The smoldering remains of the Daily United News building cast a certain bitter stench across the island, like pennies dipped in paint, set alight.
Most of the town was still asleep from partaking in the New Year’s festivities, but Marshall Aarhus had yet to go to bed. He sat on a bench across the street from his former place of employment, wondering if it really had been an accidental fire. The winter thus far had been uncomfortably dry, but the town council had decided that overall morale would be boosted by the celebration, with the added climax of pyrotechnics.
Marshall thought back to the town council meeting that had voted in favor of the fireworks display to ring in the new year. He had sat towards the back of the room, as per usual when he was assigned to cover the meetings for the paper. He had chuckled to himself about the cliché of climactic fireworks, but it had come out as a snort, loud enough that several people turned to glare at him. Marshall shrugged that off, along with the notion that a climax ever ended with fireworks. It didn’t seem so funny now. No expensive and overt attempt to woo folks with something sparkly was going to boost the morale of the townspeople of Scurvytown, or Scurvitans, as the Daily U had begun to call them.
Marshall looked around as the sunrise began. The sun was such a workhorse, he thought, so consistent in casting shadows onto places that craved darkness, and shining light onto the ghosts of the nightfall. He wondered how long he had been sitting there, staring into the darkness.
As the sun began its slow gait across the sky, something glinted in the street close to where the firemen had sectioned off the scene with chartreuse tape. Marshall stood up and slowly walked closer to inspect it. He was still wearing his party clothes from the night before, which consisted of one of his nicer business suits, minus the jacket and tie. His once blindingly white button-down dress shirt was now ripped and blackened in places with soot. He was a mess, he thought, as he looked down and noticed he seemed to have lost one of his shoes in the chaos.
Clop, slap, clop, slap, clop, slap, shoe versus sock took turns hitting the recently re-paved street. Marshall’s white sock was now gray with grime, but sparkling. Broad Street, recently rechristened from its former name of Ho Alley, was now lined with confetti, glitter, and soot. As Marshall got nearer to the glistening object, he felt like he was being watched, but resisted the urge to turn and look around.
He bent down to examine the shiny item in the street, and watched as his shadow bent with him, its pointed head reminding him that he was still wearing a conical paper hat from the previous night’s party. He grunted a half-chuckle as he knocked the hat off his head, letting it hit the ground with the merest smidgen of a sound.
The object seemed smudged as it lay there in the street. Marshall took off his glasses and polished them with a clean spot on his sleeve. His surroundings swirled into a blur without them. Sometimes he liked to take his glasses off and watch the world the way it would have been without corrective lenses. It seemed both more real and less daunting, somehow. Perceptions were a funny thing, he thought. He wondered what someone would think if they drove down the street and saw him standing there, disheveled and still a little drunk.
He put the glasses back on his face and bent down and picked up the object. It felt cool in his hand. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a fifty-cent piece, which was something he hadn’t seen since he was a little boy. On one side of it was an airship, on the other, the face of one of the Inventioneers: Tesla, maybe, he thought.
A sudden noise behind Marshall startled him, and he turned to see what it was, A breeze had taken note of his hat, spun it around in a few circles on the pavement, and Marshall thought how marvelous it was, to be alive to see it. Moments before, as he sat staring at the charred building, he had been lamenting the fact that his life was over. Now that there was no more Daily United News, what was left for him to do? Sure, they would undoubtedly rebuild the facility, but there was no way to be certain they would want him back. Not after the last issue that went to print, anyway. For all he knew, he had been a target of the fire, as he had rushed back to work to file one more story when the blaze had erupted.
The coin grew warm against Marshall’s palm, and he realized that his hand had formed a clenched fist. He wondered who had dropped the coin, and what such outdated currency was doing on the island in the first place. There was only one person he knew who would know what to do with it, his wife, Alice. She’d taken up coin collection, which everyone said was an odd hobby, but Alice was practical if not overly optimistic. One day, she had said, her collection might have value again, and if so, she’d be the richest woman in Scurvytown.
With determination in his unbalanced step, Marshall Aarhus headed across the street to the Welcome Center. Alice had been putting in ridiculous hours lately, with intake at an all-time high, so she’d just assume sleep on the couch, and roll over and start work. Last night, she’d even packed a bag and told him she didn’t know when she’d be coming home. He hoped that Alice would be on speaking terms with him once again, especially considering the rare gift he was bringing her.
#
Scurvytown, Welcome Center; June 7, 2050; 3:00pm
“Weclome to Scruvytown” proclaimed the giant banner stretched across Broad Street. The winds had picked up unexpectedly after a gorgeous morning, and they had worked free the top right corner of the banner. Janet Tor shielded her dark brown eyes from the sun and watched the banner as it twisted against the threat of incoming inclement weather. She batted away strands of her dark black hair, and pulled it back into a pony tail, securing it with the rubber band she usually wore around her right wrist for occasions such as her hair getting on her nerves.
Dark clouds were beginning to make their presence known on the horizon. Janet turned back towards the Welcome Center, where she was in charge of maintenance and reception. She put her cigarette out on the mouth of a squid, which was actually a garbage can. This particular receptacle had been painted bright purple, and its large cartoonish eyes glared up at her.
“I’ll quit tomorrow,” she said to the squid, tossing the extinguished butt into its mouth. She imagined the receptacle gulping it down and gagging at the taste.
She turned back to look at the approaching storm clouds, grateful that they were finally being promised a bit of rain. Janet shifted her attention to the building across the street. It was a hollowed-out shell of what had once been the printing facility for Scurvytown’s branch of the Daily United News. There had been many promises over the years to re-build it, but there it sat, going on over twenty years of furthered disintegration. It was a reminder, like a scar, of dangerous times, and the power words can have against the people who aren’t afraid to use them.
Janet looked at the banner once more, its glaring spelling errors sending spikes of insult down her spine. That was the last time she had trusted someone to send documents to the printers without her final approval. She had thought that Captain Tullis would know what he was doing, having written a famous book and all, but after the banner incident, she knew better.
“I’ve never been a strong speller,” he had slurred his explanation.
“But you’ve always been a drunk,” she had retorted.
“It’s funnier this way, don’t you think?” he’d replied.
She was pretty sure she had exploded into an unrelenting torrent of expletives after that, the large framed Captain Tullis cowering in his bright red pumps.
Janet was distracted from her revelry by a deep booming voice calling her name.
“Oi, Janet!” it said.
She looked up to see who was shouting at her and groaned when she recognized him.
She shot a knowing glance at the squid trash can and whispered, “Speak of the devil, and he will seek you out without a moment’s hesitation.”
Captain Tullis waved as he approached her, like they were dear old friends. Janet waved back, her face twisted with condescension and annoyance. The Captain was wearing a full-length sundress today, horizontal striped yellow, his black and gray peppered chest hair poking through the cleavage. He had on his trademark golden sandals, which added four inches to his already towering 6-feet.
He bear-hugged Janet, slapping her on the backside like she was a member of some super-jocky sporting team and not a more refined member of the community. She would have thought, seeing her dressed up in her cute, short (but not too short) plaid skirt, well-pressed white blouse, and finely manicured fingernails, he’d be a bit less oafish. Especially if he was so prone to make sexist comments.
He pulled away and gave her a once-over.
“Nice tits today, Janet,” he said, as if skimming thoughts directly off her mind.
“Thanks,” she replied, buttoning her top button, her breasts heaving against the stifling heat of the summer afternoon. “What can I do for you today, Captain?”
“Well, I have some research I need help with. Something odd and old and I can’t really remember, but I was wondering if I could use your computer?”
Janet sighed and opened the door to the Welcome Center, gesturing that the Captain go ahead of her.
“You’re in luck,” she told him as he swept past her. “I have intakes coming any minute now, so I’ll be busy with that. You can research to your heart’s content, but we close at six.”
“You got any beer?” he asked, barreling towards the kitchen to check the fridge.
It always cracked Janet up to see the Captain walk around in ladies’ footwear, lumbering around like a man in his dainty shoes. He needed to take pageantry classes or something. She loved to imagine him trying to swivel his hips across a stage, a massive unabridged dictionary on top of his head, and a glittery sash reading “Miss Scurvytown” blazoned across his hairy chest.
Janet left the Captain to his beer quest. He was always asking to use her computer. She wished he’d get one of his own, but they weren’t exactly easy to come by. There was a waiting list for new machines, and an even longer waiting list to purchase someone’s old one. There was always the black market, but Janet shuddered to think what kind of trades one would have to make for a piece of modern technology. It was better to wait.
She moved over to the reception desk, and sat down daintily onto her swivel chair. She picked up the latest fashion magazine to make its way to the island. It was a two-year old issue about wintry fashions. It made Janet want to crank up the air conditioning in the Welcome Center, just so she could have a reason to wear a heavy coat again, not that she currently owned one. All her pretty clothes were back home on the Mainland, and her twin sister, Edi, had probably laid claim to them all. The Tor sisters had grown up on the Mainland, far up north to remember driving in the snow and bustling up in so many layers of clothing that peeling them off indoors made Janet feel like an onion.
Janet turned the page from winter coats to a much more sexually charged article. She pretended to read it, but her mind quickly drifted from “10 sexy things to say to snag a man,” to “10 salty things to say to ensnare your sailor.” She sighed deeply, mentally cursing her revisionist nature. Oh, to be back on the Mainland before everything got crazy, editing the holy frigdazzle out of epically boring manuals on jet engines, and on the weeknights to supplement her paltry editor’s income, answering pornographic letters-to-the-editor for skin mags.
The Captain poked his head around the corner. “Janet, what’s the word for when you try to say one word but say another one instead?”
“Aphasia?”
“No.”
“Stupidity?”
“No, that’s not it either,” he rolled his eyes. Janet noticed he must have been drunk when he applied his eyeliner because it was as askew as she’d ever seen.
“Sorry, not sure what you mean, then,” Janet said sweetly, hoping he’d go back to whatever research he was doing in the back office.
“Nevermind, I’ll think of it,” he replied, and turned to lumber back to the office.
“Hey!” Janet said suddenly, noticing for the first time that something was missing from Captain Tullis’s usual attire. “Where’s Hopewell?” she asked.
“Oh, he’s being laundered,” Captain Tullis said, his shoulders sagging. “Things got a bit messy last night, to say the least, and I don’t really recall so I can’t say more.”
“Don’t you feel sort of naked without him?” Janet asked.
“In a way,” the Captain admitted. “Poor Hopewell. When I woke up this morning, I was on the floor next to the wash bin, and he was in the middle it, covered in sick.”
“His own?” Janet asked, muffling a giggle with her hand.
“Suck it,” Captain Tullis replied, unamused.
Janet knew she was pushing her luck with him. If there was one thing Captain Tullis loathed, and there were a great many things he hated, it was people poking fun at Hopewell. If she didn’t change the topic, she’d be on the receiving end of one of his epic rants about basic human rights. He truly believed in a person’s right to consider a stuffed animal their best friend, and not get poked fun at for it.
Luckily, the bell jangled in the doorway, distracting them both from the conversation. The Captain scrambled off to the office to continue his research. Janet shoved her reading materials into the left-side desk drawer, which was filled with various fashion magazines from the last five years. She had read most of them cover-to-cover at least ten times. She folded her hands and waited for folks to trickle down the long hallway that lead to the reception area.
Four twenty-somethings walked single-file into the lobby. They all seemed confused about where to stand, or what to do next. Janet stood up and walked over to them.
“Welcome to Scurvytown!” she said, greeting them with a warm smile.
She shook each of their hands and gestured for them to make themselves comfortable on one of the chairs in the lobby. She wondered if they were new college students or if they were aiming for the workforce. There had been a recent call for jobs at the Squatter Foundation.
After the four kids had seated themselves, she stood in front of them, with her hands twisted behind her back, almost as if she was giving herself a secret handshake. She looked into the face of the students and thought, “Tall brown-haired boy, chubby blond-haired boy, skinny red-headed girl, and blue-eyed, brown-haired Boobzilla.” She hoped the Captain would stay confined to the office, as he didn’t care for folks to ask him about his choice of clothing. If he ventured out, she could mentally picture him sprouting wings and making a beeline for the busty girl, his yellow and black striped sundress already casting him perfectly in the role of the bumble-lecher, stinger primed and ready for his prey.
“I don’t know how much you were told about The Welcome Center and what we do here, so I’ll give you a quick and dirty history lesson and we can get started with your paperwork.”
Janet paused for a moment, taking in a breath and holding it, as she watched the twenty-somethings exchange significantly sarcastic glances. She exhaled and continued barreling through the prepared speech that she’d given so many times before.
“Every newcomer to the island of Scurvytown must register with The Welcome Center. This is mandated by United policy, and has been since Re-indoctrination Day. If you are found wandering the streets without your visitor’s bracelet, you will be held in the holding station until proof of your identity is confirmed. Once issued the bracelet, do not lose it. It looks like this,” she continued, pointing at the silver bracelet on her left wrist. It was engraved with her United Security ID code, which was unique to all persons.
“In order to register with Scurvytown, you must fill out our lengthy paperwork, so get comfortable in those chairs. It should take about an hour to complete. Then we’ll begin a tour of the town. Any questions?”
Janet braced herself. She hoped this group wouldn’t have any stupid questions for her. She turned her back on the kids and walked back over to the reception desk. She opened the bottom right-side drawer and pulled out four identical clipboards, with eight pages of forms to be filled out.
As she handed out the clipboards, the chubby blond-haired boy asked, “You got a bathroom here?”
“Down the hall, the room with the toilet in it,” Janet pointed. “Make it snappy. You kids need to have these forms finished by six o’clock, or you’re going to be doing the self-guided tour.”
The chubby boy plodded off down the hall, and Janet returned to the reception desk. She raised her hands above her head and made a soft noise as her back cracked. She was fairly certain the swivel-chair was plotting her demise, but who could really be certain of such things? She sat back down and opened the bottom left-hand drawer. She pulled out a thick manila folder and sat it in front of her. It was so filled with papers that it immediately popped open to real itself as a holder of old newspaper clippings from the Daily United News.
The chubby boy returned from his journey to the toilet, and Janet watched as he settled his large rump back into the sofa, the cushions seeming to groan under his weight.
“Oh, one more thing,” she directed the kids, “if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me, but it should all be pretty straight-forward stuff.”
As she spoke, the kids looked up at her, and when she finished, the resumed their work. It seemed they didn’t want to prolong things past quitting time, either, Janet assumed. She returned her attention to her collection of newspaper clippings. The top one was the last issue printed by the Daily United News before the building was gutted by fire.
The headline read, “Scandal at Fulger Triangle.” Janet had read the article many times, but it was still mostly a mystery what had happened. After all, there was no follow-up story, unless something had been printed about it outside the island. She doubted that had happened, considering the rest of the states that made up the United Mainland seemed to care very little about the events of their bastard cousin island state of Scurvytown.
Janet lost herself in pages upon pages of newspaper clippings, and found herself wondering what had become of the journalists who had written for it. Particularly, she wondered if there was a way to track down Marshall Aarhus or his family to find out what really went down at Fulger Triangle, and what was the real story behind the burnt-down newspaper facility. She had always heard that it was an accident, blamed on dry weather and an ill-fated fireworks display, but that seemed a bit far fetched to Janet.
“Ma’am?” the skinny red-headed girl called out.
Janet hated being called “Ma’am.” She was barely thirty, certainly she wasn’t quite yet old enough to be addressed like a spinster. She glared up at the girl and threw up her hands as if to ask, “What do you want?”
“We’re all finished here,” the girl replied, softly.
Janet sighed as she carefully shut her folder, dropped it softly in the drawer and slammed it shut harder than she’d intended.
“Oops, sorry,” she said, as she stood up and walked over to the kids.
The clock on the wall said it was five past six. Janet hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, or she would have set a timer so she wouldn’t be late to her second job. Quickly, she gathered up the clipboards from the kids. She scattered them on her desk for first thing in the morning.
“Looks like that went over a bit,” she said, frowning.
The kids all nodded in unison.
“Well, you have two choices, manned tour or self-guided. And as I’ve got a shift at the Bone tonight, I’m afraid it’s going to have to be self-guided tonight.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “I’ve got one map, you need to be careful with it and return it to me when you come back for your official bracelets tomorrow afternoon. Follow me to the desk, and I’ll hand out your visitor’s passes. Do not lose them or so help me, I will hunt you all down and you will not like it.”
The kids followed Janet back to her desk. She handed the map to the red-haired girl, and bracelets to each of them.
“The Welcome Center is at the corner of Land Boulevard and Broad Street. Do not forget this. Sometimes, the locals will refer to Broad as Ho Alley. Long story, if they say Ho Alley, they mean Broad Street. It they say Ho Avenue, they mean Ho Avenue. I know, confusing. Don’t ask. Follow the map. I’d suggest checking out the Red Light District. That’s where most kids your age seem to gravitate anyway. The hostel is located over there, stumble-drunk distance. If you get lost, remember the charred out building you saw on your way over? Good landmark since we’re right across the street. And remember, whatever you do on your tour, do not set foot in the rubble. It’s off-limits for your own safety. Got it? Good! I am going to be late for my second job.”
Janet grabbed her purse off the back of the back-crunching swivel-chair and raced toward the door before the kids could protest. In her haste, she had forgotten that Captain Tullis was still in her office.