a lane to walk down
He never could remember which one was an Allosaurus and which one was a Tyranosaurus so he ended up just calling them both Allanosaurus, a catchy name that he couldn’t get rid of, *achoo*. Darn, lingering cold.
He had just finished wiping his nose when Jane stirred in the tent.
“Ohh, my *head*.” It was here she realized she had lost another baby which was the same as a ball. It was all play and pretend except it wasn’t.
“I had to give you a sedative so you’d sleep through it all,” Dr. Brown explained to his ground 00 patient, still waiting for that ball to turn blue so he could determine a sex. Else: this keeps happening. Waking up in the woods. With the dinos, Real Self far far away.
Jane remembers the 8 corners of space, the near (Moon) and the far (Muff-Bermingham). Trouble was, she couldn’t remember which is which, more memory condensing and overlapping. Like with the Allans, as Brown eventually, inevitably shortened the name to.
“I… *died*!”
“Yes, in a way. Your baby died. You died along with it. Except you didn’t. You are here.”
Jane managed to raise herself from the tent floor, look out the door. Dinos. Allans. Everything was here that was needed to understand. South America. Land of the Dead.
“Library,” she said.
“That too,” he admitted. “I suggest we read while we wait. Cut back the talk. No need to waste oxygen. You have them in your eyes as well. Just think of a book to read… and read.”
(to be continued)
different
Despite the prehistoric nature of the place they sometimes had guests. Like today. Robed angels of death stared at her in several sizes and shapes from this perspective. Death was the guest as well, it seemed.
“If I have children, *when* I have children,” she corrected, “I’m going to name them Flaarf and Bozo, after this Second Lyfe sim.” She has a second life here, she realizes. A second chance.
“What about Ingleboort, dearest,” offered Dr. Brown beside her. “I thought if you had twins you were going to name them Ingleboort and Flaarf, giving up on Bozo — like with the Middletown children. ” He didn’t add *alien* children. “It’s not a very complementary first name. Kids will make fun of him. Or her.”
“Yes,” she said, recalling that decision as well, a Muff-Bermingham one and not from the Moon. That darn, lingering Moon, bearded and all. She briefly looks into the sky to see if she can spot it. No luck; too sunny today she reckoned. Full shine on.
The guest finally spoke. He wanted to make a deal to come back. He wanted a religion named for him, this Mr. X as he called himself. Xianity would do swell. He said he’d die to make it happen if it came to that. And it probably would given our history.
“Starve,” he said, choosing a course to do it certainly not involving a meal. “I’ll go out in the dessert and fast myself to death. If it comes to that.” The visions must be purified, he knew. “Desert,” he then amended. “Did I just say dessert? How fitting!” He laughed, probably in a good way. Ally, yes.
As they negotiated, the roaming Allans roared but kept their distance, instinctively knowing here was someone who could eventually defeat their dark overlord and set them free.
(to be continued)
persisting (lime green teddy)
If there’s anything to this *line* she must start here, she feels. A woman named Constantyne, memorialized in the sim of Constance. Too close to be accidental, she understands (the only other Constan/ sim is Constantine, etc.). This is ground 00 — ‘nother one.
But what was this place, actually? She and her ice cream eyes longed to explore further.
—–
She found something. A man standing on the beach, as if looking for someone. For me, she thinks? She zooms in. A black man, tall, maybe 6′ 5″ or so. A guess, but she’s good at such. A man, yes, named Hill, Ruby’s psychic senses tell her beyond the ice cream eyes and lips and everything else. Hawaiian style swimming trucks. Odd goggles — lighted. The man wants to dance but can’t. Someone is stopping him from doing so. His partner cannot arrive without the balls, red and blue. But, she also senses, *both* balls are blue, one upright and one reversed. Sex, male and female. A decision must be made.
This man, wishes to be a father.
The man can grow 3 inches any time he wants to and become 6′ 8″, another Hill. Two Hills in one, then. But it means giving up the product.
The man is both blue and yellow. Think that’s it. Better get back and report.
—–
“My boys!” Mike exclaimed back in Annaberg in the sim of Newt, sitting around his mica table again, yet another ground 00 but perhaps the first. “Poison!” he shrilled. “Poison!” his mate Pat duplicated beside him. They thought this part of their story was done and over with and that they could freely and easily move to the center of Lemon Free State, good over here and bad over there, just a small fraction of its former power. Almost nonexistent. But, turns out, it may last above all the rest.
“No, don’t worry on that front,” explained Ruby to the excited couple. “He didn’t have the product. I looked all around. No lemon, no lime.”
Fruit headed Mike and Pat, being who they are, became very confused with this. Eventually they just disappeared in front of her. She had a new boss to report to. Al.
“My name is Al,” he started, “but you can just call me X. I am the founder of a new religion. Died not by the cross but the desert. Did I say that right this time? Yes. Desert. Died.”
—–
“Hello,” it said between two Tiki totems, making him turn. Ruby was wrong.
(to be continued)
making hay
Her long journey over (thanks “Sing to God”, the double album masterpiece by the Cardiacs, for getting me there!), she pulled into a spot dotted with horses, real and plastic alike. Her Boyfriend’s XL flannel shirt she threw on in a rush served pretty well to ward off the cold; would have worked better if she hadn’t kept the windows down the whole way out here because of the music; had to play it loud in order to get the full impact of the event. And she didn’t forget her pistol — secured in a holster at the top of her stockings, along with some phony cash and some cheating cards, or so she told me earlier (4 “extra” aces). Hidden by the shirt, we’ll say. There was always something going on for this creature of the night. The Gates of Heaven were safe for some, probably most. But not for her, she reckoned. Heck, she may even have a shoot out with the Lord if she doesn’t watch out. Al, I think he goes by these days. Her new boss, one could say. The person she has to answer to. She’ll make sure she does it on her own terms. No need for him to know about the gun, money, cards. Not yet.
She had reached the end of the road if not the end of the line. Now where the heck does it continue from here, she pondered, staring at and around the red star. She was moving in a direction not many people knew even existed. She was heading off the map.
Rounding the corner of the sign and spotting the horse rezzer, she remembered. She could follow this wall all the way to the ocean and then just keep going: south. Shouldn’t be too much further.
—–
“Almost there, Sugar Cookie,” she reassured the water disliking horse. “Almost home.”
(to be continued)
Constantynople
My newest virtual village, already finished in outline form, I feel. Center is 7 story high Falmouth Gallery this go around. The name Collagesity is kaput for now. Falmouth represents the only ground gallery of my work. No Red Umbrella, Boos. No Power Tower or Edwardston Station in any form. More on that soon. Temple of TILE is also a central building, parked in front of Falmouth as seen in the above photo. I want to work on my personal religion, see how far I can take it. This may mean the return of Man About Time, who is also all about TILE. How about the late great Jeffrie Phillips, his former boss, the previous mayor or sheriff or something of Collagesity? We’ll see.
Sunklands Instititute is still in town, just moved off to one side to fit in better with the high landscape masses to the east. Town even has an airport, although not of my design and merely “appropriated” for my use. All current private land is on the opposite side of the sim sized island, which is also convenient. All land immediately bordering Constantynople, to the east south west, is accessible. And to the north is linden water. Perfect, I feel. What should happen. Not a rebirth of Collagesity, like I said, but something more logical for the time and place. Not dominated by collage galleries but also not forgetting about them or shunting them totally aside. They are as much a part of me and my virtual life experience as anything.
More on this exciting new development soon!
Vowells
And so they were wedded that June. Something about substance over style in the vows. Something about quantity over quality. Substance and quantity over style and quality? Something was wrong here, really wrong. What does this wedding have to do with Constantynople, our newly minted darling of the blog? And why do we have the returned, purple gowned Wheeler in Alpha with Baker Bloch? Marriage of convenience? Let’s back up, have them eat those words for now…
We are at the end of 32, sliding into 33. Wheeler wasn’t joking. She’d won the Tic-tac-toe game fair and square. “We will be married to each other and also the town,” he now recalled about what she said at the grated white table in Ontario above the completed board, food shunted aside for the moment. Town, he contemplated. Wrong one. *Really* wrong one. He was falling into a pit, deep and dark and dank and dingy. 4D. No returning to kaput Ontario to the scene of the crime. We’d have to resolve this situation elsewhere. He lost his hat.
Someone stirred in the blue and yellow glowing teepee.
Fall over, Pitch Darkly stepped out of his dark (etc.) house and into the blinding white light. “Hey you blippity bleep bleep kids stop playing around with that statue!” he cried from the porch.
fishy
“So how long you going to keep up this ruse? *Pitch*.”
“As long as it takes,” he replies generically, shifting his long legs nervously again. “Do (he indicates behind him), do these *people* have to follow you everywhere you go?”
“The Eightyeights? Of course. You know that.” She paused, thinking about what to say next. “Bad luck to stare at the ocean this time of day, though, they believe. Have to face away. Like the bear.”
“Ted?” He dares to glance back in its direction, centered in the sandy passageway that runs between the two halves of Sunklands Institute.
Another pause. “We can call him that. Or her.”
“What’s with this Tiki curse anyway?… riddling the town. Saddling it.”
Wheeler paused longer this time and decided not to even answer Baker Bloch, currently disguised as thought-to-be obsolete VHC City originating vampire Pitch Darkly. Married to Mary instead of Wheeler. The reason for his being.
“You can’t keep postponing the inevitable,” she said after staring into the hateful ocean for a while, bright in the fairy blue light. The light of the Devil, some say. 10:01. The Eightyeights couldn’t handle it, thus the turning. Wheeler was, in contrast, soaking it all in. Pitch was just glancing all around, shifting his feet and legs and arms. And glowing eyes. “You’ll wake up next to Mary one morning, perhaps one much like this one, and realize she’s just a symbol of something bigger. ‘Mary me,’ I said so long ago that I can’t recall where and how.”
“Boston?” Pitch said, and then corrected himself. “No, not Boston.”
“Not Miami,” Wheeler also offered. They both sat there, trying to remember the circumstances surrounding the event. It was also the day he met Mary; he did recall that. Reel reel reeling them in. Just like now.
“Caught another one!” she cried gleefully just over at the newly placed dock.
“Wonderful dear! A *whopper* this time!” he observed.
“Just like your story,” Wheeler hissed over through folded hands.
“Doorpick”
“User,” he said, pointing. He knew who I was. Did I? Am I still Baker Bloch in the game we play that is Our Second Lyfe? Is that my primary avatar still?
Anyway, thanks to Pearl Grey for including this work in her most recent Wanderlust Art Truck show! Pearl’s blog here:
https://millionhappyendings.wordpress.com/
And you can teleport directly to the exhibit here:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ashenlave/199/61/63
caught
Turns out Philip Linden, maker of Our Second Lyfe itself, was a neighbor to me on my island of Constants, but he was another one of those on the edge, ready to drop off the world — his world, after all — with any significant push or wind. Boy does *he* have a whopper of a story to tell, though. Hopefully he can get to it at least in part before gravity and entropy does its inevitable damage.
Dancing Chuck awaits downstairs after it is all said and done, a reward for a job well done. Throw a towel on why don’t you (!).
I knew something I had to tell him: that this wasn’t His Second Lyfe any longer; this island was different. Looking into the future, perhaps that’s the info which pushes him over the edge, causing him to fall to pieces. I’ll try out that theory soon. At least he doesn’t seem to have a swollen head about world creation any longer. Less to break when he tumbles.
—–
Elves on the roof, another tale to tell.
00380510
She looked at the object that allowed them to be caught in the presents. Not working any more, thus: stuck.
“Sister of mine, why don’t you come over and join me again.”
“I’m *not* your sister. Get that through your skull.”
“Of course you are. We have the same mother. 1/2 sister, granted. But siblings still to a 1/2 degree.” He patted the spot beside him, just below the non-blue ball. “Come.”
Xia sighed (Xia?). “Okay, but I’m only *1/2* enjoying it. My other hemisphere will be dwelling on the fish and its ultimate meaning. Why the floppy tail on the roof? That sort of stuff. In fact — just forget the whole thing. I have more important things to do.”
“Like what?” he asked innocently.
“I think I just told you.”
“You told me nothing. Tale to tell? That is vacant words.” Xia, he contemplated himself. Short for Xian, as in Christian? Interesting twist if so. He’ll have to ask their, after all, church abiding mother the next time he returns home. Hopefully with Xia in tow. But the whole breaking of the portal. How to *fix*??
Maybe that’s why they got so strongly into this whole TILE religion thingy — drew them to the island in the first place. “Take us where we ultimately belong,” they ask the magical portal that fateful day in May’s June far away. It was, of course, working at the time. Another property of the mother. Or maybe — the father. That might explain a lot. Dark Lord.
“Xia,” he spoke over to the pretty elf still fiddling with the object. At least she’s gotten the lights and sound to kind of work on it again. “Tell me about your name.”
(to be continued?)
00380511
She thought of herself as ugly, a cow even.
Later, from her perch above, she watched her bathe, thinking, If I was only that beautiful. Xia and her cat. Always the cat, even in water. Sky, land, water — didn’t matter. Sometimes she believes she is the cat. I can’t leave, Myrtle thinks. I love her too much.
“All done!” came the call from below. Then she moves toward her clothes, cat still glued to the shoulder. Another constant, let’s call it. Myrtle watches everything with great interest. She use to not be this way. There was Ted, there was John — his twin, granted, but still another person. Then Harry the Lie Detector Magician. He hooked her up one day after much pestering. “Who do you love?” he asked her with great sincerity, tricking her. “You?” she answered basically as a question, making the meter jump. “Try again,” he said with some venom. Zimmy of course. Forbidden love. But then Zimmy changed into Xia. Soul shift. She use to not be this way.
—–
“Tell me that you love me, Xia,” she said, looking over. 1/2 sincere, both knew. Xia was playing this game too. She’d learned from the best (Zimmy).
“Of course I love you, Myrtle. You’re my bestest friend in the world, even closer to me than Zimmy.” Myrtle knew Zimmy didn’t exist any longer physically so he really didn’t count. She said so.
“Oh, Zimmy’s around. I just saw him fiddling with that portal, trying to get that thing to work for *real* this time.”
Myrtle had watched *Xia* mess with the so-called portal on the porch over there just before she came for a visit. There was no Zimmy. Not any longer. Okay, she’ll play along. “Zimmy’s a good brother to you.”
“*1/2* brother,” Xia quickly added.
“1/2 brother,” Myrtle calmly corrected herself.
“He taught me everything there is to know.”
“I know.”
“I *know* you know.”
Silence between them. Xia’s feet daintily kicked the old wooden fence marking the border between their properties, reminding her that she needed to return home soon. But — so lonely over there. Only Zimmy. Like talking to a mirror sometimes, she lamented. They were only 1/2 kin to each other blood-wise but still so close that their skins almost overlapped, blood shared and then some. “Come over here,” he said just earlier, before the visit started, patting the rug below the non-blue ball.
It took about 5 days, but Xia, slowly but surely, began to think of Myrtle as a mom. *Her* mom. Zimmy’s too. This baffled Myrtle. She decided to retreat into the interior of the island for contemplation, to a parcel some call the Abyss. Maybe the term was applied later, after what happened to Myrtle. Myrtle became… dark after that.
While gone, she rented her place to an orange being. All Orange. Not useful any longer, the elves retreated back into Philip, their creator after all, if not a Dark Lord. They’d forgotten who their actual father was, and that he had been living amongst them all this time. Everyone absorbed the inevitable fall together. Dancing Chuck looked on at the mess, wondering how the heck he was going to put all these pieces back together. In the end, Zimmy became intermixed with Xia and visa versa. And Philip became part fish, part tall tale himself, the stuff of legend; many books and documents written about him. When Myrtle returned from the Abyss and kicked All Orange back to greener pastures… well, we better save some of the story for later…
ML Gazebo 91
A wall. Indicating my time in Constants may be limited, despite the name. And not a really pretty wall at that. But I, of course, have tricks to get around it.
There’s Falmouth Gallery! Is it so ugly that you have to hide? Moard (original creator) would not be proud. I think it’s bea-u-ti-ful.
After taking the picture, Mr. Z gets up from the chair and continues his journey, intent on finding cousin Zimmy and his maw before sunset, er, sunrise if possible. Word.
—–
Truth of the matter exposed, he soon made his way into the center of Constantynople, unknowingly walking right by the stairs that would take him to his new apartment. And, perhaps more importantly, the new meeting place for the TILE study group. Had to happen.
“Hooray, he’s here!” cried the standing yellow porch ickle upon seeing him enter the square.
(to be continued)
ML Gazebo 91b
She’d blocked herself off from the hill, her property, never intending to return. Of course she did. Kicked out that All Orange creature (with the red prison legs) from her house, as stated, found only Philip and the big caught fish next door when she returned, pretty Xia and Zimmy gone forever, it seemed. Philip exists on here to tell another tale. I personally know he has to visit the newly set up library over at my Constantynople, see what’s been written about him for the archival record. A lot! Small and big fish alike. Some whoppers once more. He had to stay on the island.
She stood further back, knowing this was about as close as she could get to the center of the island. She stares across what would eventually become the Abyss toward her namesake hill-ridge now in the distance, wondering aloud what it all meant. “Another island? Another pitch dark center? Axis?”
“Yes?”
She twirls. Nobody there — the voice came from nowhere. But she did spot the gazebo in the distance now through a couple of the island privacy walls, portal opened, Constantynople fulfilled. An urban area for the island at last, no matter if the other residents knew it or not. She’d fill each and every one of them in later. “How dare you, so and so!” “How dare *you*, so and so!” And so on until everyone was accounted for, starting with herself.
(to be continued)
ML Gazebo 91c: What’s Next after Newt?
And so we return to the beginning of sorts, the grave of Constantyne, namesake (of sorts) to Constantynople.
Close. Very close.
secret cave
She needs something in her midriff. About, right… there. Don’t worry; doesn’t hurt. It’s all play.
Afterwards, she gives thanks to handy Ganesh for the gift of the new beginning. She’s able to turn herself off now at will. She can return home.
“Get the f- out of here. And take your dangly red legs with you too!”
00380516
“I found something,” im-ed Wheeler, disguised as ice cream dress wearing Ruby again. “A second memorial. You can mark it on your map from my position.”
But Baker, disguised as Newt, had found something too. A working portal. He clicked one of the balls and it took him directly to ML Gazebo 91, a miracle. Just where he was suppose to be.
“Got it!” he im-ed back after the pin placement, not daring to tell his new discovery to the young, impressionable Ruby. Wheeler later, maybe.
00380517
And then Ruby finds maybe a final, major landmark of the island: the almost football field long Wall Street also known as Long Lane.
We can continue.
Sunklands 