00440401 (4×4)
“Will it work?” I asked her, this Lexi of brain-daze editing notoriety, currently building a robot, currently perhaps also my lover.
“I think so. Came in from Montana just yesterday. Stayed up all night putting together the thing after unpacking it. Box labelled ‘Live Cargo,’ funnily enough. I don’t know why.” She turned away from me back to the cityscape she so loved from this vantage point, her mid to upscale apartment in Kabusie. “End of the tracks, last of the train,” she’d said about this stop in her life. She expected to die here, I took it. Exploration of the network of ditches would be her magnum opus, a cumulative marriage of tech and art. Compared to that, I was just along for the ride. Sitting across from her, listening to the rails while I could. Full speed ahead.
I turned to the pseudo-flathead mechanoid on her work table. Not Arasaka quality, but she said there’d be compensations for this. Legal, obviously. But Lexi had designed some special AI components, borderline rogue she’d described them. “Approaching the Black Wall,” she said about them. “But *careful* not to cross.”
“Of course.”
—–
In another BD I found myself staring at the same scene, Lexi and her Ralph as she eventually called the robot. It was a much less smooth ride this time. Shaky, but not from nerves. Lower quality overall. A metal hit from the 60s by Everfat blared from the nearby stereo system, perhaps a remake of a Fats Domino and/or Everly Brothers song from a century before. Maybe an anniversary thing. Anyway…
“Who are you?” Still at the window, still staring out but only staring at blinds this time.
“Lincoln,” I said.
“Get out, get OUT,” she said, not wanting to hear that type of name in her apartment. Not since Madison.
(to be continued)
00440402
“No you don’t understand,” she said calmly but firmly after the proposition. “I’m through with you now. You can go back home… the North Pole or whatever. Some circle of ice. I have someone else to meet. And a name change involved — tricky business. So… shoo.”
He shoos. RosE T. takes his place across from her.
She tried to be inconspicuous when listening in, but *this* Rose was indeed curious how the discussion would go. She already had a twin next door with the same name. They bickered all the time about who to call what. A 3rd would *definitely* not do. Tin knows this, she understood. Tin will set her straight. If she wants to stay. Because otherwise… blood may be on her hands.
He walked into the next establishment over, determined to succeed with his proposition. “Buy a pretty lady a drink?” he said to the tender. Rose, he observed. Name seems so familiar, *she* seems so familiar. But of course, he realized, recalling the twin not 50 feet away. This is the sticky name change situation Tin mentioned. I understand now why she didn’t have time for me. Potential blood on her hands. Pretty Roses always come with pricking thorns.
“Yeah, not going to happen,” said Rose T. firmly but calmly back. *Now* what? Tin thought.
Then, knowing this particular Rose got her name from a Zombies album, she figured out another angle of attack.
(to be continued)
She watched the two Greenies (shirts) go down the corridor that the camera just emerged from and decided to follow suit…
… taking along her own tag-along Greenie, Burt I believe (hair).
And more green tiles too.
Like Lester (name?) before her, she steps from green onto gray in the 2nd of our 2 screen captures above, thinking of war. Suddenly green hatted Evelyn Ginger looks on, seeming to understand the significance.
The police continue to walk the thin white line and try not to see the difference.
00440404 (An Emily for Rose (The Zombies got it backwards (or at least that’s how it was sold to her)))
Well, she thinks. I believe I’ve waited long enough. Sticky Rose name problem solved, there’s no excuses left. Time to go into the hole. Just a short gondola ride away via that cable line over there.
—–
Soon she was in the gift shop, not very grossed out atall so far. She, like many others before her, found the fleshy environment, let’s say, kinda comforting actually. Like crawling back into the womb or sumtin. And there’s that hum, like an abstracted, dumbed down lullaby. Some find it unsettling. Not her. She’s one of the gifted ones; one of the people that could succeed down here (the pit thinks for her). She purchases a small yet expensive book about one of its many “grotesque,” flesh dependent creatures and moves on.
At the end of the 4th and last corridor to this entry level: dead end, with ominous tones beyond even for her, the gifted and perhaps the damned if she proceeds. Dare she jump over the barrier and experience the flesh directly beneath her feet, squish squish squish? Tempting… tempting!
Then she thinks of the deaths, and wonders why they don’t get that much publicity beyond scattered reports here and there in the media, seeming to almost treat them like jokes when they do pop up. The cover-up must go way up, she realizes, all the way to the president perhaps, a man soon to be named G. Cleveland if things go terribly wrong and time loops back on itself, mirroring what happened in the late 1800s. Best to stay down here until it all blows over, she decides. If she jumps over this barricade, maybe she can find a safe place to hide deeper down in the pit.
And this, of course, is where everything (first?) goes terribly wrong. For Rose Emily.
00440405 (Big Ear (Breakfast at Tippany’s))
—–
“Thank you for meeting with me [delete name].”
“Did I have any choice?”
“Not really,” Jer Left Horn answered. “Now about my brother.”
—–
“What did my brother tell you?” Benny Right Horn asked right off the bat.
“That you’re a liar and don’t trust anything you have to say. You’re a Democrat. That’s what he called you.”
“Well he’s a Republican,” the right horned one of the brothers responded. “They lie even more. They lie *all* the time, not just some of it.”
“He said… that only one can continue. The other must end. What does he mean?”
Benny pondered this for a second. “That only one of us is the true Horn. Where the message came through. Problem is, no one knows which is which. Tipping point,” he ended his point.
Breakfast Aisle
00440406
“It’s obvious that Hellboy (as she called him) is the Man in the Middle — this Middle Slaughter. And you know what that means?”
“No,” I said, lost in Fern’s brilliance per usual.
“It means we have to get to Slaughter before *it* gets to us. Black Wall. Diversion.”
Always the Black Wall for Fern lately. Where’s lighthearted Lichen when you need her?
“Pack your bags,” she then said. “We’re heading for Auburn.”
“Alabama?” I said. “What’s there?”
“Washington,” she corrected. “Like George. C’mon, let’s eat some cereal together and I’ll lay us out a plan.” She knew I was just a fill-in for Lichen but she had no one else at the time.
(to be continued)
00440407 (change)
“Don’t forget about Lichen’s 4 Stomach Tour,” I tried to ground Fern.
“Of course not. But back to immediate business. Black Wall.” Then she forgot. Again.
“Right, right.” I shook my head internally while nodding on the outside. Fern didn’t pick up on my doubts, which was a little disconcerting itself. Lack of recognition. Brilliant in so many other ways. But not irony — comedy in another form. I knew we were entering dangerous territory.
She drew more diagrams in the notebook before her, a gray Mead 5 star spiral with 22 holes and 5×7 inch design, I noted from before. “Pre-1906,” she said, still looking down in a pause between scribbles. “Probably around 1893 or maybe even dating back to 1886, hmm. Anyway (she shook her head), we’ll see soon enough. So the Black, the White, the Green will all be in their proper place and not all mixed up during this period. She punctuated the page before her at the appropriate spots, apparently some kind of crude map as I understood now. “Auburn was still Slaughter with its Slaughterhouse Hotel, or close enough, before the scaredypants changed the name.” She scribbles some stuff on top of what I took now as Auburn on the map, near the old conjunction of the Green and White rivers as I knew from previous discussions. “Everything was right. We can even go there, you know — this Slaughterhouse.” She circles Auburn which she’s changed to Slaughter, with a little cartoon house with teeth drawn atop of it to reinforce the link. “Thanks to the magic of Our Second Lyfe. There we’ll meet Middle. Are you grasping this yet?”
“This… has already happened?” I guessed, thinking of the snake, the tail.
“The Wheel is the middle of the Tarot, or at least the end of it (The Wheel, not the Tarot). 10… you met Tin at another hotel which is perhaps the same hotel — motel — in Room 10. You have arrived.”
“*You* have arrived,” I said. “What happened next?”
“I… drew my gun and opened the door.”
“Yes?”
“She turned.”
“Right.”
“Then… black out. Loss of power. But I recognized her. Tin for sure.”
“Ten,” I said. “The Wheel.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s where Lincoln starts his latest Brain Daze. Not 5 days ago. We’re looking right at it in the beginning. Sunset Motel in the Badlands again. Then he goes and hops on his motorcycle and heads back into town from whence he came, or at least the Rancho Coronado suburb. Leaves it at another service station there after walking around a while, finding stuff, interacting with people.” I end my quick review of the BD, wait for Fern to chip in. But she wasn’t there any longer. Where’d she go?
—–
“Are you Lincoln?” she said at the start, knowing it was truth.
“Yes? How’d–”
“You’re heading the wrong way. You need to go further into the desert.”
(to be continued)
00440408 (rain of planets (they’re here!))
Planets you don’t even know the names of
Planets, you don’t even know their names
00440409
There’s a boat out there she came in on but I couldn’t see it from this angle. Blocked by the east end of the Harbour Master Building. I thought this queer. Why couldn’t I know?
And which of me is which?
Someone steps out of the Breakfast Aisle Shuttle in front of it.
00440410 (cow?)
She came in from a planet called Red Dead, she said. St. Dennis, she specified. Said she was very busy there and what did I need? I asked her what was so important there that she was so bothered to meet with me, her other half after all. Something — the male counterpart — of sorts. Maybe we need to sort all that hierarchy and stuff out soon too. Maybe now, hmm. So I told her this after she sat down, ordered her own drink. She was wearing the Crazy Blue, good. That means she would be obedient to me. I checked my watch on purpose. “Been waiting 2 hours, you know. 2:27 now.”
“I know what time it is,” came her response. “I have a clock in my head.”
Doubtful, I thought. Then I thought again. Could she? Powerful, I knew. From another planet — probably true.
We went out on the balcony, me and her. Well, she was on the balcony and I was standing just inside, still staring at the harbour, the boat I couldn’t see because of the building and all. East end. I asked her about it.
“Oh that old thing. It’s just a cargo boat.” She stopped, looked at me with a glint in her eye. *She’s* the cargo, I realized. Mechanoid? So I asked her that too.
“Long long ago,” she began her answer. “There was a forest, a woods. Big Woods, let’s call it. And in the middle of that woods, a Sugar Shack, run by a gal named Sugar. But no ordinary gal. A *dinosaur* gal — small one, granted, but a dinosaur.”
“Yeah, you’re giving me the backstory of Aisle of Palms so what? And I suppose *this* Aisle makes 3, a perfect triangle.”
“Not perfect. But close.”
I turn on the shaders so I can see her better, in her true light and color. Hopefully I can keep from crashing out of this world again. But I couldn’t resist.
“Do you want me to change out of the Crazy Blue?” she asked, trying to adjust her AO so she could seem more natural standing in the corner of the balcony.
“Whatever.”
“You will have no control over me if I do.”
I felt the horn on my head, sprouting left right.
“Alright.”
She had gone through about 10 standing animations. I thought 2 were fine — including the present one — and told her so. “You can stop,” I said. “Just stop.”
“Do you think I’m fat?” she ended as the waves crashed behind her.
00440411 (metals)
It was Crazy Black and Crazy Blue at once, 2x crazy. Perfect match it seemed. She had almost finished reviewing the story of Big Woods. Or he, whichever. Who is who, which is which? Black and blue once more. Oz.
And at the very end of the Big Woods story we find Lincoln again, oddly enough. Crazily enough. Desert time, me thinks. AISLE can wait.
—–
https://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/tpr8.htm
“Oh, look. I found a penny!” she says in a New Mexico location, in the desert or at least very close to it. Arid. “Oh, and it’s heads up. That means it’s good luck.” The boy says, “I hope it does bring you good luck. Penny.”
00440412 (Badlands)
“Edward’s dead,” she put it bluntly, witnessing the spectacle herself. “Out in the desert. Dancing up a storm, dancing harder than anyone else. Then: the storm hit, shall we say. Like in Arroyo.”
“But… *I’m* Edward,” I say back, remembering the conversion. “In Kabusie this time, on the other side of Nightsity. Next to the canal. Ditch Canal. Or Channel.”
“No, that was a close call, but you’re not Edward. He passed you by. Close but no call. Lucky for you now.”
I recalled seeing the crybaby being consoled by a girl, probably a girlfriend or at least a friend. Then immediately afterwards: Edward, who I’d already identified as such; that was my actual nickname for him (Crybaby). He passed through me. I *became* Edward in the heart of the moment. Or at least I was convinced at the time. In retrospect, yeah, maybe Fern’s right. Fern the Nomad (now). Maybe it was close but no call. Like baseball. Like not being out at home.
“Dead,” she said again to reinforce her point, looking at me trying to grasp and grapple with the issue. “Out in the middle of the desert which is the same as its edge. I went back the next day. I *saw*.”
(to be continued)
00440413 (Arroyo)
“Chop!” I said, looking into the Dewdrop Inn room I’d force-opened and recognizing my dog at last. Well. At least the *map* of my dog. Martha’s Vineyard. Always wondering what it meant and why the feet were there. And the head with the two Chop names, East and West, like paired lips or ears or sumtin. Well that head is *this* head, those feet — clearly — are *these* feet.
My dog is a robot. And a sexy one at that it appears, at least to those of its kind. But maybe Chop is instead the robot in the chair — watching. Maybe the map is that of his true love, something he wants to *eat* — chomp away at. Like breakfast, hmm. Rose, I remembered. Better get back and finish my meal.
“Never mind me,” I wanted to say to the robots in parting. “Wrong room.” But I knew they couldn’t hear me. This was a spectacle, something only to be observed and that alone. Same as, er, Chop is doing here. I’m engrossed, he’s engrossed. Seems to fit, yeah. I shut what remained of the door and leave the motel and head next door again.
(to be continued)
00440414 (layers)
“Do you own this house or do you rent this house?”
“Yes, we own this house.”
Pause. “Who did you buy it from?”
“Honey, who sold us the house?” Incoherent speech from the interior, but an answer to her question.
“Chalfant. A Mrs. Chalfant.”
Longer pause; the FBI agent seemed very stunned and discombobulated by now. “And… do you happen to know who she bought it from?”
“No I don’t, but… ” She turns inside to ask again. Incoherent speech, but not an answer this time.
“No.”
(to be continued?)
00440415
Waldo indicates downtown Lost Sanos in the distance where he soon plans to get lost to continue the game, even though he’ll be even redder at the time. Not sure why there’re 2 downtowns here, though, to be honest. Have to study.
In other recent Google Earth Street View news while we’re talking about it: feet again.
Or should I say Google Earth Feet View in these cases?
00440416
And so we end this section in the middle. Middle Slaughter. Standing in Kabusie again, illuminated by red neon light in the middle ground of the below snapshot. End there as well (for the BD (thanks again Lettuce Walk!)). Go figure. Too weird, too crazy, even. We continue in this vein…
Sunklands 