By David C. Daoust
No one was more surprised than Montgomery Dunn, that his life had landed him here- as a sheriff on the small distant moon of Twin Crown.
Monty was born and raised on New Runnymede, the entertainment epicenter of the Onion. He was, at one time, a writer. He started out, struggling against the corporate cookie cutters. Writers who would do anything to get that job, a clear mark of the Consortium, from changing genres, changing character, changing the basic message behind the work, they’d go as far as to change the point of view of the entire thing. All this, in Monty’s opinion, forced everything to match what was already out there, what was already proven to make money. Which meant everything looked the same- cookie cutter.
Monty spent his young life struggling against this very thing. The struggle, of course, helped him gain his voice; a unique voice among a din of people saying the exact same thing. This garnered him enough attention, to get him some work. Monty found himself writing for evening sitcoms. Over the years he’d found his stride, and eventually was head writer for the most popular show of that decade.
Everything was going great, he had the most popular Romantic Comedy on the air, it was like the show wrote itself. The actors were perfect for their roles and the supporting cast and crew was a well oiled machine. The whole thing accumulated into the most perfect ‘will-they/ won’t-they’ of all time. This fact alone kept the audience buzzing, all week long, for several years.
Finally, it all came to a head. It had to. Everything was perfectly aligned for this huge payoff. It would be Monty’s Magnum Opus, he knew it. When he sat down to write it, it just flowed into being without having to think or even try to make it work. It just worked. All of which led to rave reviews when the two stars of the show finally tied the knot in the season-finale. He spent an off-season praised for his beautiful work, awards were given, awards were accepted… it was a dream.
All the way up until the next season started…
Monty had strung the audience along for so many years, with the ‘will-they/ won’t-they’ bit, that once they got a suitable answer, they simply stopped watching the show. That was it, it was over. The audience was happy where they left it.
Now, to the rest of the Onion, this was just a little half hour show, they could take it or leave it as the mood desires. Yet to the cast and crew, this was not only their dream come true, but a well paying job- a meal ticket in the harsh reality of the Trade Consortium. Since, more and more of that audience chose to ‘leave it’, this meant the show’s ratings plummeted, which meant that well oiled machine of hard working cast and crew, were out of a job.
Monty’s Magnum Opus became a huge blunder!
The competition was so steep on New Runnymede that those in the entertainment industry rarely got more than one shot at anything. Popular or no, once your show went off the air, that was it, you were done. People pulled away from Monty as though he had the plague. That included the female lead of the show, Jessop’s mother. She ran off to find the next big thing, left him to raise Jessop himself. Monty sunk into a pretty deep pit of despair back then.
It was from this deep pit that he’d found Emanuel Grady and his ‘Chantry of the True Night’.
The Chantry was an off shoot of the ‘Church of the Eternal Night’ which was the major religion of the Trade Consortium. He was actually raised under the Eternal Night doctrine, though had lost his taste for it early on. It basically just charged people to forgive them for their greedy ways; Perfect for the Trade Consortium. Those of the ‘unique voice’ persuasion, however, weren’t going to be charmed for long.
The Chantry’s message was quite a bit different. To Monty, the Eternal Night represented, you know, space which it was ultimately named after. Which said to Monty, harsh truths and cold steady reliability of what was… and an inability to change. The Chantry of the True Night was about migrating to the surface, to a natural world where the sun rises and sets, naturally. It was a message of hope for something better, rather than just seeking forgiveness for the same old thing.
Admittedly, Monty already lived on the surface of a moon, but it was the message that spoke to him. It was like a shining beacon of light, which led him from the darkness…
Honestly, it was just the thing he needed- at the time. He would not admit it, but a lot of that shine dulled once he’d climbed out of his pit… but, he was sure, he’d still be wallowing in that pit, had it not been for the Chantry of the True Night.
His loyalty was to Grady and the Chantry.
How did he end up as the Sheriff of the small port town? Well, put simply, they needed a sheriff more than a sitcom writer and the prime requisite for the job, was filling out reports.
At first, it was easy work, he just wore a badge and walked around; very rarely was there conflict. They were good people, all of them filled with the hope of the Chantry. Sometimes there were issues with First Wave haggling, fighting with local merchants, but really it tended to get smoothed over easily enough. He mostly just rounded up teens when they got out of sorts. For the most part, there was a standing ‘teens will be teens’ policy when it came to their misdeeds. He put his writing skills to good use, filling out reports, which was the majority of his job.
Things got bumpier the longer the community lived on Twin Crown. Money got scarcer, and the promises of the Chantry dulled for more of the population. Star Speeder gambling was rampant and Crime spread throughout the port town. Monty was forced to do actual work, led to deputies and uniforms, spending quite a bit more time speaking in the holographic courtrooms of the Judicial Colleges… and writing much more mind-boggling reports.
None of this compared to the Drone Raid. Monty’s town was torn down around him like a sandcastle in a hurricane. Torn to bits and cast asunder, Monty wondered if he’d ever actually made it out of that old pit at all. At least, that’s what he was thinking when the day turned to night, as unnaturally as could be, and Old Henry Bogs howled out into the darkness, his confession; His murder of Emmanuel H. Grady himself, the founder of the Chantry, of their community, of the port town of Grady that Monty was meant to protect.
To protect and serve, that’s what he’d sworn to do. That’s what he was doing when he arrested Henry Bogs for murder. That’s what he was doing when he’d brought the Laurens to the Blue’s Sand Crawler after they’d been pelted with rocks, and that’s what he was doing when he took the young mottled boy into custody, rather than leaving him unprotected, amidst what could easily become a mob of attackers if just one of them thought justice would not be meted out.
That’s what he was doing now, sitting within the makeshift sheriff office within the Starport, futilely filling out reports, a big black bruise surrounded his left eye, as the two Haul boys sat behind an energy field behind him, when their big burly father, Raymond Haul, came storming through the door.
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