“Dimmy, I am the mama you answer to from now on. Understand?”
Dimmy nods, suddenly not remembering how his mother actually looks. Maybe this *is* his mother. Yes, only several seconds later, he’s convinced. “I *will* find your toys, Mama!” he exclaims aloud.
“Good, good,” Rag Doll says to this. “At least you got the string. And *you* Newt,” she turns her attention to the other male sitting in the front row. “Newt of Newtown. What are you doing flirting with a woman 5 years older than you looking 15 years older? Does *Wheeler* know about this?”
“Well…” Newt glances over at second row Wheeler, who doesn’t glare back as might be expected but seems kind of indifferent to the situation. She’s seen worse. She *is* worse.
“Never mind. You met her in the mall today by the way. Do you think he was really there?”
“I–”
“Moving on,” Rag Doll quickly said. “To Osborne. Osborne, look up from your book and pay attention.”
Daughter Lou beside him nudges his ribs with her elbow. “Da-ddy. She’s talking to *you* now.”
“Oh, ahem. Um. What?”
“The town owner,” Lou tries to whisper but everyone in the room hears anyway. “Up there… on the stage. The dancers are gone. The main show is on.”
“Oh, erm, yes. Yes!” he speaks up, a little too loud he realizes. “I’m here, town ruler,” he softens a bit.
“And you’ve found MOA?” this ruler asks.
“Why yes, I believe I have. It’s in the basement…” Osborne looks around as if seeing the sewer room for the first time. Suddenly he doesn’t know where the library is, its basement, anything. He recalls… walking through a soda machine.
“Good enough,” says Rag Doll. “We’ll talk more soon in private about that. Let’s see, that leaves Eight and Eighty and then Pietmond and Norris. Let’s start with the girls. Eight, we’ve talk a lot down at the ratskeller together while Eighty was away, shared a lot of town gossip and rumors in our giggly, girlish ways. I wonder if you’ve thought about the note.”
“Eighty looks at Eight as if also betrayed, more than Wheeler perhaps surprisingly. Eight seeing Rag Doll behind Eighty’s back? When did her position in town change?
“I took the note from you 2 years ago and yet you didn’t protest. I called it worthless and you didn’t question my questionable assessment. Of course it’s not worthless. I’ve manifested it in your pocket — just look! EINSTEIN; ‘To; Tu/E.”
Pulling the note out and unfolding it, Eight saw, Eighty next to her too. More to talk about later.
“And then the boys, Norris and Pietmond. Clearly Nazis are bad and deserved to be mowed down, ancient headgear or not. So by, let’s say, moral default you have won the contest. Now think carefully: What do you wish your dream island to be?”
After high-fiving each other about the victory, the boys talked amongst themselves and then spoke up. They jointly described a post-Nazi (is)land full of decent Germans in a more modern setting, adding central yellow to an already present red and black in the national flag for increased light and illumination. Given enough time if not space, these people may even be able to make light/find levity in a dark dark past, they theorized. “Our ancestors, PHEH,” said one or the other. “What *were* they thinking about, and so on.” This would obviously take a while, though, the boys furthered. In the meantime, they could go about their daily business in the light of God-day without accumulated sin from their country’s history weighing them down. They’d be free. “This is what we wish,” they finished.
And so it came to be. The burg of Newtown with the sim of Newt at its core was born retroactively from that moment, hurrah! END OF SECTION.
Sunklands 