Sunklands Admin Team interview Baker B. re Collagesity 01
SAT:
Hi Baker B. Welcome to the interview.
Baker B.:
Thank you. And: thank you.
SAT:
We are you after all.
Baker B.:
Right. State your first question worker (smile).
SAT:
How did all this Collagesity stuff start? Second Lyfe… Collagesity. Don’t go into details. Just the general, just the mundane.
Baker B.:
2008 for Second Life, er, Second Lyfe. 2010 for the first virtual town, which was called Pietmond. Collagesity evolved from Pietmond — started 2014. Is that general enough?
SAT:
Thank you. Your first avatar was a woman. Your second avatar was a man. Yet both are named Baker. Please explain if you can — again succinctly.
Baker B.:
I actually can’t remember why I chose a woman as my first avatar. My RL wife decided to be a man (inworld), so I guess that had a role. She was what you could call a very prudish looking woman (with long white dress and un-accentuated features). At the same time, my RL wife’s avatar looked much like David Bowie.
SAT:
The woman’s name was Baker Blinker, the man’s Baker Bloch. Just clarifying here. I understand that Baker Bloch gradually took over responsibilities from Baker Blinker and became your chief or main avatar. How and when did this take place?
Baker B.:
Oh, probably after our move to mainland and I purchased my first land from the Lindens directly. The Lindens own and run the Second Lyfe world. Or, I should say, Second Life there, since I’m talking about them now. And Baker Blinker — perhaps hard to believe — was getting a bit of griefing (as a woman) on mainland that she didn’t have in the less crowded Estate (non Linden owned land of the game). So when Baker Bloch, not Baker Blinker, bought the first mainland land for our “family” (of avatars), in Rubi and very near where I still “live” virtually — Collagesity that is — then that was really the beginning of the end for Baker Blinker as the main avatar. She’s made a big revival in the Collagesity novels more recently. She even got married (!).
SAT:
Karoz Blogger, yes. Describe how they met and then the progression from there to marriage and beyond. I understand they had some rocky patches to work through. Perhaps these are still going on?
Baker B.:
Yes, I don’t think I’m giving away much of a plot when I — we — say the two characters got married rather early in the Collagesity novels as they stand so far. It was a big event, along with them getting together — falling for each other — in the first place. The latter event took place in the exact center of the first Collagesity novel, which we’ll, for simplicity’s sake, call Collagesity Novel 01, although the actual title is “Collagesity 2015-2016 Winter”.
SAT:
Describe how this took place.
Baker B.:
Karoz just looked around and realized one day that he was attracted to Baker Blinker, where before she was just an acquaintance — one of the family, if you will. But this went beyond family. Baker Bloch and Baker Blinker, for instance, never had this kind of attraction to each other, although at least Baker Blinker might have wanted it at one point. Instead they are more brother and sister — closer than brother and sister, since they have a common user. They can finish each other’s thoughts because they are the same; that kind of closeness. Closer than married couples who are close in many ways.
SAT:
Cool. How about Hucka Doobie? I know he is the guiding spirit of the blog, and one that Baker B. — you — relied on a lot for sage advise, at least before the Collagesity novels started kicking in. Can you describe your relationship to him, and what changed about the character during the course of the novels?
Baker B.:
Hucka D. has a definite backstory. He was formerly Charles Nelson Blinkerton, a New Mexico artist from New York who was always one beat behind the current artistic trends. So when Pop Art was around, Blinkerton was still a surrealist and abstract expressionist. When Pop Art yielded to more postmodern concerns, Blinkerton trailed again and took up practicing the basically obsolete form just mentioned. He died on (or near) the top of Burro Mtn. in New Mexico of a heart attack in 2008 at the age of 98, I believe. His soul went into the already prepared body of Hucka Doobie in Our Second Lyfe, then. But the melding created a fusion of personalities, since Hucka Doobie was already established a bit in this world. It wasn’t just Blinkerton taking over a body.
SAT:
Hucka Doobie is the 3rd avatar you, the user, created, and the first beyond The Bakers male and female.
Baker B.:
Yes. And I should add that in the Collagesity novels it is revealed that Hucka Doobie is a woman and not a man, or transformed into a woman from a man at the least. She is continuing to morph away from her purely bee (shaped) start, and currently looks much like David Bowie’s widow Iman, a strong black woman in the modelling industry. Kind of strange… and she seems more trapped in Second Lyfe than ever through this more human form and unable to go back to spirit form, let’s say.
SAT:
Interesting. Let’s see, now we have Wilsonia, the 4th avatar. I’m just reviewing the chapters of “Where are We on That?…” in order.
Baker B.:
Right. Wilsonia was never developed, really, although she has a point of origin: Otherland (Estate land again). But in the novels she becomes Wheeler Wilson — or, sometimes, Wilson Wheeler — certainly a very important character there.
SAT:
How did this (development) come about?
Baker B.:
She absorbed, I guess, the feminine half of the spectrum — from Baker Blinker at the end (during Collagesity Novel 02). Baker Bloch is now the primary male avatar and Wheeler Wilson the female one. So it is appropriate earlier this year that Baker Blinker sells her chunk of Collagesity to Wheeler Wilson. But Wheeler Wilson is multiple avatars now, as is Baker Bloch. Baker Blinker, Karoz Blogger, Hucka Doobie and the rest: not so much. Like I said, Baker Bloch and Wheeler Wilson are the great male-female duality now. Bracket Jupiter is also around.
SAT:
Topic for another night. Good night.
Fishers Island
“I *had* a girl, Missus Lemon,” proclaims the drunken Fisher, leaning against the bar counter. “And I let her go.” He takes another gulp of his golden beer and then looks down. “Yellow,” he explained. Natsu Lemon made a face and moved away. “No, no, no. *Cartoon* yellow.”
Note to self, he thought, watching her back from afar: Stop calling Lisa the Vegetarian by her true color ’round these parts, *orange* boy.
Natali Woodhull decided it was time to reveal herself.
Post New
“Well it’s working for me Wheeler Wilson. Or are you The Bill still here in this new work?”
“The Bill,” Wheeler Wilson answered. “Sorry again to call you over. The interwebs just wasn’t pulling up for me tonight.”
“No prob. Good we talk and keep up with each other every so often. We are the two chief avatars after all, with 90% of the stuff. Bracket Jupiter is running a distant third at, say, 5%?”
“I wouldn’t give him even that. But I miss him still. Where is he now, Baker Bloch? New Eden?”
“We can allow him to become part of the story again if you wish.”
“I’m having *loads* of fun, but…”
“We can do that,” Baker Bloch reinforced, turning over in his mind how that could work.
“Roger Pine Ridge,” spoke Wheeler Wilson, trying to similarly figure out a solution. “Could Bracket play…?”
“I don’t think so. Roger is a composite being. Composite avatar. He — let’s say he wishes to become one of the core avatars — one of us.”
“Hmmm.”
“Let’s bring him in. I’ve got to change back to Pitch Darkly and fix Mary’s supper now. She doesn’t like leftovers.”
“Alright.”
Baker Bloch paused, staring at the map again before them.
“It makes total sense that the focus on New Island shifts over to Fisher’s Island to its left.”
Or its right, Bill/Wheeler thought, looking as if from behind… inside. 1/2 and 1/2.
—–
“Darn! It’s not working again.” She turned to her new guest.
“I almost forgot how to get a hold of you, Roger. Peter Soso,” she repeated his core avatar name for memory purposes. “Soso, Soso…”.
“Sooooooo,” Roger interrupted on beat. “Are you ready to hear my pitch?”
aldition
“Waitress, some fresh wine over here please.”
It’s like Sid has completely forgotten who I am, Martha Lamb ruminated. Might as well fall off the face of the Earth.
“Finished with your salad sir?”
Wait, she thought twistedly, eyeing cheese colored Golden Jim across two tables. I already did.
—–
“Well, Indy. Our Corsican contact was correct. Looks like Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley changes over to *Diagonal* Alley beyond this point. She’s in there all right.”
“Shall we?”
“Better change over now before going through the wall. Muggle,” Sid added playfully, making his older daughter giggle.
“Okay.”
no dice
They were about to enter Gringotts, the famed goblin bank at the opposite end of Diagonal Alley where Harry Potter briefly kept the Philosopher’s Stone (among other adventures), when loitering Business Man, wannabe Wizard of Wall Street, indicated back in the direction they had come and that they’d missed something.
“Oh no, daddy. You don’t think she’s strayed into Horizontal Lane by chance?”
Business Man taps his index finger several times against the tip of his nose.
“Oh *no* daddy.”
“Hi Mistress Martha! Master Jim!”
Okay, just *be* that way.
with sides of orange and violet
“Red green yellow blue, Indy. We better retreat back to whence we came. This goes beyond square into cube!”
“No saving her,” his daughter agreed, and changed back into Indigo. Mission aborted.
—–
Returning to their Rubi trailer, Angus (Sid) and Indigo broke the sad news to Ragdoll, who then secretly smiled a little inside while thinking back to their heated confrontation in front of Max, etc. But Martha Lamb’s story within our new Collagesity novel is perhaps not done.
—–
“Yellow. Yellow yellow yellow. I’ll say it til I die.”
“That – can – be – arranged.”
—–
Alright, maybe it is now.
keeping it real
Fisher stared at the red and yellow condiment containers of the Deep Fried fast food stand, understanding that he had seen them before — alive. Obviously in a dream, he thought at the time.
But no. It was reality. The *stand* was a dream.
—-
“Looks like Orange Boy is finally coming around.”
“Oh goody. More fun!”
merging sides
“Molly, Fisher says he’s drunk again and needs a ride.”
“Missus Lemon, boss, sweetie. I’m on break right now. That side of the room — active. This side: zero; nothing going on. I’d say, talk to the hand, but I can’t even be bothered to lift one.”
“Catchup and Mustered are back on the counter and working, and you should be too. 15 minutes break time here at my bar and that’s all, I’ll remind you.”
Still grumbling Molly Lustrous mentally prepares to rise up from her violet latex sofa and give Orange Boy Fisher yet another ride, pheh.
missing
From the first time she saw it in the northeast corner of the sim, Young Ruby knew this was her church. Somehow it wasn’t the Maxites per se that caught on in Collagesity. It was more connected to the Cult of Oo’d then, obviously. But the only way the true story would unfold is if she signed the contract. She’d met Madame Silver yesterday and understood the basic terms. Fishers Island progressed from New Island; Tronesisia as art-clay centerpoint brought back to life. Eels. Right now it was Silver’s empire to rule, but she was the understudy, destined to be top dog soon enough. She asked how long she had to make a decision. She wanted to explore the other river islands more to make sure she was picking the correct reality to manifest. Other islands represented other array points (!). Fishers Island had to be named carefully and with much consideration and deliberation. Quality over quantity this time around, Ruby thought, face unwincing. Sucklands to Sunklands. Time capsule castle opened.
—–
“Well, looks like radiation levels are finally low enough where we can return to the ground and feel safe, Ruby.”
Axis looks around the table, the room, as if waking from a dream.
“Ruby? Young Ruby?
Hmm. Not here.”
Mr. Yellows
“You know something. Don’t you?
Now spill it.”
establishing
The deal was signed. She had even picked out a house, she thought. Place of safety, place of calm, Madame Silver reinforced while the ink was still wet. Contract pretty much laid out everything plain and simple. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do that. And we’re done. “Go ahead and choose one of the dwelling units on the northern edge of the property,” Madame Silver then suggested. “If one is already occupied, the door will be locked. I have other business interests to take care of now. I’ll see you at the sim-wide meeting, Young Ruby!” And then she was gone: vanished in a poof.
She didn’t want to be greedy. This smaller dwelling spot she was also attracted to would have served perfectly well for her home. But the door was locked. Later Ruby found out a girl almost exactly her age lived here. Interesting. The other houses around it were basically one floor units. She wanted multiple floors. She always wanted to live in a high rise, the narrower the better. And her new house pretty much filled the bill on this.
Here it is. An oversized treehouse, right beside the smaller unit that we just took a gander at. It was the huge, multi-paneled window that totally sold her. But the place was not without its drawbacks. Oh no. As Ruby quickly found out, physics is a little wonky all over the property, but especially in close spaces with a lot of textures, which this house was filled with. Let’s go inside and see what we have.
A calico cat with two black kittens! She always wanted a cat. Apparently she’ll have at least 3 now. Unless she decides to give one or both of the small ones away. But how could she!
Up the stairs we must go. But already Ruby has a bit of trouble getting off the vintage pouf the cats are on. Oh well… she can get use to the physics here. Yes, surely she can.
Ahh, what is perhaps the living room.
A nice desk for writing and drawing and such.
Ruby’s throat is getting a little sore. Must be all the climate changes switching between New Island and Collagesity and here, she rationalizes. Instantly she decides to cut down on her bouncing around. She’ll stay here for a while; explore the neighborhood and whatnot. As long as she abides by the contract, she’ll be fine. This will be her base. Permanent one? We’ll see how it develops. Day by day, month by month, she thinks. But upwards we must continue!
Beautiful. She will entertain many new friends in this space, she feels.
From this 3rd floor, Ruby finds she has to go outside and traverse a corner porch to continue exploring the house. She pauses to take a look at the view. “This is all mine,” she utters, as if reinforcing the reality of what seems a dream.
Suddenly she didn’t care what the upper floor or floors from here looked like. This was her home for certain, and nothing else she could see would change that.
She opens what turns out to be the final door.
tit for tat
“You better hurry up with your pie, Ruby. We’ve got a whole shake to get at (!).”
“Well… you hurry too,” Ruby commanded to her new acquaintance Tin Tin. “You’ve got a whole piece of pie to go as well.”
“Fork’s a little dirty,” he said, turning it round and round. “Maybe I should ask the waitress for a new one.”
“You can’t ask the waitress for a new fork every time you take a couple of bites (!). Just clean it off with your mouth, dufus. Your lips or tongue or something.”
“Hey, don’t call me stupid.”
“I didn’t,” Ruby returned measuredly. “I called you dufus.”
He stared at her, then just waved it off and took another bite. She did as well.
“Can we *please* stop talking about food all the time and get to why we came here?”
“We came for the talk,” Tin Tin returned. “*And* the food.” He started eating with his mouth open again.
Ruby couldn’t wait much longer. The water and the fish across the room seemed to be closing in on her. Maybe she has agoraphobia she didn’t know about before. Or maybe it’s simply the company crushing her down.
“I don’t think this pie is getting smaller, Ruby,” proclaims Tin Tin, looking down at it. He glanced over. “Neither is yours. Do you *feel* like you’re getting any fuller?”
“Yes,” she replied quickly, staring at his queerly two-toned face. Yes, she thought to herself. I’m certainly getting my fill of all this.
—–
Yesterday, across the sim:
Hearing approaching footsteps, Tin Tin rolled over on his sleeping sofa.
“What are *you* doing here?”
“Well… what are *you* doing here?”
allover
“Yeah, you’re right Bendy. That *is* wrong. But what does it mean?”
“Something’s tampering with something, that’s what it means. I can feel it deep down in my metal bones.”
“2 realities combined into one?” Fisher offers. “Someone’s pissing on us?” he tries again, looking down at the red spill.
Bendy couldn’t help it. “What a mess,” he exclaims to the camera.
other side
“If you asked me, it’s a witch that did this, Fisher. The Wall… everything.”
“Where did you park the car again Bendy?”
Wall, The
He was disguising himself as a chatty alien to this town. Lucytown it could be called. We’ll see. Maybe Walltown. Or just: Wall. Wallytown.
“How did this Wall come about, Peggy? I prefer Moon myself. Better music, maybe better lyrics even. Did you know there is a Moon on the opposite side of Wall in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania? And Pennington County, South Dakota for that matter. And now: here. This proves that our — *my* music will live on in time. Past the 21st Century. Past more, hopefully. Moon is permanent, and maybe it can drag the interior Wall along with it.” He shakes his head, playfully adjusts his mouth, laughing. “Inferior I meant there, although a Wall certainly does have an interior… and an exterior. Inner and Outer. Do you know why they hang green and red banners along the exterior of the Wall instead of, say, yellow and blue? I saw a blue car parked beside them today, in the middle of the road. Got towed — I called it in. Do you like chocolate, Peggy? How about lemonade? How about rustling me up a freshly squeezed glass of lemonade? Or do I have to go to Bar Lemon for that? I will, you know. Just down the Wall and through the tunnel and hang a right.”
It was only then that Roger Pine Ridge realized he was talking to a mannikin all along. The other Peggy at the bar — Peggy 02: same story. Only Natali was real here, and she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. A day off is me-time for her. Talk to the hand all day today. In costume, she was, of course, our Molly Lustrous, a dancer at Bar Lemon Roger just mentioned, and a constant ride provider for Fisher, another town newcomer. That crazy robot friend of his, she thinks with a slight grin. And that yellow colored girl he keeps yammering on about all the time and getting in trouble because of it. He doesn’t even know about the secret stash of ammunition in Drugstore Orange just below that could blow up a, well, a town about this size.
“You have to click the keg at the end of the bar,” she finally managed. The still drink-less Roger followed her point. Soon he had a cranberry martini in hand, complete with lemon slice.
“Ah yes. Thank you, stranger. My name is Albert. Albert Halsey. I’m from Oregan, Earth, USA. I’m on the run; out of breath. You know: Time. Constraints that drive one mad and induce Brain Damage, Money not the least of them. Do you know about Money? Time, Money, Brain Damage? It will all survive the test of time. Well beyond the 21st Century. Maybe even up to the *31st* Century.”
Natali was thinking: how to ease out of this bar scene as gracefully as possible. After all, there were about a dozen bars in Wall Wallytown she could visit by her estimation, and that may still be selling the burg short. Around every single blasted turn there seemed to be another one. Bar Lemon does a fairly steady business but it use to be different back in the old days. The days before the coming of the blimey Lindens. For this use to be a Lemony town through and through, Bar Lemon a link to that lustrous past. And herself as well. She could open up to this alien man sitting next to her and blow his freak’n mind. Give him a ride all over town and show him the sights, tell him where this and that use to exist and how it was mainly replaced by *inferior* structures and objects. Mr. Yellow knew too. Both of ’em. The town has certainly been pissed on by the Lindens. Yes, she could give him a total ear-full of info.
But it was her day off.
higherarchy
Poor, pitiful creature, Dr. I C. Yourinsides thought, returned to life from the ice cream truck catastrophe like the others. Only *one* eye.
Didn’t she read about a town over in the Atoll Continent that was ruled by such a being, though? She’ll have to look it up later on at her personal console.
—–
Ah yes, here ’tis. Collagesity. Class 2 population place, which is more like a village. The continent also contains a class 3 pp named Olde Lapara Towne — logically: a town, then. And, wow, even a class 4 city (!), just a notch below the Linden controlled class 5 superburgs of Bay, Nautilus, Kama. VHC City it’s called here in this Baker Blinker Blog. But it’s, hmm, bakerbloch.com. Two Bakers.
Wristband monitor alert warned that her energy was running low again. Only 3 hours since the last regeneration. Continuing effects of the New Island catastrophe radiation seem to be worsening lately for unknown reasons. Unable to go groundside until the situation stabilizes. Wouldn’t make it.
Two of those who didn’t make it.
But it’s not New Island below us now, she considers. It’s Fishers Island. She needed to study up more on the differences between the two, and what the consequences are for the SHIFT from one to the other. Given the shituation, this could obviously be bad news, at least for her as a strangely organed alien.
Another class 4 pp immediately below. Multi-sim. Dr. I.C. is manipulating the space as best she can remotely. Red and green banners indicating the continued presence of New Island witch Mid Hazel there. Bar Lemon, a link between past and present. Mr. Yellows too. Wrongful combination. Different kind of pp. A Moon rising against a far Wall, full of caged creatures as well. IT IS FULL. All of that last part due to the last true wizard possessing the Rainbow Sphere now.
—–
Roger Pine Ridge finally found a place in Wallytown where he felt safe to manifest the sphere. Cul-de-sac; no interior to the surrounding buildings. He burned a hole through the fabric of time-space with his cigarette and prepared to look inside again.
naming (it begins)
“You know, Bendy. I suppose it’s really time we talked about how we got here.”
“*Much* better than Mabel’s house, I’ll tell you that. Lots to do in this town. Bar around every corner if we ever tire of Bar Lemon. Which I haven’t.”
“I didn’t ask you how you liked it here… in comparison to New Island. I’m asking you about how we got here.”
“Dunno that part,” his robot companion returned. “Just woke up one day and here I was.”
“It can’t be that easy,” Fisher gruffed, shaking his head. “I personally think I remember something else — don’t think it was just a dream.”
“Well?” prompted Bendy. “Spill it.”
—–
“It started that day we went over to the park to play and then spotted Mr. Yellow in the distance: looking different. We went up to him and saw that weird-y combo thing, looking like it was pissing on the ground. Red liquid instead of the usual yellow, but not blood I don’t think.”
“Soda,” offered Bendy. “I tested it when you turned your back to the camera.” Fisher winced toward him, making Bendy shrug. “Couldn’t resist.”
“Anyway, I went back to Bar Lemon down the wall — that’s when you decided to visit the beach scene — but as soon as I sat down at the bar and started watching Molly warm up, things started happening. Mustered and Catchup were on break…”
“When *aren’t* they,” groused Bendy. “At least when Natsu Lemon isn’t around — the boss.”
“Which is becoming more frequent; that could be part of it as well.” He put his hands behind his head. “But it was something about the dance that… awoken me. Part of me that was, er, dormant before.”
“Sex?” Bendy joked. “You’ve never had any problem there.”
“‘Course not,” Fisher reinforced to his sometimes erotic pal — just every once in a while. “Something else. The dance told a story. The *music* told a tale. I believe the song was called ‘OTR.'”
“‘On the Run’? responds Bendy quickly. “Over the Rainbow’? I have both of them in my database. If you wish, I could even sing both at once.”
“No. No more wacky combos for a while.” But then Fisher realized Bendy was totally on to something in his prescient manner. It *was* a combo of those songs. *Another* wacky combo, two in one day. And perhaps intimately connected. Yes, it had to be so. He blew out a large puff of air. A chill also passed through his body.
“So anyway,” he began again after the reflective pause, “I started remembering stuff about the spaceship. About the regeneration. Dr. I.C. Yourinsides.”
“She prefers Dr. Ice Cream lately,” corrects Bendy. “But: spaceship?”
“Yes. We were taken away from New Island and then placed here. This *new* New Island.”
“That’s a horrible name. Why don’t you just name it after yourself.”
“Why don’t *you*?”
“OK,” acquiesced Bendy. “Lord Bendington the Third’s Island it is.”
Fisher shakes his head again. “No, let’s just use your original suggestion. Name it Fishers Island. Or maybe just Fisher Island. Either one… 1/2 and 1/2. Like a fisherman or several fishermen live here, or were seen here. Fishing or something, I suppose.”
Bendy splashes around water in his pool. “Alright.”
“Now about the spaceship…”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 