Philip Strevor couldn’t help himself. He had to read ahead in the red book to see what life would be like in the Bermingham part of Muff-Bermingham. With the kid.
Journal entry, 01/18/19:
Today was the first day my mother didn’t come calling.
Panicking, he quickly thumbed back to pages already experienced, carefully marking the ultra important division between past and future. He’d read enough of the latter today. No more peeking, he vowed!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0407, Muff-Bermingham-
Philip paused in reading his red book to stare over at the child. “What’re you building, sugar?” He’d become more open in his affections for Heidi Hunt Ives recently; he’d been dreaming about her almost every night. She was fast transforming into his own flesh and blood offspring.
“A portal,” she said mysteriously, still not looking up. “You *do* like to get high… don’t you?”
“High?” Philip coughed. “Nah. That’s more Marion’s bag. Nickle bag, hehe.”
“But…,” she continued while making her sand castle, “… you *do* want to keep him calm and happy. Because he then calms you down. Remember how it was *before*? You were not the nice person that you are now.”
Philip considers again that Marion should have never told the kid about their backgrounds. But she insisted if she was to be part of the group, the *gang*. He remembered his own briefing about the girl. “Shapeshifter,” Marion reinforced. “Can turn old, middle aged, young. She’s even got a dog transmutation… poodle, she claims, although I haven’t seen it up close and in person. Then there’s another one she’s working on, Philip, and this will take the cake. Bug,” Marion says, making him laugh. And now that’s what he keeps calling her in these dreams. My little bug, etc.
Philip decides to walk over to the sand box and take a closer look. It seemed quite detailed from his perspective. She was just finishing up the northeast turret.
“Hana Lei is where it will take us,” she began again. “We thought she was dead but now it’s been found again.”
“What — or who is this Hana Lei?”
“Island,” she speaks, halting her work and looking up at Philip now. *Is* this his child? he wonders, staring into her green eyes.
“Pitch,” she then utters.
“Pitch?”
—–
Pitch Darkly rouses himself. By his side, Mary was staring at him, wide awake already. “You had another dream didn’t you?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0402, Capitol City-, Gaeta V, HANA LEI
Philip continued to read his book for hours. Afterwards it described him looking through the telescope at hand and seeing Spica, bright as a bell, like he was back in the northern hemisphere and far away from that dreaded Southern Cross. Back to studying the Spica variable star and the precession of the equinoxes, similar to one of his major heroes Copernicus did before him. Our Second Lyfe’s sun, hmm, he then ponders, wondering if it could possibly be reachable by rocket ship. What is in the centre?
—–
By this time, Marion Harding was back down on the ground — grounded — and seeing Capitol City straight and for what it really was again. Bland and boring. The others of his gang were suppose to meet him in Raven Manor’s main dining room at 7:00 (more leftovers from the great spread he had prepared 2 nights back now), but since they both were usually a little late, he decided to drag his feet this time as well. He takes a detour to that recently found ice fishing shed over in Horizons-Spica, part of the sci-fi retro sub-continent where land can be rented so cheaply (thanks Veyot!). Ahh, vacation, he thinks. Could it be possible soon? Perhaps after the one last big bank heist in Farmington. Or was it Bennington?
He teleports to the shack using the landmark created last night. An angler is positioned just a bit down the bank from him, seemingly of the female variety. “Hello?” he says. No answer — but this might be problematic. He wanted to be alone and smoke his grass and talk to his fantasy creations: Peanut Cop, Golden Josephine, and the rest. Away from that nonsense babbling Kid and tough talking Philip, somehow the best of buds now despite their different natures. He doesn’t want other fishermen — or fisherwomen — in his way. Who does own the shack? He desires it for his own, his own centre of the universe, he realizes, at least for a little while.
He decides just to ignore the problem for now and poke around inside again. Chess, he remembers…
He finds himself laying down on the far couch against the colorful throw pillows.
“Fishing,” he murmurs, relaxing, letting it all go. “Fishing for fish. Fishing for answers. Fishing for…”
“Pitch,” the fisher lady then calls from outside, puzzling him. “Pitch. Time to wake up. Wake up.”
—–
“It was awful, Mary. I dreamed I was back in Buster and I’s killing shack, but I was the victim set up this time. I was to be sacrificed!”
“There, there,” Mary comforted, stroking his white forehead. “Only a dream.” Then they laid together. It was like old times.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0308, Capitol City-, Gaeta V, HANA LEI, Horizons
“Why do you kill me, hwwww?” wheezed the peanut shaped flattie cop to Marion Harding. Sometimes he had these kind of visions up here in Capitol City’s giant tree: all alone and high as a kite. “Over,” wheezed the cop figure, also smoking, “and over… and over and over and over and over, hwwww?” He paused. “I mean, am I still alive? Because I think I’m falling from this tree.” Pause, then another laughy wheeze.
“Then he falls out of the tree?” Philip concurrently reads down on the ground in Raven Annex. “What the hell’s bells does that mean?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0307, Capitol City-, Gaeta V
He paused in reading his little red book to call to her. “Time to go home, kid.” For that’s what he already was nicknaming Heidi Hunt Ives, appropriately; she couldn’t help but snicker a little inside every time he used it. “5:00. *Lord* Marion will have laid out what he considers dinner back at the manor in about 15, swee…” Philip Strevor bit his tongue. He almost called her sweetie! She certainly is some kind of bewitching child, he considers, staring in her direction through jungle gym bars welded together with red, yellow, and blue pentagons. Marion had that part right.
“I’m coming,” she complied, finishing up her last dangle of the day.
Philip then turned again to watch the only other kid in the small playground. Unsupervised, but he seemed a little bigger than Heidi and a boy as well — probably all right to fend for himself, he deduced. It reminded him of his days growing up in South Yankton. Snow 9 months out of the year. Playing in the cold with Tommy Fox, Archie Hound, and the rest of the gang. He was use to cold, yes. Craved it, in fact. But he had to leave when he was 6 years old, his family cast out of the village after he attempted an armed robbery of its lone bank, pheh. Yeah, the prison guard families there were a bad influence, but he got away from crime. For a while. Turned to science; turned to the stars. B.A. in Physics at Cambridge. M.A. in Applied Astronomy from Oxford Shoe. That’s where he met Jimmy and became buds. Jimmy said there was another position at the observatory in Australia that he had just earned a job at himself. “Southern skies,” Jimmy lured. “Whole new realms to explore. And you can still see your precious Spica from that hemisphere *almost* as well,” he tacked on. Ah yes, *Spica*, Philip thought bitterly. He paid for that small loss of brightness indeed.
Philip Strevor decked up at Cambridge in better days.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0305, Capitol City-, Gaeta V
