Voter Turnout, continued
From the desk of Captain Benjamin C. Tullis (edited by Janet Tor)
I have traveled the world far and wide. I have written a book about my travels, and the amazing things I have seen. The book, cast off by some as the deranged ramblings of a drunken lunatic, managed to catapult my name to cult status, as I toured the mainland. It is as this cultured madman that I feel the need to issue a statement on behalf of the people of Scurvytown: we were collectively deceived by the best of them, by a scientist so devout in her beliefs, that she spent years developing methods to make her mass propaganda widely believed and undoubted.
Nothing that I did in those years, or in the years of adventuring that lead up to the book tour could quite prepare me for what I’ve recently witnessed in the locked-down state of Scurvytown, the oft-mocked island state to the southeast of the mainland.
What I found was that while our little island community was locked down from the happenings on the mainland, there was essentially no reason for it. We were the unwitting research participants of a project being conducted by the Squatter Foundation’s head of Research and Development, Matisse Batiste, who has apparently spent the last twenty-four years conducting an experiment based around the 8-year Presidential election cycle.
Why did we believe what all the propaganda told us? Because we’re good citizens who care about our own well-being, that’s why. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have some drinking to take care of for the next seven or more hours.
Good day,
Captain Benjamin C. Tullis.
Additional reading: a relevant article from the Mainlander-Gazette:
The Mainlander-Gazette
Mass-delusions and Corruption Skew Election Day Results for the Island Population of Scurvytown by Templesmith Fox
The months before Election Day are filled with propaganda, campaign promises, and lately, an increased amount of mudslinging between candidates. For the citizens of Scurvytown, someone sought to change all that, but not for the reasons you might suspect.
An employee by the name of Matisse Batiste from the Squatter Foundation’s Research and Development team got special funding from an anonymous and untraceable source that enabled him to use the population of Scurvytown as the control group for his research project. There has not yet been a formal statement issued by the Squatter Foundation on their involvement in the mass-conspiracy, for the record, but we have been in contact with their offices.
Mr. Batiste managed to convince the entire island that there was a new species of bat, called the Blorgbat, that had settled on their town twenty-four years ago, and that, due to the dangerous nature of the creature’s 8-year mating cycle, they must flee below-ground for the entire 6 weeks leading up to the election. The next phase of the plan was to create a media blackout, so that no information could go between the island and the mainland for the six weeks leading up to Election Day. It was Mr. Batiste’s hope that once the voting was over, and the results were official, he could then study the effects of the campaigning versus the lack thereof for the citizens of Scurvytown.
We were unable to interview Mr. Batiste, but an amateur podcaster by the name of Magby Aarhus was granted that privilege, and has agreed to share her story with us. As a citizen of Scurvytown, Miss Aarhus remembers going into hiding during Blorgbat season for as long as she’s been alive. Her interview is linked here.