Tag Archives: Zero^*++++~

December 22, 2020 · 10:49 am

forth

The next morning, Tickie finally caught up with Jeffrie Phillips, who was scared out of his wits at the events of the night before, damaged beyond repair even.

In the weakness and as a cure, Tickie *merged* with Jeffrie to become something else, unafraid of fear. A new superhero but hopefully not supervillian. Blue Thorn, perhaps the Blue Rose Thorn but with the Rose dropped because of fear of copyright infringement (see: Santman).

Blue Thorn looks around with new eyes for both, sensing that Knob Noster was not here in the Inbetweenland. Never mind Mr. Platinum/Operator/Undertaker/Zero Hero, because he was a different animal altogether. Blue Thorn could change back into Jeffrie Phillips (and Tickie, I suppose) after he had nabbed the similarly blue beast and brought him (or her) back home to mama (Charlene Brown the punk, who we know now is a type of bigfoot *herself*) for detailed study. She could finish her cryptozoology dissertation that way. She could become a doctor herself. Maybe then Jeffrie could find a way to finish off the other doctor he knew well, the one who could turn into a mouse (Pansy). It was all coming together if it wasn’t all falling apart. And actually it was both. The Blue Thorn stepped forward away from the now closed portal into the past.

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December 20, 2020 · 7:10 am

00230513

Valley no. 1. Probably not far enough away from civilization to act as a bonafide monster attractor, but we’re on the way. Tickie reviewed the events of what just happened in his mind again. Tenty: dead! Or was he? And the Operator or Zero Hero. He is me! He’s jumped the rail, skipped the highway. He’s in lala land: a lala. He believes he hears a whale song far in the distance. Perhaps the sea is nearer than he thinks but perhaps not. New York comes to mind as well: he’s heard about a certain island on this continent that acts as a land antipode for a place on the opposite side of the world, proving Our Second Lyfe is a globe, a sphere (it has a belt). But it’s not New York; something *pre* New York. New Hamsterdam: that’s it. Pot-D sent a team in there a couple of weeks ago — hasn’t heard back from them. Pan-Z’s probably not far behind. They like to send the red shirts in first to test the atmosphere of a place. And antipodal Our Second Lyfe sounds dangerous.

2 hours earlier:

“Just up this path should be the second valley. More chance of monsters for certain!”

Sammie Parr hung back. She was scared. I should have never left NWES City, she bemoaned, thinking of Richmond.

Jeffrie Phillips was suddenly on his own as well as Sammie silently made her way back to the highway while she had the chance. He only turned around at the top.

“Sammie?”

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December 20, 2020 · 7:09 am

rails again

He’s in there somewhere, Tenty. We’ll check that isolated valley over there first.”

“We’re looking for different people — entities — yes, but have a common goal.”

“To free the Inbetweenland of monsters (like us).”

“Correct.”

“Alright, let’s move out!”

Inexperienced traveler Tenty never made it past the railroad tracks.

“Watch out!!!”

Tickie then spotted him across the road and knew this was no accident. The Undertaker. Some called him the Operator. Some… Zero Hero.

He lifted up his monstrous arms and screeched a horrible, echoing sound. “Watch out!!!”

Then he turned into me and I was gone.

“What just happened??”

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November 25, 2020 · 5:57 pm

102 01 02

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November 10, 2020 · 9:04 am

The Inbetweeners

Tickie was getting between good friends Tealy and Tillie. He had to run away. Tenty was the logical choice for a destination, a twin brother from another.

—–

“Ground rules: *don’t* go over to Grimm unless absolutely necessary and, whatever you do, don’t go over to the Slot Mountain Castle. Death within!”

Tickie had heard about a head in a jar named Homer there who use to be a prominent resident of NWES City (*almost* NWES Town, but not quite). He wisely decided to heed the warning of host Tenty.

—–

Tickie naturally looked east for answers instead of the forbidden west (Grimm; Slot Mtn.; Slot Mtn. Castle). They were sitting in identical chairs in back now, but Tickie had gotten up: restless. “Who lives over there?” he asks about the house between the source and the lake of a blue-grey stream beyond the wooden fence.

“Oh, just one of those TILE fanatics, hence the *river*.” Tenty didn’t really like the Tilists, and thought there were too many in the area and on the island as a whole. He stated this to Tickie. He told him about the river of the world as the Before and After, or the Zero and the Nine.

“Like Zero Hero?” exclaimed Tickie, getting excited despite himself. He was a hero worshipper by nature, and Zero Hero was one of his favorites. He’d never heard of a hero called Nine, though.

“That’s Jasper,” spoke Tenty through his tentacled mouth, but in a pretty ordinary man-voice despite this, more than Tickie’s which was kind of squeaky; mouse-like. “That’s the Land of the Dead. The Egg.”

Tickie didn’t know these terms. He felt like he was getting in over his head with Tenty, who use to be a professor of religion/philosophy/games at Northwest NWES but which wasn’t there any more, a victim of the Tar Wars as they called it in scholarly-land. He turned toward Tenty. A realization occurred. They had been here before!

“Tell me about core avatars, Tenty,” he asked, knowing his friend would know a lot. His very close friend.

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October 31, 2020 · 4:46 pm

pre-Gong

“A message from Elberta,” she chipperly chirped to begin.

“Oh yeah?” He’d been waiting a long long time. He’d cross his arms and tap his foot to signal impatience if he possessed any. About all he had left were some basic facial features and his gruff, booming voice, now reverberating across a sickly, cold, monochromatic basin.

“The deed is done. The Smipsons bartender is gone, perhaps even dead.” “Like yourself,” Bethulia the messenger chicken wanted to add but stopped herself, ending instead with: “You can move in.” Shakily, one might put it, as she continued to stand in its shadow and stare at the dark, foreboding spheroid, the realization of what actually happened dawning on her. This was not warming sunbeams, light. This was the opposite. The cosmos had been swallowed whole, starting with the pole.

“Remind me: which of us came first?” Yes, Karl wasn’t quite ready yet to return from the Land of the Dead, the Land of Jasper. He remains a zero, a null, a void — for now. Not a true hero any longer. Bethulia relays this observation back to Elberta and gets fed lots of feed for it. She’d almost made a vast mistake. She didn’t realize Karl and Moe’s deadly Egg were the same.

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October 18, 2020 · 10:42 am

zzz aaa

“Now. Isn’t that a lot better than that nasty old gun, eh? Corona-V. Won’t let you down, hehe. 9 out of 10 pirates — *recommend*.”

“Who *are* you?” she said to the tiny green creature on the pool’s edge beside her with the projecting, announcer-like voice. She was getting use to honing in on the frequency, like a small radio that blends into background noise at first.

“Why I’m a *friend*, a guiding spirit if you will, yes.” Spore rubs his miniature hands together in diabolic glee. Plan Z was working perfectly. Except he’s decided to trim the name down to Pan-Z to separate it from that other guy with a plan about the canal that didn’t work so well. NWES City remains in pieces. “Now just rellaaxx and forget *all* about that awful black swamp, eh? Settle back. You remain a star, don’t worry. I’ll be back shortly.” He patters off, still rubbing his hands and snickering underneath his breath. Oakley Annie floats and sips for a while, thinking of the past.

“You use to be *my* friend,” Big Wanda with new doo spoke, sitting up for emphasis.

“Well things change, what can I say.” She looked over. “What happened to your horns, the thing that gave away your sign?”

“Aww, got tired of them.” She patted her hornless head, indicating her pigtailed hair she replaced them with; kind of floppy horns if you will; deflated almost. “Looked much better on the other version of Elberta I have,” she opined about it, “the one that was going to marry–”

“Don’t tell me,” Oakley Annie beams with new psychic insight because of the brew; in the dark no more. “Toothpick.” She cackles. “*That’s* what Spore was going on about with the guy with the failed plan, ha.”

“You’re not the only one who’s dead here, Oakley Annie. I am too.”

“I know.” She almost reaches back into the box to produce a beer for Big Wanda but then remembers this is all imaginary; in her head. Big Wanda was not dead, not yet. She hasn’t tasted cool happiness at the end of a long, dusty trail.

Another sip (*ahhhh*). Spore says she can stay in his land for as long as she wants, and she has nowhere to go. Could be a while (*sip*).”Who can I speak to next? Who will fill that vacant hole of a zero doughnut this time?”

She trembles despite the good vibrations. “Mom?”

Truly dead this time.

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October 15, 2020 · 8:17 am

male

“Where’s the rabbit?”

“He’ll be up shortly,” Toothpick answers Supper Man. Both are getting married in 1-3 weeks. They have to decide what is first and who is marrying who. The latter should be easy.

“Dinner Girl wanted us to meet again, have tea. She thinks we can help each other. She doesn’t want a double marriage. She thinks we should go first. I say we should go second, see how it goes for you guys.”

“And Dinner Girl isn’t (also) your sister?” asked Toothpick, following up from earlier speculation.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Listen, we’re not the same person.” He leans forward, but dares not touch any part of Toothpick’s body for fear of passing through. Invisible. Nonexistence, even. He’s worked too hard on his abs to fritter all this away. And now that his favorite restaurant has closed up shop it should be even easier to keep the lbs away.

Toothpick/Filbert looks left as a distraction. “The rabbit over there is indicating our old friend Certain Death, Supper Man. No running away from all that. But then there’s the 561 steps now leading from End back to Beginning and the 561 again. Through 24687531 we can be saved.”

“Bahh.” Supper Man even spits toward Toothpick a bit here while exclaiming his exasperation over the supposedly sacred (heart) number. The spittle indeed passes through Toothpick’s skin, muscle and bone, some reaching the back of the chair behind him.

“Why do you disbelieve the power of the even in a row and then the odd in a backwards row?” Toothpick then considered the 9th is involved. He’d seen it once or twice before. The counter to the Zero, perhaps the Zero Hero. “We are getting married in the Temple of TILE after all with the sacred book now open at the front for everyone to see. We have the story of the CITY. The CITY is TILE.”

Supper Man scratched his head. “You and *me* are getting married in the Temple of TILE?”

Back to square one.

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October 13, 2020 · 6:21 am

letters and numbers but mostly letters

“Red yellow green blue,” the introduction began. “NO purple. NO orange. NO nothing else. We have our 4. I am Phyllis and I approve this manifesto. Let’s make this shit happen.”

561 words. In the next paragraph.

—–

Future scholars picked out key words like Olive, Gray, Residents, Oklahoma, Pink, Brown, and Geronimo as anchors to their attempts at analyses, even though the sentence, “Keys — you can have them; I’m producing my own delicious peanut based spread for my bread.”, appears plainly in the 166th paragraph (before perhaps one about milk) as a seeming warning to this approach. 1/2 and 1/2 again, since almost everyone agrees that this sentence *is* the key since it is the only readable one in the whole 561 paragraph document (except perhaps for the sentence about milk following it), with the ending paragraph simply, “End.”, and the second to last, “Tartar mosquito.”, and the third to last, “I am instant.”, and so on back to the 561 word 1st paragraph — most scholars don’t count the clearly worded introduction just to be clear. So the 166th paragraph with the sense making sentence has, let’s see (pulls up calculator), 395 words, of which 16 are in that key sentence quoted above. Some turn to maths for explanation of the inexplicable Manifesto, usually capitalized in these TILE friendly and frenzied days. Jim Baloony of Yale’s Harvard points out that 395 divided by 16 equals 24.6875, which when extended to the logically equivalent 24.687531 contains all the even and then odd numbers in order and then reverse order between 0 and 9. “Where is the 9th?” he questions, and then turns to the “perhaps sentence” (as it is called these days) about milk to make his theories more palatable and easier to swallow. It reads: “And so on the 5th day he cowed.” Several books about that sentence alone have now been published, one by Bart Smipson, a skateboarder from Tull, and the other by his vegetarian leaning sister Lisa, co-written by someone who chooses to simply be known as Marty. And then there’s the whole Zero Hero cult that has grown around the mention of Gong in paragraphs 3, 40, and 340.

(to be continued?)

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June 6, 2020 · 6:48 am

Heartsdale 00

Zero was a figure of some importance so I decided to circle around him in a permitted pattern to indicate this. He marked my 5/4th time with his special watch.

Yoko 01 showed up and was mystified why she was already here in Heartsdale. And now the drama continues…

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