Ch 1...Escape from Joja
It was Friday, yay, and our boss had left for a late afternoon off-site meeting. Right. All of us good little Joja drones who didn't have fictitious meetings gathered around my desk for our favorite Friday pastime. Why my desk? Line of sight to the front door and strategically placed for ducking into the mail room. Our favorite pastime? Fantasizing about how we were going to quit Joja Corporation.
"I'm going to put a skeleton in my cubicle," Alice said. "See how long it takes Boss Lady to notice."
"Don't bother," Morris said. "It's been done before." Alice made a face at him.
"I'm going to fold my letter of resignation into a paper airplane," Robert said. "Sail it across the table at the next staff meeting."
"I'm going into the army," Steve said. "My physical is next week."
"What? No," I said. "You're serious?"
"Serious as a heart attack."
"But we're at war. You might get sent overseas."
Steve shrugged. "After two years of the daily backstabbing that goes on around here, I think I'm ready for anything. What about you? How are you going to get out, Cathy? How are you going to save your soul?"
Before I could answer, Morris cut in. "None of us are going anywhere," he said. "You know the economy is in the pits. Joja's the best game in town. Best game in the Republic. Face it, we're here for life."
"Not me," I said. "I've got a farm." Everyone laughed. "No, really, I do. It's outside Pelican Town."
They laughed harder.
"Where's Pelican Town?" Steve asked.
"It's in Stardew Valley," I said.
"Where's that?"
"Way south, in the middle of nowhere," Morris said.
"I've been to Pelican Town," Alice said. "If you can call it a town. It's like going back in time. No roads, no cars, no power lines. They don't have a school or a movie theater or anything. Nice beach though. Great place to go camping. I don't think anyone could actually live there."
"My grandparents lived there," I said. "On the farm. My farm now. They called it Wayward Acres." I ignored Morris' sneer. "I stayed there one summer." It was after my father died but I didn't see any point in bringing that up. "It's beautiful." I thought back to that summer, such a long and strange time, so filled with joy when I forgot and grief when I remembered. "Truly beautiful. There's something magical about Stardew Valley."
"Magical." Morris scoffed. "More like medieval. No, worse. It's like the Stone Age."
"It would have to be a magical place to turn you into a farmer, Cathy." Alice grinned. "You can't even keep a houseplant alive." I gave the bedraggled plant on my desk, her gift, a guilty glance.
"It doesn't look so bad," I said. "Just needs some water. Or fertilizer. Or something."
"Cathy. You killed six plants in a row and that one's artificial."
"Oh."
Morris pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going back to work," he said. "None of us are going anywhere so we might as well get back to it."
But he was wrong. Robert never sent that airplane letter. He got canned. No one said why but when Morris got promoted, everyone figured there was a cause and effect there. Steve's army physical turned up a heart murmur and they wouldn't take him. Nothing serious, he said, but he got canned too. Joja Corp only wants super healthy employees.
The next Friday, Morris stopped by my cubicle.
"If you want to move up in the world, you have to show commitment," he said. Yep, I thought. A commitment to climbing over the bodies of your coworkers. "You've got to show hustle. You've got to show loyalty. You need fresh new ideas." He rubbed his hands together. "I have plans. Big plans. You could be a part of them, Cathy. But we'll talk about that later."
Oh, boy, there was something to look forward to.
He then gave me a little speech about productivity. He was serious, too. I couldn't believe it.
Well, actually, I could. He finally slithered off. I shut down my computer and opened my bottom desk drawer where I kept my grandfather's letter. Why did I keep it at work? I don't know. It was a slender tether to sanity, I think. The paper was old-fashioned vellum, the writing old-fashioned copperplate script.
"If you're reading this, you must be in dire need of a change. The same thing happened to me, long ago. I'd lost sight of what mattered most in life... real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong."
Could Stardew Valley be the place I truly belonged? It was time to find out.