Creative writing By Damian Yerrick This is a story that actually happened. == Pronunciation guide == X-SAMPA transcriptions of the names of various proper nouns in this story follow: Tom_Nook [%t_hAm"nUk] YoshiX [joUSi"Eks] _Joshua ["dZASu3] Pino ["p_hino] Matthew ["m{Tju] Chadonn [xa"don] Chester ["tSEst3`] Picken ["pIk1n] MegaTown ["mEg@%t_haUn] == Universe == Nintendo published Animal Crossing: Population Growing, an open-ended simulation game for Nintendo GameCube that has been compared to Natsume's Harvest Moon and EA's The Sims. Each town, stored on a Nintendo GameCube Memory Card, has a Nook store run by shopkeeper Tom_Nook, who is either a raccoon or a raccoon dog (he won't tell). As the players in a town buy and sell stuff, the Nook store becomes larger (Nook's Cranny to Nook 'n Go to Nookway). But Nookway cannot become Nookington's until a player from another ACPG town visits and buys something. == YoshiX == Pino, _Joshua, Matthew, and Chester were friends back home. They went to Krusty's Super Fun House together every other weekend. In late December of 2005, _Joshua and Pino visited YoshiX, and a year later (December 2006), they decided to move in. Each of their houses had a personal robot called a Gyroid (atk/1000 def/1000) at the door, which allows a human to sell items to other humans. At that time, YoshiX was a wasteland of weeds, but _Joshua and Pino had that fixed in a matter of days. Matthew followed a few weeks later. At the time, Pino was beginning to suspect that the world he was living in was not real, as if it were some sort of TV show or video game. None of the YoshiX natives believed him or even understood what he was talking about. _Joshua had learned magical incantations called "universal codes" from his friends on the Internet. These allowed him to order golden shovels, golden axes, golden nets, and golden rods from the Nook store without making any effort or spending any money. _Joshua had also used a universal code to order bells from the Hyrule Project to pay the mortgage on the house that he had bought from Tom_Nook, claiming that he had to visit Ft_Wayne too often and didn't have time to get any work done in YoshiX. At the time, there were trees grouped close together on diagonally adjacent squares. Pino dubbed these "tree walls" and broke them down with a golden axe that _Joshua had given him, always making sure to keep the trees in balance by planting fruit trees to replace the ones cut down. Pears were the native fruit in YoshiX. But occasionally, Pino would receive other types of fruit in the mail. Through careful handling of trees, he managed to turn one apple, one cherry, and one peach into a whole orchard. Pino's main source of income, which would reach 20,000 bells per day, ended up being the fruit as well as selling fossils that the local museum branch already had to Tom_Nook. == Chadonn == Weeks later, Chester decided to move out on his own to the town of Chadonn. It was an interesting town with an interesting name, which used a sound not found in English: the velar fricative [x]. But a drawback of living in Chadonn was that visitors could not pronounce the [x] sound. Some used [h], which was ok (compare Hebrew "Chanukah"). Others used [k] (compare "character" and Italian "occhio"). Worse, others used [S] as in French or even [tS] as in Spanish. Even with the correct pronunciation, visitors' obligatory comparisons to the German pronunciation of "Radon", to "HeadOn" (a topical headache remedy), or to "hard-on", became tiresome. _Joshua called Chester and asked him to visit. So Chester took the train to YoshiX and bought a signboard in Nookway. He grabbed some peaches, cherries, and apples to take back to Chadonn and set up a money-generating "war machine", as he called it in his journal. But then he discovered that both Chadonn and YoshiX had pears as the native fruit, ruining the possibility of getting all the fruit species. Worse, the animal villagers started to move back and forth between the two towns every time anyone got on a train, and it became difficult for both Chester and Pino to keep track of who moved where. Chester quickly began to feel uneasy in Chadonn as his plan failed, imagining that he was like a puppet with someone else pulling his strings, and his war machine was turning against him. He could not have so easily predicted what would happen next. == Chester's final message == Within a couple days after Chester moved into Chadonn, on Saturday, January 20, a guitar-toting dog going by the name of "K.K. Slider" visited. Using his K.K. Song, with its lyrics like "Zeeky Boogy Doog", he and his forces bombed the town and caused panic. Chester lacked the will to keep things under control. So he visited YoshiX and gave all his belongings to Pino, leaving one final journal entry: My purpose in life, to plant a Nookingtons seed in YoshiX, has been fulfilled. I can't stand Chadonn anymore. It doesn't have any new fruit. NPC residents move too often. Visitors can't pronounce the town's name right. Worst, I can't even move out properly! So I'll just give my furniture to Pino and move out the only way I can. Sorry guys, the puppet master is putting me away. - end of transmission - Luckily, Chester and the other residents survived and escaped to other towns, though it left Chester emotionally and physically scarred. Chester hinted that he might return, even if not in ACPG. YoshiX got its Nookington's store, but the residents of YoshiX kept asking Pino for things that the villagers had borrowed before they moved out. == Chadonn reloaded == Chester, not a fan of universal codes, heard of _Joshua's golden axes. While looking for a new place to live, Chester met Farley, the creator of the wishing well network used to make sure that deliveries make it to animals who move away. Farley promised Chester a golden axe if he could get 12 trees in every acre and keep the weeds under control for 15 days. Wanting to repay Pino, Chester devised a plan. So on February 3, 2007, he came back to the Chadonn area to view the damage. It turned out that six new residents had moved in and built a new town on the neighboring land. This town had a layout at least as nice as the old Chadonn, with the river on a straight north-south course through town. Best of all, this town had oranges, which were the one fruit that YoshiX lacked. After completing a few jobs for Tom_Nook, Chester ran back to his house and instructed his Gyroid: "Chadonn: apply directly to the memory card." But back in YoshiX, things began to look suspicious to Chester. None of the villagers who had moved from the old Chadonn recognized him. Perhaps it was that Chester's face was scarred in the fires and commotion. Or perhaps it was just the poor memory of animals who knew Chester only for a couple days between when he moved in and the incident with K.K. He suspected that they blamed him for what happened. _Joshua reassured Chester that keeping track of villagers who move wouldn't be a problem, at least for _Joshua, but Chester suspected some sarcasm in _Joshua's tone, as if _Joshua were insulting his intelligence. Chester returned to Chadonn with an axe from YoshiX's Nook store and some pears, apples, and cherries from trees in YoshiX. Based on what Farley had told him, he wrote some rules in his journal: RULE 1: No trees on acre boundaries. This means 1/4 of all the trees in Chadonn have to be cut down, but it makes counting trees and moving around town easier. RULE 2: Put 12 trees in each acre. The more acres have 12, the quicker Farley will give me the golden axe. RULE 3: Don't plant trees in adjacent cells. Tree walls make it hard to move. So he left a note on the town message board to let his neighbors know what he was going to do, and the next day, he cut down all the trees on the acre boundaries without immediately replacing all of them. He had to order five more axes from the store to get the job done. He planted a few fruits from YoshiX, but not near enough to balance all the logging. This caused the town to become unattractive for a period of time, and a few villagers moved away. Chester waited for the foreign fruit trees to grow so that he could replant the fruit and multiply the trees by 3 every four days. He took it as an investment in Chadonn's future happiness: no pain, no gain. On a visit to Chadonn, Pino saw rule 2, asked Chester to explain, and decided to implement it in YoshiX. Chester and Pino got to talking about fossils. The museum in YoshiX had all but a few fossils, and the museum in Chadonn had none. They struck a fossil swapping deal: Pino would use his Gyroid to sell any fossil that is already in YoshiX museum but not in Chadonn museum to Chester at a discount in exchange for the first plesiosaur neck that Chester finds. On February 11, YoshiX was designated a most livable town. == Questioning reality == On February 12, Hank from the old Chadonn moved back into YoshiX, but like the others, he did not recognize Chester. In fact, three days later, Petunia in Chadonn compared Chester to somebody she used to know named Chester. "That was me, you dimwit!". Journal entry from two days later: Pate told me she noticed that cut trees just vanish when they hit the ground. Perhaps there's some truth to this "matrix" shit that Pino was going on about the first time I met him in YoshiX. On February 22, Pino paid off his house and wondered he had left to do in YoshiX. The next morning, Tom_Nook had put up a huge golden statue of Pino next to the train station. Chester, not wanting to be one-upped, became more determined to get his own statue by the Chadonn station. By that time, the fossil section of Chadonn museum was full except for the same fossil that Pino was missing: the plesiosaur neck. They decided to call off the fossil deal, although they continued to trade fruits every visit. On February 26, Pino visited Chadonn, and Bluebear told him that she noticed the same thing that Pate noticed. Rizzo complained that there's no shopping mall in any AC town. February 28 was the first rainy day that Chester had seen in Chadonn. He knew that something was up when Bubbles said to his face: "Hey, you know, I haven't seen Chester lately. That's kinda weird, huh? Isn't it? Kinda weird? Do you have any clue what Chester's up to? I wish we could see each other again!" Was this a weird prank? Or are animals as dumb as they look? March 1: Cookie discovered the disappearing tree issue too. By mid-March, both Pino and Chester had earned legit golden statues, golden shovels, and golden axes. They created a guide telling exactly how they did it, and Pino sent it back to one of his friends from his old home town to get it published on the Internet. http://www.pineight.com/rant/acpg/ Abundant Cash Player's Guide Axe Collecting Player's Guide == Picken == But neither of them felt like staying around for the golden rod, golden net, or golden Glock. Pino went back to his old place to help his wobbly friend Gus with his lockjaw problem. Chester left Chadonn behind on March 23. He took the train to the train station, got out, and hopped into a taxi. The driver turned out to be a sea turtle named Kapp'n, the same kappa who showed _Joshua where to get coconuts. Chester told him: "Drive!" The cab headed into a thunderstorm. After a few hours of pouring rain, they ended up in a new wild world and at the gate of a new village called Picken. But Chester couldn't afford the cab fare for such a long ride, and Kapp'n took Chester's viking helmet instead, revealing to the world for the first time what Chester's hair looked like. Again, Tom_Nook showed Chester to a house, opened a mortgage, and put him through a so-called "tutorial" to earn a few bells. As Chester explored the area to introduce himself to the villagers (all three of them), he found that the town felt significantly smaller than Chadonn. Despite this, it was more difficult for him to find his way around because he could not feel when he was crossing an acre border as he could in Chadonn. But the tailor shop in Picken was next door to Tom_Nook's shop, and it sold something new: patterns that could be placed on the ground. Chester realized that these could build his "street" obsession to new heights, and he designed three new footpath patterns. He completed marking off the acre borders with these patterns that same night after Tom_Nook's shop closed. He asked Copper what else was new, and Copper gave him an actual address: Chester Acre C-1 Picken 2620-8829-0820 More villagers moved into Picken over the next couple weeks. Chief gave Chester the nickname "scout", and some other neighbors came up with their own nicknames for him, none of them mean. Chester became more adept at finding fossils and money rocks, giving him a steady income even in the early stages of paying off his house. During this time, Chester discovered that _Joshua and Matthew each had their own houses in separate towns. Joshua (who didn't use the leading space in the wild world) had a house in another town also called YoshiX, and Matthew lived in MegaTown. MegaTown looked normal, but YoshiX was strange. Tom_Nook had more than one shop, Redd and Katrina appeared to have permanently installed tents, and Joshua had a car just like Gracie's parked outside his house. Worse yet, Joshua appeared to own two houses, and entering the smaller house and leaving it would take one back to the bigger house. Joshua also appeared to have more money and rare items than God scattered about YoshiX. Pear trees were all over YoshiX, just as apple trees filled MegaTown. On Chester's first visits to these towns, Joshua and Matthew let him shake fruit trees and carry the fruit back to Picken. Chester put together an aggressive plan to replace trees with foreign fruit trees and to split the town into three nearly equal parts for harvesting the fruit. This helped his income nearly match what he had in Chadonn, even with less land for fruit trees. But income wasn't everything. Unlike 30-acre towns, 16-acre towns like Picken have lots of dirt on the ground, which means they need flowers in order to look good, and the flowers need to be watered. Chester lost the annual Flower Fest to Goldie and felt bummed. So he pulled up half the flowers in town, scattered them to the corners of each acre, and soon enough, Pelly told Chester that Picken was perfect. A couple weeks later, Phyllis showed up with a package from Pelly: a golden watering can. Chester occasionally visited YoshiX and MegaTown to sell his peaches and help pull weeds. He found what he thought were some of his old friends from Chadonn, but none of them recognized him. In fact, some of the animals who had once lived in Picken had forgotten all about him when he visited them in the other towns. Again, he began to wonder about the intelligence of animals. Chester never met Mr. Resetti in the game, but in Chester's dreams, Resetti admired Chester for following the rules: no surprise power-downs, no time traveling, no universal codes, and no map editing. Chester had heard rumors that Joshua had been using a "map editor", which in the wild world is like universal codes on steroids, and that was why YoshiX was so strange. == hyrule == "Will work for fruit". On May 18, Chester found a friend named Ryan who had just moved into a town called hyrule. Ryan had been making most of his money by fishing, not shaking apple trees. Chester showed Ryan how to put down acre footpaths, replacing the trees that blocked the way with peach trees. He also gave Ryan a plan for splitting up the harvest into three sections to be done one per day. And all Chester wanted in return was some apples to sell in Picken. During the week of June 3 to 9, Chester made hyrule perfect too. == Next episode == Does Chester fully realize his purpose and why the name "scout" is so appropriate? And what happened to Pino?