just at some kind of so-called mid-life crisis or anything. And it doesn’t have to be mere slide and glide afterwards as some might put it, swift motion without aim toward the grave. It could be about a different motion, a different progression than you had when you work worked. And this is a problem I think a lot of people are confronted with upon leaving their job. 8-5 filled a lot of time. Maybe you had friends at work that will be hard to keep up with now unless, perhaps, they’re around the same age and have some of the same interests that you can share beyond it. What I’m saying is that the old energy needs to be put to new uses. Play with your freed up schedule; have *fun* with it. Think of time as also increasing in quality as well as quantity.
Speaking of gliders…
Constantynople, Constance
… let’s talk about Death now. The true end.
https://bakerbloch.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/00470309/
“No need to worry about a glider this time,” exudes the spirit-head that calls herself Phyllis, guessing what he was going to say.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0309, Constantynople, Nautilus
“You know, strictly speaking, that sign doesn’t depict 50-50. More a 48-52 or 47-53 split, I’m guessing by the looks of it. What I mean–”
“I know what you mean,” Katherine L. interrupted me, getting the joke. She must be pretty sharp, I realized. And easily dismissive because of it. Much like–
“I’m NOT a Tiler if that’s what you’re thinking,” she interrupted my thoughts this time instead of speech. Wow, I think then. How did she–
“My *husband* was.” Again! I think. “But he’s… passed on. I don’t wish to talk about it now. Come back tomorrow for what you need. The gate to the shop shouldn’t have been open; we should have– just come back tomorrow,” she interrupted herself this time. And then she just rolled it down on my gawking face. She wasn’t kidding about returning when she was in a better mood! But, poor her — husband just died. I had to find out how. And dig into more of that Tiler background — why did she seem to dislike them while her husband embraced the, ahem, cult? And why did she alter that sign I’d seen elsewhere in Neon to indicate more a 48-52 (or 47-53) split between the 2 color sides of the game/philosophy/religion, red/yellow in one part (*almost* half) and green/blue in the other? I had stuff to think about before returning tomorrow and hopefully getting more of the story. I knew it wasn’t a sign for calories and carbohydrates. This sh-t ran deeper than that. A sign, yes, but not of what it indicates on the surface.
The next day would give me more of a surprise. Her husband was killed. Perhaps by these same cultists! No wonder she altered the sign. To throw the 50-50 sh-t back into their gawking faces!
(TBC)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0048, 0308, Starfield
I couldn’t tell whether they were talking about Vermont or New Hampshire from this distance so I had to zoom in.
Still not clear, but from my now floating lips position I did get this was all about a movement away from another state tucked even further into the northeast corner of our great country of the US of A: Maine. You could say that was the main topic of the conversation between Mouse and his greatest creation, another mouse, anthropomorphic in its case, named Pansy. We were in South America’s Amazon far removed from North because he thought he could get away from prying ears here, didn’t suspect me because I was at the resort when he arrived, let’s put it. Hired by the Gaston Berries to keep track of Mouse and his doings. More on them later maybe.
—–
“A sequence of 1 second shots,” shot back the doctor, following up on rules 34 and 35 already cited. They were exchanging ideas rapid fire on the edge of the cement pond shaped like New Hampshire or Vermont, reader’s choice from these angles.
“Yellow,” started Pansy.
“Blue,” replied the doctor.
“Green,” said the anthropomorphic rodent.
“Red!” issued the doctor named for said rodent to close the sequence.
They’d paced the words to be exactly 1 second apart, just like in the video they were referencing. TILE in summary, the ultimate poop product one could say in a vanilla not chocolate way, a different issuance.
Then the golden gloved one emerged from a static filled background at the center to tell the rest of its story.
(to be continued (?))
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0303, Amazon, Jeogeot, Maine, Nawt Vaya, New Hampshire, NVFS, Vermont
Sunklands 