00480601 (“Clucky?” (inland sea too))
00480602 (Alabama Phoenix)
I am far away from you now.
But I will return.
00480603 (escaping Miss Ouri)
“I’m telling you, Mike,” Pat relays telepathically. “If the next box is one specific color, one *specific* color… then we can’t kill her. We just can’t.
“We can’t kill her brother of mine (sigh).”
2 boxes later, past the demonstration of TILE that placated the onlooking, desirous ghouls, she finds the key, the center of it all.
Switched from colored to black and white, she can now unlock the door with the Newton-Jasper cube indicating scale.
Damn, thinks Mike. 2nd one today.
00480604 (00420515 revisited (1/2 way))
“Get out the shot, honey. I’m trying to take a picture of that ghoul in the cemetery over there!”
—–
“My people were tough on crime. And they didn’t tolerate breaking the law either. We grew up in the shadow of a mountain that began with Wee-Wee. My mother, when we moved over here to the states in ’79, said to be proud of the name and where we came from. But I was embarrassed, always called it the alternate name of Onigbaporo however tongue-twisty and unmemorable that was to the white people of our new land. But when I found Pee Pee Creek over on the west side of Rodentia and its crazy cemetery and its baffling preacher church I knew I had also found a home again in this world of Our Second Lyfe. My mother was priestess before in the “Wee-wee” place we came from and now I became quote unquote priestess in the Pee Pee place, as male and female polarities also switched positions there. It all made some kind of beautiful, circular loop.”
I studied the photo she held in her hand, looked at the flat headed statue of her mother in the center square the townspeople chose to erect before they left, a permanent tribute to her famous presence in their small Nigerian burg. Then I looked up from the photo at Daisy’s flat hair, the perpetually shaving razor held by a ghostly, hovering hand next to it. I started to understand the dynamics involved. But there was still the explanation of her non-colored father remaining. Non, hmm, I pondered. Could that be the reason for the obsession with creating the perfect, non-alcoholic brew? Turns out this was so… partially. TBC
00480605
Passing by this root system the other night I could have swore it spelled out “Howdy Stranger”. In fact, I *know* it did. But when I tried to recreate the spelling: nothing really that close. How could this be? Was it just some kind of sleepy time hallucination? Or was it someone… something communicating with me inside the game again, like had happened before with other ones. *Swore* it said, “Howdy Stranger”; even stopped the video at that point, thinking I’d come back to it to take a snapshot the next day and it would obviously — *obviously* — still be there. But, no.
Through the character of Albertville Mercury Spaghettiboro, now on Jemison in the Alpha Centari system in the metaverse of Starfield, I planned to talk about this “illusion” with on again off again girlfriend Gemilly Niceniece, a toolmaker from Kuum. I enter the underground section of New Atlanta called Brown Well either because of the color or the frequent brown outs it experiences — 50/50 split opinion on which it really is, or 48/52 as I better recall, although I don’t know which side has the slight advantage if that’s the case.
I spot her at the corner of Charlie and Hustle and throw her a, “You coming?”, which she replied, “In a minute, waiting on a part.” “Okay,” I said and thought about blowing her a kiss but then decided better as I headed over to Kay’s to save us a table.
Should be *any* moment, hmm. Food getting cold now, though. Better start without her, hmph. The revelation might have to wait until another day.
“*There* you are. Sorry I started without you. Did you (nom nom nom) get the part you needed?” She nodded… and then got up to leave. She just wanted to come over to say goodbye.
That part turned out to be an act. As in another play. TBC
00480606
“Gemilly!? But… we were suppose to be a *team*!”
“Gem-i-LEE!!! Yeah just *keep* on walking! WO-maan! Woe to me for ever getting *involved* with you!” he continued to sulk.
He followed her for a couple more football fields worth of terrain until he gave up as he watched her move past that rocky hill with the single tree on top. And he too was single now. A lone man in a heavily masculine oriented metaverse that didn’t care that much about the girl to begin with. Good for her that she ran away.
—–
Eventually she found her way to an even better role on an entirely different planet with a really proper script for her to act from, even donned his Atlantis style clothes to symbolically complete the exodus from the Gardenspot of the Universe that some call Jemison. The fools, she thought while continue to walk in a straight line away from it all, even at this great great distance. Who’s the fairer sex now, Rib Boy? TBC?
00480607 (Jeogeot continuation)
He was in the cemetery again or perhaps just outside, Linden-Linwood-Lime all arranged around an edge that =s the county of Genesee in the state of New York in the country of Our US of A. “A linden in England is called a lime,” he recites again while standing amongst the limbs of the small tree, his head dangling there like a low hanging yellow-ish or green-ish fruit or something. Primed for a fall if he didn’t watch out.
(It was) an old mantra dating from his days as a Greta Gaeta bartender in what I dubbed the sim of Clemscott but is really, actually, just Clewis in a name change I can’t even recall the rational for now, more (heretical) mythology imposing on HIS (Our Second Lyfe) reality. “Who was that shadowy figure?” he also said at the time about the African-American boy who left the overgrown lime on his bar counter and then mysteriously disappeared down the stairs never to be seen again by him until the Omega times.
He also remembers a monk entering the sim of Rookwood — true name this time — looking for the place he would be buried among all the dense growth of linden trees and plants, perhaps representing the burial of Linden Lab created Our Second Lyfe itself. Right now it is in its “gracefully aging” stage.
Moreover, in the top photo of the present post we’ve returned to another cemetery in Virginia like this one. More Lime.
Parallel stones.
Careful, Philip Linden. Careful. Avoid the trap of Vertigo; don’t fall in quite yet. We need you still. All of us, the Bakers, Wheeler, all the core figures. Don’t go right now. Wait a spell. Your time has not yet come. Hang in there baby, etc. TBC
00480608
“You know, I’m kind of tired of all this, Wendy of hot dog restaurant fame. I think I’m going home. I think I’m going over to Nada’s tonight instead of staying here. I think I’m… leaving.”
But Wendy didn’t care. Wendy was merely a stand in for another. Again.
—–
—–
“How was Little Hell today, Philip?” Frank asked while they were gathered together once more around the dining table at suppertime. Or thereabouts. Frank just assumed he wouldn’t go to Heaven. The 2, upper level doors to his high castle in the skies labelled such don’t naturally swing that way for him, being an Id figure and all. Disposable by the end (of the game) as stated.
“Oh. The usual. Think I’m going down to the coast tonight for my r&r, though. See if Nada is still hanging around Lexi’s place.”
“Good idea.” Mouse was absent from the castle too, having gone back to the Amazon’s cement pond to confer with Pansy about more YouTube Poop possibilities. He knows now that the rest of New England is key for the movement of the main castle down through the states (of consciousness?). Now maybe Frank can enjoy a little peace and quiet about the place. Maybe time to call up Daisy, ask her how her day’s been at the bar. And remind her of that *third* date. Because tonight, he felt, was the night, Miss Mistletoe 2025 and her waiting lips being more a distant thought than ever. He knew about her real life Nigerian origins with the mother priestess and all, and her continuation of that ancestral calling in virtual Rodentia. He knew that the father had something directly to do with the out-of-this-world Non she wanted to develop, and why she came to Jeogeot’s only inland sea of Nawt Vaya in the first place. She’d heard about the alcoholic sea monster, what issues for the Hole in the Wall it caused. An opening had been revealed. Non-alcohol would be all they could serve, which slotted in perfectly for her plans of Our Second Lyfe dominance in that department. All has been revealed about the family that needs to be. Now it was time for a different kind of revealing, of a more intimate type. Frank was ready. Now the question on his mind is: was Daisy ready for this kind of commitment?
00480609 (now)
00480610 (1st Pierr/)
“You see? You SEE?? Columbine. Revealing strangely bright lit Edward Pierrot coming from the North. He doesn’t know what will backstab him in a minute. Or back *stick* him as in a stab. This is important. This is *crucial*. She should have never opened that door in the wall and neither should we.”
“Simmer down, Mouse,” said Philip Strevor to his oft times housemate, still unable to beat his high score at his best game, NUMBER not to be taken down yet. 28064212. “Just start over at the beginning, pal,” he said while also looking up at the castle’s video feed he just walked in on. Mouse: always jabbering, always theorizing. Until it ends.
“How about the middle,” said Mouse, and then went there.
“The banana moon hangs low in the blue night-sky, yellow-ish or maybe even green-ish, sun nowhere to be shone now,” he describes. “In the shadow made by the walls the stick keeps poking, keeps jabbing, turning him ’round and ’round and eventually gone. Leaving Columbine for…
“…. Harlequin. This is the tragic tale of our Edward, Philip.”
“Edward… Philip?” TBC
00480611
Perspective has changed at De House. Mann has lost wo-Mann in a way, in a manner. A hole has been formed in the middle. Witches. Which witch is which? What is good and what is baad?
“Interesting art you have there up above the bar now, Daisy. Another Corona Non while I have your attention, thanks.”
“The art?” She turns and looks up. “Yeah, it’s the alcoholic sea monster there in the middle, obviously. And the pool it’s in: the Nawt Vaya Sea. I found it in the user’s inventory. He indicated the association.”
“User?”
“Yeah, baker b. The user who controls us all, or at least while we’re on his land I suppose, this Nawt Vaya Free State on the shores of same.”
Biker Mann takes another drag off his cigarette, attempts to take all that in. He decides to focus on the art, the meaning. “Soo… is that a painting or what? Looks more like a photo.”
“It’s a collage, silly. You know that.” Daisy Flathead looked flatly at him, anticipating more. Hopefully the discussion will get seriouser from this point on. She decides she needs to add some information here and does so. “It’s… not a part of any series that I know of — not really.”
“The houses,” Biker kind of interrupts. “The same?” making her turn around to stare again. “90 degrees?” he furthers. “3 years?”
—–
“Oh, and the central figure, er, figures. The brown statues that grow shorter with time.”
“Do they?” It was Daisy who was trying to catch up now, mann overtaking wo-mann once more. In this certain situation in this certain time in space.
“Yeah. The acorn topped head.” He pointed to Daisy’s flat one. “It’s Pierrot again. Did you get that?”
She didn’t. But then she makes a decision after continuing to gaze. “I — don’t think they’re the same.”
“Aren’t they?” he pressed.
She checks again. “No,” she judges firmly.
“Okay, okay,” he gives in, seeing the pretty different designs on the, er, helmets of each. Head tops. “Then let’s shift to the hole in the middle.”
“Nawt Vaya? Sea?” she added.
“Kind of I guess. But (moreover) the hole made by the line figure collapsing inside his own clothes that obviously overlaps the brown statues. Where, um, does that hole go?”
She notices the hole, she notices what is highlighted. Thinking of Grant’s Hill again in Missouri and nearby Siloam, she says the word in her mind.
Just then, Philip Strevor pops his head in the door, asks about Nada. “Seen her?” he finishes his introductory paragraph.
“Nada? Yes, she came in here earlier with Lexi,” Daisy provided him. “Said they were headed up to Juho. Said something about a haircut.”
“Oh no,” says Philip. “Oh *no*. WITCHES?” And he ran away from the bar to the North as fast as he could, hoping to catch Nada before she made a big BIG mistake. TBC
00480612
Citrus fruit loving Philip was pleased the lemonade stand was still there on Infinity Lane but had no time today to stop. Must hurry! “Sorry, Bart!” he calls out while sprinting by. “Maybe next time!” he shouts back, already a blur in the distance to the boy colored the same as the product he sells and who still couldn’t sit while he works because of the broken chair that came with the stand. Where’s tireless former robot co-worker Billy Clockwork when you need him? he always frets around the 4 hour mark on any full shift these days. But it was off to the big city for him when he graduated local Nawt Vaya State University with a degree in economic ergonomics, a bunch of real life experience piled up by working with Bartholomew before, between and after classes. He’d learned a lot in both, enough to get him a 6 figure salary right off the bat. We probably don’t have time or space to get into his story in this here photo-novel, rapidly coming to a close (I hope!), but I believe he lives up in the middle of the Nautilus continent. Or was that Nautilus Island? Anyway, back to Philip. With all that writing I just did he’s now had enough time in space to make his way up to Sep Felton’s haircutting establishment more in the northern part of Juho city. He stops at the door, bent over because of lack of oxygen and unable to speak at first, then straightens up and manages: “Nada New Year? (pant pant) Know? (pant) anything about? (pant pant pant) her?”
“Whereabouts?” Sep completes Philip’s assumed sentence. “Here,” and she pivots the barbershop chair she stands behind 90 degrees to reveal the worst for Philip. “Pink? PINK?” But then he realizes he must back pedal the insensitive utterance. Fast! “LOVE IT!”
“*Wait,” mischievously smiling Sep says playfully. “My mistake. This is *Lexi*. Nada is over *there*.” And an at first relieved Philip stares into the darkened corner of the stylist shop she indicated only to see… but just then my computer crashes ARRRRGH. (TBC?)
00480613 (“Endless Window”)
Harlequin moves from the darkened corner of the courtyard into the house with Columbine, Pierrot having shuffled off below the event horizon like a dying orbital sun. The oldest extant animation ends here with the created black hole, paint applied gelatin finishing its run.
—–
“Now let’s get to the other one, Daisy. Father you say?”
“Father I say.”
00480614
Afterwards she provided more details about her father. Finally. “He lived on top of a mountain but not that one, the one we talked about before.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking of my own mountain, my own castle here. I don’t live on top — not yet anyway; working my way up there with the positioning of this bed behind the eyes at the top of the spiral staircase; just for more privacy on this special special occasion (!) But instead more in the middle where the great majority of my things are still, like my notebooks, like my piano. Just behind the mouth and that gall darn big tongue sticking out from within. The one Philip likes to take his wee-wee’s off of between games of High Speed, ha. Hmm, wee-wee again. Pee pee, I restated in my mind, to match Daisy’s progression of the phrase in moving from real to virtual back in ’12, she revealed.
“They torn down his *house*, Frank,” she just blurted out. “It was awful. Just because he was a rich white man in a poor black country-state working on stuff they couldn’t understand.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I decided to say.
“So am I. He built a much smaller, much more modest house to live in after that but they just torn that one down too, the ‘stuff’ being the problem and not the money he made off of it. Not really… at the core. He had no choice but to leave. Off this world, actually, to a second one initially thought to be far far away indeed, unobtainable to reach in distance of space. He sank all the remainder of his money into the endeavor.”
“Off – world?” I didn’t know where this was going. Was she insinuating that her father was an astronaut? Actually flew into space on a rocket ship? “What could he have… I mean, what did he do to–”
“–incite the people to such anger, such destruction?” she finished his fumbling question. “He was head of a startup company developing AI.”
“Artificial – intelligence?”
“Yes. And they, the townspeople surrounding him on all sides east west north south, believed it to be an evil spirit, a rare, *dark* orisha they called it. Because it threated the whole world, the survival of the human species itself. Or so they were told.”
She became silent here, like a mute button was automatically activated on her flat top head. And so it was. tbc
00480615
“I- don’t know where I am!!”
“Wait a minute. Yes… yes I this I *do* know where this must be,” Mouse rectifies as his head stops spinning around an unknown center and the earth moves up to meet his feet, giving him balance on the perch atop the trees. True earth, and not that fake crud up down sideways in Our Second Lyfe. “Bill,” he says, looking down. “This must be Bill again, a, um, reduction from the mountain in Maine. As, yes, mass turns into energy for locomotion… across the landscape. I *remember*.”
—–
“I forgot to tell you — I got a postcard from Mouse today,” Frank says after he puts his hands on the planchette to begin. “Turns outs he’s in Vermont, not New Hampshire.”
“Interesting. Okay… back to the game.” Philip also touches the planchette from his side, which then rather quickly spells out OLD ZIRCON. The self described phased-out Byzantine devil ends up giving them the answers they both need and desire. tbc
00480616 (hands a blazing)
“I know how to beat Mouse’s high score and get away from the fire of Little Hell for good, Frank. Red car!”
“And *I* know how to beat the difficult score before me too, Philip my oft times housemate. Red note to also constantly remind me of middle!”
PLAY.
And hoped for, 2nd, even more oft times housemate Daisy makes 3. Er, make that *5*.
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2025 LATER”!
Sunklands 