Young Writers Society

"Our mother has been absent, ever since we founded Rome,

but there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home."

-the Mountain Goats

***

0001: They dragged the Absurdist Prince out into the wilderness between the train tracks and the lake, where they analysed him to death. That was the word on the street, at least. Now, standing in the place where he died, you can almost hear him as “thrumthrum elephant” is taken to mean something about the marginalized voices of animals in the conversation about their own gradual extinction. You feel sick. You fight off the need to vomit, and instead decide to look around for any clues the NIU might have missed.

0037: There’s sixty cents on the ground nearby. All the objects that floated around the Prince were gathered up as evidence. You recall the oboe, the pineapple, the googly-eyed rock he kept about him like a pet – all locked up now in an evidence room. Because of the random telekinesis, no one spent a lot of time with him, so no one really knew what was there. Sixty cents, though, might just be random enough, especially this far out in the wilderness, to have been in his orbit when he died. But what does it mean?

0012: What’s that, up in that tree?

0013: His hat! He didn’t wear it on his head, but it floated around him like a satellite.

0014: It doesn’t seem all that odd that he wrote the words SNARE DRUM all over his hat in thick black letters. That sort of thing was his deal. You’d think nothing of it, if you hadn’t heard rumours of a vicious gang known as the Rhythm Section slowly gaining traction in the area. Coincidence? Maybe.

0023: Okay, that does it. How did they overlook the 4/4 carved into this tree? The chief needs to hear about this. His house isn’t far. He doesn’t like being bothered on Sundays but, hell, this is important! [Go to: 12 Seagull Way]

0041: He isn’t home. This is rather inconvenient. It occurs to you, however, that maybe the chief doesn’t need to know about what you’re doing. Maybe you should do some of your own investigating. You decide to return to the place where The Absurdist Prince was murdered.

0001: They dragged the Absurdist Prince out into the wilderness between the train tracks and the lake, where they analysed him to death. That was the word on the street, at least…

***

I think I’m stuck in a loop.

Damn.

Ok, tell me where you went.

***

As Thomas Moss lay there in the dirt, bleeding from any number of possible places and struggling to breathe, he imagined himself like Dorothy: waking up in Aunty Em’s house, surrounded by the people that had shared in his delusion. He looked up and imagined he could see his best friend, the girl he adored and a failed presidential candidate. “And you were there, and you were there, and you were there.” He thought about the moment that brilliant idea came to him: the tornado that picked him up and carried him away. The truth, however, was that the storm was in him, albeit without words or shape, in many moments of his life leading up to the night it escaped. In bars and car parks, in beer and in boredom.

It was in him as he stood on a small makeshift stage in his friend Emily’s backyard, encircled in friends and lanterns.

“And so,” he yelled as he held out the microphone to the crowd, inviting them to join in. “My fellow Americans!” Even the people who thought his choice was too much of a cliché joined in. It was a cliché because they knew the words. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can for your country!”

Nobody was really sure which came first: the portmanteau of oratory and karaoke, or the idea to base a party around such a combination. In either case, Emily had raised her head from the desk during the final class of the year, shouted the word like it was bingo, and then put her head back down. Thus Oratoraoke had come into being – loudly and in need of further explanation. The next few weeks had been spent alternating between final essays and rehearsals of great (or not so great) speeches.

“My fellow citizens of the world!” Finally feeling included in the proceedings, suburban Australia applauded for their impersonation-in-chief. It was at this moment when Thomas caught the eye of a girl in the crowd. She wasn’t wearing a costume. There were probably one hundred people in that massive Western Suburbs backyard, nearly all of whom saw Oratoraoke as a continuation of a costume party by other means, even if they were only spectating and not performing. May, now meeting Thomas’ gaze, was wearing unremarkable Friday night clothes and had earlier that evening given a rousing speech about freedom and equality. When everyone wanted to know who did the original, she laughed condescendingly like they should be ashamed for not knowing. She confided to Thomas, only Thomas, that she’d made the whole thing up. “Isn’t the costume a giveaway? It’s a May Wallace original.” Now, on stage, he wanted it all to be real, the way hers was.

“Ask not what America will do for you, but what we together can do for the freedom of mankind.”

When he finished, Thomas stepped down from the stage and accepted a shot of something from Cameron, as applause washed over him like a chaser. Someone in a Nixon mask extended his hand to congratulate him, before pulling away at the last moment. Ever the sore loser, even at parties. For a few minutes he was all executive power and Boston Irish charisma, and then it was all over so suddenly: Washington to Dallas in a heartbeat. The attention of the crowd was soon focused on a fellow classmate named Hannah, dressed like a hooker and delivering Aragorn’s speech from in front of the Black Gate. The delivery was spot-on, except she replaced ‘men’ with ‘women’ whenever the word came up.

“I bid you stand, Women of the West!” she screamed. Riotous applause, and someone shouted “For Frodo!” but Thomas stood at the back, trying to appreciate the brilliance of the commentary. Instead he had spent the whole time trying to figure out a way to explain to Cameron, now quite drunk after earlier doing his best Billy Bob Thornton from Friday Night Lights, what he was feeling. He didn’t quite get there.

The idea was in him, almost on him at this point, later that night when the conversation at the party inevitably turned to what everyone would be doing next year. Cameron told everyone about a job he had lined up with a marketing firm. Some were going travelling, some were going to study law. Emily had gotten a journalism internship through her father, who owned the newspaper. May, who was the only one whose response Thomas actually wanted to hear, muttered something about a job. When it was Thomas’ turn, he thought he sounded like someone who had gotten stoned before a pitch meeting.

“Well, I’ve been working on this location-based hypertext noir adventure… thing,” he told the circle of people. Having never explained it to anyone, except Cameron who was helping him with the app design, he wasn’t really sure what to say. “Like, you start at a location, where you find a number hidden somewhere. Then you take out your phone, put the number into the app, and it tells you part of the story. Then it might tell you to go somewhere else, where you’ll look for another number. Or you might get a choice between going one place, or another. And it records which numbers you’ve already put in, so, say 0033 will read differently if you’ve already entered 0032, than it will if you haven’t.”

There was a moment of silence before anyone said anything. Eventually Cameron spoke up. “It’s still in the beta-testing phase.”

“And are you planning to make money off this?” Emily asked. “Subscription fees? Charging people for the app?”

“No, I just… thought it might be fun. Make the place I live more exciting for people.”

More silence. Then, “I think it sounds great,” said May. “I’ll even help you test it, if you want. But,” she paused to consider what she was about to say, “are people going to, like, get it? I mean, the place you live isn’t exactly known for its… culture. It might work in Melbourne, or across the university campus, but the outer suburbs of Perth? Are you going to explain over fifty years of game, film and narrative theory before they start?”

He didn’t know how to respond to this. His attitude had always simply been ‘if you build it, they will come,’ until now.

“Just, don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out.”

For the second time that night, he wished he had something real to tell her. He wanted to tell her that the idea was taking the suburbs by storm, or that some developers from Silicon Valley were interested in it. He would have even settled for being able to say he’d also gotten a job interview somewhere, but there was nothing. This was the closest he had come, before the night when his ambition and frustration became an actual string of words, to telling someone that he was also possibly interested in getting involved in local government, but it felt too much like a 5 year-old saying he wants to be a fireman when he grows up.

“I know,” he said, smiling. “I won’t.”

If there was a germ of the idea in him the next morning when he woke up on Emily’s couch, it was in the form of a hangover and a resentful, 40-minute, Sunday morning drive home. There were never any parties close to home. He found Cameron asleep in a hammock in the backyard, with a girl Thomas recognized from a first-year history tutorial. He felt bad about waking him (and by extension, her) but the tangle of their bodies was not going to keep his pounding head from its own pillow. They did the apologetic dance of disentangling, the choreography made more difficult by the hammock’s swing and its depth, and soon Cameron was in the passenger seat of Thomas’ car, fighting off the need to vomit. Thankfully, he was successful in this, but there were some close calls.

It was early November, the summer of 2012, of Monsters and Men and Macklemore. Cameron was closely following the rise and fall and rise and fall of Mitt Romney, while Thomas worked on his simulacrum – his sub-suburb. He had taken down all of his posters – Jay-Z, Christina Hendricks, Batman – and covered the walls in maps and sticky notes. A story began to emerge about a Pirate King and an underground battle for the fate of thousands. He wrote sub-plots within sub-plots within alleyways, obscure characters that could only be encountered with a very specific series of numbers, and toyed with the idea of adding an inventory system.

“Now we’re getting beyond my skill level,” Cameron told him when the idea was pitched. “If you want fancy shit like that you’re going to have to hire a pro.” In the three weeks between finishing his degree (the day before Oratoraoke) and starting his job, Cameron spent most of his time at Thomas’ house. There he could get high and watch the American 24-hour news networks – activities not available to him at his own parents’ house. Despite also living with his parents, Thomas was not exactly subject to any real parenting the way Cameron was. Where Cameron’s actions at home were still very much controlled by restrictions and negotiations, the Moss household was governed by the far more subtle means of awkwardness and communicative action. If caught smoking weed, his mother would merely ask how often he did it, and why, and the awkwardness involved would be enough to ensure would not get caught again.

Paul Ryan, the uneducated man’s educated man, was on screen talking about numbers that were too complicated to be talked about, when Thomas broached the subject of how much spare time Cameron would have once he started his new job.

“I don’t really know,” he said in reply. “I don’t even really know what they expect of me, so we’ll have to wait and see. But I guess that isn’t even really the truth. The answer is, probably not. But maybe you could learn to do the app stuff yourself. It isn’t really that hard.”

“Yeah, I guess I should.” He had very little interest in learning web design, despite the fact that that was the one skill anybody hired a Communications major for. He liked to reassure himself with the example of Steve Jobs not knowing anything about coding, but the similarities fell apart pretty quickly.

They would normally spend most of the day in front of the TV, alternating between CNN, FOX and the Cartoon Network, Thomas half paying attention to Cameron’s three quarters. The hypertext adventure, now given the name of Suburbs Beyond Suburbs (with all apologies to the Arcade Fire), was slowly coming together. As a result, Thomas had inadvertently, perhaps by osmosis, become more aware of what was happening in his real community. There was a talent competition happening at the youth centre. The library had a weekly book club for senior citizens, even though it made a point of saying that, really, everyone is welcome. There were, supposedly, nature walks that took place around the lake every Saturday, but that information had last been updated in February, 2009. He found himself neck-deep in the council’s website before long, where he noticed an ad for a job vacancy. Looking up from his laptop, interrupting an semi-important speech on TV, he said to Cameron, “Cultural Development Officer.”

“Huh?” he responded.

“There’s a job opening with the local council. Cultural Development Officer.”

“And what does that mean?”

“No idea. But it sounds like me, doesn’t it?”

“Mmm. Sure.”

He spent the next day misremembering the past well enough to put together what he thought was a decent resume and cover letter. Going to bad movies and good bars made him “culturally engaged” and his Bachelor of Arts made him “ready for the challenges of public service.” He even cited Suburbs Beyond Suburbs as an example of taking initiative to improve the reputation of the town, believing that such a fresh, experimental idea would make him the clear choice for the job. He finally clicked ‘submit application’ at 3am on a Friday morning. Immediately after doing so, he realized that being that guy who is up at this hour, looking desperately for a job, was not a good look. He hoped the applications weren’t time coded, but knew they probably were.

As if writing about his aptitude for a world of project implementation and core values brought out his latent professionalism, he just kept going. He wrote more letters and addressed selection criteria like it was, in itself, a full-time job. Junior Communications Officer, PR Assistant, Youth Projects Administrator, even something that was advertised as ‘Social Media Rock Star’, which conjured images of girls throwing underwear at him when he Tweeted. The descriptions of the jobs all sounded like things any person who knew how to use a computer and talk to people could do, so surely the law of averages suggested that at least one of his many applications would at least get him in for an interview. But they didn’t.

The rejection from the council came through, via e-mail, two weeks later on a Friday morning. It sat in his inbox for three hours before waking at midday and opening his computer. No interview, no follow-up, no feedback, just “we are sorry to inform you blah blah blah.” The others trickled through in the weeks after that or were just silent, like con men skipping town with your money and your ill-informed dreams.

In those weeks, while Cameron was at work and everyone else had dispersed to various corners of the globe, he thought a lot about Mitt Romney. He seemed now, after his defeat, like the least powerful man in the world: almost on par with Thomas despite his millions of dollars. But at the beginning he seemed sure of himself, in an inept sort of way. Like he only needed his own support to become President, because that confidence was enough of a credential. This was the moment he remembered out there in the bush, possibly dying but probably definitely not. Surely most public figures could trace a line in their lives from wanting to give a convincing JFK performance, to wanting to impress a single person in a large crowd, to wanting to improve the place they live, right through to realizing that the best jobs are the ones no one has to offer you. A word surfaced for what he wanted to do.

When Cameron showed up at his house after work one Friday afternoon, they grudgingly conceded defeat to an empty fridge and decided to go to the only bar in town. It took ten minutes to walk there, and this was its best feature. The place was an absolute nightmare of contemporary hospitality, perhaps through no fault of its own. Intimate dining inside and regular al fresco violence outside, with a neat casual dress code for both. Modern décor and ultra-modern fingerprint scanners upon entry. Vodka, Red Bull; vodka, Red Bull; water; vodka, Red Bull. Cameron and Thomas sat down at a table in the beer garden: a garden so named because it was presumably brought to you by your $11 beer. They kept a wary eye on the bar and the doors, hoping to avoid the weekly high school reunion.

“So, Corporate Cam. Taking the business world by storm?”

Cameron laughed. “Yeah, something like that. It’s kind of strange though, this business world.”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know. They talk about social media like they can sell you shit while being your friend. The internet’s just going to be one big business lunch when they’re done. They’ve got me working on this campaign – heavily supervised of course – for a housing development out in the hills. So they talk like they’re already your neighbour, welcoming you with muffins and letting you know that if you ever need anything they’re just next door.” He took a long sip of beer. “I guess I need to stop saying ‘they’. I’m the one driving the welcome wagon now. Or at least in the passenger seat, waving stupidly.”

“But you’re going to stick with it?”

“Yeah. If I do the knucklehead Facebook stalker stuff for a while then maybe I can get out and do something better.”

“Like politics?”

“Yeah, maybe. And anyway, there’s this really nice girl at work that-“

“What if we ran for mayor?”

“-I think might be into… wait. What?”

“I think we should run for Mayor.”

It took a few moments of scrutiny, and half of his pint, to make out whether Thomas was serious. He finished the beer, looked his best friend in the eye, and asked, “We?”

“Well, me. But you’ll be campaign manager.”

“Why can’t I run?”

“Because I said it first.”

And now his nose was most certainly broken. Maybe some ribs too.