synchronicity
Tired from her “tour” and walking so much, Marsha “Pink” Krakow sits down at a conveniently placed bar in the middle of it all. She would have settled for water but all they had here apparently was alcohol by the looks of it. And also no one tending the thing. She ended up pouring her own beer, an Anheuser product, probably Busch. Only one other person in the place and that was a woman dressed like a horse sitting at a table against the wall. She figured: protection, like she had on her cow suit for same. But in truth this was the bartender on an unsanctioned break, black mare outfit merely indicating her employee status.
She dreamed of being a novelist, Star Team fan fiction to be precise we could call it. She had been waiting on the publisher to judge her latest effort, a two-pronged story about the perils of asteroid belts and also belts in general, including one the Captain wanted his new favorite helmsman to start wearing. He introduced it to her by saying it could transport her to another realm altogether and that he could then join her there if they were properly synchronized. Then the asteroid belt hit and they had to laser a hole through the biggest, darkest one in order to make it out and continue toward their destination. “You see?” she said to her publisher who was interested but not sold yet, calling to ask more questions to assess the ultimate value of the book — money value obviously, the way publishers have to be these days in a dog eat dog, capitalist driven world. “It’s all Freudian (she continued). Readers would eat it up without even knowing it’s trash at the bottom. Or, to use another analogy, wouldn’t even taste the normally intolerable hot spice I secretly added to the meal.”
Shady Lane Publishers worried about the Star Team angle, obviously a nod to Star Trek. They consulted their own team, legal in that case. No go, they said. Can’t take the risk. And so Liz was served with a big thumbs down the day after the call. And here she is. Drinking on the job because of it.
She got the Pleiades angle from a map conjunction in Pennsylvania…
… and a map conjunction in Pennsylvania.
sing sing
In a hidden wing of the prison she finds a big clue, perhaps a master map. Gazing at pink, she knows where she is. And who she is! She dispenses with the cow part, hoping to remember more.
It worked! All Orange beneath (perfection). “I am a–.”
—–
“Once you finish your meditation we can begin the reading, Edward.”
“Still can’t believe you’re a (prison) psychic as well as a bartender, Nas,” he spoke from his yoga position across the scrying table. Another Golden Goddess, he thinks. A chain! And all he had to do was set up a date later on to pay. Perfection once more.
“*Concentrate*. Put the question foremost in your mind.”
—–
“This prison can no longer hold you, Edward, her Eddie,” she read. “You have past through the 2 pillars. 10 becomes 1 from bottom to top and you begin again. You will have enough money to prosper or at least be comfortable in your olden age to do so.”
Good but not original Golden Goddess good, Eddie intuits here. He must return to her.
Now he just has to wait on Pink to finish her sentence.
Meanwhile…
She was through with prison for a while, having properly finished her sentence there (“–goddess”). She took her new found knowledge about the cow, All Orange, etc. back to Broadwater. Or actually Osbourne Beach to the south of the new strip mall instead of west. Prison was north. Pink saw pink and understood. Herself. She could handle it if she remained off the grid grid and all the square stuff where Utah merged with Omega and tended to cancel it all out, good triumphing over evil, it thought. She had to make peace with her mother. She had to gain knowledge from her library in de skies.
“Yes, there it is,” she said to her after thumbing to the right page in Book 18. “All Orange.”
“We begin there, then,” came the reply.
00400404
She was back in her old room doing remote research. Mother provided free food, just like in childhood. She had a tape recorder and several hour long tapes in which to record her thoughts. She started at the beginning and worked her way up to the present. Early on she found her Volkswagen bug. “There!” she pointed out to herself and herself only. For now. “Like Emma’s, like Jack’s before her. Or after her, doesn’t matter. A story in a brook.”
The man is Tropp, she recalled. Grown up from Opp and wearing a birthday hat instead of a birthday suit. But she gets the picture. He started out as an Mmmmmm but became more, unlike his cousin Grassy who remained a mere toy. He walks pass the bug and through the arch to yesterday’s tomorrowland.
00400405
“There!” she cried again. “Mother’s apple!” She was still studying, still perusing the category “All Orange” in the blog through her remote feed. Orange slice after orange slice, she ate, trying to get the whole, rounded picture.
“And there!”
new gal
She just remembers bits and pieces of her existence there. Like this entrance to what she understood as Pipewold, a concept first encountered on New Island not far west south of here. It has moved, she understood. Part of the same continent but in a different location. She always liked pipes. Until she came here. On the far end: a doll, she knew.
She remembers Billy. Or Billie. Soon she would take her place. She had the key.
Sandy Too
“No, I wasn’t really gone,” answered still neighbor Sandy to Pink, “I just changed forms. And sexes as you can see.” Now we can *really* get to know each other better, he thinks. The search for All Orange continues…
His spiral eyebrow curls even higher.
apple red hiding a key
“Thank gods you have arrived. Now I can be free to exact my revenge.”
“Revenge?” spoke Marsha “Pink” Krakow, unsure what part of the prison they’re in but knowing it was a crucial place, a decision point. She was not ready to let the doll in front of her go. She has the key.
“Yes. The people that put me here. The Durexians. They came to Mountain Lake where me and my doll mates often bathe our parts. They took us. Here. Prisoners of war. Exchanged for information. First Dolly — obviously — with a name like that it would seem she’d have the most knowledge. But stupid as a porcelain dish she was. So, frustrated, they took Dimmy, thinking it was an ironic name too and maybe *he’d* have valuable information to give them. But: the same. Dimmy was not an ironic name.”
Marsha tried to speed up the conversation. *She* needed information. And here was one willing to talk, sing even, perhaps. Sing sing.
“What about the canary?” she decided to phrase it.
“Oh it died in the mine,” Billie almost responded, humor chip activated just by someone showing up. She was always pondering a joke when others were around. “Oh it died,” she actually said, stating the stark truth and that alone. She took off her hair to show what happened.
(to be continued)
00400409
So unable to do so herself because she was underaged and also didn’t have a payment record on file with the Lab, Marsha “Pink” Krakow had to take her place on the lime green karaoke stage of Kenzie’s Korner in Kuradov while she watched as best she could from outside. Marsha tried to sing to her as much as possible through the window, feeling sorry for the self proclaimed war scarred doll-girl. She warmed up with “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, a crowd favorite from the 70s. Then it was on to “Rockaway Beach” by The Ramones from about the same time period — she was getting closer. Then Ozzie Ozbourne’s “Crazy Train” took her all the way home to “Jackie Blue” by another “Oz” act, Ozark Mountain Daredevils in that case. She knew she was singing all about herself now, like a canary. Canary in a mine? No, just canary, she realized. “Oooo hoo hoo, Jackie Blue,” she belted out the first line like there was no tomorrow. Which there wasn’t.
She’d never left her doll cage. Drugged up by the implant in her head to believe she was free again and her imprisoner was her friend, not fiend. *They* recorded it all.
And then the next night she went down the stairs that didn’t exist and out of the neighboring Rockaway Beach prison and did the same. Over and over and over. Slowly, gradually, the Ozmo Daredevils song lyrics began to change; take their true form. She was beginning to remember. They almost had the final original version.
00400410 (the tall and short of it)
“Alright, alright. I’ll go over and talk to him. Just stop the screaming.”
Ozzie Osbourne walked out of Gaston’s Rhino Club with more information than when he came in. He had to go back to Meat City to perform. Wise if reluctant spiritual advisor Hucka Doobie told him why. Blocked!
Changing its color from gold to silver after going through the Mimosa portal, the VW bug pulled up on the sidewalk just outside. They spotted Osbourne and Osbourne spotted them but he just kept on walking. He had no need to talk to ones luckier than him. “A gig!” Ketchup Tom messaged Marsha “Pink” Krakow back in Big Sandy, who drove her car to get there since the punk was car-less, not even a drift conquering dune buggy to his name. The small vehicle was jammed full of guitars, speakers, drums, microphones, so on, with barely enough room left over for driver and passenger. They were talking all the time over of stardom and success and making it big. The sight of Ozzie Osbourne exiting the bar doubled this down.
—–
The noise of the resulting gig was too much for Hucka Doobie, who moved outside to stare at the bug they came in, wondering if it was the same she’d seen in (Meat City?) behind the strip mall. The mayor’s daughter, she recalled, busted for drugs and imprisoned in Rockaway Beach Prison for, what was it, 40 days? Or maybe 40 years? Anyway, they turned her into a doll and that was that so this couldn’t be the same gal. Could it? Hucka Doobie ponders possibilities and impossibilities while listening to the end of “Fire Ants,” transitioned expertly into the follow up but lesser hit “Water Uncles.” Then Marsha’s part of the gig kicked in, starting with a cover of “I will Survive” by 70s pop star artist Gloria Gaynor. Relieved the noise had died down, Hucka Doobie breaks her stare from the car and heads inside again. She needed to find out the truth (“Rockaway Beach” now). She’d made way for these up and comers by telling one of the biggest stars on the planet that his stint was cancelled here in Gaston — just walked out, huffing and puffing, blown away that some small fry, backwater place could do this to him (“Crazy Train”). And he was only here as a favor to an old friend, another “Oz” mate. A Daredevil some called him. Death of a cook. The gig was suppose to be for her. And, turned out, it was (transfigured “Jackie Blue”).
00400411
“Definitely silver,” he rechecked through the past observing tool locally known as the chronovishmach. “So definitely George.”
—–
In the past, Hucka Doobie was eating alone. But in this alternate version she had the guts to walk up to Marion Star Harding and ask him on a date. Just after this she continued her guttiness and told Ozzie Osbourne, another star, that his gig was up in Gaston and that he’d have to return to Meat City for future concerts like these. Still on an adrenaline rush she goes back to Marion at the bar and gives him a kiss full on the lips, saying that’s to tide him over until tonight. Just arrived Ketchup Tom, aka The Musician (aka *George*) walks into the club, wanting to check everything out while Marsha was unloading the car, especially the structure of the place, trying to determine if his music would collapse it like before with that huge piece of coal for a bar in West Virginie. Hucka Doobie assured him that all had been prepared and that a non-collapsing spell had been cast by a local wizard. Club Rhino: definitely at a crossroads between various dimensions. Why Hucka Doobie was here in the first place, she finally determined after much lamenting and gnashing of teeth about her “entrapment” in Gaston. “Damn you Tammy Whatammy!” she cursed aloud a lot at first. “Damn you evil, conniving Casey One Hole!”, the root person to blame since Tammy was just following orders when she pushed her through that imprisoning collage back in photo-novel 7. Such a long time ago. She knew alternate versions of herself existed elsewhere. But she only existed within the body, the *vessel* of this here one. And she’s tired of complaining about the darkness. “When in Rome,” and so on.
“When in Rome” (2018)
And so in this version she dines and drinks with Marion Harding instead of doing so alone. And other things have changed: no “Welcome to Mimosa” on the sign, you’ll notice in comparing the last photo of this here blog post with the one above, anything that was once golden having been lost in the transition. Silver now. Night. Dark. Welcome to Gaston.
“We better get to the gig,” Marion requested after 2 wines, hoping to move to his more standard pot soon. Levon would have some, he knew. And Levon liked his music over his money, women, anything else. He’d be at the gig for sure.
“Oh,” said disappointed Hucka to this, wishing they’d just skip to whole gig thing and move on to that other stuff she had in mind. Bases, although obviously safe at home still — home base is definitely off limits tonight. But 1st, maybe 2nd? In play, she envisioned in her mind. Was she still desirable? she couldn’t help wondering as Marion got up and she followed suit and then looked at the back of his suit as it made pleasing motions while he walked toward the Rhino.
00400412
AND she’s started smoking pot. That’ll teach the Powers that Be, she thought while finally exhaling the wicked weed and then feeling the Devil pull her heart out through her belly button. All Orange, she thinks. “All Orange!” she cries, looking at the thing wriggling and writhing in front of her like a Red Incubus Baby. RIB she decided to call it on the spot as it was dropped to the ground and walked away on its own energy. Into the night — it would always be there from now on, she knew. Waiting…
There it is again and 10 times larger!
—–
He liked this particular apt. because he could keep an eye on Newton’s boat out in the harbour, a sim-skipper. He knew that if the unique ship was gone for any length of time, then it could come back with an outsider, which might be bad, really bad. He had too much invested here in this Gaston, formerly Mimosa. Pot was basically free, Philip’s pills were plentiful. It was perfect for the criminal duo. Shady dealings all around. Laggy but — small price to pay. And now he had Hucka. But did he really? She didn’t have the best reaction to that pot he provided her night before last, he continued to ponder. And she didn’t call last night like she promised.
She could figure a way to get out which would also be bad, leave a potential trail for others to follow, both out *and* in. He’ll have to review with her the collage and the pushing and the arrival at the jail. Casey One Hole, PHEH. He’s still around too, he knew.
“Marion, I’m *bored*. Let’s go do some drugs or something. Sex, drugs, rock–”
“Don’t say it,” Marion cut him off. Strum and Drum was playing one last time at the Rhino tonight and Hucka D. hadn’t called about a potential date. And it was protocol in this Sadie Hawkins kind of town for her to do so, females rolling the dice instead of the men in affairs of the heart. But… she said her heart was stolen over at the pool after she finished off his joint. Maybe he should have warned her about the potency, and that he’d been smoking so long that it took a powerful strain to do anything for him any more. Maybe — he looked over — maybe he was stuck with Philip after all.
“Okay,” he relented. “But I still would like to drop by the concert sometime.”
“Will Levon be there?” the professional pill popper on the couch asked.
“You bet he will.” And he asked him to keep an eye out for Hucka too and to call if he sees or hears anything, he thought privately. She *did* leave the first part of the gig for a while the other night, the Ketchup Tom composed half which involved a lot of noise, she said afterwards. But she seemed to enjoy the transfigured “Jackie Blue” enough to end; asked a lot of questions about its origin and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and then the mountain they were named after. “Big Sandy,” she said at one time about the current band. “They said they were from Big Sandy.”
“Yeah?” Marion said back. “It’s a place. People have to come from places and go to other places,” he said matter of factly, adding a smile.
“There’s a boat out in the harbour there,” she then said, which immediately made him think of Newton’s boat but which turned out to be much larger. And more complicated.
“3 sims?!” he cried when she told him the dimensions of the thing. An internal sim-skipper, he dwelled about afterwards, complete unto itself. *Danger-ous*. But also completely fascinating.
“Philip?” he said in the present, hatching a new idea. “How would you like it if I bought us 2 golden tickets to visit the mainland?” *Or*, he then thought… hmm, how *exactly* did *Strum and Drum* get here, hmph? He knew about the Volkswagen Bug of course; it was still parked half on the sidewalk outside the club. But… it couldn’t just *come over* by itself from the mainland. Not without some kind of magical aid.
Daffy Duck had just blown up Uncle Scrooge with a rigged 100 dollar bill. “Say what?” Philip said, not breaking his stare from the TV and the blackened duck, suddenly realizing he was hungry.
a punk is born (zooming in on yellow (1st thing in the morning))
Many famous musicians have walked the roads of Gaston, and many famous musicians have left from such roads. Not George, though: he remained glued to the town through his car as it were, white in the daylight here but silver at night, as silver as Maxwell’s Hammer.
And now his soul has returned as the strumming punk known as Ketchup Tom because of his red mohawk if not visa versa, Marsha “Pink” Krakow his new drummer in tow, owner of her own VW Bug and one she perhaps is glued to as well, and even perhaps the *same* bug. Paired silver and gold as we’ve mentioned before — or white and yellow in the daytime. The Portal. Mimosa. Probably dusk and dawn as I’m writing and thinking this out.
George also existed here as Duncan Avocado, a character very important to the blog and attached photo-novels up until and including 31. 3-1 (March 1). His birthday which was also kind of his death day, at least in my eyes. He lay in a blue-yellow tent on the floor of the Collagesity library after that, a virtual structure last seen in Constantynople which has recently been destroyed/derezzed, with a final friend in the library *still* a friend — but simply too busy with a young kid to have much time for anything else, including our promised hikes. Important thing: I don’t hold it against him. And I should probably get over my disappointment with Duncan too. Put it in the rear view window. Thing is, we’re *doppelgangers*.
Red blue yellow houses in a row to begin. Again.
“Ugh, my head. W-where am I? And *who* am I?”
time doesn’t exist
His attached mohawk was more pink than red before but obviously the same otherwise. Ketchup Tom = The Musician fer sure.
“I *lived* here.” Yes, Musician. You were Duncan Avocado as well, breaking the cycle of 10 to 13 to 10 to 13 over and over and over. You glimpsed sunnier 18 and you ran with it. All the way down the street to the car and outta here. But now you’re back. “But now I’m back,” the character said in the present to reinforce this idea.
Mokum, he also thinks in the present, reading the writing on the wall. He remembers that too. Red again.
“My mohawk!” he cries, also realizing the small but still significant color shift.
00400415
Ketchup Tom knew this day would come. End of gig; time to go. But what is time here? It was as if he’d just arrived.
He stared at what he remembered was a sim-skipper outside the window in the harbour. “Should’ve come in on that instead of Marsha’s VW,” he muttered to himself. Marsha was in the shower. *No*: Marsha insisted on renting the place next door instead of staying in the same apartment with Ketchup. She certainly hadn’t given up on Eddie, her Edward, back in Big Sandy — which we’ll be returning to soon.
Ketchup Tom knew he was The Musician. He knew he could come in but, once here, couldn’t leave, unlike so many before him. Because he was different. He and the town were like two cut out pieces of paper stuck together. Like fused leaves of an old waterlogged book found floating in the harbour. “*No*,” he insisted just as vehemently back to Marsha in the rental place next door when he came to tell her. “You have your place and I have mine. Here.”
Yellow House, he knew. He wasn’t going anywhere. Marsha would have leave Gaston by herself.
another try/revisions
“Senseless war, Speck. Redshirts a plenty.”
“Our past, Cpt.” He arches one of his non-spiraling eyebrows ever higher while checking the tricorder he holds in his hand. “Aand. Our future I’m detecting.”
“How– can… that be, Speck. I… mean…”
“I know what you mean, Cpt.” says Speck, the person playing him thinking that Don is overdoing it again. Shakespearian actors, pheh. He: a Marlowe fan. “Time… doesn’t seem to factor into the equation. Nor space.”
“Space and time, Speck,” gruffly cussed Doc just offcamera here. “Is that all your Vulcan mind can comprehend? There’s such things as *feelings*.”
He turns toward Doc and thus offcamera as well. “I understand feelings too, Doctor. I’m half–”
“Just… stop it– guys.” Cpt. again of course. “This is just– what the Daruvians want us to do. Bicker… amongst ourselves.” He turns halfway toward the camera, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He’s hatching a plot in his mind, a play within a play. “What if… *we* become the actors they *want* us… to be.”
“Or not to be,” Speck chipped in with a rare kind of joke.
Doc — offcamera still — huffed. “You *act*, Cpt. — like the Daruvians are also anything but barbarians. They’re not, dammit. I’ve seen what they did to Jed. Right in the head in bed until he was dead.” He stares intensely at the Cpt. and then Speck. Or so I’ve been told.
“Jed was… an anomaly, Doc.”
“He was a *person*,” counters still fuming Doc. Always angry. Grumpy. “Just because he had 8 arms and a head the size of Nebraska–”
“I’m picking up on something else,” interrupts Speck, always checking for logical developments. “The situation inside the arch has slightly altered to make it a bit more interesting. The primitive weapons known as muskets… are now hoisted over their right shoulders. Not their left.”
All watched as the guns were then lowered and turned. At them.
“RUNNN!!”
Sunklands 