Chinook by George M Hosier II - Clean Air

For your own safety, please sit down before you read any further. I am about to break the story of the century! I look forward to humbly accepting the Pulitzer Prize, for uncovering a tale of tyranny and bureaucratic corruption that will make your blood run cold. Are you ready? Here it is: wood stoves in the Fairbanks North Star Borough are about to be outlawed! That’s right. I was first tipped off to this situation by my neighbor’s best friend’s uncle’s cousin’s girlfriend’s ex-aerobics instructor who overheard a sinister conversation as he was regaining consciousness after passing out drunk under a table in a Fairbanks bar.

As the alcohol oozed slowly from his brain, he became aware of the fact that he was staring at two pairs of polished wingtip shoes. That immediately struck him as suspicious, because anybody who wears wingtips in Fairbanks in December is a salesman, a preacher or a Fed. He kept quiet and strained to listen. Sure enough, he could make out the words that the owners of the wingtips murmured over a couple of fuzzy navels, unaware of my source lying in a pool of vomit at their feet. Gradually, my source was able to piece together the sordid facts that some outfit called the In-vitro Mental Perdition Agency is accusing Fairbanks of having an air pollution problem.

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