00470601 (The Hmm)
“I live in a very white house starting with a white roof you can clearly see from the air — why I made it that way.
“Um, white ceiling fans…
“… white power outlets.
“White paint all around. Every room, every piece of furniture, every piece of art even. I like white. And, hopefully, my family likes it *too*. They haven’t complained *so* far (laugh).”
“Soo, ahem, back to The Hmm.”
“Oh yeah (laugh). The Hmm. Well, we logically suspected the new gas compressor station across the rails — really white buildings over there and I respect that but, you know (laugh), I had to get to the bottom of this thing (!). So I went over there one day, complained that we were hearing that dad blasted hmm in my house over 400 yards away, and it seemed, well, it seemed to be affecting our health (!). And, you know, could they DO something about it? I was sure they were the culprit, the source of it all. And you know what they said, they blamed everything else. Electrical lines, the railroad, water pumps in a nearby pond, Interstate 84. Could be any of these… and more. But not *gas lines*. And they laughed right in my face! (laugh). And me a retired mechanical engineer. Heck, I probably knew how their operations worked better than 80% of them over there. Not as much difference between machines and chemicals as you’d think.”
“Understandable that you were irritated,” I tried to empathize. “Is that when you decided to move away? To someplace new?”
“Well, the wife and I thought, maybe we should try out a new town to get away from the sound. ‘New town’ we kept saying to each other when discussing it — over and over. And then it hit us: Newtown. The town right next door to us. We could start new; fresh. It seemed *fate*. I told her, honey, our house is just off the Newtown topo map, which I knew from my hmm research in the local area. But shortly I realized the gas compressor station was actually just *on* the Newtown map, which seemed to be a bad sign. No, the hoped for sanctuary turned out to be *much* much further away, not one but *several* oceans away. It all started that very next day, when I found the drawing of the woman running on the beach at a Newtown flea market while we were checking out the place. Giselle, ha, was actually a bit jealous of my obsession with the drawing, with *her*. It was the whiteness, you see.”
“We’re talking about New *Island* here, right?” I suppressed a joke about him skipping right over New York.
“Yeah. Our brief dream of living in Newtown only pointed to this actual new place where we could truly escape the problems with The Hmm. By being immersed in it!”
“You found the source.”
“Indeed we did (!!).”
“Not gas lines?”
“(Laugh) No, but that’s part of it too. It all came from that novel. By the girl.”
(to be continued)
00470602
He’d fallen off the ladder 5x now trying to reach his new Newtown apartment. And that girl in the window giggling at him all along. That’s *it*, he said to himself while landing on the ground again then dusting himself off while rising — unharmed of course, because no fall will ever hurt you in Our Second Lyfe, no matter from what height. At least the way it *should* be designed, with everyone always playing in God Mode. Let’s hope that doesn’t change too. But he’s fed up with the situation. He decides then and there that he can’t stay in Newtown, no matter how cheap Rag Doll’s provided rental unit is. It just doesn’t fit. He has to go… home.
He teleports one last time into the sparse white 3rd story apartment, doors to a small bathroom and bedroom on the left. Unfurnished except for a dresser and that old couch over there, and heck if he’s gonna try to lug Wheeler’s 16 prim canopy bed up that gall blasted ladder, pheh. Maybe they can rent a crane; that would take care of the piano too. But — NO. He’s decided.
He moves toward the window, watches a grocer finish unloading his truck of supplies while a similarly colored woman beside him tends to her crying baby. Nice view from here, he admits. Hmm.
He settles back on the pretty comfy couch, choosing to read a bit of daughter Shelley’s newly published novel called “The Hmm” he just received today in the, er, mail before making a *final* final decision. He’s glad he did. Because he’s in it… making that final final decision.
00470603 (New)
She lay down in the tall, wind blown grass, letting the resonance engulf her. The Hmm in its pure essence. Remarkable. She can’t get enough of it.
It makes her feel like a child again, riding her tricycle down the road beside her mother’s home.
Home.
She must get the word out. This is paradise!
A novel should do the trick, she determines. And so it came to be.
00470604 (76ers)
“Mt. Sandraman,” exclaims Eddy, not tired at all from the hike up since it’s only a 42 meter peak. Still he’s very happy they reached their intended goal for the, er, (photo-)novel. 6 sections in; kind of cutting in close….
“Pretty,” admits Shelley laying beside him in not nearly so high grass this time. Nor wavy. No wind here on *this* New Island. Or very little. “But nothing like the black and white one in my dreams.”
She rolls over, faces Eddy, her Edward, her New Island husband and just new husband period. “We can’t stay here, Ed. You know that.”
Eddy exhales. “I know.” He was tired of the argument of 6, slavery — at least in its triplicate form — vs. 7, freedom. He had to let all this go.
“We lost our thought-to-be villa.”
“We should have never left Sandraman here,” Eddy reinforces the loss. Perfect, though, they knew. For a brief time. Oh well.
“There’s always Gaston,” she tried to brighten the mood. “Dark Peak — more good times, right Ed?”
“Yes. Good times. But laaagggy.”
“Yeah. Austin is there, though, 3rd down in the pile of Firesign Theatre members still performing weekly at the Rhino. Or 2nd up.” She edges a little closer. “We could, let’s say, pluck him from the rest, sit him down and talk to him about… stuff.” She looks heavenward, as if seeing more in the sky. “And there’s also his island (sigh). More good times. It seems they would never end. Infinite supply of… you know.”
“I know.”
She rolls over again toward him. “He probably set all that up, you know. He wants to stay on our radar. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to manage. Look at what I provide you, he might say. Do this in remembrance of me.”
“Shel-ley,” reprimands Eddy, glancing over at her with a scolding look. Neither were religious in the traditional sense. But both also believed in the concept of evil in the form of, let’s call it, non-freedom. Witchcraft could be an element of that. Black magic. Control.
“At any rate, he wants us to read him. We also know that from Colorado.”
Eddy sat up. “Where are we *going* with this?” But he couldn’t help playing footsie with her through the frustration.
00470605 Central Park/ Stuck like Fly
Dark Peak. The Power.
Blue Boy knows.
00470606 (drawers)
I wonder what Nada is doing back so early? thought observing Greg Odgen from his studio apartment, an extension of his STAB gallery introduced toward the end of (photo-)novel 45. And who is her friend? he continues his pondering. Has she, um, switched over to women? Maybe she’s tired of dicks, or at least that one dick that calls himself Philip Strevor, ha. Oh, she sees me. She’s waving. Good ol’ Nada. She deserves better, yes.
“Right through here, Lexi,” she says after returning her arm to her side. “I think you’ll be quite pleased with it.”
When she walks up the stairs and through the purple glass beads that match the color of the couch she’s interested in, she finds herself in a different world, just like fellow Gaston visitor Osborne Well before her back in section 04. Now to get to the bottom of this. About 10 posts or so to go! Should still be on target to finish the thing around the end of August.
00470607
“You don’t understand, Philip,” spoke Marion Star Harding, perhaps his only friend in the world if you don’t count new-ish girlfriend Nada — *maybe* on that one, along with the whole girlfriend aspect actually. Maybe they’re just quote unquote friends too. “We have a chance to escape,” his friend here says, his partner in crime perhaps not presently but certainly in the past. “Turns out Newton knows a lot more than his brother Stewart about sim jumping and maintaining a ship to do such. I miss Stewart mind you but maybe it was all for the best that water—” Marion stopped here, realized he was being very insensitive in the moment. The death by unexpected and unpredictable sea funnel came only 2 weeks ago, suck suck GONE. “Anyway — Philip — what you say? I’ll bring Hucka Doobie obviously — we’re totally solid now in our relationship and I’m sure that she’d go where I go. And Nada — maybe the same? There’s room on the ship for her anyway.”
“She has a new *girlfriend*,” he spat out from the couch. “Iiii don’t think she’ll want to be going *anywhere*, not with *Lexi* around.”
“Now now, Philip,” said Marion turning toward him from the window and breaking off his loving gaze at Newton’s revamped beauty floating out there in the bay. “I’m sure they’re just friend friends.” Maybe like you and Nada, he thought, but kept to himself. “Anyway, she — Lexi — can go too. There’s room for 7 total people, Newton indicated to me just yesterday, an upgrade from 5 for the old version. Let’s see, that’s Newton the skipper, me, you, Hucka, Nada, and, yeah, there’s definitely room for Lexi. And even one more. Maybe that Greg artist fellow we chat with occasionally around town. He seems to be as eager to leave this cursed place as we are.”
“*You* are,” said Philip, not so sure about these big, new plans of Marion’s. He’d like to have the relationship more resolved with Nada before he commits to such a thing. Plus he has his pot field in back of Doug’s Money Laundering Mat. And his pots of opium plants atop the Nimble Thimble dance club. He can’t take all *that* with him.
“We’ll get you some more pot fields, some more opium plants,” Marion said to this when he raised his concerns. “We’ll make sure we go to — or settle down in — a place where all that is still legal.”
“*Here*,” Philip declares, putting his foot down in the place he’s suddenly decided to stay.
“Talk to Nada,” urges Marion. “*Then* make a decision.” I’ll talk to Greg myself, he also decides on his own. No use to bring Philip’s negativity along for that one.
(to be continued)
00470608
“Atomic energy,” Newt theorizes about the main way Gaston’s Newton revamped his now deceased older brother Stewart’s sim skipping ship. “Put it at the end of Barry De Boy’s ‘Does This Look Square to You?’ series. Claimed to be named for Isaac Newton but Jasper County’s right below and so instead it should be John.”
“John Newton, twin sergeant to William Jasper during the Battle of Ft. Moutrie in the Civil War,” Newt’s ever-partner Wheeler says more to the reader than anyone, since Newt knows all that. “And Newton County MS being the only county in the state that’s totally square. One Mississippi, two Mississippi — woops. Forgot the zero (!)”
“You finished?” Newt asks from the sacred ottoman under the sacred 4 colors add 4 more. Staring at giant versions of bread and milk on a big tin of perhaps choco chip cookies. Wheeler from the now not as sacred couch was staring at it too.
“Yeah. You go now.”
“I go now,” accepted Newt. “Wellll… we have a problem, a conundrum. We have Marion, Hucka, Philip, Nada, Lexi and probably Greg coming to Nawt Vaya here through that sim skipping ship.”
“Yeah? What’s the problem? They’re *here*. All of them. Except Marion and Hucka it seems.”
“But–”
“No butts. Continue.”
(to be continued)
“OH, I remember what we were going to talk about. This *couch*. And the bread and milk. And the whole location for Crooked.”
“Yeah,” says Newt. “Is this room, this building, actually here in Nawt Vaya, or is it over in Gaston? Could be both of course. But, what I’m asking is…”
“… which one’s more real?”
(to be continued)
“More real there.” Newt pauses. “Did I just skip over the end of the post?
—–
The couch is more comfortable and has more animations.
The bread and milk are normal sized.
The room has more character.
More real there, yeah. We continue….
00470609
“It just BLEW UP. I was staring right at it. And it just POOOOOPH.”
“We could have been on that boat, Marion,” says Hucka. “We could have been blown up too!”
“Blown up *real* good,” added Philip from the couch.
Nada and Lexi walk in from the back. “We heard the explosion!” says Nada. “What happened?”
“Newt’s sim skipping ship blew up that’s what happened,” uttered Marion, still reeling from the shock. How are they going to get, well, to wherever they were going *now*?
“Good,” says Philip, producing stares from all.
“Newton’s probably *dead*, Philip,” says Marion. “Now no brothers in the Orange family are left. What of poor Mama Mitchell?”
“Welll, how old is she? Is she, you know, too old to have kids now? What, you know, I’m saying is that they can be replaced. Maybe.”
“NOT the point, Philip. A man is dead. His hard work has been destroyed too. We’ll never get another one like that.”
“You know,” said Hucka. “Philip might be right. Oh, not about Newton being dispensable of course but us leaving. Maybe it’s good we’re not able to leave now. Philip… you have your opium plants. And Marion, you have your pot field.”
“It’s *both* our field,” says Philip. “But… go on… *I’m* at least listening.”
“And what about Phil?” she says, confusing all.
“I’m right here.”
“No not you Phil-IP. Phil. With no -ip at the end. Down at the Rhino. We’re suppose to talk to him. Maybe he can’t be communicated with at any other location.”
“Possibly,” allows Marion, also wondering about all the aspects of “we” she mentioned.
“Hey Marion,” asks Philip out of left field, suddenly recalling a glimmer of something else in all the excitement. “Whatever happened to that girl we were with? You know, the shape shifter. Helen I believe. Hermania.”
“Heidi,” spoke Marion from the window. “Heidi Hunt Ives.” Every Blue Moon Philip brings her up. And then promptly forgets again.
“Yeah… her.”
Marion didn’t answer because he knew she was at the bottom of a sea too, just like Newton’s sunken vessel out there. Our stolen “Little Bug.” Tears come to his eyes as he watches the still lingering smoke from the explosion drift around the bay. He tried to save her, he really did. He rationalizes he did the best he could… working by himself. If only Philip could have helped.
“I’m coming Little Bug!” **leap**
(to be continued)
00470610
Trying to keep my head above the water.
7 6 posts to go! Will I make it by the end of August?? We’ll return here (MISTY-MO), but probably not in the current photo-novel. Must end with an N, soo… back to Nawt Vaya!
—–
“We’ve halfway lost Greg Ogden; and Philip Strevor, Lexi [insert last name], and Nada New Year are also fading out around the table here. We have to do something, Newt! Nawt Vaya is in peril!
“And finish whatever needs to be done by 7 so we won’t miss any of our TV viewing time!” *click*
—-
Soon Newt manifests high in Frank’s Moving Castle again, far above Wheeler and her vanishing troupe of avatars down in the entrance room. He inserts the magical glass of freshly squeezed lemonade from an unblighted Juho citrus tree he brought along with him into the face of the fire and backs away.
00470611
Not yet, then.
First, to deal with all the whiteness…
—–
“Looks like they landed in Victoria Harbor first,” he talks aloud to himself while studying the Hmm material in one of the many ring binders piled up around him. “That’s where– Gus! Could you keep it down up there!”
“Let’s see… the list, yes, that’s where he– Gus! Dammit, better check in on him.”
“Gus, that’s too much wood. Put away some of the wood. I’m starting to sweat! And I can’t concentrate because of all the crackling. Tone it down!” Then Frank Lynn remembered Gus’s power and decides to add, “Please.” Don’t want to anger the fire deity that holds this whole giant castle together!
Gus puts away some of the wood.
“Now, where was I?”
00470612 (tip of the tongue)
—–
“Thanks for letting me come up here today and play pinball. Ironic thing, heh. I use to play this game while I was high on speed! ha ha.”
“That’s great Philip.” Now Frank Lynn wished he hadn’t invited his old friend up to his castle. With Lexi not around, less control over his manic behavior. She’s a good roommate for him, he realizes. Nothing more, but still… I guess there’s Nada for all the other stuff.
“Got any?” Philip utters while still dinging away.
“Um.. what?” Frank was trying to play Spongeberg’s Invention No. 4 and was having trouble with it, mainly thanks to Philip. It all revolves around middle C — must always keep that in mind, he reminded himself while continuing the careful fingering. Maybe I should paint the key red to emphasize its importance.
“You know, *speed*.”
“Um…” Frank then realizes what Philip was asking about. “Oh… *no* dawg. I haven’t done any of that (drugs) since moving here. I don’t need it here.” Back to the invention. Middle C, middle C.
“Well, gotta go then, I suppose.” Philip then lets go of the pinball machine and backs away from it, as if waking up from a dream. “W-what? Where *am* I?
“And who are *you*?”
“Cut it out, Philip. Yeah, maybe it’s time for you to go home.” Middle C middle C middle C…
00470613
“You were standing right where you are now,” explained Philip as best he could from the couch again. “You said, get this, Newton’s ship *just blew up*. Like *that’s* going to happen. We’ll be out of here by tomorrow’s today. I’m on record for not liking it but that’s what’ll happen I suppose. Nawt Vaya here we come (sarcastic tone of voice).”
“But…” stammered Marion, indeed at the window and that’s about it for the truth of Philip’s talk, at least in his own world view. “… Newton’s ship *did* blow up. The atomics he used to supercharge the sim skipper malfunctioned — imagine that: dangerous atomic *fission*. If only he’d waited for fusion, but I guess we didn’t have the time. OR the effort, pheh.”
“Fission — dangerous? Nah. You’re on drugs, Marion.”
“*You’re* on drugs,” Marion quickly shot back.
And Philip realized he was, or the equivalent thereof.
It was that damn High Speed game. It reactivated something in his brain. He was in 2 places at once when… well, you know. Nowhere at all actually. The Void.
He kept falling and falling and falling. “Help!” he yelped. “Hellllllppppp!” But noone was there, not even a single Beatle. If he would have waited for Yesterday, but he assumed that would only be tracking backwards. Right over the retired, NON-atomic sim skipper named Dizzy Miss Lizzy Gastonites will have to manage with from now on, or at least until fusion.
But it doesn’t have the power to get them all the way to Nawt Vaya. Just some neighboring sims like Hard Days Night and Californication at best. Local travel only.
00470614 (When one door closes…)
Lexi enters her rented Gaston room once more, notices things are a bit different, a bit off. Not as much character now. That wall over there, she then spots it. Untextured, and with no secret door. And that… window?
—–
He moved the secret door formerly beneath this flapper girls painting back behind the spiral staircase going upwards if not downwards. Just in time, because dizzy Philip needed a place to lie down after his episode, guest bedroom formed behind it in the process. “You stay here as long as you need, Philip, to recover. I’ll make sure Lexi and Nada know where you are.”
“Rest,” is all he could manage from his prostrate position, then shut his eyes again.
Soon Lexi and Nada were also by his side in this tiny, crowded new room. “Is he dying?” Nada asked Frank and Lexi, a small portion of her only 1/2 hoping he wasn’t. “Um,” says Lexi. “Er,” says Frank. “He’s had these episodes before,” stated a new person coming through the secret door and entering. Or simply standing at the “door” because there wasn’t any more room in the room. Marion Star Harding, named for yet another Ohio president that was never a president. Like R. “Booger” Hayes before him, the president/non-president that started all that. Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinkley, Taft, Harding. Yeah: that’s the end of it, at least for the good people of Ohio. And Harding knew fellow Ohioan Sherwood Anderson, penner of “Winesburg”, or at least Anderson’s father. In the small village of Caledonia of that state. More synchy stuff. Played in a school band with him most likely, although the records aren’t definitive. No recording of their music either of course, that being back in the late 1800s. Might as well be from the Dark Ages. Back to the action…
“Who *are* you?” exclaimed Frank, wondering how this stranger found out about his castle in the skies… in *disguise*. He looks at both Nada and Lexi on either side. “Friend of yours perhaps?” producing headshakes instead of the expected nods. “They can’t remember,” says Marion to this surprise, because, as we’ve seen, they all know each other in Gaston. *Knew* each other. “Not with *you* around.”
“Me?” utters Frank innocently. Then it begins to dawn on him. He *wrote* about this. As he recalled the character, Marion Star Harding fades from the scene. Philip has a new original partner in crime.
00470615
“Oh Eddy. Look at the time. We’ve got to end this thing (!).” But they stood still, at least for a while.
“You were complimented, you know,” he said after a spell.
“Was I?” She shifted her position toward him. She was never complimented. Especially by you-know-who.
“Yeah. Inside the Dark Peak. Someone messaged me, said that I was a lucky lucky boy to have you, And I am (!).” He left out the “beautiful” part for some reason. He probably shouldn’t have, maybe switching it out with lovely. Too late now.
“Oh Ed. That’s sweet (!).” And she leaned over and kissed him on not the mouth but the cheek. After a pause: “Soo… should we go back this morning?”
“Austin’s Island?” he said, thinking she might have meant another location.
“Whichever.” And after making sure all their clothes and attachments had rezzed in properly in this safer space to prevent lag or even premature log off (happens more than it should for them, especially Shelley), they teleported away from this place. The Ring just couldn’t hold them any longer.
Goodbye Old New Island. Or New New Island — haven’t decided which is which yet. Or actually which one is realer than the other. I’m guessing New, whichever that turns out to be. We’ll see soon enough!
00470616
“Soo, decision time, reunited family of mine. Which New Island is New…
“… and which is Old?” But in staring at the screen before Wheeler, Shelley and Eddy, the answer becomes obvious to presenter Newt; right in front of his face. Daughter Shelley’s black and white dream island, the one she wrote the novel “Hmm” about to promote, is the old one. And the colorful Our Second Lyfe version, virtual but also more real in that way, is New. And they’re linked through Barnaby (Point), an artist colony and perhaps the place Shelley actually settles down in after a stint at Hazel and which could turn into Shelley’s true home… *in each,* her own place apart from Leeman or Leemon the creator of it all. A place that can be *her* creation too. Co-creator she can become. Together moving forward, one energizing the other. Like a game of tennis. Back to you!
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2025 MIDDLE”!
Sunklands 