Adaptive Curmudgeon

Attack Of The Lesbian Activist Squirrels: Chapter 7: Thunderdome: Part 02: The Van Plan

AdaptiveCurmudgeon

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The Van Plan

Brett Alverson was a damn fine graduate student. His thesis, “Avian Components of Riparian Ecosystems” was well thought out, carefully researched, and boring. He was going to defend his thesis soon. When he got his hard earned degree he’d be serially underemployed while making student loan payments until he died. His brother, a welding foreman on an oil rig, had a high school degree, a new truck, a hot wife, and ample savings. He referred to Brett as “Dr. You Want Fries With That.”

Despite the odds against him, Brett had two cards to play. The first was Cindy Leachman. She was the university’s sole female electrical engineering major. Intelligent but reclusive, she was a technical whiz. She’d made a business plan based on both their skillsets. The second was… Well he didn’t want to let the secret out just yet.

Cindy met Brett at the lobby of the university’s communication hall, or as students called it “Che Guevara’s Jockstrap”. “The Che” was the burnt, fizzled, exhausted structure that once instructed students in the long forgotten, entirely problematic, skill called “Literature”; named as such because the last non-socialist to receive a Literature degree was from 2005 and that was only because the staff was in shock after Hunter S. Thompson’s unexpected suicide. The “Jockstrap” was the sagging deflated basement beneath the Che. It housed the utterly ruined major called “Journalism”; where they were known to genuflect at a small altar of Bob Woodward.

There hadn’t been legitimate studies of journalism since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 but there’s a lot of ruin in any profession. As recently as twenty years ago the “Jockstrap” had a fielded a “News Van”. Even as journalism descended into full-on communist propaganda, the department had funded the “Action Seven News Team,” a public access weekly news program. With time, the program had become a bi-weekly, all mime, naked, Punch and Judy show. Parked out back, an impressive but obsolete Ford Econoline 350 with gaudy graphics and a huge retractable radio communications antenna was the sole reminder of former glories. Internally, the van hosted an impressive array of audio and video processing hardware; all of which was long obsolete. Cindy could replicate most of it with a Raspberry Pi and a WiFi connection.

None of that mattered. What mattered was that Cindy had created a business plan that would generate a legitimate profit and put keys to the “News Van” in her hands. There was only one reason she’d gone to all that trouble. Cindy needed a vehicle.

That Cindy found it more logical to structure a non-profit wildlife based documentary series than take out a car loan, tells you all you need to know about Cindy. Besides, she was the only student in town that knew how to drive a manual transmission.

Brett was fresh faced and eager. He was carrying a briefcase. He nodded to Cindy and they entered the graffiti laden front door to “The Che”. It was go time.

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