00430601 (going home…)
… before it’s too late.
She timed the exit perfectly. “Oh. Hi Shelley. Seems we’re going out at the same time.”
“Hi Lexi,” Shelley said while stopping her walk, letting her neighbor approach. “Where’re you heading?”
“You first.”
“I thought about shopping down at the mega-mall today. Boot sale at Fairies.”
“Hey, me too! What are the odds?”
Too odd, Shelley thought, but went along with it good-naturedly. She was use to attention like this, could handle the needed distance. She walked her own beat. In her own shoes. Keds, soon to be more she hoped.
But the boots didn’t suit her and she emerged from the Hooktip mega-mall still with Keds. Keds for the kids, she figured, to go along with the hair style she hadn’t changed since childhood. Lexi said she couldn’t find any boots to suit her as well, so retained her own shoes too, black cosplays I believe.
As they arrived back at their apartments, Lexi invites Shelley to help her unpack the big plywood cube from Montana that arrived yesterday’s day before (Saturday). “Get this,” she said. “There’s a robot dog in there just like from my childhood. Can’t *wait* to put it together.” But then Lexi remembered the likewise plywood colored pictures on her living room wall, the shells and, especially, the keyhole with the beautiful girl inside, Lexi’s representation of Shelley as Fern had already determined during her visit several posts back. “Uh, just remembered my apartment is a mess,” she backtracked. “Need to clean up. Maybe tomorrow, he he.”
Shelley stuck out her hand to shake. “It’s a date,” making Lexi actually blush a bit. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long. Date, but not what she hoped. Still the word was out there, ready to be molded into something different. She envisions a happy ending. And she’ll have that robot built by then and they can play fetch with it or something. It can be *their* pet. Together (sigh). She finally remembers to let go of Shelley’s hand.
“Laters,” Shelley says, using that same hand to wave brief parting in one, graceful motion, like a dancer, Lexi noted. Soon she will be dancing to a different beat, she hopes, watching her walk away.
00430602 (shining)
Baker Bloch stares at Ring Lady in Falmouth collage 07 and decides he must call a town meeting before things progress further. He *rings* up Wheeler, she rings up Hucka who still isn’t really talking to the male Baker. He rings up Newt which is kind of himself — in the same room. He rings up Baker Blinker his original female counterpart and still is in ways. And last: Grassy, representative of all things toys. How exciting to be getting the cores back together, chatting with each other again.
“Status report, Wheeler,” he requests to his right from his seat of power at the Blue Feather Table. “How’s daughter Shelley doing over in Heterocera?”
“Hooktip, right,” Wheeler clarifies. “Well, she’s going back her roots. And, no, before you say it it’s not brunette.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” says Baker Bloch, serious for tonight’s meeting. Tonight’s important important meeting. Because all of Collagesity Aisle of Palms is at stake.
“Newt. To my left. Hi, first.”
“Hi.”
“We haven’t talked in a while.”
“Since Friday.”
“A year ago, yes.”
“Approximately.”
“How’s *your* daughter doing? Jennifer isn’t it?”
“Shelley,” answers Newt the same as Wheeler. For it is their child. We went over that in novels 34 and also 35. And some in 36-39 as well. Before the Big Change in 40. When Newt points this out, talk shifts to this change.
“40 is where I started reading Dolores Cannon and her Convoluted Universe series,” begins Baker on this new theme. “40 is where, through (the conduit of) Bellissaria, things started to head offworld. And then Aisle of Palms was founded (in 41). Current base; for 1/2 year now. About the last time we talked, Newt.”
“Approximately,” he said again. But what’s time in a town like this?
“So this brings us to the question: What if we just head offworld *permanently*? Exist in Youtube videos about Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Cyberpunk 2077? Before getting a better computer and purchasing all those games and being able to walk inside them with an actual avatar, mind you. That could take another year. Years. Newt, we may not be talking with each other again until after that decision is made.”
“Fine,” he answered, knowing it didn’t matter in the long run. Baker was him and he was Baker. *All* were Baker. Besides Wheeler, besides Hucka, besides Baker Blinker, Grassy and some other cores. But mainly Wheeler. She was the new female to Baker’s male, the queen to his prime minister (of Aisle of Palms). He holds the power but she holds the jewels. They must be a balance. Newt doesn’t really play a role in this except as an exteriorization of Baker, a way for Wheeler to have a husband and so have Shelley as her child. Married to Arthur Kill still, yes (novel 35), but flirting around with Edward Daigle (37-43). Can the horses keep moving together in the same direction?
(to be continued)
00430603 (art and music)
“*There* you are, Greg Ogden you sneaky devil,” he said while watching him paint bathing beauty Redd again in a totally different location than before, different from anything we’ve seen so far in this here photo-novel, 43 in a series. “We’ll catch up as soon as I finish my tour, you abstracter you. I’ll remember where you are.”
Likewise period clothes wearing Greg said nothing, as if he wasn’t even aware of him passing by. The man hadn’t created an identity yet in this new land. Maybe that’s the problem. So on to the next terrace…
… where he encounters a band of progressive folk rock musicians. “The Whistler approaches!” said their leader as he comes into the scene. “A song for the Whistler!” And they leap right into the Jethro Tull song of that same name.
He circled around behind them, listening, then remembering. “It’s *Witcher*, not Whistler,” he exploded, bringing the tune to a screeching halt. “I am the Witcher. Fools.” With this declaration, he also recalled his mission. To save the town from a monster.
Now to refind Greg Ogden, because he knows something about this too.
“Halt Greg Ogden! Stand back from that *demon*!” he says to the painter when approaching again. Greg heard him this time, as the Witcher knew he would now that he understood who he was. Paintbrush dropped like the tune before it, he stood back. Redd’s face had changed.
00430604
“I first saw what Mmmmmm Grassy Knoll later verified as some kind of Tiler in the slums of Kabusie, Green being his nature through his mask. He was posed in front of a red green yellow blue shack appropriately enough that we’ll also see around the fringes of the city: the Badlands, the Oil Fields, etc.
“Just afterward I spied him conversing with another Greenie on a nearby bench, solidifying the connection. Green tiles too, you’ll notice.
“Then to up the ante and finish the deal we shortly run across *3* identical, different Greenies (with brown shirts) meeting in the middle of a busy Kabusie street next to the roundabout Grassy also cited. Green tiles on either side of the street there too.
“So bringing back Washington state into the picture like with Kabusie, I have decided this is actually about the Green, the White, the Black,” Fern Stalin summarized at the Yalta Bar and Grill in Castle Town to her pal Lichen Roosevelt, with no Churchill still to be found. She’s talking about 3 central Washington rivers now, and how their histories intersect toward the beginning of the last century. “Green use to be White up to Black,” she started in this vein. “Then in 1906 the course of White changed after a land altering flood and Green no longer flowed into it just above a town called Auburn. Instead Green became its own entity, separate from White, up to Black about 10 miles north, which is the Black River. Then in 1916 things changed again with the opening of (Seattle’s) Lake Washington Ship Canal, an event that lowered the level of the namesake lake by 9 feet, thereby drying up former outlet Black as its water flowed instead toward Puget Bay. Thus Black no longer flowed into Green. Disconnection in that direction (too). Follow me?”
“Disconnection… of both Black… *and* White… to Green?”
“Very good, Lichen. You’ve been studying your soils again. And that started… what?”
“The war,” she said confidently.
“The war to end all wars. Green vs. Gray — or Grey with an e, either one — depending on which side you want to emerge on top or maybe depending on which side of the ocean you’re on, British or American. Like Diablo and Draco before it. Trouble is, it never ends itself. Ouroboros. ‘Nother one. And Old Mabel’s Little Big got sucked into all that when Mars entered the fray, as was inevitable.
“Gray is Black and White together,” Lichen continued to grasp and grapple with Fern’s concepts. “Therefore, Gray is separate — disconnected — from Green. Therefore… um.”
“We must bring in the Indians to continue,” supplied Fern. “Where Black and White historically intersect at what they called the Inside Place — pre-1906. True Gray. Or Grey with an e. We must go there next. Find the within spot, the still one. I just hope it’s there still,” she tried to joke. Lichen didn’t crack a smile. She’d figured out something while Fern attempted jest, perhaps a transfer of talents in the moment. Sages. They had to look for sages. Little and Big Soos, hard to differentiate from each other at the source. She excitedly told Fern this, which led to the uncovering of these old pictures from photo-novel 3. The expression “wow” comes to mind (!), since the name here is from a 6 mile tributary of Washington state’s Green River near Auburn called Soos and not the Gravity Falls character.
Keep in mind that Mabel’s name also originates in this TV show. Along with her twin brother Little Big’s.
00430605 (Atten-hut!)
The 4 horsemen are logically reduced to two and brought into closer proximity with the main body that leads or steers. Let’s call this one “Big Ear 02”. What’s he hearing through the fusion?
00430606
He tried to spy the location of his vineyard from between these two blooming bushes but had not yet trained eyes to see the names popping out in the landscape before him. He was still new-ish to this region of Tousaint, different from the one with 2 s’s, as he himself was Gerald and not Geralt in this alternate reality cooked up just for the blog (and attached photo-novel of course; always the photo-novel too now, the ultimate output beyond a mere seemingly disparate collection of individualized posts). And a dog! he remembered. Chomp — he *thinks* that’s the name. Never really good with appellations. Pet of the old owner who passed away. “Looks like a canine goes along with the property,” said Princess Annabel while signing off on the deed and seeing the clause. He’d never had one, after all the years of living on planet… er, what *planet* is this? Anyway, maybe he was ready to settle down at last, put his witcher ways behind him.
“Morning Witcher!” a group of citizens called to him as he exited to viewing patio, joining the flow of the community again. “Gerald,” he tested. “Call me Gerald.” It would take a while to catch on.
(to be continued)
00430607 (archipelago)
“As you can see when we change the map into something more modern, Feedem becomes Freedom. This is probably a mistranslation, then, but significant still. Because it indicated where Arthur and Shelley should go to rekindle their marriage. And with his money from all those roles in all those Shakespeare plays — worldwide, mind you — he bought a top of the line yacht to celebrate the find. Actually he found the yacht and pretended to buy it but never mind that now. So there they are on this hot tropical island paradise, complete with a dog named Chomp who keeps chasing his own tail. Twins.
“I’ll open up the Table to questions.”
(to be continued)
00430608
“Found her, Lichen!” Hiding behind that flamingo, pink for pink. Another revisit of an origin story you’ll notice: Voyageurs, where we all 3 started from. Remember you did that fabulous cow gag where you had me believing Wendy had 4 stomachs when we began studying her? Wonderful!” Fern wanted to encourage and bolster Lichen’s sense of humor as much as possible since she was slated for a stand up gig at Bull’s Bar on the 9th, setting aside her natural sharpness. Or trying to.
That checked off, it was on to the next task. In Washington state. “Keep your eyes peeled for anything giving hints that the energy of Black jumped over here after drying up to continue its existence.” And eventually be shown to the world, she realized while starting up the trail on her bike and thinking about the camera, Lichen right behind her. I’ll remember to give her some lines the next post she’s in, maybe dealing with her bar act (Sorry Lichen!).
Something was wrong here…
… very wrong.
Fern and Lichen decided to stay here for a while and eat their packed lunch to see if the phenomenon reappears at roughly the same spot. Fern believes it could have everything to do with Soos Creek in the foreground she’ll be staring at while dining. Tree barking Lichen knows better. The phenomenon has everything to do with the ring she secretly stashed up her bunghole in her pants pocket before the ride. Owned by someone who is also a Ryder. They would not recreate it while stationary and off the path. Must be on. Moving on…
There (again)!
00430610
“So as you can see very clearly in the next photo, Ring Lady’s, let’s see, *right* eye begins to form in the middle of the upper central guy’s forehead, obviously scrubbed clean by Kubrick to emphasize this very transition. I’m amazed more Shining researchers haven’t found it.”
“And now we think this woman is a Ryder?” Wheeler to his right tries to clarify in her own head. “As in Winona?”
“Correct,” answers Baker Bloch, the male Baker at the head of the Table, head visible only from the hat up in this angle. The female Baker (Blinker) couldn’t make it — head cold. But Newt was here to his left, if with no visible head. And so was huge green headed Grassy sitting across from Baker. He’d just finished his talk about Kabusie in the Cyberpunk 2077 game platform, and how it leads to Soos. Leading to this.
“Do you think *Winona* knows about this? Perhaps through Rolling Stone?”
“Maybe,” says Baker to Wheeler. “She’s a bright little girl.”
“So the woman, this ring woman, in the Shining’s ending photograph… is…”
“Ryder, yes. The same.”
And clearly with the ring that becomes Jack’s left eye, she noted in the 3rd photo Baker shared for further explanation. Glowing as if radioactive. And apparently it was. Uranium for Uranus.
00430611 (Mr. S)
They were just experimenting with the one bike between takes, merely rubbing noses it seems, when the director called them back to the set. “Actually,” he said when they returned to the plywood backdrop in the background above that represented all things Soos Creek, “I think we’ll just go with *plywood* this time — let *plywood* be the actor. The girls logically thought this idea was the result of his rock cocaine imbibed during the break but he was altogether serious. Plywood actor it is, a hire from the Robots Guild. Since he could travel at 181.56 miles per hour and the Guild was only 5 miles away, given a favorable wind and a pretty straightforward path between points A and B it only took him around 2 minutes to reach the set once the call was put in.
“Aaaaanddd ACTION!”
“Hmm, where’d they go?”
00430612 (The Letter)
Gerald realizes there’s only 1 bush and not 2. Not 2 S’s in other words. He is a former witcher true, but his name is Gerald, not Geralt. And the “monster” he slayed in Tousaint — 1 s again — is Redd not Rhenawedd, exposed for the double face she is. The immediate giveaway is that she couldn’t be painted, thus artist Greg Ogden’s highly abstracted depiction of her appearing on his canvas much to his chagrin initially. Later he got use to the style, eventually descending further further further into this new art until only pure mathematics and pure chance were left, 2 faces of one thing themselves. You are what you paint.
Harking back to the Oracle there is a historic village named Tousaint in Ohio along the Toussaint River, the lone example for that town name in our country of the US of A. And in the same county of Sandusky with Clyde and Fremont.
Oops. Wrong map. 🙂
We recall that Mikie’s Frank’s therapist was named Clyde, soon to be changed to Fremont as June-July-August inevitably slides into Fall and beyond. A larger community for higher ideas and ideals. And this returns us to Mars through the backdoor, Asylum bartender Teebestia with a mask herself waiting on Anderson, Norris and Hayes at once, as if she had 3 heads to match each of theirs. Triumvirate.
“I’ll open up the Table to questions.”
00430613
“If you were smart, you’d figure out more about the beanstalk through Wyatt in Missouri.”
“Who’s there? Who’s that?”
Pause. “Wilson,” she decided to say.
—–
I’m not sure why I liked thunderstorms at night so much but when they came I almost inevitably found myself outside exploring the roads and byways of Tousaint, drenched or not. Tonight was no exception.
Maybe it was the lack of people around to distract me from my thoughts, but these beaten paths weren’t very populated even in the center of the day so that wasn’t much of a reason. And I didn’t mind chatting with an occasional acquaintance or even friend I might meet along the way. Good way to keep up with gossip about the realm.
So what was it?
Sometimes my new dog Chomp would follow me onto the road during these nights but would always turn back upon the first loud thunderclap. That one time I took graytop mushrooms before going out, putting the green after it instead of before for a change, alchemically speaking. “Damn!!” he issued loudly in a surprisingly feminine voice for such a butch appearing mutt at the initial boom. “I’m out of here, boss!” and hightailed back home. That’s when I decided to put the grey before the green more often and listen to what he had to say. A lot as it turned out! He seemed to know more about the realm than any single person for sure. And even beyond its borders, far far beyond…
00430614
It happened shortly after the rain started, probably after the first thunderclap. “What’s that, boy? Timmy’s fallen down a well and can’t get out but never mind that now and more important matters are pressing?” Frank repeated after his talking dog (in his head, for now). “Well, lead on!” he said.
The rain had stopped and it had gotten light when they came to this upside down guy with his parachute stuck in a tree down a nearby dirt road. A man from Tennessee, he claimed. No, a man *named* Tennessee, let’s change it. So the Blue Balls/Blue Moons sculptor is actually a man and not a woman as presumed. But what’s he doing in this tree, dropped down from the sky? Helicopter? Better cut him down so we can ask more questions.
Back on the ground, Frank told him that he had Chomp to thank for his rescue. But in turning around to find the dog — nothing. Frank didn’t own a dog, never had never will. And then the parachutist was gone too; Frank Lynn had apparently hallucinated the whole scenario. No more graytop mushrooms! he swore off then and there.
—–
But he eventually couldn’t resist — Mikie talked him into it I believe. This caused the second manifestation of the dog in another thunderclap during another thunderstorm, all part of it too. He was wetter and blacker this time, Frank noted through the gray-ish haze. “What’s that, boy?” he began to talk to the mutt again in his head. “Timmy remains trapped down in that well but there’s still more important matters to deal with tonight over at the damn, er, dam?”
So he followed the dog again down a different road this time to, as it turns out, the Petrochemistry Dam in a whole ‘nother game. The same guy was in trouble once more.
“Tennessee — if that’s your real name. What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s perfectly fine,” he said, teetering on the edge of death. “I just have to finish what the tree stopped before. The parachute opened by accident. I never intended to be saved.”
“Man that’s crazy. Get down from there!”
“Too late! AAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Muttering about him being a damn (dam?) fool, Frank Lynn rushed to the bottom….
… only to find someone totally different lying in the blood tainted stream there. Somehow someway, Tennessee had switched over to Kentucky in the free fall. Then everything disappeared just like before. He had Clyde on the phone in no time to schedule an emergency session, but his therapist had bad news too. He was changing jobs and moving. In the fall. No bookings before then. This is when Fremont came into his life. And Rutherford B. Hayes became the first president of our US of A to never be president. Triumvirate.
—-
“Go see Jonny Silverhhand to end this thing,” spoke Blue Moon to me when she popped up good as new over at the Kabusie roundabout marketplace after about 3 days we’ll say. “Just around the ‘corner’ — you can’t miss him.” And then she came to me and pecked a kiss on my cheek before walking away, saving the best for later.
00430615 (garage as it turns out (a kind of bat cave))
“Try to open this door,” Silverhhand said as I walked up. Around the corner, just as Blue Moon indicated.
I went up to the keypad, noticed the thing was laid out like that of a traditional phone, 3 or 4 letters grouped under each number. This:
2 corresponds to A, B, C
3 corresponds to D, E, F
4 corresponds to G, H, I
5 corresponds to J, K, L
6 corresponds to M, N, O
7 corresponds to P, Q, R, S
8 corresponds to T, U, V
9 corresponds to W, X, Y, Z
“Jesus. We’re almost at the end. Hurry up with it, will you.”
And so I took Jonny literally and carefully typed in 53787, the numbers standing for the letters in the name he just gave me. JESUS. No go. Then I thought of the WOW signal that had replaced JESUS in Grand Theft Auto’s version of Richard Knight’s Salvation Mountain over in the southwest part of the state, and, suspiciously, containing some of the same letters. What was it? I thought. Yes, 6E, um Q, J, and, er, 5. U somewhere in there too. Right, 6EQUJ5, I put them together in my head. That sounded right. So I figured out the corresponding numbers for the included letters and then typed 637855, so close to the other number. The door opened after I punched in 8, so only 4 needed. Even closer, then: 6378 to 5378. Only 1 after if we count in 1000s. I walked inside.
Silverhhand manifested on a lighted table in the revealed room full of high tech equipment. “Well what do we have here?” He was staring at a huge projection screen on the far wall, maybe a TV. He picked up a conveniently placed guitar, started strumming a tune he said was called “Beast of Tousaint”. “Ring any kind of bell?” he asked after playing a couple of bars. “Say… a mountaintop?” Suddenly images began to form on the screen across from us, layered one after another in a kind of domino effect. All this confused me at first. The people in the images appeared… different than the ones in Nightsity. They seemed alien to me. Then I recognized one about 5 in, which caused a domino effect itself. From there until the end of the “presentation” about 30 slides later many if not most seemed familiar. I had indeed seen them before. On a mountaintop. In Tousaint. I told this to Jonny who had finished his song by then.
“Good boy. Good, We’re ready to go out to the Oil Fields.” And his 97 silver 911 Porsche manifested before the screen representing a quick way out there. Would take hours to walk.
00430616 (Silverhhand)
Just over here, V. Behind these Tiler shacks.
—–
“So this is how it is?”
“What did you expect? A tombstone? Flag and flowers?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
“You blew up Arastraville Tower. You killed a lot of people, Jonny. And where did it get you in the end? The corps and their suits for men are still in control.”
“I know I know.” He pauses. “I was a musician too besides being a terrorist,” he tried.
“One overrides the other?” I asked as a question. Because I was curious how Jonny was going to balance the two. History would view the music as largely about terrorism, not visa versa. Music should ultimately be uplifting, not constantly tearing down our lives, deconstructing them. Something like Blue Moon and her UK Cracks have merit just by that virtue alone. I told Jonny this.
“Are you saying I should have listened more to those bubblegum bitches?”
“Maybe. Cary listened. He liked them. Until… well, you know.”
Both thought of the death of Blue Moon and possibly Redd the Menace too.
“Maybe it should have been me at the bottom of that damn dam instead of Kentucky. Maybe history would have viewed me more in a positive light.”
“That’s static in that direction, Jonny. You’re not Blue Moon, you’re not bubblegum pop. You’re hard edged rock ‘n roll, always have been, always will. You can’t change who you are inside, the core.”
“Can’t you?” Exhale; another pause. “You know I thought about being an artist, V. A painter instead of an axer. Pretty good too. Won some awards as a child prodigy.”
I checked my watch, thought about the growing length of this section. “Yeah, really don’t have time to explore alternate realities right now, Jonny. The musician/terrorist polarity is complicated enough. Any last words? Over your grave, I mean.”
“Just carve the initials and let’s get out of here.”
“Done, and…
“Done.”
Sunklands 