00460401
Another one looking for Roberts and Franklin, Officer Buford thinks, trying to distract himself from the carnage behind him. He can tell because she doesn’t seem to know her way around. Only regulars use the asylum, and noone goes downtown unless there’s legal or other problems or maybe to fix their car at Ben’s. This one doesn’t have a car. This one has some kind of legal or other problems, he’s determined by process of elimination. And so it is.
—–
She finally finds the right teleport spot and then walks over to the office, stepping inside.
“You!” says the receptionist, thinking she recognizes her either from print or film, reader’s choice. Probably print, though. Because of the not knowing the location here.
“Oh. Never mind,” the receptionist backtracks the reaction. “You’re not her. Can I help you, then?”
“I’m looking for Franklin,” Charlene The Punk Brown begins, taking all the oddness in stride. “Or Roberts — let’s make it Roberts,” she decides.
“Big House,” says Wanda (Wanda again?). “Investigating a Big Foot sighting.”
“Exactly why I’m here.”
“Not surprising,” Wanda quickly replies. “It will be a debunking, mind you. They always are. I’m just trying to save you some money up front. We have enough guillible people coming through here to keep my boat afloat.”
“Wondering about that.”
“You get use to it,” she says about the boat that keeps her afloat.
“Riiight, so… just use the teleporter outside again? One of the selections?”
“I’ll take you. I need to get out of here for a while anyway.” And so she did.
—–
Not so big, thinks Charlene, being behind Wanda a bit due to not quite getting the hang of these wonky teleporters still, pheh. But then she opened the front door to the house.
“Up here!!” Wanda calls from quite a far distance, quite a far distance indeed.
20 minutes later she was there after climbing up a rope from a trash bin.
(to be continued)
00460402
“Is this Roberts?” says Charlene, knowing it wasn’t but saying it anyway. Just to kill some time.
“No that’s just another dead body; girl named Time. Over here,” Wanda instead directs Charlene’s attention while still looking out across the room from that perch on the giant vanity table. “Those shoes. That’s you!”
“Me?” Pink high heeled shoes, Charlene observes under the distant bed again. And a blue body stretched out and strapped in up top. Disturbing!
“Oh. Right,” backtracks Wanda once more. “That’s someone else. I keep forgetting.”
“O–kay. But *Roberts*,” Charlene tries to focus the queer, young receptionist. “Where’s the private investigator I came to see? I’ll take Franklin too, mind you. If she’s closer or more available.”
“Roberts is good. Roberts is *there*. Big Feet (!).”
Wanda doesn’t move, but suddenly they were there.
—–
“Ms. Brown. Ms. *Brown*. Slap her again,” commands Roberts from above, fresh from a case. So Wanda does.
I fully come around, sit up from my stretched out if not strapped in position on the floor by the door. I hear Roberts tell Wanda to return to her desk, job done.
“I must have, ow!, tripped over the bow of that boat.”
“What boat?” Roberts says, not even looking around for one. “Never mind. Get up when you feel like it and come into my office. We have many things to talk about.”
“We do?” I said, still aching, still recovering.
“Yes.”
00460403
“So you see, the giant blue cryptid turned out to be a really big human with blue painted toenails. Uncovering this, I hightailed it out of there via the rope I came down on because, you know, they were still *Big Feet*. Case closed. I file that one under Solved like all the rest of its kind.
“And so, Ms. Brown, I can tackle any case like that, debunk it in, say, 3 days tops. Like yours. What was it, underwater sighting in that tunnel over in the inland sea? 2 days for that. First off, it was probably a costume, probably someone you even know. Who reported this to you?”
“Well, um. My brother actually. He’s a, er, shapeshifter himself.”
“Shapeshifter, phtt,” Roberts dismissed the word outright. “No such thing.”
“I’ve seen him — it.”
“People see many things and interpret it their own way. The planet Venus becomes a UFO, The Moon turns into the face of a vanilla rapist hiding behind some trees. It goes on and on. I hate to be the one to burst your bubble–.”
“About Bigfoot, then,” hastens Charlene, having to get back to the records store by 3 when assistant Devon’s shift is over. “The Nawt Vaya one.”
“Ah, Nawt Vaya,” Roberts mouths the location. “Forgot the name for it. Clever.” She thought of Alamo and Arizona, smelly, salty inland sea transmuted to clean, freshwater one. Probably worth it despite the lowering of resolution.
“How much to, er, find out the truth?”
Roberts thinks of Wanda’s boat that must remain afloat, along with the business itself. Cases were kind of coming in slower than usual right now because of the aftermath of the flood. She reviews what Charlene Brown has told her. She runs a records store in a place called The Burg. Doesn’t sound like much money in that. But before, she says she worked as an adjunct faculty member of a local university. Studying cryptids of all things. Her research parallels some of mine. No real proof for any of it. She’s thinking about making a film of the subject to reenter the field, mostly emphasizing the debunking, throw in some loose ends here and there. Loose ends, she would admit if pressed, that she too has about the existence of bigfoot. Could this particular one — represent a loose end? After all, Charlene is pretty seasoned on the subject. In all likelihood not, but…
“No charge,” Roberts decides, making Charlene crack a smile. She’d have to sell a lot of records to level up to her standard fees, Roberts thinks. But the movie — she could ask for a role in it, recoup the cost that way and then some; help emphasize the debunking aspect as most paying customers would expect; help organize the financial backing along those lines. “Now: tell me more about this film.”
(to be continued)
00460404
She was already absorbed in preparing for another case with an appropriate upgrade of clothes for a richer client. “Goodbye Ms. Brown. Do you need Wanda to help you back to the teleporter?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks!”
—–
“And so that’s how the whole thing started, the whole investigation thing,” Charlene began wrapping up her story told at the Uptown Bakery after the town meeting, Downtown having no such establishment and thus no option for them to support fellow Downtown businesses in that way. But, then again, Uptown has nothing like Emily New Moon’s adult oriented video store or Charlene’s records store specializing in vintage vinyl. “Sending Wolvie potentially up the Big Creek,” she continued, “but, lucky for us, wink wink, only resulting in probationary work. With me, ha. Working on my film along with Roberts. With her encouragement, I’m upping the bigfoot debunking angle. She’s got some major players involved now, bringing in some big money. We could be looking at Hollywood box office hit, Emily. I’m talking major leagues, Cincinnati Reds stuff. No more Louisville Cardinals.”
“That’s sounds fabulous,” said Emily to her friend, her lover on odd nights of the calendar with Wolvie taken even and them taking turns with the first day of the month, those always being odd and so stacking the *odds* in Charlene’s favor. They worked it out in a way. And then there was the problem of the full moon for Wolvie. Speaking of which, there’s one tonight…
“You know Wolvie’s right,” Emily New Moon said to Charlene after a couple more bites of her donut, trying to frame the words correct in her head. “Bigfoot’s real. It’s (munch), common knowledge on the Makah Indian Reservation where I was raised. My Aunt Whistling Bark saw them, or at least heard them. She was just unloading her trash at the Sooes Creek Dump. Recorded the sounds on her phone even.” She pulls out her cell phone from a back pocket. “Here, I think I have them saved—”
“No need, Emily. I know they’re real.”
“You *do*? Then why act this way? Why accept, I mean, you’re being *persuaded* to debunk the… I mean, um.”
“I know what you mean. You just have to trust I have a plan. Like *you* have a plan for your Blue Moon Kentucky video tape. Paired pet projects we can call them. You have withheld secrets and so do I, wink wink.”
—–
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of town in its Park District, Wolvie locks himself in and prepares for the long night ahead.
00460405
I took another day off to explore the town more. I’d taken a lot of days off lately. Perhaps I was already pretty bored with the mayor’s job, I don’t know. I found myself wandering… and wondering. Here I sit in Downtown’s subway station watching a train that never stops. Where is it going? Where’s it been? Never here apparently, or never gathered people here or dropped them off. I move on…
… to an abandoned petrol station, wandering and then wondering about the name Clyde on the window over there behind the tires. I knew the town was formerly called Blue Ball or Blue Balls so that didn’t seem to fit, despite the name Clyde being applied to a lot of towns across our fair country of America back in the day. Like one in Ohio where famed American author Sherwood Anderson grew up, along with U.S. independently affiliated senator and so-called father of the TVA George Norris and a couple of other famous people, including a Civil War Union general I can’t recall the name of.
I know, I’ll go ask Charlene. But maybe Emily would be a better target, having been here in The Burg longer. What’s her story, why did she move off the Makah Indian Reservation after being raised there? Something about Wolvie? — probably something about Wolvie. So that ropes in Charlene who’s the sister of what clearly is a shapeshifter in this here town, probably a werewolf by the sound of it. And he recognized me (!). In that service station with the black and white wolf poster over in Juho. I wonder how Newt is doing over there (her thoughts deflect). I wonder if he’s done anything with Newtonia since I’ve been… away.
That graffiti artist over yonder (she triangulates between useless subway and abandoned petrol station, a right one it appears). Maybe they will know something about Clyde. Worth a try.
She approaches, notices the cigarette in both his mouth and spraying hand at once. James Smoker he quickly becomes in her mind. Until she learns the truth.
(to be continued)
the man with the plan (canal)
Phil knows.
00460407
“What I *saw*, V, was the vision of a robot. Not to be cliche, but a robot from the future. Jonny knows.”
“Huh?” I say, knowing this would prompt an explanation.
“My canal channel told me this robot, who is described as being female, saw something that greatly disturbed her which she couldn’t help but record at the time. Which became the recording for all time. She saw herself. In a video. As a human. Doing something she couldn’t do but wished to do. Both Japanese, but 1/2 of 1 being. She had split herself in two to experience this thing but had forgotten about it until that moment. Half Japanese — remember Jonny said that about her. She was full Japanese but Jonny was actually picking up on the split. I was even given a location for the, um, reunification. Place called The Burg. Ever hear of it?”
“No,” I said without emotion, all that busy dealing with the ramifications of what Mysti was saying. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it! Yet, deep down, I knew it was true. Because, deep down: there was Jonny, smiling at me in his wise guy way. I preferred Panama but he liked Lexi (=Judy). Yet here came an X factor. Literally.
“Bimbo is the name,” declared Mysti in front of me between the two magenta balls held by that statue she worshipped, what, 4 times daily? Maybe 8. “Got that too from my source. They said that would be enough for you to find out the truth.”
“Truth is a relative term,” I said back without thinking, that being busy too with the ramifications.
“Too true,” said Mysti to end. Time to get busy. Better meet Judy Lexi down at the Afterlife. Because I’d figured that part out too. Lexi wasn’t my potential lover. She was my sister who lived in the big city, me from out in the Nomad sticks. Separated, when, childhood? I had to ask.
(to be continued)
00460408
“Hey,” I said while approaching, noticing he was looking across the road at it. “Know anything about it?”
“Wellsprings?” he said, with head now cocked sideways in a listening position. Could just as easily have been Welles, hmph. But, directly: Hey. Thus my opening. Did he get it? I urged him to continue.
“Yeah, Wellsprings will do.”
“I can do Welles too,” he said back cryptically. Another me! I recognized.
“How about Hey?” I said, splitting the difference. “As in, let’s say, Heywood.”
“Overarching.” And with this word he moved on down the street further into The Glen, seemingly concerned with other matters now. My matters took me to Vista Del Rey less than a minute walk from here. All part of Heywood, though. Including Wellsprings.
On the other side of town in Watson, Mysti tries to resurrect dead boyfriend Welles in her Small China esoterica shop through various channels and potions and stuff. Will she succeed? Another: we’ll see.
00460409 (1 Pink)
“I know this is not the ideal location,” started Newt in earnest.
Oh God, thinks Wheeler. This is leading to a baad place.
“But we kept crashing out of the nicer restaurants in Juho and I wanted to set up *something* for you, something pretty quick.”
Here we go, thinks Wheeler.
“Stand up, please.”
“O-kay.” And then Newt gets out of his own chair and kneels.
“Wheeler Malone Wilson. Will you marry me? Again?”
Again? thinks Wheeler. Riiiight.
But she did end up allowing him a kiss on the lips, which pleased him very much indeed. As consolation. The one time would have to do.
(to be continued)
00460410 (centerpoint)
They moved the swing outside to view the surrounding countryside and stars. At least that was Wheeler’s plan. Newt just wanted better reception for his wifi. He wanted to check how the NBA playoffs were going and some other stuff. Back to his laptop…
“I know what you look at when I’m not around, one time hubby of mine.”
“You do?” Lakers lose to Timberwolves by 5. But Luka was sick. Someone in Minnesota gave him food poisoning on purpose? he couldn’t help ruminate. So he was involved in that and not really listening to Wheeler. Typical.
“Yeah. I know your plan. You want to get to 100 by the time you’re 80. Smart.”
He pulls up a clip, making sure the sound is turned down. Luka missing a three and then missing a pass to the corner he’d make 99 out of 100 times. Yeah: sick obviously. Oh well, there’s always next year. “Yeah,” he says, still 1/2 listening at best. “Or 80 by 100, whichever,” he jokes weakly.
“It’s because of me.”
Clip over, Newt looks at Wheeler. Those eyes change daily, maybe hourly. Changeling. “Of course it’s because of you,” he said, closing the laptop now. The Lakers season might be over just as much as his dreams of a second marriage might be over. “Even if we can’t get married… again,” he tacks on.
“It’s all for the best. I mean, let’s say there’re two holes, two portals… into this world they call Our Second Lyfe. Actually I guess that’s only us that calls it that.” She laughs slightly. He smiles.
“I know what you’re getting at.” He opens back up the laptop. “A kiss will do for now.”
He logs in as himself and continues onward.
00460411 (again)
“Check out that ball at the centerpoint, Wheeler.”
“Where?”
“Well, it just moved underneath us now. Under this plywood platform. It’ll reappear soon on the other side.”
“There!”
“Yes, a rolling plywood ball,” Wheeler says while observing the thing, trying not to sound impressed. Because she knew Newt was onto something.
“Center again, Wheeler,” he says as they both watch it roll through that point. “Just like the title of the last post. This is a manifestation of my wish, my desire. Must be.”
Wheeler kept silent even though she knew he was right. Shouldn’t you be getting back to your *laptop,* she wanted to say but of course bit her tongue. This was her one time hubby. Once is enough, but kisses will still come. And maybe… maybe… if they can solve the two hole problem. Dare she think of it? Absorption. Incarnation. Together. He’d have to give up the 3rd person perspective, rely only on mouselook to move around. She’d have to make concessions too, like getting rid of Backwards Falls Edward. But theoretically it could be done.
It rolled right over the sim’s center again as both kept watching and thinking. This wasn’t possible. Was it?
“Let’s go back to the swing, Newt. I want to show you something.”
00460412
Afterwards, Wheeler explained what Newt saw and experienced through a double recently found online. Rockstahr. “See?” she said, pointing it out. “The red blue green yellow tubes of the mad scientist go through the hair and potentially to the back.
“Just like you,” he said, still not over the excitement. Tingly!
“Yeah, and the orange and violet tubes…”
“Up front, right.
“Soo… you’re the creation of a mad scientist. Just like Rockstahr.”
“Mad, yes (giggle). Scientist — not exactly.”
Artist instead, he understood.
00460413
“Hey motherf-cker. Long time no see!”
No, You’re not who I’m looking for this go around I don’t think. I can return here if needed, though. Thanks!
Nor you, Redd from GTA V among other places, although there’s a seat opposite you I could certainly plop my behind down in where we could catch up with each other if needed. Again, saved a timestamp.
Fish in the ceiling at the Advocet Hotel bar is certainly interesting but there’s no one around that I know atall here. Another time marker.
Then exactly halfway in my journey through Vista Del Rey via this BD video that continued the first, I find the Dandelion Cocktails bar. And Redd there sitting on the side of it (!). Must be Redd I’m looking for after all. I approach her — again.
Dandelion Cocktails is a Witcher 3 easter egg in Cyberpunk 2077, by the way. Referencing this poetic dude.
00460414
I’d caught up with Redd but turned out it wasn’t in Heywood but Watson, Kabusie to be specific about a city district and its namesake Roundabout Market to exactly pinpoint. She looked considerably older than when she would have known Frank. She’d obviously been through a lot here in this city of Night. Beaten down.
She smoked like Plan Man seen earlier in this here photo-novel 46 in a long long series it could turn out to be (80 by 100 100 by 80). And, correspondingly, she knew a lot about a certain canal or channel leading from a certain pool of water with a certain wrecked car survived by a certain cat who might have took on the identity (spirit) of the dead driver. Person named Phil. Who, in turn, knew all about a man named Happyacre.
Or was it Honeyacre? Let’s make it Honeyacre.
00460415 (The River Styx?)
Rockstahr, Philip thinks while staring at the red green blue yellow lines again. Gotta find the origin. Who is this madman behind it all? Across the water?
“Whaddaya think, Frank?” he said after the story was over, still staring across the Nawt Vaya waters that had replaced the Alamo Sea waters in their now smaller, less broad virtual existences. “Little Heaven? Little Hell?”
“Might be,” he said, reminiscing in his own way about Redd. And that darn cat of a man she spoke about. She/he knew so much!
(to be continued)
00460416 (warm up)
“Prince Julian of Droop?!”
—–
“Someone had to take care of him, hubby of mine. Or her. I think it was meant to be us. A family. You, me, er (she points), it!”
“I don’t blame them for shedding all that hair on occasion, spoke Newt to on again off again mate Wheeler, back in their matching Mr. Moon t-shirts for the occasion. “General rated sim here but what can you do.”
“Make sure no one can see in. Make it private even. Plus (she gazes), they have hair underneath their hair. Whatever that means.”
“It means they’re *special*.” 2n1, both understood.
He turns toward the interior. “Now where were we?”
“Summoning a spirit. On that ottoman over there.”
“Oh yeah.”
Sunklands 