Jerry Lind
She’d basically been living in Wallytown for I don’t how long, weeks at least. She’d taken enough showers to kill a cow, wash a bible head starless black ink sculpture all the way back to clear. She wasn’t done. Someone was with her, urging her on. Her worse half, as she called the louse (see above). This was the Orient, this was India. *She* was India. It was about time for an interview.
India: Glad be here. Glad you like my secret schweet smile.
Me: I missed you in Delhi and New Delhi. Turns out it was American instead of Asia.
India: I like hiding (laugh; smile revealed again).
Me: Chef-inspector Petty is hot on your tail. How do you feel about that?
India: He’ll never find me. And if he did he’s just a mesh object. No danger to him, none atall (smile again).
Me: What of the plane?
India: There *is* no plane. Petty knows.
Me: What of Kolya, who also goes by Pepi and Can?
India: (after a pause, then serious) A schweet boy, but damaged goods. I dare not touch him.
Me: And Alysha? We seemed to have scared away all the main characters.
India: *We* are the main characters. Always have been, you and I (she points to her and me).
Me: Alysha is Asian (I tried).
India: We are done.
3 cores and a dummy
The train was 2 full and so that’s how they all met. Jerry, also named Harry; the nice Indian man Hidi the hamburger woman started to date afterwards — the proximity was just too close in there; and lastly but not leastly, Kolya, the damaged one. All we needed was Alysha to walk in and take a seat opposite them, but that was for later. In the here and now, we have the 7 merging into the 6, secret smile discretely packed away like a traveling trunk for boys.
“I knew he was damaged and we shouldn’t touch so I turned the other way.”
“Toward… Jerry,” I guessed. I figured the red complexioned Indian dude might be named Jerry as well. Jerry Lind perhaps, compliment to Jenny.
W thought back to that important time and place. They were traveling at a breath-taking speed, destination unknown, perhaps to New Delhi and Delhi and thereabouts again but maybe not. The white tiles flew by outside, almost at a blur’s pace; opposite of turtle or snail. We were in Wallytown I knew that. W didn’t seem to be able to really leave, now she’d met Jerry Lind (we’ll keep calling him). Giant for a day and maybe giant forever. If Wallytown had its way.
(to be continued)
No Toronto
“What was that destination again, sir?”
“Picturetown,” Kolya answered for Cpt. Margret Coffee. “Thanks for the coffee, Margret, by the way.” (*sip*)
“Call me Captain,” requested Margret, ready to sail the ship, as they say, after her stint at baggage check-in was over.
“Yes ma’am,” Kolya dutifully replied, a Marine brat as a youth and thus use to accepting orders.
“Ginger, you got anything yet?” asked Cpt. Coffee to the receptionist by her side, just back from medical leave for a face replacement.
“No, I’m afraid not. How about Toronto?” she offers. “*Very* popular destination. I’m betting you’ll like it there.”
“It has to be Picturetown,” insisted Kolya, off on one of his tangent tasks. “Try Prince Edward Island.”
“Ahh,” jumped in Cpt. Margret Coffee again. “A beautiful province. Setting for ‘Anne of Green Gables’, you know. You’ll *love* it there.”
“No, not that one, the other one, the other Prince Edward.” Kolya scratches his holey head, at a loss for words beyond this.
“The other Prince Edward… oh you mean the *county*.” Margret had figured that part out. “And *Picton*.” Margret had figured the other part out.
“Picturetown, yes.” Kolya could not pronounce it any other way, no matter how hard he tried to conform. Picturetown it is.
—–
The plane went down somewhere between Otterville and Delhi. That’s how Kolya met the red complexioned Indian fellow named Sam. Sorry: Jerry. He was wearing a lime colored shirt while jogging past a collapsed garage. He also owned a lime hued X 1/9, and stated this route to Delhi was much too dangerous to attempt it by car — too many right angle turns, too much distracting graffiti, especially down at the Indian Lake Creek Bridge, he said. He preferred running it. But he was all up for a lift when spotting the collapsed garage and Kolya just happened to drive by, asking for directions. “Which way does a bird fly to get to Picturetown around here?” he called through the rolled down window, just in time for Jerry to catch it since he was quickly losing steam. He had reached the end of his jogging days. “I’ll show you,” and he sprinted one last time around the side of the car and got in beside Kolya. Soon he had taken the driver’s wheel. The train tracks on the other side of Delhi beckoned. They were going beyond the before.
grid patterns
Kolya truly loved Hidi but could only touch and hold her in his dreams. There he called her “my unicorn” — that could be an alternate title of this post. The shower had yet to be installed at the uncompleted bathroom down toward the bay area in the dreamscape, but at this tree they’d set up duplicate poseballs in the meantime. It wasn’t ideal. Most times they just pass through each other, like tonight. There was no water, thus they remained dirty, or attempted to be. He called her a bad kitten and had to be punished. She laughed — that smile again. Always the smile. She took the tomfoolery good naturedly. It was all play in the land of dreams.
Reality reared its ugly head again. Kolya was sitting apart from Hidi in the train, who had also nodded off then woke up. They were having the same dream in fact. And where was Sam Jerry, her real part-time lover? Husband Axis had been left behind in NWES City, where he ran a brothel for cows. The other Jerry, who also goes by Harry and even more commonly Norris, had decided to become tiny again and look for his old home in Rose Heaven. He planned to go back to composing but slow it the hell down this time, one tri-chord per 2 seconds at most.
So they pondered about each other in awkward silence. In another dream, Kolya, and probably Hidi along with him as he thought he recalled, took the train all the way to Picturetown. “Where the hell is Picturetown?” he remembered asking a jogger on stilts in Toronto.
holey man
“Brain Damage he had.”
“We’ve already determined that, okay,” she replied, planning her escape route. Starbucks should be open by now — 5:00. But Baker is trying so hard to understand. The 2 is impossibly in front of the boy-man, right where the brain was…
“Have him interact with someone in this specific location, so close to Collagesity. Alysha, perhaps. She hadn’t been in a post in a while.”
“Only if,” she compromised, “Kolya goes back to the airport and finds out more about the red book and the accompanying red light.”
“Deal.” He spits in his hand, which she naturally doesn’t shake. Such a goofy person (!).
—–
“See there? Mysten Underhill and Mysten, let’s see, can’t recall the other one. Anyway, those *2* squares, just there. Down toward the lower right corner; right in front of you, in fact. Do you see the houses? Of course you do. I rented one of those, or attempted to. And *Spongeberg*, yes, was there. I recall the number… 144. Table. We tried to set a table up. Didn’t quite work.”
Alysha let Kolya ramble on. He was a true friend and would do anything for her. He was attempting to explain the past of Mysten not far atall north of Collagesity through this old sim map they’d stumbled upon. He’d been here a long time. But so had she, just not as long.
“We owned just to the east,” he continued, remembering more and more about “2”. “But not in Siliconicus: that would be *southeast*. But the *Church* of the Silicon Soul was set up right on the border again. Right beside our own property.”
“The Table House.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “That was what it was called (!).” He paused, joyful in the memory. He could see vague faces around it.
—–
They had to go back in the past. And they could (!). Except only the darker side, the place of fumbles and bumbles. Spongeberg the Destroyer was still here, still lived in the general Collagesity area, but just more down in the east, beside Highway 14. He’d given up on 13 — moved on. The darkness beckoned. Christ and accompanying Christianity was not around to brighten the day any longer.
Mysten Underhill, 2015
—–
They both took another big lick of their triple scoop sorbet cones before continuing.
“Funny about places like this, Ayesha,” Kolya then said with cold mouth.
Alysha, she thought without correcting aloud, use to such things.
“Like they are stuck in time. Harder… more resistant to the general erosion… um.”
“… of Our Second Lyfe,” she finished for him.
“The 2, yeah.”
She looked at the top of his holey head, where the rain gets in. Simultaneously he recalls someone at the Table, as if they are linked by one user (they were). But he passes over the memory of Marty as if it were a letter gap. On to the next thought-color, green I believe.
Kolya realizes that was a lot of ice cream for a little girl. Because he could definitely finish it for her. “Are you done with that?” he couldn’t help asking while staring at the stack of mostly unlicked colorful balls in the cone in her hand. He was eager for more brain freeze.
lone choice (cake eaters)
I thought I recognized you… *mother*. Now talk before my finger gets itchy.”
“Talk to Cory. Talk to Cory!” she defended herself, panicking to get out of the crosshairs.
She meant Austin of course. Austin knew everything, or at least a whole whole lot. Enough to survive any firing of questions.
Or was it Eckert. Peter?
Knowing mother most likely had an aunt or two packed away in her back pocket, Dinner Girl called for reinforcements, which meant W since no one else really wanted the job, none of the other cores that is. Plus she wanted to buy some clothes from the freebie stall this particular realtor of the lower central northeast sector of Corsica had set up ’round back, maybe a summer dress or a pair of sandals or a straw hat. Something that started with an S to go along with the hissing of summer snakes. So I guess we’re dealing with a Joanie.
Make that Hidi.
Dinner Girl covered her while she went around the corner to shop. Play before work, she always said.
As she perused the contents of a box full of swimsuits, red tie donned Jefferson Thomas studied her intently, wondering if she was a member of Pot-D or Pan-Z or perhaps both. Like himself.
“You there!” Dinner Girl called over, spotting the threat. “Back away from the hamburger girl!” Mother took the chance to hightail it out of here herself but was gunned down in crosswalk, a distraction that allowed JT to escape with the girl. Like they had it planned all along; sacrifice for the greater good and all.
—–
15 hours later, a rose holding bride posed for a picture outside the house across the road, just wedded again to the late great Jeffrey Phillips. “It was the only way to bring him back,” she lamented later to a broken-hearted Kolya back in Nautilus or thereabouts, his lemonade gone stale again.
00260207
“I hear you got a new job over at the airport terminal, Ginger. Life must be treating you good.”
“Just shut the f-ck up while we wait for Snowmanster, Marty.”
“Oooo. Touched a nerve, did I? Life *isn’t* treating you that well.”
“If I had a gun…” she seethed, not daring to glance in his direction, because looks could kill at this point. Plus there was Lemon to deal with. Always in the background: funny foot Lemon, always with the guffaws. She couldn’t ask about him because she wasn’t sure he was alive or dead. Life (and death) is so confusing in this land of 2. Just ask holey headed Kolya, who Marty kind of invented after all, Marty kind of made him up. “Penny Lane,” Ginger realized at some crossroads while they were still living together. “Arnold Layne”! The great 2n1 that started it all. Takes 2 to know. It all fell completely together before it all collapsed utterly apart, with him over there on the couch and she in her bed, sometimes with another after that. Tom the milkman, Ben the paperboy, er, man. Man, she meant there in her thoughts. 18: old enough, or so he said. Then Jake the butcher; the candlestick maker — she even forgot his actual name and he had come over more than once. Unlike One Time Feldon. She remembered his name because of the Oracle. Feldon — Fieldon. He was 30 but didn’t look a day over 10. And the fun they had that one time! “Water’s on!” he called from the bathroom at 5 in the morning. She’ll never forget that line. Then Marty came home early at 6 from one of his blasted solo tours and put a stop to all that. All she had was the once. But it might have been enough, because she had memories. And a hi-fi tape, ha. Yeah, they got back together. Before Ringold came along and drummed him out of the picture again, maybe for good this time. They hadn’t spoken since, but they had to divide the house. Hence the visit here, to the Illuminati once more. Whom Marty vowed that one time back in Spring ’64 that he would never revisit, till death do them part.
home again
Marty walks into the Table Room of the Blue Feather in Collagesity. I realize he should be on the wall as well: The Beetles. Like seen in Picturetown crossing a road, minus one — I believe it was Ringold (the bastard).
He said he would be glad to join The Table even though he had a busy schedule, being a famous celebrity and all. He said he was referred by The Bill, which I didn’t originally take as the Illuminati but perhaps I should have a rethink about all that. And The Bill’s influence in it. Wheeler, when she was ruler of this here Collagesity, wore a little “Bill Hat” on her head after discovering the “Gravity Falls” character of the same name from a book procured by Baker Bloch. *That* was Illuminati tinged — the whole takeover of Collagesity thing from Carrcassonnee, the former deity/ruler. And Carrcassonnee *still* can’t be restarted, just going “Iiiiiii,” for the most part, although at that one, recent party she said a couple of things more until a quick regression.
Who is at The Table with us? Roger Pine Ridge should be here but he had yet another engagement with The Rainbow Sphere. I asked Marty if he knew about such a thing and if, theoretically, he could become similarly engaged if, say, the album was Sgt. Pepper instead of Dark Side. He admitted he could… and he did. I asked him to elaborate. He didn’t.
He lit a fire and began to smoke without asking, clear reference to Eraserhead Man. So I decided to query about “Twin Peaks” and if he knew my role in it. “Jefferson Thomas might know,” he responded cryptically. I thought about it; I realized the message. *I* am the Illuminati (as well?).
(to be continued)
home again 02
I phoned up Charlene and told her I was back from the dead but I was married now and we couldn’t start seeing each other again despite the reborn part. She responded, “sure you are,” and hung up, busy with another man at this point, I believe his name is Stan. Stan Wallaby, a used truck salesman from Oakley. Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, the return of the late great Jeffrey Phillips. Thanks to Marty, thanks to Jefferson Thomas, thanks to: The Bill? Apparently. The Bill had chosen him to return. Would he now have to wear that little hat Wheeler wore when ruler? He hoped not. He was very vain about his looks and a tiny, bobbing hat on his head would ruin the whole girl magnet effect, he thought. Uncool to the max! Might as well be wearing a diaper. Goo goo ga ga, he thought here, reverting to the baby he truly was, being just reborn and stuff. He reached for a rattler but it turned into a snake, one of those hissing lawn ones planted there by Joanie. Or was it Hidi? Yes: Hidi. His wife. His summer gal, who he would toss away in the fall to return to, perhaps, Charlene, maybe Lois, or limber Tina Pretzel down at the Freak Show Village even who could do that thing with her body and also her tongue. Which brought him back to “Twin Peaks”: he had to decide *how* he died in order to prevent it from happening again, and quickly (!). He slipped on that gall darn log on one of the outer rim islands — he can’t even recall the name of the place he died — wait: Corton (he thought). Queen and King. Spread and Widen. Glen and Gould — Goldberg Variations: spread ’em out, make them the bookends to a wildly successful career that raked in a lot of gold, a lot of accomplishments, a lot of acclaim. Freedom? Where we we?
(to be continued)
three
“Is this the book you were talking about, dearest?”
Wives, he thought here. Always meddling in places they shouldn’t be. I’ll have to put a stop to that. So I can still play the field. But Jefferson Thomas warned him about that, along with a bunch of other things. “You’ll have to stop eating soup with a fork,” he chattered. “You’ll have to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road with the right kind of car,” he rattled on, like a slithering summer snake. On and on, winding and unwinding. Wind him up so he can wind me down: he said that was the reason for his being. I didn’t like Jefferson Thomas at first, and I even liked him less at the end. Best man, *pheh*. I don’t *want* to be tied down,” I screamed. The new wife took the hint. “I’ll be the subordinate one, then,” she said, thinking of a role that would fit her down the road like a velvet glove. “Dearest”, here, “Sweetie”, there. But underneath would be slithering, snapping rage.
this story has teeth
Hmmm. Tempting, he thought while reading the “clothing optional” signs he was passing. But I must focus, on Shark Rock tonight, at least to begin. I *do* need to shed this Santa costume sometime. Maybe wait till when I get back to the Blue Feather with Wanda, he he.
Or was it Angela?
He passes from Nightshark into the parcel with Shark Rock the next sim west, but I’m not sure if there’s any causal connection. Thus the investigation.
—–
Huh. I wonder if this little fellow here is suppose to be me? *I’m* the shark.
The message seems to be reinforced by what is perhaps the progeny all around.
—–
“Wanda,” he calls over to the girl across from him back at the Blue Feather Table.
“Angela,” she corrects, blonde hair combed over one eye.
“Sure, sure. Ahem: I’ve made a decision about the suit. I’m going to keep it on for a while longer. (pause) You can exit through the side door just over there. Make sure Wanda doesn’t see you as you slither away into the night.”
So there was a Wanda.
(to be continued)
Neogene. It’s Neogene.
Kolya didn’t usually meet people when he combed the realistic looking beach at… let’s say this is Fieldon again. But he did today. “This is a piece of ginger,” the stranger exclaimed to the man-boy while bending down to pick up something behind a tuff of beach grass. “The first thing I see when I come to the beach and it’s ginger. Imagine that.”
This made Kolya think about Ginger. Where was Ginger? Where was anybody in this land of 2? He needed to focus on the here and now. These realistic rocks might help. He’d seen them before. Fieldon? No, this is Fieldon.
Or was it?
I’ve got to get back to Canada, Kolya thought while kind of panicking in the moment as he realized the person in front of him was mere shadow-like hallucination. I’ve got to find Ginger!
—–
He asked to be centered. He stands on the very edge of the beach, its comber gone. *He* was the comber of course. And this definitely wasn’t Fieldon.
He watched himself walk away from himself in the distance.
beach house (cooked)
Jeffrey Phillips was still in bed with the static blaring, no wake zone indeed. Hidi would have to wait until he got up to start playing chess, since black goes first and she’s white. She’s always white. The subordinate (*snap*!). She has her first seven moves figured out until he’s good and ready. He’ll be done by dinner.
—–
They were on their way back to the rocks. “You see that sign, Hidi?” Jeffrey pointed out, wishing his wife wouldn’t hide anything anymore.
even odder
He was on a rock just away from the circle. “You must think about who maaade me,” he hissed like turtles do, not quite snake but getting there. I knew I had to return to Magic Mountain. I knew I had to return to *magic*.
I checked his shell. No grid yet, but getting there.
—–
He returned from the rocks and the sharks. “That was admittedly more than I was expecting (!).” He glanced sideways. “And why didn’t I see *that* sign before, pheh.”
He walks between it and the turtle.
“I wonder if Wanda is up for another game of chess yet?” He peers inside their beach house but can’t see her white for his black. And it was Angela. Angela “Hidi” White, the snapping turtle.
“Jerrrry.”
Southwest
HOOPA ULLA . Former Choctaw town . From Choctaw opa , owl , ola , hooting .
I am so TILE right now.
But I need someone here to help me enjoy it. Blackbyrd Beach, eh? And a Black Lives Matter sign just west, or what can be called the northeast corner of Southwest, Nautilus (continent) that is. For we may be completing the corners of the continent tonight, a rough outline of a square, or a circle and a square together: squaring the circle. That’s what this is all about, after all. Back to who will be joining me. W will fill out the rest.
While we’re waiting, let’s check out that map of the area.
The central island Jeffrey Phillips is merrily floating in a TILE Pool upon will be called OWL, and perhaps represent a backwards world, not technologically but just reversed, as is the name of Jeffrey Phillips himself looking from the direction of “Twin Peaks”. For there it is, of course, Phillip Jeffries, the famous head of the infamous Blue Rose Task Force… who doesn’t want to talk about Judy and her slippery shoes. Death! Almost forgot that Jeffrey needs to figure out the hows and whys of his own so that it won’t be repeated. He was a slipperman. He fell to his death on Corton, a Far Eastern island — actually two islands, larger and smaller — of Linden design.
—–
“Dead of night, eh?” Not a girl but Marty. Work before pleasure I suppose.
“Hop on,” and we turned into a ship.
(to be continued)
00260216
I looked at the island from above. I guess I can see the resemblance: 2 blue pools substituting for 2 blue eyes, obvious reference to the Arkansas-Missouri polarity as well that centers our US of A. One closed (restricted property) and one open (unrestricted). And the little pool there I was floating in: a (sideways) mouth of sorts? What is the island saying?
Since we were merged as a ship Marty wasn’t there to answer me. I would have to call in yet another.
“Rrrrrough! Rough!”
“Bow wow wow!”
“Rrrrough!”
Maybe this wasn’t the best outfit for the situation.
Access TILE
“Okay Gee Cat,” I requested from above. “Try to figure out why one pool is restricted and the other not. From your unrestricted position of course. And try to ignore the dogs.”
“Cat,” he channeled from below in his haughty tone. “One is a cat. Like me. Dis-guised as a dog.”
We had our first big clue.
—–
“I was sudden-ly at two more pools, un-restricted this time,” he wrote later after following an all important lead. “A dog pa-trolled the one over the fence. I was safe! I was *in*.”
Sunklands 