Episode 2: America’s Birthday

On the Eastern Side of the Denver-Metro Area lies a city called Moda Garden. It’s a rather large city, and happens to be the city where the lads going to Coors Field lived. It was also where a number of their friends and family lived.

We begin today with young Todd’s family. Besides him, there were four who lived at the same house: His lazy but kind and rather smart father, his less lazy, technologically inept, and managerial mother, his smart yet not smart acting sister and his fat, retarded cat.

His father, who was named Dirk, was presently attending his sister, Kara’s, 4th of July party/barbecue. Todd’s mother, who went by Joanie or, when in need or want of a fake name, Athena Mann (for reasons complicated and nonsensical), was also being subjected to this event, as was Genevieve, Todd’s sister. The retarded cat, Steinbeck, was left at home to chase miller moths bravely while being frightened by the slightest movements of dust particles. Todd had escaped due to his prior commitment at the baseball field.

Also present at the barbecue were Dirk and Kara’s brother Andy, Andy’s wife Jane, Andy, Dirk, and Kara’s other sister Lisa and her husband Jack. Besides them were the mother and nephew of Dirk, Kara, Andy and Lisa, who were named respectively Marge and Rick. It is interesting to note that in another universe, Rick had recently been possessed by the spirit of war, and had no idea who Todd and his family were. His possession had to do with a strikingly similar family who were, in fact, entirely different. But that's another universe, and that's just one of a large number of events that never happened in this universe because they were too busy happening in the other one. It’s fortunate for any readers that an entirely different set of interesting events was preparing to unfold in this universe.

Andy and Dirk ran the barbecue, because Jack was basically blind and everyone else there had a knack for not working well with fire. It could be said that they did not have a knack for working well with fire, but you would not say that if you had seen this family’s knack. It was a very, very strong knack. Andy and Dirk also ran the firecracker display later in the day, which was quite illegal, left burn marks on the back porch, and entertained all present. All, that is, save for a number of spiders and the two resident cats, who were terrified by the display.

Later that night, Todd’s family intended to return home to set off their own firecrackers.

However, they didn’t feel comfortable doing as such without Todd, and so didn't.

* * *

Back at Todd’s place of residence, Steinbeck the cat was gazing out of the front window; an unusual procession of cloaked persons was occurring on the street outside. There were several dozen of them, and they were proceeding from the nearby Small Church to the nearby Graveyard.

This was not, however, what was enthralling Steinbeck; she was busy being astounded by perfectly usual birds flitting about the yard.

When the procession entered the Graveyard, they began singing a very unusual high-pitched dirge. This managed to frighten Steinbeck, but only because she thought that the birds were making the sound. She ran around the house for about two minutes, forgot what had scared her but decided that it would be safer to run for another eight minutes, only to forget that she was even running and finally settle at the back window to be mystified by the presence of a small unmoving shed that had been surprising her for at least 12 years.

* * *

Waldo’s family was also at a 4th of July party, but it was quite a large one, with too many people to identify. In fact, Steve and Lucy weren’t entirely sure they knew anyone there. Still, they managed to socialize sufficiently, acting as if they knew all the people they talked to. Unbeknownst to them, everyone else there felt quite the same way. Lucy eventually decided that it was because she was one of the few Asian people there. In reality, there were several Asian families just out of her sight; it was only the all pervasive feeling of the party.

Steve and Lucy were not in charge of anything, but took it upon themselves to guard the snack table the whole time, which, also unbeknownst to them, was the unconsciously chosen job of at least fifty percent of the people attending the party. Another thirty percent had taken it upon themselves to watch the people guarding the snack table to make sure that no one left without saying goodbye to them, so that they felt like they were important. The other twenty percent just wandered around socializing with people that they hoped that they knew. For the most part, they didn’t. It wasn’t even certain who the host was, if he or she even existed.

They continued on this path all night, until the fireworks at about ten when everyone went outside, stopped pretending to know each other, and watched fireworks with the one or two people that they actually did know.

None of them had noticed the cloaked figures trudging into the basement at around five o’clock. Well, rather, they had noticed, but everyone figured that they were with someone else, and so didn’t take note of it. The floor was too thick for the song to be heard.

* * *

Elli’s family were celebrating Independence Day as well. As members of the only major religion whose prophet lived in America, their particular church leader persuaded them to spend the day with their community. Officially, they were supposed to spend it with their church community, but since people of the same type tend to drift together, it was essentially their physical community too. So, what was happening was a sort of mildly religious, cola-free, block party. Elli’s parents, Jeremiah and Ethel, enjoyed it quite a bit, but were a touch off their game as an incomplete family.

They did, however, enjoy the celebrations, and assumed the cloaked figures entering the nearby graveyard were just there to set off fireworks that night, in some spectacular show. No one got any suspicions about this, and soon they all forgot about it because the song was too high and too far away to register with any of them. Once they had gone, however, Elder Smith VI, the leader of their congregation, began to look slightly worried. He made sure that the youths were still nearby. A sort of nauseous uneasiness fell over the whole thing a few hours before sunset.

* * *

Dawn’s family celebrated the birth of a nation that day too. Mostly by watching marathons on TV They weren’t a particularly social family. Not that they were anti-social; if they got invited to a party that interested them, they would go. But the people they tended to spend time with tended not to throw parties. A party was, though, where the eldest sister of the family, Marty, was: a huge party, where no one really knew each other, but managed to pretend they did for the most part. But, unlike the other party like this that was occurring at the time, everyone was enjoying themselves, and the effect felt completely natural. They drank much and later watched many fireworks. Besides, to Dawn's family, the Fourth of July was primarily a time that you spend with family, not friends. And since all their extended family was spending time with friends, Dawn, her mother (Sally), and her father (Jack) spent the day at home. They surfed between a Three Stooges marathon and a Friends marathon, and, just for laughs, occasionally switched to the Cops marathon on Fox, which was repeatedly being interrupted by reports on firecrackers that had gone off and were mistaken for terrorist attacks.

"I'm not sure which is worse: the sensationalism of terrorism, or the fact that they haven't said a word about the fires this could start," Jack commented once when this happened, before returning to a bit about Moe poking Curly in the eye. They realized they had seen that episode already, and switched to Ross and Rachel breaking up. They couldn’t tell if they had seen that episode yet.

They had a large backyard which they had recently cleared of a forest of weeds and other mean plants, and it had a very fortunate view of a very spectacular fireworks display that night. Throughout it, though, Sally was very busy scanning other parts of the sky. Dawn and Jack took no notice of this, too enthralled by the pretty lights.

* * *

Zach’s family were not particularly patriotic. True, they loved living in America-it was certainly better than their old life in China, where they had been both rather oppressed and constantly bothered by family-but it seemed rather silly to celebrate its birth in such a time, especially by blowing things up.

So his parents, who now went by Frank and Mary, because that’s so much easier for Americans to pronounce than their real names, which are themselves rather easy to pronounce, were busy working. Zach’s mom made beautiful clothing for retailers and high-paying customers, and Zach didn’t know what his dad did. He didn’t particularly care what his dad did, or what his mom did for that matter. There were only two things that mattered to him: Having fun and getting what he needed. He managed to do both, particularly because fun was one of the things he needed. He spent the whole day playing video games where he could either stop or help various mob bosses, or ones where he was a freaked out alien trying to get his ship from the CIA, or ones where he was actually a dream of some religious things.

He quite enjoyed himself, and decided that he would blow things up when he damn well wanted to see things blown up. He continued playing right through any fireworks displays.
He ignored the singing, assuming it to be some new form of jackassery that his neighbors had come up with since last year. He did notice it, though, and for the thirty seconds that he listened to it wondering about it, thought it was rather pretty, if painful.

* * *

For those readers who may have missed a minor but non-secretive reference in Episode 1, Zach and Dawn were Todd’s best friends. That will come into play. Remember it.

* * *

Sylvie was considered by many males of the species to be one of the most exquisitely beautiful seventeen year old girls there was. She knew this and it amused her, because she didn’t think that she really was. But she used this to her advantage by also being unbelievably flirtatious. She could control many of them, but only to a certain extent. The only thing that even slightly bothered her about this was that sometimes she hurt them, because they got the wrong idea. But deep down she thought that most of them deserved to be hurt, so it wasn't a large bother.

She didn’t spend 4th of July with her family, but rather with her best friend Mina. Mina, too, was quite stunning, but because of a certain giggly and unsure demeanor, was a bit less appealing to many of those that strove for the attentions of Sylvie, though much more appealing to a certain other set. Mina was an ex-pothead who felt, rather wrongly, that she didn’t have much of a personal personality, and thus strove to be like the most appealing person she could find. She had been doing it for upwards of ten years. In this case, Mina strove to be like Sylvie. Sylvie knew this, and it annoyed her, but Mina was a nice girl, so they remained friends.

On the day in question, they mostly drove around looking for something to do. Most of the stores were closed, however, so it was a fairly boring search. In their tedium, they managed to notice the large number of cloaked people in graveyards across the Denver-Metro area. They stopped outside the graveyards several times to try to figure out what they were doing, and could faintly hear the song. It gave them both the heebie-jeebies, so they drove away after a few moments each time.

They watched fireworks that night together from Sylvie's rooftop.

* * *

There are many, many more characters to appear in this serial. But none of them are too important right now, as they’re all doing basically the same things as other characters. For example, Sylvie’s parents are currently attending the same party as Waldo’s, being one of Lucy's unnoticed asian families, and Mina’s parents are out of town. There are a number of other major characters who are doing the same as, say, Elli’s family, or Dawn’s. We’ll get to them when they become important.




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