SISSY TALBOT, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT TO THE TIMES, BACHELORETT, AND BLUE BLOOD
Chirs Llanfair arrived at the Museo a little late. The Clock on Blimp Tower Cartel chimed out 7:08 pm. He knew is was ‘pm’ because it was dark, but also because they rang the enormous bell known as the ‘Dragon’s Tooth,’ rather than the more dainty ‘Tinkerbell’. Chris paused at the foot of the Museo de la Vida Secundo and marveled in its Box Arts design style. The colossal building was constructed of Plainold Pink Marble and then tastefully faced in used brick masonry building. As was typical of the Box Arts period, which if Chris recalled correctly had been short lived. As were all Architectural Styles in Second Life. The Box Arts movement and had started on Tuesday of last week and been over by Wednesday afternoon, and building was plastered with insane details, and superfluously ornamented with garlands, flowers and shields. A profusion of columns, pilasters, and balustrades and window balconies, burst from the sides of the building an in no apparent order. Chris recalled that before the repeal of gravity which permitted avatars to fly, the Museo had been the Gare de North train station, but in a frugal application of the idea of adaptive re-use it had been converted to a regional sewage disposal plant, and then later, when it was realized that avatars don’t really need sewers, it became the leading Museo of Second Life.
Chris was a bit late so he bounded up the enormous staircase two steps at a time, past the forest of columns, first the Doric forest, then the Corinthian with its fine leather exterior, followed by the stoic Tuscan storm of columns and then past the Ironic Columns, which as everyone knew were made of papier-mâché in the tradition ‘a la France’. Several enormous searchlights pierced the evening sky in a random pattern as if to say ‘here is where its at, and without an invitation you cant come in.’ To make up a bit of time he rushed to the grand bronze and stained plastic door. Wham!
Chris hit the wall hard and almost broke his nose. He had been tromped by the l’oeil. The massive door was only a useless painted decoration, probably by Miro’. An elegantly dressed couple standing nearby burst into laughter. The were laughing at Chris, not with him. He nose really hurt. Little spatters of blood appeared on the faux concrete below. Chris had the last laugh, because the couple proceeded to enter the deconstructiveist wing of the Museo and they quickly fell apart into bits and pieces.
Chirs spied the line of carriages of various types, hackneys, elegant gigs, and many black landaus. Alighting from the carriages and onto the red shag carpet was the cream de la cream of Second Life Society, the nobs, the hoi polloi, the robber barons, the blue bloods, and the escorts. Chris saw the Zwinky Ambassador alight with her crew to the applause of the uninvited and the flashing of brownies held by the ever screaming paparazzi. The Ambassador from Zwinky was dressed in a kind of neuveau garage band look by Romeo Gigilo which must have cost a million lindens. Chris groaned under his breath, because as President of the Reserve Bank and Counting House of Second Life he knew who was paying for the outrageous hot couture expenditures of Zwinky.
The next to arrive was Dr. Benway and who was that lovely thing under his arm? Chris strained to see, but when the festive randomly rotating 5 billion candle spotlight hit the good doctor in the face and blinded him, it became clear that the now badly sunburned young thing, was none other than the stunningly beautiful Sissy Talbot, well know hack writer for The Times. As Dr. Benway’s vision returned he released Sissy from under his arm and she landed on the runway with a light thud befitting of an upper class prig.
Then in the distance a long grey armored bus chugged into view and the police rushed about to clear an opening in the long line of carriages, buckboards, and other elegant conveyances. The bus stopped, and belched steam from its boiler and then scalding water onto the gawkers. Both the forward and rear doors slammed opened and from them rushed a small army of grey suited and heavily armed short emaciated storm troopers. They were from the benighted Clissa. The Ambassador of hated Clissa had the temerity, the nerve, and the bombast to attend the gala opening. A small man stood in the darkness of the front door of the bus. The shortest of the storm troopers, perhaps more descriptively described as fair weather dandy motioned the all clear. The small man, Ambassador Samuel Spud moved from the shadows and into the light. He stepped down onto the willing back of a storm trooper and then on to the red shag carpet. The gawkers fell silent, except for the few suffering third degree burns who moaned quietly from the gutter. Samuel Spud’s jaw was long and bony, his chin jutting V under the flexible V of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller V. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V-motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down – from high flat temples – in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan. Which of course he was.
Somewhere in the distance, near the cemetery, a moan was heard from the grave of Dashiell Hammett. Chris heard the moan and new that Spuds description was must be true.
Spud wore a stylish Kevlar operetta uniform, by the hot new designer Franz Lehar of Vienna, The tight form fitting uniform was bright blue with a high peaked campaign hat topped by a rakish hawk feather. A golden ornamental sword hung at his side and a not so ornamental carbon steel umbari which was rumored to be made by the great Nagamitsu. That was speculation, however what was not speculative was the long bloody history of the blade known to date to before the Yellow Revolution and the Dicktat of Abdication.
Chris remembered the question all gynecologists, genealogists and wags wanted to know about Samuel Spud. Was he the spawn of the Great Leader and the Glorious Leader? This always presented a topological conundrum and the mind was boggled at the thought of the Siamese twins of the ruling dynasty of Clissa coupling in the perverse ‘Thai’ manner. The thought was too revolting. Chris shuddered and looked up straining to see Spud. Too late, for the Ambassador had entered the building.
Removing his cardboard invitation from his rented tuxedo cummerbund Chris headed toward the entrance, past heavy security, and up the grand elevator. All extravagant society gala’s required a grand entrance down the three story Stairway to Heaven, and that meant taking the elevator to the third floor. He noted his name written on the invitation in a florid hand.
The Honorable Sir Christopher Armstrong Llanfair, High Exalted Order of the Garter of Saint Phlem, Associate Professor of Finance and the Dark Arts, University of Sonogno, Holder of the GED Equivalent, and President of the Reserve Bank and Counting House of Second Life.
At the top of the Stairway to Heaven, Chris paused at the glass enclosed display of the withered hand and bloody adz of the Mofo the Extreme and Very Dead. Mofo actually did have 12 fingers observed Chris, then he remembered what every school child in Second Life had had beaten into them before the third grade. The story of the Glorious Yellow Revolution, the Diktat of Abdication by the senile Monforte King, the tragic Last Stand of the New Model Army, in which models proved of little real value against mounted knights, and the grand and completely unnecessary death of Mofo the Extreme and Very Dead, leader avatars, husband to his consort Maya of Autodesk, and father of the Republic.
The public announcer, the famed Rod Blaack, stood in his powdered wig, and his antique outfit with pointy toed shoes with silver whistles. Rod was a life long back bencher in the Senate and had developed a very loud voice in order to be heard during the senatorial debates and riots, and he was especially desired for these gala events as Major Domo.
Chris stood next in line. Most of the invited guests and gate crashers had already arrived and a cacophony of merriment, champagne corks, and heated argument hit him in the face like a hot wind from backside of Mount Sodom. They were playing classical music. Chris didn’t like classical music but he recognized the group – the Sex Pistols. This classical music he knew, because he had helped his daughter Whitney write a term paper, while out on bail, about early music and the Sex Pistols. The term paper was titled ‘The Incoherence of Our Common Vocabulary of Vehemence.”
Black Rod, banged his mace thee times upon the stone floor. “Thwak! Thwak! Thwak! And then in the loudest call Chris had ever heard, except when the Crabs famed pitcher Artie “Old One Eye” Dungeness struck out and umpire little Angel Delmot screamed STIIIIRIIIIKE THREEEEE, YOUR OUTTA HEREAAA!, Chris heard the announcement of the couple before him.
“Miss Prissy Pontromptitk Plumblossom, Daughter of his Honor Caltrop Noodle Plumblossom and the Marchese of Kmart, Graduate of the Sonogno School for Wayward Girls, Secretary of the Blue Book Nominating Committee, and her escort Major Minor, GMBH, of the Order of Saint Golphus, and the Keeper of the Blessed Relic of Saint Hymneos the Benighted, Mothers of Earth Druids (reformed).”
No one noticed, the babble continued, as Prissy and Major Minor descended the Grand Stairway to Heaven unnoticed and ignored.
Chris decided to have some fun. He stepped forward and handed his invitation to Rod Blaack. “Rod he whispered, they left out the bit about being the ‘High Arch Ring of the Order of Voussoirs and Extrados’.” Blaack was nonplussed because he had hand written each invitation himself and had carefully copied from the Book of Blue Bloods.
“Forgive me Sir Llanfair, it shall never happen again,.” Said Rod as he picked up a cut glass bottle with a little squeezy thing and sprayed Listerine into his wide open mouth.
This was really going to be loud thought Chris.
Thwack, Thwack, Thwack!
“The Honorable Sir Christopher Armstrong Llanfair, High Exalted Order of the Garter of Saint Phlem, … Associate Professor of Finance and the Dark Arts, University of Sonogno,… Holder of the GED Equivalent, and …President of the Reserve Bank and Counting House of Second Life.”
Rod took a deep breath and continued.
“and High Arch Ring of the Order of Voussoirs and Extrados.”
The Second Sea Lord, The Chair, Admiral Bobby Fisher, and Bradford Cananticle Monforte IV, Royal, Dauphan of Second Life, Associate Professor, and famed historian, and Head of Anti-Monarchist Party, looked up from their animated conversation, and seeing Chris they had a little laugh.
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