Monday, July 14, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation: XXXIII. Trouble in Tourist

Bad Blogger isn't accepting bold or italic today and isn't allowing me to embed URLs, so here are four I would ordinarly have pasted as links:

(Late note: I fixed it on a revisit!)

High Flight

http://cheyennepal.blogspot.com/2006/12/high-flight.html

Sweetie’s Odyssey

http://cheyennepal.blogspot.com/2007/02/sweetie-odyssey.html

Dakota Goes to Oxford

http://cheyennepal.blogspot.com/2007/04/boyfriend-ii-oxford.html

Harsh Conditions in Dreamland

http://cheyennepal.blogspot.com/2007/01/late-unpleasantness-i-news-breaks.html

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Written 14 July, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XXXIII: Trouble in Tourist


Telairlines don’t really have Tourist sections any more, it seems—only First Class and Business—but our telecraft was V. 1.0, and so we were stuck with the old names.

Anyway, Tourist was jam-packed with frenzied Sweetie & Chey fans. They were wearing freebie Whimsy hard hats and t-shirts and drunkenly singing sections of Sweetie’s recaptioned songs from real life. When they saw us, there was a stampede.

“Sign this! Sign this!”

“OMG, I can’t believe it’s really YOU!”

“Will you please take this demo? My name and e-mail address are on it so you can IM me to tell me it’s wonderful and you can make me the big star I know I really am.”

“Could I have another for my, uh, uh, my son? And oh, yeah, my daughters! I have seven of them, all adopted prim babies. Could I have photos for them, too? I promise not to sell them!”

“What in the world is this? It’s sharp!”

“Oh, said Sweetie. “Sorry. That’s an English throwing scone. I guess I signed it by mistake."

Sweetie continued. “It seems we’ve run out of publicity stills. We will, however, be happy to sign your clothing, plaster casts, and PG-rated body parts. Please notice our tip jar in the aisle. We’re grateful for all gratuities, which will be used to beautify Whimsy and bail us out of jail if the worst should come to pass. Please remember also to keep your group membership current. We need the income.”

By regaling the fans with tales of our sims and our second lives, Sweetie and I were able to charm them back to their seats. They sat in thrall as we spoke about flying to 50,000,000 meters, of Sweetie’s abduction (sort of) by the dragon BreathOfG8d Onmura, of having to pack my alt Dakota Burns off to Oxford, of the harsh conditions in Dreamland, where we had made our first home.

Finally I said, “How coincidental it is to hijack by sheer chance a teleplane that happens to be filled with our fans!”

The spokesperson laughed. “It’s not really a coincidence. Every teleplane that leaves the port today will be chock-full with your fans.”

“It’s because of Sweetie-Con,” someone said.

“Sweetie-Con?” I asked.

“Yeah, in fact the SECOND annual Sweetie-Con. It was HUGE! We crashed the sim seven times!

“Uh,” I said, “you mean Sweetie-and-Chey-Con?”

“No,” came the reply. “Just Sweetie-Con. Who’s Chey?”

“Damn it,” I said. “I knew I should have insisted my name go first!”

Someone handed me a program and I scanned it, reading the names of the sessions:

Where Does Sweetie Get Her Shoes, and Why Do They Look So Fabulous?

Whimsy: Sweetie’s Virtual Home

Zaftig Doesn’t Begin to Describe It: Sweetie’s Shape

Sweetie-Talk: Reproducing Sweetie’s Typos in Your Own Chat

Not So Chey: Sweetie’s Fictitious Lover

“Not so Chey?” I roared. “Sweetie’s Fictitious Lover?”

“Uh, yeah,” said a fan. “Sweetie has always been oblique when referencing her girlfriend. Most of us don’t think she’s real. Even virtually. Would you tell us again who you are?”

Stunned, I did an about-face and stumbled back to First Class. I fell heavily into my seat and drained my Cosmopolitan.

Over the loudspeaker, Captain Camper said, “We are now approaching Black Swan.”
And his chair said:

Boeing Flight Pilot’s Camping Chair, Deluxe Model: “You have just earned five Lindens for sitting in this chair for ten minutes. You have earned a total of 5018 Lindens.”

And the troubles began in the Tourist section.

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