Part 4: Fit The Third : Doom House

Fit The Third : Doom House
The first full year had passed for Funkytown, and now we were in 1901. Great. Funkytown was still quite small, but I saw no reason why it ought to stay that way. I still had quite a lot of money in the bank, though it was in some odd currency called "Simoleons". However it was valued, we still had nearly 40,000 to spend.


So I quickly set out some new subdivisions...


And finally fulfilled Maria's requests for both a police station and a fire station. Hopefully that would shut her up.


They were effective almost immediately


Although their reach didn't quite extend to the power station. No matter. At least all the housing estates were covered, but that didn't mean an end to small time crime in the neighbourhood. While I was sleeping in my host's house, a rock flew in the bedroom window and landed on my bed around my groin region. I woke up with a start, looked out the window, and saw some miscreant run off into the dim morning mist, giving out a rebel yell as he did so.

BITE ME!

I shrugged and shut the window, and noticed that there was a message attached to the rock.


I scratched my head, tried to make sense of his strange patois, but because my head was still foggy from my dream where I was... oh never mind that... I decided to go back to sleep.

Later that morning, I took the note to Randall, since I figured he might have some chance of deciphering it.

*sigh* I knew this would happen.

What? That some punk would throw a rock through my window?



No, just the general bad auric vibrations being given out by the delightful young people. I've asked you many times to place a school in town.

This chap seems quite happy about the status quo!

Wal, there is an old saying: An idle young man, an unhappy old man. We have many indolent youth in our town, and, while I think it's wonderful that they spend so much of their time skinnydipping in the river, playing chicken with the trains, and skylarking around the power plant, they also need to spend some time learning about the more profound aspects of our world.

All those kids on the streets, huh? I really wish TV was invented.

Just build the school, OK?

I take it you'll be spending a lot of time there teaching the children well instead of bothering me about stupid crap like auras, yes?

Uh, yes.

Consider it done.


There was a vacant corner that seemed to be quite suitable to build a school, so that's where I had it built.


I was pleased to find that it would meet our needs for some time...


And Randall was quite satisfied for now.


However all these new civic buildings were not without a toll on the monthly budget.


I was also surprised to find that Maria was happy that the firefighters were happy, if not a little bored. Though I suspected by the look in her eye that she thought the actual reason they had so much spare time was that there weren't any trees for cats to climb for firemen to retrieve for her to make sarcastic comments about them.


Mort was more inclined to give me the stinkeye, however. Obviously, I would have to expand the town to get more ratepayers so we could balance the books again.


Then Maria came back, and she wasn't so happy that I hadn't contrived to design the city so it would revolve around the police station. Who'd she think I was? Walter Burley-Griffin?


I hadn't seen Karen in weeks, but she met me one day in the street and praised me for spreading out the pollution a bit more thinly. Then she winked at me. I didn't know whether to be flattered or terrified.


Another morning, as I left the boarding house, a mob of people approached me as I walked out the front gate. They were all pretty pleased to see me.

OK, what's going on? What are you people bothering me for this time?

A lady stepped forward from the crowd, introducing herself as Greta, representative of the people, and announced that, as the town's population had officially passed 5000, it been officially proclaimed as a town, I had officially been recognised as its mayor, and thus was entitled to a official mayoral mansion.



And here are some chains to go with it.

She lifted up this enormous chain out of a box and then dropped itover my neck. My knees nearly buckled with the weight.

*oof*

TA-DAAA! Mayor Wallace Bunkley, everyone!

And everyone clapped.

Umm, thanks, Erica. Thank you, good people of Funkytown.

So where do you want your house?



It didn't take me long to decide where I wanted it. The ideal place was next to the lake that I had so selflessly named after my late father, Jeb Bunkley. That I shared the same surname as Dad was a mere coincidence.

Not long after my house was built, several trucks containing my belongings from my old home arrived, unbidden, but O had obviously been keeping track of my progress. He even sent a card saying "I saved your china. Unfortunately your unused pasta sauce went mouldy within the first week so I had to jettison it into the garbage".


Now that I had a place of my own, I felt reinvigorated in my task to keep expanding the town. As more would-be shopkeepers expressed an interest in moving in to do business, I extended the shopping strip between High Street and the railway line.


Likewise, I allocated more space for factories.


I also began to make good on my promise to replant the area with the trees, starting outside my back door. For some reason I could only get hold of palm trees, but I guessed it would add some character to the town.

As I was walking in my front garden, admonishing the gardener for not using the grass catcher on the mower, I saw a kid walk in the front gate. I barely had to look at him to know who it was. Just something about the way he walked. Randall wasn't far behind in accompanying him, though, so I had no idea what was up. They'd obviously just walked over from the school.

IT'S YOU! It was you that chucked the rock through my window!

Yo, Mr B. You clocked me, man.

I clocked you? You nearly clocked me!

Yeah, well, Mr Shoop said I should aloppogise to you...

*whispering* it's "apologise", Nathan.

a poltergeist... a glop... apollo... ... uh, say sorry to you for what I did a couple of months back.

Apology accepted. What's your name, then, as we're now so familiar.

I'm Nathan to my moms but everyone else calls me Nate.

Great, Nate.

Oh yeah, that's not the only reason I came. It's not like I really wanted to come at all, but Mr Shoop said it was my suggestion, even though it was the idea of the whole class, but I wrote it out and all, so I should be the one to give it to you. I would've sent Cindy, she's like the class swot and is good at these things, whereas me and authority don't get on so well.

I nodded.

But yeah at the moment Cindy's having her head removed from the toilet bowl back at school. *looks sideways* I don't know how that happened.

So what's this idea of yours?

Nate presented me with a petition, signed by his whole class.



Wow, your writing's improved!

I looked at Randall who was just standing back, beaming with internal contentment as always. Smug git.

So whaddaya reckon?

I looked at Randall again.



I can't see how this can go wrong.

Well, Moe needs a new house as well, so this would kill two birds with one stone.

OK, I reckon it's a goer. I'll have it put in as soon as possible.



Fuckin' sweet, mate! Uh, I mean, thank you, Mr B.


I looked at the details of the proposed structure, and decided it'd be best located as far away from me as possible, because I'd already made a mistake putting my house across the road from the school. With a bit of luck one of the buggers would get scared to death.


I'm not sure whether it was the best idea to put it next to High Street, the only access road to many citizens' place of work, but it certainly had a certain grandeur to it.

I think Moe was pretty happy with his new house too, even if he was basically sent broke every Halloween from having to supply confectionery to all the town's children for trick or treating - well, half the children, because the merest glance of his face caused many kids to either faint, flee in terror, or chant the Litany Against Fear.

There was one major problem looming on the horizon, however.


Karen had been warning me more and more often about the increasing amount of garbage that the city's residents were generating.

You won't be able to "maybe later" this forever, Wal. Something needs to be done.


It was true. On more and more of my recent walks around the neighbourhood I noticed the piles of garbage on the backyards of the town were becoming bigger and stinkier.


People were being assailed by flies, they had to keep their doors and windows shut due to the stench, and they were getting cholera and dying by their thousands. Though the latter was happening elsewhere in the world.

The way I saw it, I had three options open to me.
- Establish a connection to another town, either by road or rail, and pay them to take our garbage away.
- Build a seaport and transport the garbage out that way. At some point we would want to establish a seaport anyway, but in the short term it would be quite a hit on our expenses.
- Build a landfill, which would solve the problem for now, but render that land useless for any other purpose for a long time, not to mention a concentrated source of air and water pollution.

The first two options were costly but effective, yet prone to the whims of our neighbours, the landfill option would be cheaper but a long term liability.


It was a pity, because this was the one outstanding issue for now. The past ten months had been pretty good, population growth wasn't as rapid as I'd like but the people were enjoying life more (aside from the smell) since I'd built the police and fire stations and the school, and at least the growth in taxes resulting from immigration had been sufficient to cover the added monthly outlays.



(Click for full-size)
Funkytown still didn't seem like much, and I still couldn't guess what sort of city it would become, but we were getting to whatever that was, even if it was in fits and starts.