CH 1 – CASINOS KNOW NO NOSE

August 5, 2018

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Ryan quickly walked down the sidewalk while firing off texts to his wife Jessica.  They had been planning a trip to the local casino, but now, Ryan couldn’t go because of his job.
 

RYAN TEXT:  There’s nothing I can do.  I have to work.
 

JESSICA TEXT: You’re the ONLY person that can do this??! Send the grunts! WTF.
 

Ryan decided to give Jessica some time to chill out because he knew she was really pissed about missing the trip.  Jessica was one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the city of Match and hardly had any time for fun. Her grueling hospital schedule kept her at work for, some days, up to twenty hours.  Of course, she made a great living, but desperately needs her getaways, such as, this casino trip.

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Ryan is an environmental engineer for Match and helps to maintain the air and water quality of the city.  You could say that he’s a sort of environmental nerd.  Instead of rolling dice and cranking slot machines at the local casino with his wife, he just got called in due to an apparent “code brown.”  Code brown meant that there was a toxicity reading in one of the city’s air or water monitoring devices that signaled a dangerous level of pollutants.  Ryan typically could dismiss most of these as false alarms, or at the most, he would simply need to look for a drainage runoff or broken factory exhaust that was skewing the numbers. Once fixed, the levels would go back to normal.

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Ryan’s colleague and best friend, Justin Lance, was also en-route to the code brown.  The call came in from Environmental Headquarters (“EH”) stating that there were abnormal air readings near the old Springer Mansion. Ryan and Justin were tasked with testing the air in person.

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“On my way to Springer..” Justin said on the radio to Ryan.

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Springer Mansion was the home of “Old Man Gilmore” – the town legend. People rarely saw OMG but he occasionally strolled around his yard, searching aimlessly for what seemed like nothing.  OMG’s mansion was located at the base of a cul-de-sac in a very nice and upscale neighborhood.  Even though it was a suburban area, about 20 minutes from downtown Match, Spring Mansion had a much larger yard than the neighboring homes.  It was also the last residential plot before entering Match’s wetland area.  Approximately 50 years behind Spring Mansion, the swampy wetlands began.  The wetlands were often-times the scene of airboat accidents as young people enjoyed the thrill of what was lurking in the marshy waters late at night, and this often led to accidents, and even outright disappearances. 

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Exactly one year earlier, in early August 2017, toxicity readings began to sore right in the area of Springer Mansion.  No one other than the environmental engineers and city officials knew of the readings so the general public had no clue.  Ryan had been sent to investigate with Justin a year ago and after sampling air and water all around a 1-mile radius, they found that the toxicity levels seemed to spike, nay, only increase, right around Spring Mansion.

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City officials and Ryan’s team monitored the area for several weeks and the levels maintained and peaked until November.  At the time, Ryan and his crew were dumbfounded because the levels of toxicity indicated that there was some sort of pollutant infiltrating the air and water right by OMG’s house.  Yet, they could not see or find any source.  Even more strange, the levels suddenly sank back to normal in November.

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Ryan sent some lower-level interns, affectionately referred to as “grunts” at the EH, to interview OMG to inquire as to what could possibly be coming from his house. It had been a short, but strange conversation. Ryan now recalls what his grunts told him after speaking to OMG. 

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“That…was weird.  He answered the door in is robe and his eyes were wide open the whole time we were there.  Dude, he NEVER blinked!”

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The whole crew laughed at the account.  They passed it off as a visceral reaction to the legend of OMG rather than a real oddity.  Due to his age and lack of any family or friends, locals, and mostly kids, have created a sort of legend of OMG.  In short, he’s the scary old man who lives alone and no one knows what’s in his house.  It’s not the spookiest of legends.

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However, the grunts swore up and down that they were not just associating local legend and that Omg was, in fact, strange.  When asked what he said to them when they asked about any gas leaks or other run-offs at his property, OMG had quietly whispered to them that he had no awareness of anything and only had mothballs in his house.  Then, he shut the door on them.

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For the purposes of last year’s investigation, that short encounter was enough for the city.  Not because OMG had given any evidence they needed, but because the levels went down naturally.  Although a decent sized city itself, Match’s decent proximity to the greater New York City area meant that pollution could radiate to Match and create spikes.  This cyclical occurrence was why EH officials were not concerned once the levels dropped in November 2017. 

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“What could OMG have in there anyway – an old record collection?  It’s probably runoff smog from THE City”, Herb Smith, Ryan’s boss had stated at the time.  As the levels returned to normal, the city figured it had been a simple and temporary issue.  But now, the levels had risen again.

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God, I’d rather be going to the casino”… Ryan thought to himself as he drove towards OMG’s house.  “Even the inside of a casino smells better than mothballs, ” Ryan playfully said to himself.  As he drove up to Springer Mansion, he noticed it was a larger building than he recalled, and had mostly dying grass and weeds in the front.  This was odd to Ryan, as the fall was still several weeks away and most Match residents take pride in their well-manicured lawns during the summer.