Chapter 1 The Prolouge

It was a hot, sunny, and muggy February day.  Well, why a hot, sunny and muggy February day and not a hot , sunny and muggy August day?  Well, we will get to that in a little bit.

    Well here it was in the city of Greenfield, Harrington; the old industrial river town of nearly two million residents that was at the crossroads of two major rivers.   A little beyond the skyscraper dominated downtown area lay Murphy park- the biggest city park in the city with plenty of grassy areas and trees for all sorts of walking, exercise, recreation, and sports.   Neatly mowed areas of grass formed into large gently rolling hills, flanked by hedgerows of trees with the urban skyline in the background beyond that.   Sidewalks, park benches, and stone drinking fountains were scattered throughout the huge acreage of the park.  It was one of those days in which people of all ages were out en masse at the park, despite the whole city feeling like a sauna this hot day.  

    Two elementary age boys ran by on one of the park sidewalks, both of them sweating in tennis shoes, gym shorts and tank tops- one chasing the other for a football.   Nearby, a young couple in their twenties walked by on another sidewalk, a fair skinned guy with spiky short brown hair in a tank top, khaki shorts and black and white sneakers.  His girlfriend holding his hand had dark curly blonde hair, flip flops, daisy duke jean shorts, and a string bikini top on.  With the hot day in Greenfield at this park, no one would really bat an eye at anyone walking around in articles of swimwear.   A short distance near a hedgerow of trees along another sidewalk walked two upper class middle aged women.  Both of them sported short shoulder length hair and carried their purses.  One wore sneakers while the other one wore sandals.  Both wore short khaki womens' shorts and light tank tops, the most clothing either of them wanted to wear for their walk to the park on this hot, hot day.   A pale skinned but badly sunburnt teenage boy  rode by on a skateboard, wearing sneakers, a backwards baseball cap, baggy blue jeans, one of those big keychains, and no shirt.  As his skateboard wheels rolled loudly across the sidewalk concrete, he proudly showed off a couple inches of his boxer shorts underneath his sagging jeans.  This day, his long jeans probably stood out a little more than his being shirtless.  

    Out all in the park's grassy hills  were numerous college-aged  girls laying on beach towels sun tanning, mostly wearing full bikinis or else a bikini top and little short shorts.  They were so numerous this day that Murphy park might as well have been a day at the beach.  Alot of these girls read romance novels through the lenses of sunglasses while sunbathing.    Elsewhere in the park, a few college aged boys were playing ultimate frisbee amidst some of the trees they were using as boundaries.  Hot and sweaty, they were all shirtless in mostly little gym shorts and sneakers.  A few wore visors and sunglasses.  It was a pretty fast paced game as they were wanting to stay in shape for cross country or basketball later that year, despite the miserable heat.   By the frisbee game ran a young slender blonde haired thirty-something woman jogging along a nearby sidewalk.   She wore white sneakers, little short black gym shorts, and a tight little black sportsbra.  She was hot, sweaty,  and miserable and was wishing she had gotten out jogging sooner before the sun had gotten up and heated the day up so much.  

    One of the big gathering points at the park this day unsurprisingly happened to be the sprinkler park set up for the kids.  While not a particularly fancy sprinkler park, it was large and was absolutely crowded with kids of all ages.  Surrounding the sprinkler park were park benches that were filled with parents and other adults watching the kids.  There were more people than park benches that day so it was standing room only for a lot of people trying to keep an eye on their hot and wet kids playing in the sprinklers.  Virtually all the boys were shirtless in swimming trunks though a few were shirtless in little Speedos.  Scarcely a boy had on a shirt in the sprinkler area at all today.  The girls were all in swimsuits- a few one piece though mostly little two piece bikini style.  Most of the girls were all in swimwear attire though a small number had on short shorts with a swimsuit top on.  The only girl in a shirt of any kind was one eight year old girl who wore a now soaked tank top.  A few toddlers were running around in just their diapers because of the heat.  

    The parents and other adults watching them wore a mix of beach and swimwear attire along with articles of summer street clothes- it was that hot out.  Several young mothers of small children wore bikini tops and little gym shorts with sandals and sunglasses.   One early 40s-something guy sported an unkempt brown beard and watched his kids shirtless in old jean shorts and sneakers, his muscular hairy body starting to get sunburnt this day out.   He tried to keep an eye out for his kids, hoping his ex wasn't going to make an appearance.  About half the adult males watching younger kids were shirtless, trying to stay cool.  The other women were mostly in swimsuit tops of various kinds, little tank tops, or the top halves of one piece swimsuits pared up with  gym shorts or jean shorts or cutoffs.  Any young  women wearing t-shirts mostly rolled them up into makeshift bare-midriff tops and wore them with their summer streetwear bottoms.  

    The only pair of long pants out by the sprinkler park this day was one young college girl watching her two little nieces.  This tall and slender fair-skinned girl wore an older pair of blue jeans with a pair of orange flip flops and a just little string bikini top on her upper half.  As she sprinkled some water over her sweaty short dark blonde hair, she was glad she had left her shirt in the car this day.  Still, she felt people occasionally glance at her as if they were questioning her decision to wear long pants this day.  She had her bikini bottoms hidden underneath, but didn't want to be out in a full bikini with her nieces and all the other parents out.   In her purse, she had a disposable 35mm Kodak film camera and was waiting for the right moment to snap a few fun pictures of her nieces.  

    Near the edge of the sprinkler park was a flagpole atop a giant monument that the wet kids were running all around.    Now as the reader gets to view the top of the flag pole, here is where we can answer our question- "why a hot, sunny and muggy February day and not a hot, sunny, and muggy August Day?"   This is because here in the smallish country of the Republic of Reimar, they are in the temperate zone of the southern Hemisphere of their large planet that is twice the size of earth.  So here in Reimar,  due to it being in the southern hemisphere, February is the muggy time of summer and by June it is winter.  And actually, yes there are still 24 hour days and 365 days a year because this twice as big planet simply rotates twice the speed of earth.  

    At the bottom of the flagpole and monument that little swimsuit-clad kids were running around was a plaque that read "Dedicated to all the Men and Women of the Reimarian Armed Forces who served in the Gavinna War 1969-1975."  Above the plaque was a metal image of an infantryman decked out in the attire of the controversial war- including the olive drab uniform, helmet, and M16A1 assault rifle.  

    Another planet, eh?  Green aliens and strange spacecraft...uh, don't think so- not here anyways.  Just humans, mind you- and just like on earth you have the different races and nationalities. Well,  here in Reimar, it's a nearly all English speaking, and it's a traditionally white Caucasian population.   The Reimarian national flag atop that flagpole was of course like all of the Reimarian national flags- it was dark navy blue with a red horizontal cross outlined in white.  It resembled the British Union jack, except no white x-shaped Scottish St. Andrews cross.  Instead in all four blue corners were four fleur de Lis, acknowledging the role of the French speaking people in the early 1700s in settling Reimar.  Adding to the incredible weirdness of it being a different planet  is that people drive gasoline powered cars on asphalt paved roads to strange places like the mall, McDonalds, school, church, the bowling alley wearing blue jeans and sneakers and when they get home they often watch television for sports or play on the computer or with video game consoles.  In the country, there are farms and small towns with a 99% white population of conservative leaning folk, but get into the inner cities, you see more blacks and people of other races who have immigrated to Reimar in more recent years, along with a more liberal political environment.
In fact, the only telltale signs you were on another planet here and not the United States of America would be the existence of a first world English-speaking country called "Reimar,"  -the appearance of Reimarian money, postage stamps, car license plates, the layout of a few traffic signs unique to Reimar, the reversed yearly seasons as we have seen, and the geography would of course not match up to any specific place on Earth.  What?  How did this alternative universe come to be?  Did the south win the American Civil War?  Did Germany win World War I?  No, it's correctly called a parallel universe- where they have all the same stuff as us and look like us and speak the same languages but the geography, economic and political history are on a totally different plane of existence.  

    Well, as was said before- our story takes place on a hot, sunny and muggy February day- in the year 1999.  In other words, the girl wearing her jeans with a bikini top snapping pictures of her two nieces would not know what a phone camera was; 35mm was all she knew, and it would be the same of the other people at that park as well.   It was a Saturday, in Reimar's third largest city of Greenfield- hence all the people in the park that hot day.    This old city of nearly two million residents was the king of Reimar's factories, steel mills, as well as trade union politics, being located at the crossroads of two major rivers.  This old river town was home to a worker proud blue collar culture as well as a small but rapidly growing welfare and food stamp and ghetto culture as well.

    The large skyscraper dominated downtown district rose proudly above the dense tree lines and vegetation that naturally grew along the riverbanks of the two rivers, three large four-lane steel bridges connected the city of Greenfield  together across the large rivers as well as highway tunnels in the mountainous hills that defined many of the city's neighborhoods.  NFL-Style Football, rock n' roll music, and hard work defined the life of this hilly blue collar steel mill city.  
A hot dog stand was in Murphy Park that day, and a hot and sweaty businessman approached it.  Grey dress slacks, dress shoes, a white short sleeve dress shirt and a blue-patterned necktie was his outfit.  The exhausted man had unbuttoned the top few buttons of his sweat-drenched shirt and loosened up his tie like a bandanna.  He unhappily noticed his earlier Styrofoam soft drink had turned to water with the day's heat when he took a sip so he tossed it in the trash can.  He knew he had better get something to eat, so he ordered two hot dogs and a bag of Lay's potato chips from the vendor along with a 20 oz bottle of Pepsi.   He pulled out of his wallet a Reimarian five dollar bill to pay for it all.  Reimar's money was printed in a bluish-grey ink on the front and featured portraits of famous national figures as most countries' banknotes did.  The money was entitled "Central Reserve Bank of Reimar."  The back of the notes were all printed in red ink, hence their affectionate nickname "redbacks"  The man received a Reimarian 25 cent piece, a quarter, back as change.  However, no sooner had the hot and sweaty businessman walked off  with his food, than he paused to take a bite out of one of his hot dogs and the ketchup dribbled all over the front of his dress shirt and tie.  The man unhappily sighed as he saw the stain as he wondered what else could go wrong this day.  The  young shirtless teenage boy on the skateboard rolled by the unhappy businessman, his wheels loudly screeching on the sidewalk.   The man unhappily set his food down on a park bench and pulled out a business-related  letter hidden  underneath the rolled up Greenfield Gazette newspaper he was carrying.    Needing to mail it, he had already attached a Reimarian 29 cent postage stamp  and tossed it in the blue and red colored round mailboxes that were known throughout Reimar as the "mail barrels."  

    The two middle aged ladies in their short khaki shorts and tank tops had strolled up to the ice cream stand next to the hot dog stand, eagerly wanting something cold.  They both quietly snickered to themselves seeing the miserable businessman's white dress shirt that the ketchup had stained in a most comical manner.  There was kind of a reason this day that the ice cream stand was quite popular today in comparison to the nearly dead hot dog stand.   Ice cream sandwiches, Cones, fruit flavored frozen bars of every description, slushies, and sno-cones were selling quickly on this sauna hot summer day along with a typical assortment of soda pop.  
The college girl in the bikini top and blue jeans from the water park walked over to the ice cream stand as well, leading her two little nieces over to the stand.  These two little girls were still in their little two-piece swimsuits from before, though their colorful towels were wrapped around their necks and backs.  As they waited in the moderately long line at the ice cream stand, the dark blonde college girl began applying more sunscreen to her bare torso, figuring she would stay in her bikini top the rest of their hot afternoon out at the park with all the things at the park her nieces were wanting to see and explore there.   The slim college girl was rather glad all the other girls were out in the grass sunbathing in bikinis so she would fit right in wandering the park in her bikini top on this hot, hot day.   She looked forward to just getting a Slushie and herding her nieces over to a shady area with benches where they all could enjoy their cool treats.  If there was a day for her to wander the park half-dressed in just her favorite blue jeans, this was certainly it.  

    While the college girl and her nieces may have left the sprinkler park to spend the rest of the summer day playing in the rest of the park, crowds were still crammed at the sprinkler park.   The shirtless hairy man in his early 40s had indeed been greeted by his ex, who was none too happy to see him.  While bystanders looked on awkwardly as the two cussed each other out in front of all the young children, their three kids spotted them both from the sprinklers, seeing them at it...again.  
We are at Murphy Park in Greenfield, Harrington, Reimar-  but where is our story?  Is our story with the two little boys chasing a football?  No.  What about the young couple holding hands? No.  Our story is not with the crowds of sunbathers nor the ultimate Frisbee game.   Is it with the frustrated and sweaty businessman making a mess of himself at the hot dog stand?  No.    The two middle aged women waiting impatiently at the ice cream stand?  No again.  Is it with the sweet young college girl and her two adorable nieces?  Still no.  The  badly behaved man and his ex  fighting at the water park?  No, no and no.    To tell our story, we must move on from Murphy Park to take you to another part of the city.  We showed you Murphy park and some of the crowds to explain what a hot and muggy day it was out as well as to see how Reimarians perhaps are less modestly dressed in very hot weather than some other cultures.  Our story really starts out a few miles away from Murphy Park in an old blue collar neighborhood officially called Harveyville.  Harveyville was in many ways a typical Greenfield neighborhood- it was far out enough from the downtown area that it bordered the older suburbs but was still clearly the city.