Part 12

I woke up the next day feeling rather well. I lay in bed for a few minutes, knowing that this was going to be the best time of day for me. When I first opened my eyes, when I was in that place where you aren't asleep but still aren't fully awake, I could pretend that everything was fine, that I was laying in my bed at home, and could get out of bed and get in my car and go wherever I wanted.

Of course, then I would wake up fully, and the weight of my situation would come crashing down on me. It took all my willpower just to get out of bed and face this weirdness.

Deryl and the city council was on another expansion kick. Things had been rather busy at the city council after I returned from my aborted escape attempt. We had developed a budget deficit that had required immediate attention. After some debate we decided that budget cuts across the board were needed, as well as the discontinuation of some civic programs. Transit funding, of course, remained at 100%. Nobody had even tried to bring up the subject of cutting funding.







As the town continued to grow I continued to go about my daily business. I told myself I was just biding my time, but I knew deep down that I was in the process of giving up. I was stuck here, wherever here was, and I would probably never figure out what was going on.

And then things started to get interesting.

It was just another day in the mayor's office. I was playing Solitaire on my computer when suddenly it felt like my head was going to explode. I hadn't had any headaches since my flight, but they had returned now with a vengeance. I almost passed out from it's intensity. And then Deryl burst into my office.

: Are you ok?

: No!

: We've got a problem.

: What?



Our first disaster! For those that haven't played the game, when a disaster strikes the game speed will drop, and you will gain the option of deploying fire, police, National Guard (if you don't have a single police or fire station), or the military (if you have a military base). Deploying these units in the area of the disaster will help fight the disaster, but for some things there is only so much you can do. Of course some disasters don't even let you fight them, such as tornadoes. They just destroy things.

: It's a chemical spill. It's located in the river, pretty close to our house. Police have already closed off the area and we've got haz-mat equiped fire units on clean-up duty.

There was a sort of command post set up in City Hall, and I spent most of the day there. Fortunately my headache gradually faded over time. By that night my headache was gone, and the spill had been for the most part contained and dissipated.



The next day I checked the morning paper to see what they made of the story. Naturally it was front page material.



The story was a mess, as usual, but I was able to glean the most per tenant information from it.



I started to put the paper to the side, but another article caught my eye. Something about it jarred me to my core. Because somehow when I saw it, I knew that it was written about me.



Choice time. But it's a fun one.

Where should we put our statue?