(BELL SOUND)
“What do you think, Hucka Doobie? It’s the Red Umbrella in NWES.”
“I see.” Hucka shuffles her feet. “I thought we were, er, done with this town. Splitsville and all.”
“Well… decided to give it one more try. The rent was so cheap. Thus (he indicates with his hands), voila.”
“Should we go inside, then?”
“Sure, we can do that Hucka Doobie. It’s all the art in the Red Umbrella in 7 Stones, though. You know all the works.”
“Have I interpreted them yet?” Hucka Doobie truly couldn’t remember.
“I — think so. Most of them anyhow.”
“Hmm. Let’s go inside anyway.”
“*Actually*, I wanted to show you something in particular. Jar your memory a bit, perhaps.”
“Alright.”
—–
“Before I forget, Baker Bloch, I wanted to tell you that ‘Humanvillians’ has returned to Fal Mouth Moon (in 7 Stones). Herbert Gold and April Mae Flowers’ story must be resolved; Uncle Joe and Aunt Zoe entrapped in a 2-dimensional realm once more.”
“Cool, Hucka Doobie. Good to know. I wonder if (we should allow) Danny to come back to the Fal Mouth Moon as janitor/receptionist, then?”
“Oh no,” replies the bee being firmly. “Tronesisia *specifically* said: that couldn’t happen. Besides, he’s pretty happy in his Metal castle in Dewey. Herbert Gold and April Mae are still there too. The Irish Village over in the Fi sim didn’t work as an alternative for them. Rent too high.” Hucka Doobie looks up at the Red Umbrella and its trademark sign. “Unlike here, it seems.”
“Very cheap,” Baker Bloch reinforces. “Especially for an urban area. I even bought the building online, thinking I could just move this whole new version of the Red Umbrella over to 7 Stones to replace the one there. Didn’t work out. Not yet.”
“Hmmm, sir, I say to that.”
“Hmmm,” Baker Bloch mimicked back, thinking Hucka Doobie knows something that he doesn’t know (once again). He stares into her dilated pupils. “We better get inside. The night progresses…”
“Sure. Thank you for the AO, by the way.” states an upright Hucka. They walk forward in their different ways.
—–
“Here, Hucka Doobie. The very first piece (of the gallery). See the jigsaw pieces?” The male Baker points.
“I see. You’re say that…”
“… I’m saying that this is NWES, the city itself. N equals North and green…”
“Blue,” Hucka Doobie corrects quickly.”
“Blue, right. Then *W* equals West: green; E equals East, which is red; and then, lastly, S: South: yellow.”
“Tile, then.”
“Right. The city *has* a center. Just needs to be found still.”
“I doubt it, Baker Bloch,” opines Hucka Doobie, shaking her bee head. She then rubs her neck.
“Neck still bothering you, Hucka?” asks Baker Bloch, truly concerned about his friend’s health.
“Nah, I’m okay. As long as I don’t walk on cement or pavement much, or hard ground,” she adds. “Just leaves. Soft, cushiony leaves.”
“Well… don’t let your *head* break off from your body.” Baker Bloch immediately regretted the attempt at a joke. Hucka Doobie looked over with those eyes.
Gast(i)on
It was almost a perfect sim, what with its trash and gutter filth. Very realistic; a perfect place to meet… someone. And the Oracle predicted its importance: Hidden Vilage (etc.). But she must return and merge with the other Hucka Doobie, the one that didn’t get this far. She knew that.
But she still had some time before the exit.
—–
The Rhino represents a direct link between here and NWES, our new focus. Rhino in each. And the *same* one (same object from same owner).
George’s Abbey Road VW remains just down the street. An indication of what’s going on (Portal; multiple).
—–
If only Jacob I. was still around, she thought while laying outside the *original* Joint Joint in the “Black Side” of the village, another thing shared with NWES (and right beside the duplicate Rhino over there — more emphasis).
—–
Ah ha. Tin Machine.
—–
Uncle Zach still shooting up and not listening to local phenom Firesign Theatre. But we’ve seen him more recently: Pipersville; (owner of a) *Gas* Station (Gastion). Should’ve known.
And that was Firesign Theatre on the turn table up there. Not Tin Machine. My mistake. Platinum (not tin). That place must be Domino’s still. Hitgal is probably around, then. Best friend Sangria too.
This side of town retains power.
Diving in again…
changes
“Is this life ever gonna get old to us, Philip? This Gastion — notice the name change?”
“Doubtful, Marion.
Doubtful.”
Early the next day, Marion and Philip realized that Gastion was just a (high) pot name and the real name of the sim had not changed. It remained Gaston. But, in fun, the two partnered criminals called it Gastion (or sometimes Gas Station or just Station) from here on out.
Then one day, without Philip, Marion visited the creepy alley behind the “Station” with the aid of Golden Joe.
“Uugh. Where *am* I?” he asked groggily while swatting away leaves from his face.
—–
“And *who* am I?”
back in NWES…
“Why are we still here, Alice?”
“Merry, please,” Merry Gouldbusk requested. “Merry Gouldbusk,” she asked in full.
“Sure, um, but, er, all the cameras have left. We’re all alone. Bob Waffleburg’s already started his next production. An adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Septimius Felton.'”
“Oh we’re still being filmed.” She looked all around at the camera-less vicinity.
“Yeah, so you’ve said before.” Actor Jack Toadswallow stared over at his co-star. *Former* co-star. But lover in this reality, not little sister. True, he was observing her all the time. *He* was filming her, in a way, in a manner. With his eyes.
Something appeared in the distance, beyond the missing piece of wall, perhaps beyond the skyscraper even. Alice pointed it out.
“Look, Ingo.” Jack had given up trying to get Alice to call him by his real name any more.
“Yes, what is it dear?” He still stared, he still photographed. What she saw excited her: dilated pupils. He turned as well.
“W-what is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know Alice, er, Merry,” replies the smaller in stature lover/brother. Looks like some kind of art from my angle.”
“*Floating* art?” she exclaimed.
“Um, yes. Not attached to ground. Attached to air instead. Sky art. Perhaps even skyscraper art,” he elaborated as it then began to float into same, swallowing green, blue/yellow, and red in sharp order.
flagged 02
A boy of 13 rotated back to 10 and around and around. Trapped, although on sunnier days he can glimpse 18.
—–
To come back here to live? Permanently? Never to leave again? That could be an answer.
—–
“I’m not 10, I’m 13. Legal age to work where I come from.”
Baker Bloch looks down at the filled in paperwork. “I see: Bennington. Rough place. Describe your childhood.”
George knew he didn’t have a childhood. Only 10 to 13 to 10 and back and back and back. Except for the glimpses. “Oh, you know, the usual.”
“Gangs?” queries the male Baker.
“Couple,” spoke George honestly. “Bands we call them.”
Baker sensed the interview was over. “We have one more applicant. We’ll be making a decision very soon. Thanks for your time in coming in.” Baker was thinking: we were really looking for a different kind of shapeshifter but this could be handy too. He rechecked George’s phone number before releasing him back into the world.
—–
“Describe your shapeshifting abilities.” Baker knew this was a crucial point.
“Wellll… I have a dog one, if that’s what you’re interested in. Could be handy for, I don’t know, entering collages.”
—–
I think we have our man,” Baker spoke to Hucka Doobie later. “And he’s a girl.”
—–
“And this is your bedroom…”
“Schweet.”
“I can’t fit in there because I’m too tall. Enjoy!”
—–
“Now to find where Cloe went in this stupid game, hmph.”
Eggplant
The Peninsula it is called, because it lies between two bodies of water and also kind of juts into them. Sort of. Anyway, the name still seems apt, given the flag in Heidi Hunt Ives’ new bedroom in her new digs, formerly Danny’s trailer. But who lives in the Scarlet Creative Sylvia House that sort of centers this peninsula? Is it Mabel once more? Or Ruby?
“That’s very nice Melvin,” Baker Bloch says as the small demon offers him a fresh bowl of hot fly and centipede soup while he ponders such questions.
Whatever, 7 Stones seems as alive as it ever has and in no danger of going away anytime soon atall now.
Maybe it’s *finally* time to bring back Karoz, hmmm.
Baker then watches reruns of old Lum and Abner shows on the tellie with Jerry until the latter gets sleepy and is put to bed by Gus, the caretaker taking care of the evil spawn until permanent residents are decided for *this* place, another NWES transplant into 7 Stones…
… as is the Red Umbrella gallery on the upper side of the Peninsula. Nifty. Switching out the larger Red Umbrella formerly here for this considerably smaller one allowed the formation of the Peninsula in the first place; domino effect once more.
Almost got it…
Eggplant 02
A peninsula would be a good place to swim, she then thought in a somewhat different form.
—–
“The blue hair will buy me more time to think about the next step, Ingo…
… er, *Sandy*.”
“I’m not Sandy,” spoke the figure across from her who looked like a cartoon version of actor Sandy Beech or character Herbert Dune (a cartoon figure himself, hence doubly so). Doppleganger, she realized. But what about herself? Fresh from a swim?
—–
She leaned back, studying what had just happened. Swimming hair… swim cap. Yes, this could work…
h is for
“Soup anyone?” Melvin asks innocently to both.
“Not now, Melvin, thank you.”
The small demon dutifully withdrew toward the stairs, biding his time. Chloe directed her attention back to the visitor who had just teleported in through her offer.
“Okay, Sandy. What’s going on? *Are* you still Sandy? You look all weird.”
“Well,” Sandy Wanna Be tried to counter. “How about *you*? Where’s, um, your *hair*?”
“I have hair. Blue like the sky. The sea and the sky both.” But here she reaches up to feel her stringy, wet curls and only grasps air. “Whe – where *is* it?? Aaarrgggh.” She flings the swim cap into the sea from which she just came at this point. I mean, the stream from which she just came. One of ’em, perhaps both of ’em. She pats and feels and pats and slaps. Still no hair to find up there. Certainly she would be pulling it now if she had some.
“May I suggest,” Sandy WB then said, watching over at the tantrum, “that someone *stole* it,” and with this himself disappears. Teleported out to safer lands. He didn’t like scenes.
“What the…?”
She tries to google “instant hair loss” on her smart phone but stops at the lock screen displaying her name. It was here she noticed something else missing about her: the “h” in Chloe. Cloe instead of Chloe, it said. She looked around in disbelief, shaking her bare head, but in just a moment forgot all about both losses.
Melvin approached again with upheld bowl. “Soup, miss?”
Perspective shortened, she “accidentally” dipped her hand into the morbid concoction. The hand disappears, followed by the rest.
let’s go with Hitchcock
“Come on and jump in with me, Molly,” he implored in his squeaky voice. “The water’s just fine today!” The chicken beside Mick remained doubtful. Not as stupid as some people think, those creatures are. They’ve seen these Florida kind of tricks before. Could be bottomless, Molly ponders. Could be a black hole.
Besides, something is already there, stuck it seems. Plugging a hole perhaps, she ruminates further. All Blue — no, wait, the *hair* isn’t blue. And Cloe, sitting on this very cement porch yesterday, *lost* her blue hair, along, ultimately, with her hat, hands, and the rest of her body. The rest of the h’.s, including heart and, finally, health. Molly came to a logical conclusion: This *is* Cloe, but an Anti-Cloe, someone reborn that perhaps shouldn’t be reborn. An abomination. Let’s just call her “H” as in capital “H”, she decides, thinking of how to present this new town development to the chickens of the local coop later on.
Mick, tired of waiting, dives without Molly into the center of the watering hole, unconcerned about the presence of another being there. He doesn’t see “H”; she doesn’t see him. They exist in different dimensions, as if turned upside down from each other.
BLAM-O!!
—-
Anti-Cloe is freed from her spherical blue encapsulation, able to leave the pool now.
Having served its function, the watery hole then withers away into the nothingness whence it came. When will you learn, Mick, that it truly does take two to know?
—–
“Soup, miss?”
“Get the f-ck out of here little demon,” she waves him off. “Oh, and fetch me some clothes from the dresser beside the bed. Anything but blue.
Well, just don’t stand there staring. Do it!”
Gunn(s)
He unglues his eyes from the object to the right and returns to his computer screen. A blood red square appears with a right leaning, white diagonal running across it, making him gasp. Right at this very moment of all times! Red Squirt Seven: assemble!
Gunn(s) 02
It appeared while he was working on plans for a new floor of the building. Red cube.
“Aww, damn. Those guys again? I thought I was done with all this,” he grumbled and got up to check the laptop at the other end of his office to see where they were in the game.
“Sh-t,” he cussed, seeing that Cloe had ditched her weapon in a small, blackhole-style glitch and progressed toward the Dead Sea(s) and The Basin beyond the namesake trailer park. “They must have found the gunn(s).”
“All I wanted,” he lamented to an imaginary Aqua Dude on the couch behind him, “is to be a Green Squirt One, on my own and away from my family of red neck bill hillies. I wanted to be happy,” *sigh*.
His former lover Aqua Dude faded from the couch as he realized what need to be done. He checked the game logs to see when the hole had last been emptied.
“23 hours ago. Maybe there’s still time…”
Gunn(s) 03
“Okay, I’m here gang. What do you want?” As if I didn’t know, he said to himself, looking around at the dumb expression on each and every one of their faces. How did we come from the same gene pool?
“We want you to *pick up the gunn*,” Cousin Lester commanded opposite him, “and shoot that woman over there.” He indicates the “woman”. “*She’s got a gunn, you’ve got a gunn. Whatcha gonna do?”
“Yeah, hehe, whatcha gonna do Bullfrog, hoho,” injected even simpler Cousin Kermit Winkler sitting beside Cousin Lester. He moves toward the table, picks up the gunn, and studies. “She’s a beauty, eh, huhu?” he says while turning it over several times in his hands, and then offers it to Bullfrog, who just stares at him in hatred until Kermit Winkler sets it back on the table between them and returns to his sofa beside Lester in deadly silence.
“Just Make American Great Again for God’s sake!” he couldn’t help add while scratching his side.
Bullfrog turns to Uncle Melville “Peepee” Todd beside him, who he considers the smartest of the bunch, which isn’t saying much.
“Just do it,” he said simply to his nephew. “Shoot the gunn at the woman with the gunn and get it over with. Maybe more of *us* will come of it,” meaning more might be added to this Red Squirt Seven bunch.
Bullfrog didn’t need to think any more. He picked up the gunn and opened fire.
changes
A new skyscraper has come to 7 Stones. More details soon.
Hand in hand with this addition, the townspeople have decided to keep the cubic form of baker b.’s “Art 10×10” of 100 collages, locally known as the Edwardston Station Gallery. Mr. Babyface originally huffs at the retention to anyone within earshot, but is then partially pacified when he realizes he can see the distant Whirlygig Temple from his apartment window by extending his sight range a little beyond the norm, as he did the day of the discovery while trying to spot the top of the new skyscraper mentioned above. Mr. Babyface even contemplates attending services at the temple, if any regular ones are to be found. He’s now a pious fellow, originally praying to God to help him cope with breast tenderness while in his early 40s.
And speaking of temples, there’s also a new one in Collagesity itself; Mr. Babyface may have a range of religious options to choose from all of a sudden. I am pleased as punch to announce the return of Karoz Blogger’s Temple of TILE, which I suppose means Karoz himself will return to 7 Stones, along with wife Baker Blinker of course. This was a surreptitious decision because Karoz was just about to splurge on a larger parcel over in Chilbo to set the temple up when townspeople voted to retain the ESG. “Come back to 7 Stones,” then urged town leader Baker Bloch to his old friend. “Free of charge; you’ll have all town resources at your disposal.” And so it seems it will be.
The price for all these additions? The groundside galleries holding the “Art 10×10”, namely Gallery Jack, House Greenup, and SoSo. But, as explained a bit in this earlier post, all of the 100 collages displayed within these structures are still in the Edwardston Station Gallery skybox, so no real subtraction for the village. And now… well, let’s wait to describe some new art coming to town until later. A bridge-maker between old and new. Important!
The Man About Time also pondering religions in his Kidd Tower apartment.
limit
“Seems like we’ll have to return yet again to NWES to have more fun, Charlie Brown.”
“Baker Bloch, please,” states the town leader, not understanding who the Man About Time is actually “talking” to. “That’s cool. It’s a large burg. Much larger than 7 Stones even with the recent additions.”
“And subtractions,” returns The Man About Time in his surprisingly mild voice. “You’ve gained but you’ve lost. Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t.” Baker Bloch contemplates again the true nature of the man standing before him. And handless even, now. “Golfing accident,” he explained when Baker arrived here. “Bad slice with a 4 iron,” he elaborated. “It’ll grow back.” He looks above Baker’s face. “Won’t it Charlie?”
Falmouth 12 (“Red Rock”)
red plus blue
She wanted to go see it so I let her. She talked to herself when arriving and observing.
“So this is suppose to be *me*, huh?” she exasperated, and then sighed. “Well — at least Bullfrog shot at the *right* target. Take out their leader and take out the whole bunch, like a body without a head. Good for his left leaning heiny.”
She studies the unblemished abstraction more. “Roundies, hmph,” and then looks down at her own. The common denominator.
Both staring Melvins, frog and little demon, were dead. Blue Berry Girl remains without clothes, and it is in this way that she decides to approach the world in all her magenta majesty, gunn(s) front and center. We may see little of her beyond these points…
cheap at 1/2 the price
“Very funny, Baker Bloch,” responded Hucka Doobie after teleporting in.
“Thought you might like it.”
“What is this?” Hucka Doobie peered inside. “A psychiatrist’s office?”
—–
“So let’s get down to brass tacks. Tell me about this compulsion to not wear clothes any more.”
“Well,” began Blue Berry Girl in earnest. “It started with the death of little demon Melvin at my hands. He was the one who was suppose to supply me with clothes (but didn’t follow orders).”
“Hmm. Any way to bring him back to life?” queried Dr. Baumbeer, sipping on milk as usual. “I mean…”
“… since *I* was brought back to life?”
She stared at him with wide, mysterious eyes. “Well, ahem, let’s, er, dive into all that, then. Do you retain any memories of Cloe from that game your user was playing?”
“Not — sure.”
“Tell you what. Meditate on that aspect of this problem using the tv static we discussed before while I study my notes. Let’s get back together in, say (he checks his watch), 15 minutes?”
—–
heaven
Melvin (Melville “Peepee” Todd) kisses similarly dead Melvin on the head to finish. “We’ll make this better,” he promises his little demon doppleganger. “We’ll – make – this – better.”
“Aaaand CUT!”
—–
“Wanna grab some lunch over at the Faux Rhino, Stewart?”
“Um, sure thing Marty.”
Sunklands 