Chapter Three

Susan walked up the hill toward her little blue house. Her heart quickened as she approached the worn stone archway that led to her postage-stamp front courtyard. Could he be watching me now? No, that's silly, she thought. He's at the pub... if he hasn't chickened out.

She looked down the lane, toward the city, and imagined she could see the multicolored lights of the pub twinkling there. No, that would be too easy, she thought. The decision is mine alone. I go, or I don't go.

Two houses down in the other direction, she could see the lights on in Sandrine and Rodrigo's blue house. As she watched, someone she didn't know, but with the burly build of a construction laborer, stopped to knock on the gate. Light spilled out as the door opened, along with laughter and music from the "Baja Bachata" radio station. Rodrigo appeared in the door and vigorously shook the man's hand before welcoming him in. The door closed, leaving Susan alone with her thoughts.

She looked at the mail slot in her door, tracing with her finger the letters of the tarnished nameplate. S. HILL. The door opened with a creak, revealing the same room she'd left that morning, the same one she'd lived in for the past four years.

Alone.

I'm going, she thought.

She bathed quickly, pinned her hair in a loose chignon, then pulled out two long curls to frame her face. Wrapping herself in a towel, she went into the bedroom and opened the antique wooden wardrobe. "Pathetic," she said, contemplating the arrangement of clothing there. She pulled out a short striped skirt, and shook her head. "I'd look like a caberet girl." She put it back and rummaged around some more. "Or desperate."

Finally she settled on one of her navy work skirts, and a colorful floral-print blouse to liven it up. For half a moment she contemplated a pair of black heels she hadn't worn in three years, then put them back when she rememberd why she hadn't worn them. Why couldn't there be a single taxicab on Tropico? There certainly were in that promotional video the recruiter showed me, she thought. Or a bus. Or at least paved roads. She slipped on her sensible loafers, checked her hair one last time in the mirror, and slipped out into the cooling evening air.

The sky faded from near-black over the sea, to deep blue overhead, to spectacular reds and oranges over the forested mountains to the west. She thought of Sandrine's advice from earlier in the day. Keep your eyes open and who knows what you may see, she reminded herself.

As she approached the pub, which was on the edge of the city proper, bright salsa music spilled out through the doors and windows. She recognized the song: "Quien Se Comio Mi Pollo?" As many times as she heard them, the humorous lyrics always made her smile. The song had been on one of the albums she bought to help teach herself Spanish shortly before boarding the boat to Tropico for the first time.

Susan came to the door of the pub and paused a moment to gather her will, then pushed it aside.

Inside, a boisterous Friday-night crowd was enjoying itself. A trio of dockworkers tossed darts at one end of the bar. At the other, a group of farmers laughed at some bawdy joke, and in the middle, a cluster of teamsters argued with a couple of laborers about the merits and flaws of the local futbol team. Through it all, two barmaids twirled and pirouetted their way through the shifting crowd like children's toy tops, never bumping into the boisterous revelers or spilling a drop from their trays.

A blue and red parrot on a perch in the corner squawked along with the jukebox. "Quien se comio mi pollo? No tengo ninguno idea..." The bird bobbed back and forth to the rhythm, having no idea it was singing about the slaughter and consumption of one of its feathered cousins. The sight made Susan laugh out loud.

"Pardon me for saying so, but your laugh is as beautiful as your face," came a voice from behind her. Susan turned to gaze into a pair of eyes the same luminous blue as the parrot's feathers. They were set in a face that was weathered by the sun, but obviously lined more by laughter than age or care. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly as he removed his straw hat and greeted her with a small bow.

"Permit me to introduce myself," he said. "My name is Richard Garrison."

To Be Continued

Thoughts from the author...

As I was writing the description of the pub above, it struck me why I'm doing this.

The series of events that happened to Susan Hill and Rich Garrison in my Tropico game could probably be described in a dozen sentences or less. Yet so far I've written three chapters of a love story that will probably take fifteen chapters or more -- and in three chapters I haven't even gotten to the first part of the actual story yet.

So why am I dragging it out? I think it's for the same reason that I'm working on the "Tropico Inside Out" project. Because I like to create worlds. Tropico lets me create a world, and when I take the time to smell the roses and watch what my citizens are actually doing and thinking as they go about their little electronic lives, I can't help but imagine the rest of their lives, the parts we can't see or read in their thoughts.

With "Tropico Inside Out," I'm using a 3-D modeling program to show what I think the inside of Tropico buildings look like. (The first one is the clinic, and I'm about half done. Perhaps I should have started on something simpler, like a shack.) This story is the same kind of thing. It lets me show what I imagine goes on inside the world of Tropico; what it must be like to actually walk in their digital footprints.

That is all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled story... soon as I write Chapter Four, that is.