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It Takes a Town

by Stephen V. Ramey

“They ain’t really going through with this,” Tom said. “Are they?” The pig smell intensified, driving off more pleasant fumes of paint and honest sweat. “First the casino. Then the amusement park. Now a rocket?” He chuckled. “Won’t you crazy townies never learn?”

“This is different. This will really put Thornhope on the map.” Anthony turned back to his work. “The whole town is pitching in.” He finished outlining the final T and selected a sash brush from his tool belt. The brush’s upper portion was crusted but the tips were flexible enough. He dipped it into black paint.

“What about materials?”

“Folks are donating–”

“And what about the rocket? Where you gonna get that?”

Anthony licked his lips, trying not to lose concentration. “There’s talk about that old silo on your property–”

“My silo!” Tom laughed hard and slapped his thigh. “What in hellfire makes you think a bunch of morons and a queerball crossdresser can launch a silo to Mars?”

Anthony rolled his eyes. This was exactly the attitude he hoped to escape. “Who’s to say we can’t?”

 

Unfortunately we don’t have the full text to this one, but you can read the rest of the story here!

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Host Commentary

..aaaaand welcome back. That was IT TAKES A TOWN by STEPHEN V. RAMEY, and if you liked that, he’s got another story freely available online at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, titled “Seeing”, that you might also enjoy.

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I got actual goosebumps for the ending of this one. It feels like a statement of intent for the start of 2024, despite being—astonishingly—22 years old, originally published in 2002. This is a year with big elections in the UK and the US—possibly the last ever free election in the US, given what one angry candidate has openly said he’ll do to his opponents on day 1 in office if re-elected, and what happened to the Voting Rights Act last time round with Bad Place Gritty. The UK, too, feels at breaking point—we are on course for this to be the first parliament in modern history where households are poorer at the end of it than they were at the start of it. But I am sick of this doom and gloom! Tired of it, I say! My thirties have been a relentless battering of my old people being sick and/or dead and my young people being troubled and my own resulting breakdowns and I! Have! Had! Enough!

So I am choosing hope over cynicism. I am choosing to believe the silo can take off and make it to Mars, that the carrots will grow, that the pigs will be happy. Our experience of reality is a haphazard reconstruction of external events based on a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum and some vibrating molecules of air as filtered through a lumpy wet sack of grey meat, and so gods help me I will make that lumpy wet sack of grey meat filter it in a positive light, I will face it all with a smile and a bounce and a community around me and I will make it work. No more bad times! Only good times! Hope and faith and pigs on Mars. Let’s do it.