00440601
“I brought you here to do an experiment, Billy. Sorry to pull you away from your original (Our Second Lyfe) home (in Zebrasil).”
“T’is okay,” he said mechanically, per his nature.
“But — as you can see — the waterfall, this Falls of 10,000 Lions as Mistress or Venus called it — can’t remember which one without checking, which is risky. Anyway, it’s at the corner of this Walk-On-Water Pool, a true feeder for the pond, you see.”
Billy was looking right at it, along with the accompanying Halloween Wither Tree seeming to embrace or almost embrace Fern at the pier. He couldn’t help but see. “Yes,” he said plainly. The gears in his head moved more rapidly and he came up with an important addition. “WOW,” he uttered.
“Yes,” said Fern, brains also working more rapidly than even normal now. “I *also* see.”
To recap: Billy is hanging off the pier at 147/147 in the Breakfast Aisle sim, right on its walkable Diagonal, then. When he attaches the waterfall carried over from his original Big Woods home without alteration of placement in respect to the avatar’s center, it becomes the feeder for the *WOW* Pond, making Billy exclaim the same. Fern realized the connection with Soos Ck., Washington and a lot of other stuff.
Auburn aka Slaughter is next?*
—–
*No. It turns out we follow this up with South Dakota. Same country, different state.
(to be continued)
00440602
“So here we are, Billy. Interior: beyond (The) Wall. Here we’ll find the information we need, I believe.”
“I… believe.”
—–
“Let’s pull in here and get some gas before going further. Don’t want to run out in the middle of the Badlands, ha.”
“Ha (or ho).”
—–
“Let’s now go to that Badlands Grocery Store we saw advertised beside the town welcome sign. We’ll stock up with supplies there, some proper food.”
“1/2 priced yogurt?”
“Perhaps, Billy.” But Fern didn’t think so. Billy would have to get use to more primitive life up here in the Real World, above and beyond the comforts of Our Second Lyfe.
—–
Fern parks the now filled up rental truck in front of the store 2 blocks west of the gas station, as the billboard she saw and memorized earlier indicated. “Keep in mind through all this that we’re looking for something *interior*… to Interior, even,” she said, walking up to the front door. “The town’s name is just a signifier, a pointer.”
Then in synchronicity, Billy points to something in the distance.
“Ball. Silver.”
“Good, Billy. Good.” Fern knew this was just a propane tank seen on edge but Billy was definitely on the right track. Change of perspective. They go inside.
But there was nothing within the grocery store but BLACK, which so happens to be the former name of Interior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interior,_South_Dakota
In 1891, the former way-station was called Black with Mary Johnson as its first postmaster. In 1893, the town was renamed “Interior” by George Johnson because he did not think the name “Black” fit the description of the White River that surrounded the town.
By losing her vision, Fern had found what she was looking for here. They carefully make their way through the darkness to find the white light.
(to be continued?)
00440603 (Nomans Land)
Is that a *shoe* represented below Martha’s Vineyard’s left foot as pointed out by Gerald’s lap-dancing robot Chomp formerly Chop?
Hmm. Anyway, having successfully found the light inside the dark in the interior of the Badlands Grocery Store in Interior, Fern Stalin and Billy Clockwork decide to visit 4 Buttes while they’re up in the real world, since it’s just a hop and a skip away from them over the South Dakota line in Montana. Or so they thought. But what they viewed when they got there 7 hours and 47 minutes later surprised them (again!) and made the much longer than expected trip kind of all worthwhile. The buttes didn’t appear pointy at all now like in the photos from section 02, seemingly worn down by the erosions of time. “Something’s flat, something’s off,” Fern free associated beside the rental truck while staring, thinking of soda and fizz and the lack thereof.
After taking the last draw off her old soda in hand, Fern decides that they missed something in South Dakota which caused this alternate 4 Buttes to, er, arise. “Wall,” she said intuitively to her clockwork traveling companion. “Something about Wall.” Billy knew Fern was talking about the original Real Life town they teleported into from Our Second Life (thanks Mistress!) before making their way across the heart of the Badlands to Interior. “Maybe something to do with the famous tourist trap drug store there also named Wall,” she continued in this vein, thinking back to their visit to it through her photographic memory. “Maybe…”
“Got it! A postcard I saw there. 420, Billy — seating capacity for the drug store’s cafe on the postcard but so much more. That’s what we’re looking for. Something at or about 420.” And another welcome sign, she also soon gleaned.
00440604
Didn’t mean to be such a downer with my screamy zombie creature late Halloween pic, Farcebook, so I added a Santa cap and made him my avatar for the Xmas season. I say Xmas here because the word might be banned soon — using this shortened version of Christmas while I can, you see. Merry Holidays! And Good Lord God Jesus help us all.
00440605
She looks over at the sign that she couldn’t possibly see from this angle except for the new green eyes. Thanks Lexi! They’ll come in handy for sure in this realm.
Later she plays pool with boyfriend Edward D. in her new skybox and beats the snot out of him, using mainly trick shots ta boot. You can tell from his expression below that he’s not a happy camper here. She learned a lot from her inner core, her true self. All this was just a facade, including the eyes.
Her 3rd turn in from the break, she surveyed the table and predicted a win, making Edward’s grimace even wider. He knew she didn’t declare these kind of things lightly: she’d win. She promptly sank the 3, 7, 1 and then 8 to accomplish this. “‘Nother one?” she asked about a follow up game of 8 ball while staring at an Arasaka sign this time in a normal, full on way, the same sign she attached to the back of the No Tell Hotel earlier on, “apple tree” to the side of the name just like when Fern found it right before her blackout.
“Nah, think I’ve about had it for tonight,” he said, getting ready to go back in the closet until the next time, the next game, the next location.
“Send my husband in, then.” And so Arthur was there instead.
They sit outside and watch the pink sun come up to start a brand new cyberpunk day. “Fancy a game?” she asked, knowing Edward wouldn’t mind. She’d follow 8 ball with cutthroat later on, inviting him back in to make up for the sudden exit.
(to be continued?)
00440606 (monkey man)
“Man I gotta find out what’s the shizzle about these red cubes so that Philip can stop having nightmares and falling asleep during our day work!”
“Just a little more into the light, my friend,” mask wearing Philip Strevor said far above, finally snapping under the night(mare) pressure. “Out of the darkness, into the light.” Luckily for Frank, his friend is not very patient.
“C’mon c’mon *c’mon!*” Pause. “Aw, f-ck it,” and he drops the rifle and leaves the building and falls asleep on the sidewalk outside, not remembering anything about the aborted shooting when he is awoken by that policeman.
00440607 (that policeman)
A red mushroom, a green mushroom, Officer Howard Sterner observes in his head about the yard beside him. This must be the childhood home of the famous Frank C. Lynn. Deserted his hood for a fat, rich life in the hills after writing that bestseller book, pheh.
And there’s the woman who helped him get to the top, Officer Sterner thinks 2 minutes later in his beat while passing the Fern’s sign across the road, not his usual beat since he’s filling in for Jr. Officer Philburg Johnson Jones, sick with the pill. Fern Stalin — odd name; easy to remember (Philburg told him all about her). Sounds like a commie, a red, he continues to ruminate. Maybe she converted Frank Lynn to a red, hmm. Maybe that would explain that red book he wrote. Gotta read that sometime now and see if this theory holds any water, he makes a mental note to himself.
Not too long afterwards, he spots prostrate Philip Strevor on a pile of mattresses outside the Mile High Building and rouses him to consciousness. 4:44, he pinpoints with his watch. Time of life.
00440608
“Wild dream, man,” began Frank Lynn to the others, his so-called friends Mikie and Philip Strevor, the great triumvirate of video gaming for this day and age, at least under their truer names and not their newer names created for this here blog and attached photo-novels. “I — get this — was *Chomp* (= Chop). Driving through that repo man’s window you made me do when we first met in that car with you pointing your gun at my head.”
“Yeah, ha,” said Mikie by his side, still by his side but in the right way this time. “I remember.”
“And so I drove it through that big front window — just like we did before — and lo and behold I was there again inside. As me! I was the repo man who owned the car dealership as well as his hired help doing the actual work.”
“Totally f-ed up,” says Philip, shaking his head a bit. “Okay… me,” he quickly shifted.
“*You* had a dream too, dawg?” questioned Frank Lynn, watching Philip try to remember it.
“Well, not as a *dawg*… dawg. But: yeah. I’m always having dreams lately; you know that. So in this one… actually I had a gun pointed at you too Frank.”
“Say whaat?” said Frank Lynn.
“Hmm,” said more suspicious Mikie, sensing a tall tale. Which it indeed was but not in the way he was thinking, as we know from the posts just before this one. Truth Philip is telling. He continues…
“Yeah. Let’s see: way up on top of a building, maybe a mile high even. Way up.” He points up, but only at some trees in this unspecified Lost Sanos location — working on it. “I-I was a monkey; yeah that’s it. Or dressed as a monkey, something. Maybe I just had a monkey’s head. Anyway, for some reason I didn’t pull the trigger — maybe couldn’t get a bead on your own head I was so far away. So I just dropped the gun and jumped — think I jumped.”
“Dawg!”
“Monkey,” corrected Philip, perhaps in a comical way. “But I landed right on a pile of mattresses, soft as um, downy pillows, heh. Or walked out and fell asleep on them. But then that officer came along and woke me up. And I woke up.”
“Wow man, Philip. You crazy!”
“*You* crazy.” He points to Frank as they share a chuckle. Two wild and crazy dreamers.
“Those are great, guys,” issued Mikie between them now, being only partially sarcastic in comparison to his normal, full on version. “Really. Both of you as animals… not far off, actually.”
“Pheh,” one or both of them say back.
“But now it’s *my* turn. I had a dream too as it so happens. Get a load of *this,* guys.”
And then he proceeds to tell them about finding the ring.
(to be continued)
00440609
“So I drove up to this shed in the middle of freak-n nowhere, knowing there was something inside I needed to see.
“And then when I get out of my car and went inside, I see… him.”
“Him?” said Frank Lynn.
“Monkey? Dawg?” said Philip, trying to guess.
“No, Philip. No animal in this one. It was a man. But a man made of green: a solid green man. I’m not talking about someone wearing just a green shirt and green pants or even a green body suit. Green — top of the head to the bottom of the feet. And *glowing*.”
“Freaky,” said enraptured Frank Lynn.
“O-kaay,” uttered Philip Strevor. He needed to get some meth ready for a sale tonight, he thinks in the back of his head, but it can wait a little longer. He wants to see this through. In the moment, he even tries to focus a bit, which is rare.
“He starts to describe who he is,” continues Mikie. “Said he was actually made of uranium and that he was from the planet Uranus. ‘Both?’ I asked. ‘Both,’ he said.”
“Maybe he wanted you to think he was a piece of glowing sh-t,” offered Philip.
“Maybe,” said Mikie. “Okay, so then I remembered I had a Geiger counter on me — don’t ask me how. I switch it on — in my head somehow; something — and the thing registered off the charts, way too dangerous to stand very close to. So I backed off, planned my escape. Just then he turned into something else, like he was picking up on my fear. A human. Maybe — I don’t know — to be more on my level or something. Some kind of mind meld, mind you.”
“Huh,” said Frank Lynn.
“Hmph,” said Philip, shifting his feet and starting to truly get impatient. Just a little more.
“He was, I don’t know, trying to tell me something. He wanted me to know how he got here. Or what would happen to him if the wrong people found him. He was afraid, get this, of white people. He was green; they were white. Like, er, you and me Philip. But not like Frank Lynn, who’s black instead. He said he wasn’t afraid of black — specified it. Just white. Unless white combines with black to turn gray.”
“Listen,” said a now quite confused Philip. “I’m outta here; gotta measure out some drugs for a deal. I told my dream, I listened to yours, Frank Lynn, and I’ve listened to Mikie’s here long enough too. Green man in shed. Radioactive asshole or something. Got it.”
“Don’t you want to know if the white people catch up with him, dawg?” said Frank Lynn to Philip Strevor, who was already walking away.
“Nah, I’ll leave that story with you and your outstanding blackness,” he waved off while leaving the scene.
(to be continued)
00440610
“‘I kill them,’ he said to me in the dream within the dream. ‘I kill them all.’ All the white people that accepted him, I realized, took him in and away from the shed. I felt horror. I was next!”
“Dawg, *dam*mit!” said Frank Lynn, alone as a listener now and picturing Mikie’s described awful scene in his head.
“But then he was back, just a dummy or something in a shed in the middle of nowhere, the nearby landfill smelling stronger than ever. I realized this was his proper place. I woke up.”
—–
“I think we’ve found our Slaughterhouse,” spoke observing Fern to — probably Billy still, I’m guessing. Yes, there he is.
(to be continued?)
00440611 (Plant Man)
“Thaaat’s betterr.”
“Hold still Mr. Middle Slaughter, tee hee. Say cheese.”
“Cheeeeeese.”
“Perfect.” Snap.
00440612 (‘Gotta light?’ 02)
“Fern?
“Over here.
“The switch.”
00440613 (plywood blocks)
He had some time to kill before he was needed again, so Edward D. decided to explore a bit more of this re-creation of Cyberpunk 2007’s Night City occurring out in the Estate sims, beyond just his involvement with Shelley Emily. At the core of this re-creation: Lizzy’s HoloCore nightclub, run by our own, chrome plated Tin Lizzy. Or at least tin. That’s one of the things I want to discuss when I catch up with her next through one character or another, perhaps Edward D. but perhaps not — perhaps here but perhaps not here as well. Why the switch from gold to tin in the conversion of Night City to Nightsity? And since this is Our Second Lyfe, I suppose this is Nightsity too, so she’ll be that dulled silver color again when we meet up with her in person, like we’ve seen at least once before in this here photo-novel, 44 in a series. I’m guessing it had something to do with a humbling and coming back down to earth, since tin in alchemy is often described as a base metal leading to gold, where you start the whole process from. Along with the more commonly named lead in this role. Here we can turn to Texas for more information, specifically one county in the longhorn state named Coleman. What’s going on here? Cornering the gold market?
Anyhoot, back to Edward and the present. He reads more about this particular brand of Nightsity in the floating text at the entrance:
Hmm. Corners again.
And peeking around the corner or edge of Lizzy’s nightclub in the still-being-built city: that damn, bright red apple tree popping up again, sometimes called cherry. But we know better.
(to be continued)
00440614
“Can I ax a question?”
“Uh HUH. Clever. But go ahead.” She was closely studying the act happening in front of us which didn’t interest him — me. Wrong body type. I wondered why. Gay? But maybe she’s just studying the girl’s moves for some kind of future reference. I popped it.
“Why?”
“Why?” she said back. I knew she knew what I meant. And she knew I knew. So I let the question stand as is. I thought of Dr. Why coming out of left field in Fern’s hospital scene to join Who, What and Idontknow in a makeshift team of physicians that didn’t care about answers in the end. Maybe Lizzy doesn’t care either. She decided to extend an olive branch.
“Let’s go back to Oklahoma and not Texas to see how much you remember. Sepisexton — Olive to Oklahoma. The Abstraction, 7 to 6. Gaeta, the 7th (continent), suddenly went dark. That affected everything that runs Our Second Lyfe behind the scenes. A change was made. The Flesh Pit was exposed for what it is, mystery no more. There’s even a bit of it poking through the supposedly vacant lot behind Aisle of Palms now, threatening its very existence if you didn’t know about that already.”
“I’ve already determined I’m going to give that up,” I said through Edward, handy in the moment.
“You have no *choice* now, though. If you’d taken that 4096 when it came up for rent. Or just bought it — maybe all this could have been avoided.”
“Who?” Pause. “What?” More standalone questions. Our fields of energy were becoming one. She was changing back. But not yet — hold off.
“I am the Ten that can turn into One,” she answered the first. “Ten is more important that Gold here. Do you have to ask?”
“Lincoln.”
“Correct. Lincoln is an alchemist.”
00440615
“Why is this lady dancing up a storm?” Billy logically asked.
“I don’t know, but she better be *careful*,” Fern returned. “She better remember Edward — out in the desert.” But then she turned away from frenzied bartender Lexi to stare at Edward in a nearby booth with the owner of the night club, this Tin Lizzy she knew pretty well now. She’d brought him here just for this very reason, she then understood. To prove that the other Edward, the other Edward D. even, is separate from this one, who is still alive and well thank you very much and living in Our Second Lyfe where he belongs. Not up there in the real (virtual) world of Cyberpunk 2077.
That explains the black and white photo on one side of the bar; she also obviously set that up as part of the message (“Crybaby”)…
… along with the other b&w on its opposite side. So if one side of the bar is a foot, she thought, then the other side is also also a foot?
“Got it!” she shouted again in a Eureka moment, common for the brilliant, ever-thinking woman. She could see now what was really going on. In the middle of the bar, Lexi changed into a dog which spoke to Billy in a language only robots could understand. “End this,” it said to him.
The perpetual waterfall, Billy remembered. The final attachment. He and Lexi were waterproof — they’d be fine, ha ha ha ha. Ho ho ho ho ho.
00440616
“Well Wheeler. Here we are at the end.”
“So… you’re admitting I’m Wheeler,” spoke Shelley to his side, also watching the water rise on the scene below.
“You’re Wheeler, yes. You’re my *daughter* Wheeler. I also have a wife Wheeler. And probably a mother Wheeler and also a dog Wheeler.”
“Down there,” she spoke, pointing to the robot dog still positioned in the middle of the bar, likewise water walking Fern Stalin studying it, wondering what makes it tick or if it could have ticks or fleas, but especially where it’s taking humanity as a whole. Obviously a lot of people will die as a result of this — flood. But the ones who survive will have a cleansed world to repopulate, free of the former dirt and smut and filth. Led at least in part by Fern, the chosen one. The one with the WOW factor.
“What about Billy?” asked Wheeler-Shelley, seeing the water submerge his small 3-4 foot robot body completely now.”
“Waterproof,” Newt spoke.
“Oh, of course. From novel 34.”
“Well,” said Newt. “Close enough.” He raises his glass of high alcohol purple snog beer from the counter. “So should we toast to the end? Another successful photo-novel?”
“Not quite,” Wheeler-Shelley said, keeping her beer on the counter and knowing more was to come.
Sunklands 