00440101 (the return of Strevor, Philip)
“Damn cube, OW! Why do they have to be so many damn cubes in my dreams lately, pheh.”
“Ow ow… ow. F-cking toe.”
“Hmm. Looks like Franklin was wrong. Nothing here, huh. Dead end. Nothing left to do but wake up.” He relieves himself on the canal wall even though he’s underwater. Then, getting down to the business at hand, starts slapping himself. Takes a while, but he enjoys it all the same.
—–
“Why is your face so red, dawg? You get slapped up by a woman or something? Speaking of which…”
—–
“Where’re we going Franklin?” he said, looking back at the coffee shop from whence they came.
“You’ll see. Just down the block.”
—–
“Are *these* your damn cubes or something? We were just here Tuesday after all. You were complaining about the art, and how simple it was and that you could knock up something like that — your words — after 12 beers and one hand tied behind your back. ‘No,’ you said. ‘Make that two. 2 beers and *12* hands,’ you tried to joke, but you were already pretty drunk at the time. Should have been drinking coffee back then too. Or eating… something.”
“I-I don’t know,” he said about Franklin’s theory about the cubes and the dreams, then looked around, actually still in a dream… something. “Hey, where’s Mike? Did we ditch Mike somewhere?”
“Dawg, where’s Mike??”
“That’s what I’m asking *you*. Dawg.”
“Mike?” Franklin calls in one of the bushes around the big red cubes. “Mii-ke?”
“Well he’s not in *there* for Christ sake. He’s not missin–” Trevor stops. He remembers… an S. An S in a bush. Flaming (SWITCH).
Part 2: Mikie, not Mike
That night he goes back to the dead end canal ditch and sees something after hitting his toe once more on that in-the-way big goddamn cube, ow ow ow! 1st monkey mosaic. “Frank Lynn was *right*!” he said before starting to slap himself red again.
00440102
“So we’ve gathered here at the cubes to save the planet. Are you with me?! Okay, great,” he said, listening to the enthusiastic response of his small group. “Cause if *not* we’d have to kill you because you’d be a continued *whore* to this world, equal or worse to those litterbugs down at Burger Shot. Am I right?!” More enthusiasm; no one dare let up. “So let’s move just down the street a bit and go clobber us some litterbugs, fellow Planetarians!”
What planet actually *is* this? she thought while putting down the futuristic book in a pause. Uranus somehow came to mind, maybe because of this so called superhero’s blue face color, she rationalized. Such a funny name. The discoverer must have known it would be the, ahem, *butt* of a 1000 jokes down through the years. Been almost 65 years since its discovery, she knew. She intuited on the spot that we’re about due for another one. So this puts the year at 1845 or so. Handy to understand.
Claude stared at her with a bottle in front of me, she thought. Better than a frontal lobotomy, she completed the joke from that old sea shanty, carried to land locked Tousaint by roaming rug merchants long ago. Just had to develop some feet. “Claude, bring your keister and your bottle over here and make yourself useful for a change,” she said to her admirer since Tuesday. “I have a question for you.” Claude was good with geomancy and astrology, she knew, so probably also geography and astronomy, their more modern, more mundane counterparts. “Come here and sit down beside me.” She didn’t sit up to give him more room. He’d have to perch on the very end of the bench she lay upon like a useful big talking bird in the moment. Control.
“So, *first* off, what planet are *we* on?” she said as he wiggled about on his cramped little spot, too close to her head with its puffy bonnet hat for any real comfort, physical or psychological. “I have to get my bearings here before I can grasp another one. Futuristic writing is *confusing*.”
The question certainly came as a surprise to the man, learned in so many ways if not comedy. “Well,” he started, thinking of history more than astronomy or even geography, “we live, let’s see, on the world of the great North-South conflict. To the North are an assortment of many republics, led by Reddania, Kaed–.”
“*No*,” she interrupted Claude. “I mean, what’s the name of the *planet* we’re on, not the names of the lands of that planet. I know what you’re talking about here. I’m an educated woman — can read and such as you can see.” She holds up the futuristic book to his nearby face, returns it to the bench. “Don’t treat me like some kind of doofus, pheh.”
“Right, mum,” he quickly responded, still hoping for that date to come out of their conversation. If he steers it well. “Well, as you know, we have the Sun of course, then the Moon… of course. Then about 75 years ago–”
“*65*, Claude.”
“Beg pardon?”
“65 years ago. You were going to say we discovered Uranus and the known Universe expanded quite a bit. The blue planet. We know this from our more powerful binoculars and monoculars. Yes, I know about the Sun, the Moon, Uranus. But what is *this* planet? I repeat for your ears. Think about it before answering.” She became somewhat more seductive in her laying pose, or at least tried — hand on hip I believe.
“Well,” he said more carefully, glancing over at the head, the body, those hips (a celestial object herself, he considers). “We know that the Sun, the Moon… Uranus, are *spheres*.”
“Okay,” she said expectantly. Don’t go weak on me, Claude, she thinks. I haven’t had a man in weeks.
“So logically you would think we’d deduce that we too, us Touisanters and all the rest, live on a sphere as well. But this isn’t so, dear lady. Scientists — you know, the geographers and the astronomers that counter the oft termed fantastical studies of geomancy and astrology–”
“Just thinking about that,” issued, er, forgot to give her a name! Let’s call her Miss S.
“Well, *they* think we actually live on a cube. Not a sphere. Have you… heard that… theory?” Would she make fun of him again? If so, she’s making fun of the scientific community he considers himself on the fringe of as well.
“Cube,” she considered, turning around the word in her head, examining each side. “And, let me guess, the *known* world only exists on one of its sides, the Northern and Southern countries you started listing out before.”
“That’s right, mum.” He points to the east from their bench. “And beyond the Blue-ish Mountains over there lies another *side*, the start of one.” He points west. “And beyond the Grand Sea lies another — we haven’t been out there either, as a people I mean, or at least returned with any real, useful information. And to the north and the south — more sides. And then the back–”
“Dark side,” interrupts Miss S again. “Our opposite.”
“Correct. So that would explain the monsters. We’re a lighted side surrounded on all sides by chaos coming from this back. The theory’s all the rage in scientific publications like the Long Lane Journal, the Redd–.
“STOP, listing things,” she barked. She’d had enough information. Time to shoo this bird away, too bird brained for a love interest. Cube PFIFF, she fumed. Not a sphere. The idiocy of these *men*.
(to be continued)
00440103
Gerald woke up in some flaming bushes of the royal greenhouse and tried to remember what happened to him during his latest (and greatest?) graytop trip. What’s this bloody mask? he thought to begin, flinging aside the feathery, white thing. Ahh yes, Princess Annabel’s masquerade ball down at the palace, pheh. And he’d flirted with… how many women? But why didn’t he sleep with any of ’em? Ahh, said he had a date with the *bushes*, he recalls. Thus: here. Hmm, *why* did I have to go to the bushes? The flaming ones? Think Gerald. Think! Something about… cubes.
00440104 (where?)
I picked him as my next NPC to follow because he was red and thus easier to spot, I figured. On my motorcycle, I hid in the flowering bushes, stifling the urge to sneeze while watching his every move. I thought of red striped shirt wearing Waldo who’s always hiding in those famous puzzle pictures, except the shoe’s on the other foot here since I wasn’t wearing red. Red shoes too, I suppose (he checks his feet). Hard to tell from this distance.
He was on the move again and so was I. I looked around for just a second…
… and he was gone! Disappeared as if into the proverbial thin air.
My determination from the overall study: NPCs, even the ones that stick out like a sore thumb, are ultimately impossible to follow in Lost Sanos. They just eventually make themselves… lost.
00440105 (the return of Second Lyfe, Our)
“Who are you?!”
“Who are WE?” the small mountain boomed back. We’ve seen it before. It was once called a butte. Turtle.
“Yes!” shouted Fern up again, wee in perspective.”
The two eyes of the “creature” which was apparently the same as a mountain looked at each other, as if conferring. “YOU first,” they seemed to decide.
“My name is Fern!” Fern said. “I was on my way–!”
“We KNOW where you’re going,” the mountain blasted again. “We just didn’t know who YOU are.”
Silence for a moment. The two eyes looked at each other again, then back to Fern. What to say next? she pondered, then decided: “So you know about the island?!”
“YES,” it boomed without much hesitation.
“Dullard?!” she faked, testing the small mountain before her.
“BRILLIANT.” So *that* didn’t work, she thought.
“Little Ritchie?!” she then tried. “Taken over?!” It was a theory she had about the wee ones (to her own stature) of that particular island. But how would this mountain–
“YES,” it responded anyway. This big hill was old, indeed like a turtle. Before terraforming it was even shaped a bit like one. But the Lindens decided not to protect this most central of the Hills of Bill and suffered the consequences. Civil War between the split apart north and south parts of the Maebaelia continent, also known as Satori. Now it seems they are attempting to repair the damage. By terraforming it again and even providing it with a face this time to speak to, along with building a new, bridging section of formerly divided Highway 8A next to it to showcase the effect. Fern is merely taking advantage of the moment, but she truly needed to get to that island, her goal tonight before this “distraction” came along.
“I’m going to go check!” she said up. “I’ll be back!”
“WE will be here.” They knew she would return. If only because of the prim atop the northern one’s eyebrow, just out of sight from her ground perspective. A special plywood cube that Fern needed to know about and understand the meaning of. And why it had a dent or hole on one side. Oh, and also to learn their names.
But for now they could sleep while waiting. “Night night BAL,” said the first eye that closed. “Night night WIN,” said the other, then shut as well.
00440106 (noclip)
She watched it from afar…
… and then found herself inside…
*POP* (manifestation noise).
“Wendy?”
“Why are you dressed like that?” is the first thing she said to me.
“I was told” — she looked over at Wendy, wondering about her own blank attire — “it was cold down here.”
“Well you were wrong!” She changed into who she really was.
00440107 (Plutonians)
“I have seen many things in the forest,” she explained to me. “I have seen a giant stone hand with an eye representing the place where I came. But not where I’m going.”
“Our Second Lyfe,” I pinpointed. “Or better, *Their* Second Lyfe.”
“Forest of Kahruval at least,” she said to my observation. “This was different. This was Kerchal. A full sim chocked to the brim with pines of several different varieties. No grass, unlike the Rubi Woods found later. But not devoid of other vegetation, which is my next item on my list.”
“Go ahead, then,” I encouraged.
“So one day, after being involved in the forest for a while, I chanced upon two bushes and wondered about the old expression of not seeing them because the trees of the forest took the focus. *This* is where I’m going, I realized. Toward the bushes.”
“Um hmm,” I said, trying to adjust to this new focus as well. I saw — the overlap. Bakers’ Island. This is Baker Blinker, with Baker Bloch soon to come along as well. Bakers in the plural, then. Salvation.
“And then we have the treehouse. Where I opened the eye with the (alphabet) map. But that was within another forest. Or so I thought.
“Everything became white.”
“But this was actually after the arrival of the aliens,” I said. “They build the treehouse. In *those* woods.”
“That’s what changed after the whiteness,” admitted Wendy who was playing the role of Baker Blinker currently. Or maybe it was visa versa — another reversal. “The aliens came first. Two bushes; two ships. Not one.
“The other (find) was a made up reality. *I’m* made up.”
“Because you’re actually Wendy. Not Baker Blinker,” I said. The alien she described before, a big white cup with a pink straw that took control, was obviously her, probably arrived from the future — say, 8 1/2 years later. Not a true alien, at least in her mind. But I knew better. Because of the pink.
“Like I said, there were two of them. Not one. They *built* the treehouse. Everything was backwards from what I remembered. The treehouse came last not first,” she reinforced. “They *built* it,” she couldn’t help but say again.
So should I tell her that both realities are true? Too soon?
00440108 (slab)
Now we just have to return the shovel to where we found it so as not to piss off the local aliens. In the second bush located in a nearby old tool shed. Flaming.
Still in the dead of night, we deliver the slab to said aliens to complete their glyph puzzle so that they can see how to leave this place, this planet. Fire, wind, water they had. But we had to provide them with the final piece representing Earth.
“This planet is a cube!” they all uttered in surprised unison just later while looking down on it, then got to work on recalibrating their navigational charts accordingly, soon to be gone from here.
00440109 (which one)
Why would someone gift me a free cow outfit normally worth 300 lindens? she pondered at the pool with the statue while trying it on. Oh well. Time to meet her new best mates at the downtown diner. Maybe they’ll have some thoughts about this, hmm. But more importantly: thoughts about saving the planet we’re on, namely Our Second Lyfe. We know it’s a cube. We have that much. And the continent of Maebaleia also known as Satori takes up one whole side. This one. We know this because of the return of the Butte. Turtle.
Maybe she is the Turtle.
(to be continued)
00440110
“I now make my home in a gym over on Corsica,” she told her friends down at the diner. “I’ve gone over to the Dark Side, ha.”
“The… opposite side of the cube,” said one.
“But not the 7th,” said the other.
“Yes, Gaeta is truly the dark one still without meaningful internet access,” responds Fern to this. Everyone at the table understood this was the 7th continent formed after the original 6. Even if it was never finished — it was finished. 15 years ago now since the development stalled, ancient history in video game time. “But a cube, you know, only has 6,” she continued. “Corsica slides over into Gaeta, true. That is one problem. How to combine 7 with 6.” She logically thought of Sepisexton here, the abstracting.
Time to see who her dinner companions at this Maebaleia location are, formerly called Gregson in our photo-novels — probably still is.
Thought so.
00440111 (Sisyphus)
“I decided to log into Our Second Lyfe away from my new home ‘at random’ and immediately stumbled across this turtle at Mont Saint Michel, shocking me.
“It tried to run away and hide under a chair, but I’d teleported in just at the right time and place to catch. Much like Turtle Butte before it. Not planned; had other things in mind to do that night. Same situation.
“But then I looked around at the bar, the books, the tables, the maps, the balcony, and figured this might be a new home for Lichen and me, replacing Castle Town from the previous novel (43). 2nd home, along with the also newly found gym in this here photo-novel of 44. Axxion is the name, exercising is the game. Like I did when I got back…
“… and then found the connection between turtle and cow as I unlocked a special aspect of one of their seemingly mundane machines, I to T to E to L becoming I to E to T to L — crucial reversing there in the middle, you’ll notice. Suddenly, *I* found myself in the position of a turtle which was also a cow. The *turtle* — butte (but she pronounced it as butt?) must have sent the cow suit. One and the same here. Wish I had a photo to share.”
But we do.
Exercising at another, better lighted spot.
And yet another.
00440112
I’ve seen this band before. On Corsica. Group called Red Eye. Play King Crimson covers and who knows else. Genesis I believe here. Or is it Jethro Tull? Gentle Giant? Anyway, to the main part of the post…
Cpt. Planetary scanned his world maps for signs of trouble. All quiet on the western front. And eastern… and northern and southern, sides. Yes he has time now for Our Second Lyfe, saving that world as well.
But first, the business of Burger Shot in yet another virtual world, one of many we’re involved in now.
Aeriel drives past the scene, curious about the protesters indeed. “Just down the street a bit” uttered by Cpt. Planetary to his small group of loyalists toward the beginning of this here photo-novel turned out to be moving from present back into the past, V to IV and perhaps before to be more specific. But Aeriel is involved in her own adventure tonight. Heading toward the Big Ear of Bone Country and seeing if the Horns were back on the radar, one or maybe even both of them this time around.
There. In the distance. Listening.
(to be continued)
00440113 (no cow)
Hmm. What is actually being protested here? Back to Big Ear, where the same has arrived…
… with a lab coat gifted by a giant, green eyed turtle, complaints successful. Mission accomplished; well done. No sexualizing the cat-like aliens.
No one here yet. We just wait. Patience. She definitely has a bone to pick with these 2 lowlifes. Good to calm herself first with some vapors I suppose.
00440114 (clobbered)
Today Cpt. Planetary has a meeting with an important, different doctor located in a sprawling, upper right central Maebaleia continent urban area of Our Second Lyfe. He picks his way through the maze of streets, finally recognizing a familiar landmark.
—–
“Just relax, Cpt.,” says the sandy beach haired doctor just later. “Sink deeper into the chair. It’s designed to ease you into a hypnotic state. Deeper… deeper.” The choices appear on his screen from the feed.
“Good, good. Now. Look at all the options, look at all of them, lined up in a neat row across the wall. They’re all different — different colors. You can put down the crowbar — they’re all harmless as well. Can you sense them?” He takes a deep breath through his sandy haired nose. “Can you *smell* the difference? They all lead to different places, different, er, *seas*. A B C. Choose now, Cpt. For the planet you represent.”
He chooses blue.
“Gotcha! Ah hahahah!”
This is an obvious place to wake up but he finds he can’t. Abstracted; 7 to 6.
00440115 (243/243)
He returned to Clobber to try and find a proper mate in which to fight the aberrant planetary forces together, under one roof. Poison Ivy came to mind.
He can’t see what’s staring at him right in front of his face, Sandy Beech thinks in his upper central Maebaleia continent psychiatrist office, viewing the terminal depicting where his brainwashed, abstracted superhero was now. Looking for an Eve to his Adam; tired of inept subordinates picked basically at random from the scum that represents humanity polluting its perfect, cubic surfaces. No, it would have to be another superhero, another planetary force to reckon with, Sandy Beech thought in tandem with the Captain. And there’s no more deadly planetary force to deal with than Poison. Ivy, that is. Only the Mother calls it Poison, as she should.
So many choices await him. There are many more options than Poison. Could go with a more wholesome mate. Like Kudzu, like Weedwoman, *different* from Flowerwoman, although the latter is an option too, he supposes. I wonder if the Incredible Bulk has a female green counterpart? he wonders. But how about *Wonderwoman*, hmm. No, too ordinary, too mundane, he decides. Like picking Superman or Batman if he was instead a woman. Same with Batgirl or Supergirl of course in his shoes. And better it be a so called “villain” — in the villain category — instead of on the positive side. *He’s* on the positive side. He needs a balance. Maybe Poison is the way to go after all. But he better get to looking through all the aisles before the morning is gone from him and he has to start preparing for his afternoon walk. 12 noon now. 12:06 actually.
Tired of watching and having chores to do himself, Sandy logs off, letting Captain Planetary have a look around unaccompanied by observing eyes. For now. He decides to start from the back, probably more the place to find the villains over the heroes, he thinks. His mind quickly turns to aliens.
Sandy already knew this would happen.
00440116 (chanced upon)
“Holey moley. What’s this?? A spaceship? No. *Two* spaceships. Back to back with each other. I’ve got to go investigate this for sure.
“Hallo?
“Looks like they just had a picnic. Or are having one, given that the food lays there uneaten. Maybe even… no. Can’t be. Nooo.”
But then he got slapped on the cheek when he picked up one of the picnic baskets for further examination — enough for it to turn red — and knew it to be true. The aliens are still here. The aliens are… invisible!
“Keep it coming!” he yelled into the thin air all around him as he picked up other items from the table cloth, provoking more slaps. “I want to wake up!”
Sunklands 