June 2nd, 2045. That day wasn’t D-Day quite yet, but rather the day when things began building up to it. Of course, D-Day had been a long-time coming, but June 2nd was when fate took a first step toward the eventual, inevitable destruction. Let’s bring you into Goldcrest so you can experience the events that led to D-Day.
It’s June 2nd, 2045 and you’re sitting next to Colin at Nathan’s house. Nathan was hosting his weekly gathering with a few of his close friends. Of course, Nathan would never host any sort of event where he had to invite more than twenty people from the neighborhood, mainly because he despised many people in Crestwood. Ever since Harmony had packed her bags, Nathan and his friends, including Colin, had begun realizing and discussing how many people in Crestwood were just like Harmony and deserved to be evicted.
On June 2nd, the subject of the complaints was a person named Daryl. Nathan, Colin, and Kayden were sitting in the garden, gathered around a small glass table. The rest of the guests were in the house, too far away to hear the group of friends’ snide remarks; at least, that’s what Colin thinks as he asks, “You know how everybody loves Daryl because they’re always talking about their ‘cool’ science experiments?’
“Dude, they’re so bad. I bet one day, their science experiment is going to blow up in their face and kill somebody,” Nathan complains, shaking his head in disbelief as he opens a can of soda. “I can’t believe so many people like them.”
Kayden simply nods in agreement. You glance over at Kayden. She was never the one to start these conversations; she simply added witty remarks to the conversation. Nathan was her best friend, but Kayden seemed too nice of a person to be hanging around somebody who was sharp-tongued as Nathan.
“You know what’s funny? I pretended to care about Daryl’s stupid science experiment when I ran into them today at the library, and they started talking about how much they love carbon and a bunch of other nerdy shit. So I asked them to write a list of all the chemicals they were using in their newest experiment. And you know how we’ve been leaving anonymous messages on their doorstep? Well, I wrote a new one that makes fun of their new experiment.” Colin pauses to take out a crumpled-up piece of paper. “Look at this.”
“I hope your experiment fails, you dumbass science nerd. Bro(nium), I wish you would just shut up forever because nobody likes you or your shitty experiments,” Nathan reads out loud with a grin.
As you laugh along with the three friends, you don’t notice Mac standing near the sliding door, his eyes wide as he listens to Nathan and Colin insult Daryl with jarring comments about how they baited Daryl just to make fun of them behind their back. But, of course, Mac didn’t know why they were doing it. For some reason, he thought he had a responsibility to intervene in a situation that didn’t involve him.
A day later, you see Mac meeting up with Daryl in a quiet coffee shop in the corner of the town, and as Mac nervously explains that Colin and his friends had been the ones leaving the messages, you see Daryl’s expression morph into one of utter horror and disbelief.
You watch as Daryl covers their face with both hands and sinks down in their seat. You watch as Mac places a careful hand on Daryl’s arm and asks if they’re okay. You watch as Daryl shakes off Mac’s arm, feigns a smile, and stands up. You watch as Daryl walks out of the coffee shop, their head bowed down as they look at the screen of their phone through tear-filled eyes.
Word spread around town, and, by the end of the day, you notice that people started to avoid Colin and his friends like a plague. You figure it’s because Daryl, who was well-known in Goldcrest, had spread the word about who was behind the anonymous messages that they had been receiving for weeks.
You’re walking alongside Colin as he and Nathan walk across the town, their anger barely contained as they noted the disgusted glances that people who once would cheerily greet them shot their way. Earlier that day, Colin and Nathan had figured out that Mac had been the one who told Daryl about the anonymous messages (it didn’t take much effort to guess; Nathan’s gatherings were so small that they figured out that Mac was the only person at the gathering who was friends with Daryl) and abruptly cut Mac out of their lives, blocking him on all forms of social media and uninviting him from their weekly gatherings.
Nathan kicks at a loose rock on the sidewalk as he muses, “I can’t believe Mac would rat us out like that. I really trusted him. I’ve known him basically since I’ve moved here, and I really didn’t expect him to do that.”
“Yeah. Honestly, I hate how he overreacted and made everybody hate us for no reason. Daryl deserved what we did to him.” Colin suddenly pauses mid-step and holds up a finger. You and Nathan both look over at him curiously, watching his annoyed expression slowly morph into a contemplative one. “You know, we’ve always had a bad feeling about him. What if we find evidence that he’s done something bad in the past?”
“Wait a second, that could work! Then we could show everybody that we were just doing the right thing by trying to drive Daryl out of this town. You’re a genius, Colin.”
Colin beams proudly as Nathan claps an approving hand on his back. You break into a smile to see hope blossom in their eyes, but some part of you has a feeling that this is the calm before the storm.
Finally, D-Day. People in Goldcrest call this day D-Day because, after what happened on this day, nobody wanted to say Daryl’s name. After Colin and co. had become public pariahs, they knew that the only way they could win back the hearts of the people of Goldcrest was to prove that Daryl was in the wrong.
So, Colin, Nathan, and a few of their good friends (and, frankly, the only people who were still willing to talk to them) headed to city hall and dug through all the files. Not physical files, of course, but rather the digital files that city hall had on all the citizens. Before the fiasco with Daryl, Colin was familiar with some people who worked in city hall and had managed to convince them to give him access to all of the files, including — especially — ones that were prohibited to the general public.
Colin and his friends gathered around the monitors containing the file database and spent the entire morning scouring for any dirt, when, finally, Colin discovered something in Daryl’s file that caught his eyes.
“Guys, look at this,” Colin gestures to his monitor. Pulled up on his screen was a file detailing Daryl’s involvement with the eviction of the old mayor of Orville.
The Orville town had been the only Terra Town that had failed miserably, following a mass eviction in the wake of its Mayor Gilbert being evicted. He had been generally loved, but a small group of disillusioned people had gained enough influence to have him evicted. Then, the citizens of Orville who supported Gilbert retaliated by evicting all leaders of the group before the town collapsed into chaos and was shut down. Orville had served as a warning for other towns, but, compared to all the other successful towns, it was a clear outlier.
Colin zooms in on the photo he found that had the leaders of Goodbye Gilbert, and, sure enough, Daryl was standing right next to the leader of the movement, Michelle, who had been so disgraced on earth that her friends and family cut her off.
“I thought the evicted people of Orville weren’t allowed in any Terra Towns,” frowns Kayden.
Nathan claps a hand on Kayden’s shoulder and grins, “Well, I guess that means Daryl bribed one of the assignors. Looks like we were right to have a bad feeling about this liar after all.”
Colin and his crew didn’t share this information immediately. They wanted to prepare everybody for the big shock, so, while Uma, one of their friends, was creating the pamphlet about Daryl’s misdeeds, Nathan, Colin, and a few others went around town, dropping vague hints about the information to unwilling listeners. Every time somebody glared at him, Colin would remind himself that he was the righteous one and continue along.
When the pamphlet came out, it spread across the town like wildfire in the (what would have otherwise been) calm evening. Colin smiled, expecting that people would forgive him and his friends again now that they had proved that Daryl was in the wrong. They’d gone through so much work just to bring light to the truth, so you couldn’t blame Colin for wanting a little credit.
However, as Colin was walking around town with a smile on his face, everybody seemed too distraught to care. Almost the entire town crowded around Daryl’s house, shouting angrily with demands of eviction as Daryl fearfully tried to defend themself by shouting back, “It was so long ago! I didn’t know it was wrong!”
One of Daryl’s long-time friends, Teddy, spots Colin and Nathan walking near the house, and points at them, hollering, “Why didn’t you tell us? How could you just not tell us that we were friends with a liar and traitor?”
Some people echo agreement and Colin raises his hands defensively, “We didn’t know either until this morning.”
“So, this entire afternoon, you just kept this information from us?” a random person yells, and Colin wonders just how far his influence had spread.
“We tried to prepare you guys!” Nathan scoffs, and the commotion increased to the point where you couldn’t even tell if you were screaming along with them. Because if you were, you wouldn’t be able to hear your own voice.
By the end of the day, Daryl was evicted, and there was a looming mood of silence as everybody in the town tried to process the loss. Unlike Harmony, Daryl had been universally loved (for the most part) and their absence left an unavoidably large gaping wound that the citizens of Goldcrest were desperately trying to ignore.
Colin hadn’t been hailed as a hero either. People blamed him and his friends for D-Day, but nobody made a move to attempt to evict them out of fear that they would find dirt on them too. People no longer greeted one another cheerily on the streets out of fear that they were getting cozy with the next Daryl. It was astonishing to see how the events of one singular day managed to send the normal dynamics of the town teetering wildly out of balance.
And now you can understand why Colin had zoned out in the grocery store. He had been reliving D-Day in his head, thinking about how everything had backfired so badly. He hated thinking about how he had lost everything in that one week just because of Mac. He wished that the crushed lemon (which was in perfectly normal shape before Colin started getting worked up) in between his hands was Mac’s head. He knew there was no changing the past, but damn, he sometimes wished he could get satisfying revenge on Mac.
“Um, excuse me, sir, do you need any help with that?” a store attendant gestured to the lemon juice pooling around Colin’s red sneakers.
Colin simply blinked and smiled at the store attendant. “Nope, I’m good.”
