Something Random to Satisfy You With

Chapter 2: Where They Went Wrong

Thank you. Now where everything went wrong happened earlier that day. It was a warm, clear September day in Cilcinny, Alberta. It was a day when birds were chirping, kids were going to school, their parents were going to work, dogs were barking at those stupid birds who weren’t letting them get their sleep, and everything would have been going swell, had it not been for the fact that today was Election Day.

But before telling you about everything complicated in this story, and it does get very complicated, let me tell you a brief, simplified layout of the Town of Cilcinny:

The road layout of the town itself was shaped like four eights stuck together in a rectangle, two on the top and two on the bottom, with houses spottily lined around the rectangle and on the four corners. The Town Hall was at the north side, the theatre at the west side, the Tastes Like Chicken on the east side, and the gas station on the south side. All of the other businesses and the library were sandwiched within the rectangle. The church was just outside the town on the south side, and the hotel was just outside of town. The streets were straight, but wide, unlike most small towns. It acquired this system after getting a complete overhaul in the 60’s. Sure, most of the town had to evacuate and those who stayed behind couldn’t get out of their houses for weeks, but it was worth it. Nowadays the only way you could cause a traffic jam was if you screwed around with the traffic lights, but no one was imperatively idiotic enough to do that.

Now back to the story.

The Election today was arguably the most important in the history of the town. On one side was the current mayor and his sponsor, Michael Ericson of the Fundamentalist Party and Lewis Lucas of Golden Golf Courses, the famous golf franchise. On the other side was the mayor’s opponent and his sponsor, Jack Miller of the Moderate Party and Max Carlson of Tastes Like Chicken, the infamous chicken restaurant franchise. There were several things that made this election tight, and some the reasons wouldn’t be ones you’d expect.

For one, the two political opponents didn’t seem to give a reason for people to not vote for them. Mayor Ericson had a good track record, winning the last two elections and serving his people well. The economy wasn’t as terrible as most small towns, events were held every year to make things interesting, the people on his staff weren’t total jerks, and the guy himself wasn’t a jerk and was just a nice guy to begin with. In fact, this might have been the first election in 20 years not to have a potential split vote, had it not been for the opposing opponent, Jack Miller. Miller’s campaign had been promising an observatory, a recreation center, something new every week, and a strategy that would double the town’s money in six weeks, guaranteed. Unfortunately, the details about these changes were pretty scarce and vague, especially when it concerned something about a budget, but it all sounded so good. It was just so hard to choose.

Another factor to consider was the long-standing, yet publicly unknown, grudge between the sponsors, but before I explain the grudge, I better explain the sponsors.

Golden Golf Courses was a golf course franchise based mainly in the prairies and deserts of the world. The idea behind it was that instead of going across green fields and hills hitting a small white ball into a hole or castle, you were going across wheat fields and sand dunes hitting a small black ball into a hole or castle. The idea itself was the brainchild of Lewis Lucas, a former tire designer, who got the idea after playing on a golf course while on a business trip to Nevada. The golf course managers, instead of letting loose its roots and let the dirt be dirt, decided that it would be a good idea if they covered everything up with artificial grass. This concept didn’t work well, as the grass was loose and would fly up into the air and into people’s faces, as well as exposing the ground for what it really was. After this experience, Lewis brought home two things that day, an intense hatred of artificial grass, and an idea that would be crazier than any of your wildest dreams.