The history of Coastal Town is complicated. Short, but complicated. Short, being a relative term, in this case.

 

We start about 13 and a half billion years ago. In our local area, the last thing to abandon the future site of coastal town was a photon. A particularly reticulated photon of the microwave family, that had been born many an eon before in the death of the last singularity that had finally succumb to the relentless evaporation caused by hawking radiation. The photon, and many like it, when the event horizon finally dipped below the Planck distance, decided that that maybe it was time to move on.

 

This photon realized that the party was over. As the event horizon collapsed, the photons hurried to gather up coats and keys. Many remembering that they hadn't paid their rent in a terribly long time. To drive the point home, one of the photons started humming, "Closing time". That old song has always held great wisdom.

 

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

 

And Lo the photons scattered into as many directions as there were photons, although a few remained superimposed upon one another for quite while, saying their last goodbyes. Making promises they would never keep to stay in touch. Awkward goodbyes at the end of eternity.

 

But our particular photon was a bit of a loner and was at just the right frequency that when he reached the boundary of the void, like light being refracted at the surface of a glass of water, he bounced back into the universe, to take one more victory lap.

 

In effect, he was to be last light to go out... err... GET out, I suppose.

 

Now, starting out as an x-ray, thanks to the passage of time and the relentless smoothness of the void, this photon took forever to stretch out into a microwave of just the right frequency to finally pass the barrier out of the void, well, you simply do not have the ability to conceive of the number, so I won't even bother explaining it to you.

 

Although, in a curious quirk of fate, because time slows the closer you get to the speed of light, and time stops at the speed of light, from the point of view of the photon, no time passed at all. After all, light travels at the speed of... well... itself. So to a photon, nothing happens as it travels. Without the passage of time for the photon, nothing changes. It is frozen between moments, no matter how many moments for us may pass.

 

To a photon, time only passes when it interacts with an object, gets absorbed, and is re-emitted. Often changing wavelength. One could argue the original photon dies and a new one is born, because a photon is nothing more than the conveyance of information. Information that happens to take on the form of a tiny packet or wave of energy, depending on how you look at it.

 

In other words, photons are the original bi-sexuals and if not for their slutty nature, the universe as we know it could not exist. Which is also why so many were hanging out at the last singularity. These so called black holes were the cosmological equivalent to a New York city sex club, its just they weren't as pretentious.

 

However, you didn't come here to hear about the bedroom lives of bosons.

 

Now, it is important to note that time is only SLIGHTLY frozen for photons. Time DOES pass, slightly. A single Planck moment. To you or I, a ridiculously short amount of time. In fact, it is the shortest unit of time possible. You simply cannot exist without at least one Planck moment passing. From our point of view, again, we cannot conceive of such a short amount of time.  If a Planck moment does not pass, nothing happens. If the universe had a clock, it would be a single tick of the Planck hand. If the universe was on film, it would would be the passage of a single frame. Well, subjectively. Every single fundamental fragment of matter, energy, and thought would have its' own film running, of course. It's own frame of reference, limited by the Planck distance, the Planck moment, and the Planck Meme.

 

Although truth be told, the photon was all too happy to leave. Even if a photon is experiencing only a Planck moment as it zooms about the eternal void, photons have notoriously short attention spans, and it was very, VERY bored. From a photon's point of view, Planck moments can take FOREVER.

 

And with the departure of the last photon, this particular patch of nothing finally, well and truly, was empty.

 

And this is where Coastal Town begins.

 

Right next door to our void was another void. THAT void had given up its' last photon several eternities before our void did and it had happily settled down into retirement. It was content to remain empty and to enjoy being void. Yes, not much to do as a true empty void where not even virtual particles are popping in and out of existence, but that's the way out neighbor liked it. It had retired and it was enjoying some serious "me time" and it was glad its' next door neighbor, our universe, had finally settled down and stopped making so much noise.

 

Our void, finally utterly and completely empty, was settling down for a long nap itself. The last Planck tetrahedron had settled into perfect interlocking harmony with all other Planck tetrahedron that make up what we consider empty space. Space and time had become, finally... perfectly... smooth.

 

But as the old saying goes, smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.

 

You ever sit in a parking lot and listen to the radio? Maybe you close your eyes and catch some Z's only to wake up suddenly, realize you are late, and panic. You turn on the engine, throw the car into reverse without really looking, and back up, only to find out the guy next to you was doing the exact same thing. As you both back up without checking, you catch the other out of the corner of your eye and slam on the breaks, only a little too late?

 

Bam! A minor fender bender.

 

That's exactly what happened to our universe.

 

When we achieved perfect smoothness, and the universe right next to us achieved perfect smoothness, they synched up perfectly. The disruption caused by the presence of matter, energy and information prevented the two voids from ever coming in contact before. But at that moment, they were both identical in their smoothness, and as such could do something that doesn't happen very often.

 

They touched.

 

You might think, two voids touching, how bad could that be? And from the void's perspectives, it wasn't bad at all. Cosmologically, it was the equivalent to trading paint. Unfortunately these two universes had bought insurance with an insanely high deductible, and there was no point in trying to get insurance to pay for it. So there was a short period where the both got out, looked at the damage, our universe slowly shook its head, worried about how angry its spouse was going to be, while the other universe spit on his hand and tried to rub out the damage. A futile gesture that was a bit gross, but given the situation was not something worth complaining about.

 

In the end, both universes just agreed the damage wasn't that bad and that they would exchange phone numbers, just in case some unseen damage had occurred, not that that was really possible, given they collided at merely the speed of light, but hey, stranger things have happened.

 

Better safe than sorry, as they say.

 

You might think that would be the end of it, but on OUR level of reality, that much void colliding with an even BIGGER void, well... that might be a whole lot of nothing, but even an empty universe still has quite a bit of heft to it.

 

This is where most people get the whole big bang thing screwed up. They walk the clock back to a single point, when in reality it was more like getting side swiped in a parking lot.

 

In that instant, an unimaginable amount of energy was released and the current incarnation of the universe was bone. This was about 13.5 billion years ago, by our particular point of view. The vast majority of the Hydrogen atoms that combine with water were created at this point. Later the hydrogen and a few stray helium atoms would collapse into galaxies, then stars, then some would form huge super giants that would burn hotter and hotter, fusing hydrogen into helium and helium into lithium all the way up to iron, where upon the whole reaction would suddenly collapse as more energy went into the process then came out.

 

Where upon the supergiant would collapse and explode, which in our local area included triggering a neighboring supergiant to explode as well. This is when the vast majority of the elements that make up the earth were created. Slowly they collapsed back into a disk, and then the solar system, and right after all that the sun got going, then a few other stars nearby exploded, clearing out our neck of the interstellar woods.

 

It's nice to have a clear view. Really helps the property values.

 

Then the earth formed. Right after that, earth got smacked upside the head by a chunk of rock about the size of mars and as a result, the moon was formed. Originally this got a ton of complaints. Which is understandable, because nobody likes change. However, given that the collision stirred things up putting a ton of heavy elements within arms reach of humanity, not to mention the fact that a large chunk of crystalized iron roughly the size of mars spinning in the middle of your planet makes a wonderfully protective magnetic field, in the end, this has been seen as a good thing.

 

Then Pangea formed and a good time was had by all. Almost immediately there was drama and a break up that put MTV's the real world to shame and next thing you know, the continents are drifting apart. That sort of thing happens after college. Then some chemicals got the idea that self-replication was what all the cool kids were doing, and order started to break out all over the planet.

 

Unfortunately, many forms of this self-replicating order quickly discovered there's only so much crap on the planet you can use to replicate yourself. This resulted in various disagreements which were increasingly resolved through the process of digestion.

 

Then Chlorophyll showed up, started shitting oxygen EVERYWHERE and made a right mess of things. Fortunately at the same time, a particular ambitious bit of self-replicating order that was to become modern day mitochondria thought, "Hey, maybe Oxygen ain't so bad." and got in on the ground floor of aerobic respiration, thus becoming the first capitalist.

 

And with the boundless energy provided by burning digested bits of other creatures, not possible before oxygen or mitochondria, a couple of cells figured if they remained in a clump, there was strength in numbers and they could seriously kick everyone else's ass, thus becoming the first socialist.

 

And Ironically, it was the first living creature with an ass to kick. Sort of a chicken and the egg situation. Or a self fulfilling prophesy. Not sure which.

 

Now, when it came to this particular form of order self-replicating, originally most multi-celled organism tried to stick with Binary fission, but that became impractical over time, so they moved onto fragmentation, and eventually budding. Still, there were issues. While asexual reproduction has the advantage that you are technically immortal, it just wasn't polling well.

 

And so a small group cells got priority over all the others and started running the show, telling everyone else to "take one for the team" while putting themself first. Specially, I speak of genitalia.

 

And as soon as the first form of self-replicating order started thinking with their junk, shit got real. About this same time, the nervous system became a thing, and before you knew it, skeletons, both external and internal started trending on twitter.

 

Now this resulted in spines and brains, both good things, but the problem was that all the programing stored in these nervous systems were hard coded and the firm ware was notoriously hard to upgrade. People got annoyed every time they wanted to adapt to the environment, they had to throw out the old model and buy a new one.

 

Knowing a pyramid scheme when he saw one, the first human decided to fuck that noise and grew a frontal lobe. Now, while this thing is still in beta testing, the frontal lobe has been truly amazing, what with "free will" and "self-reprograming", while admittedly quite buggy, being a huge advantage. Yes, it does result in some whacky output from time to time, like religion, The Kardashians, and fart jokes. The frontal lobe has, over all, been a huge success, having a 93% audience score on Rotten tomatoes.

 

And the next thing you know, humanity spread across the planet like wildfire. And like wildfire, burned down everything in its path without a whiff of mercy or concern. After all, if you were in humanity's way, you clearly had it coming.

 

Which almost brings us to Great Bear Island, but lets back up a bit.

 

Just after Pangea broke up, the North American Craton had some deep butt hurt by that chain of events and was really ticked off that he never got back his deposit on the apartment they all shared, and basically stomped off in a huff. He did keep in contact with south america, but only because they were drinking buddies. In the process, North America built up the west coast accretion belt. When combined with some serious deep sea continental shelf on oceanic plate action this resulted in a number of islands being created on the west coast of Canada.

 

Canada is very sorry about all that. They will try and to keep the noise down.

 

About this time Humanity was cutting loose and a bunch of humans wound up on Great Bear. After discovering the place was way too cold and covered in bears and wolves and other shit constantly trying to kill you, as well as the many many many earthquakes from being smack dab in the middle of two of the largest geological structures on planet earth trying to get "jiggy with it", those humans left for safer places.

 

And lo the humans that wound up settling on Great Bear and eventually founding Coastal Town would be Canadian.

 

Originally settled as a company town, the first administrator, Todd Granby, incorporated Coastal Town under the name "Coastal Town" Because he wrote the name of the town in the description, and put the description where the name should have been. Once the name of the town was officially recognized by the federal government, it became way too much of a pain fix, and thus went uncorrected.

 

Most likely for the best, because Granby was about as creative as Sir Issac Newton. Which is to say, his creativity has been rotting in the ground for centuries, and is best left undisturbed.

 

Coastal Town has waxed and waned over the years, becoming quite the boom town in the early 20th century. However, in an unknown year, but estimated to be around 1903, there was a forest fire that swept through the area after a particularly dry summer. Pine resin, when dry, becomes extremely flammable, and under certain circumstances, capable of detonation.

 

That night would forever more been known as "The Night of A Thousand Exploding Trees"

 

After the fire swept the island, devastation was left in its wake. Coastal Town lost every major building, which included a 45 room hotel, a general store, and a nine hole golf course.

 

The town's use to the mining company vanished over night and the companies just moved to a new area less prone to arboreal ignition. However, many locals survived the fire by simply rowing out to the island off shore, and they were determined to rebuild in their beloved town.

 

A number of houses sprung up, but the main building that the town would now center itself around was Quincy's Quonset Garage, so named because of the metal dome that forms the main part of the garage. Nobody knows who Quincy was. It is suspected that the person building the garage really liked the TV show with the same name. Which was quite the feat, because the show wouldn't air it's first episode until 1976.

 

While one couldn't call Coastal Town thriving, one could say it was surviving. In fact, its small size was instrumental to its survival of the Spanish Flu epidemic when it swept through the island.

 

Many accredit the survival of the town to Todd Granby, now known as Old man Granby, who was a heavy drinker. He claimed a sip of moonshine every half hour kept you immune to the Flu, and handed out alcohol to everyone. His skill at making alcohol kept everyone rip roaring drunk, although it is thought that a few instances of people going blind may have been caused by his alcohol, I'm afraid I have no confirmation of this anecdotal story.

 

Todd Granby was well known all over the island, being one of the few people brave enough to enter the homes of those who died, to drag the bodies to the Stone Church and bury them. Todd died at a ripe old age of 103, remaining the mayor until his passing.

 

In the resulting power vacuum, two rivals started to fight over who would be the next mayor. Percival Carr and George Blarney. Apparently their rivalry wasn't just political, but also for the affection of the Town School Teacher, Margaret Maud.

 

Alas, Margaret enjoyed playing the two men against each other, enjoying the attention and loved to openly flirt with both. 2 days before the election to determine would would be the new mayor of Coastal Town, She had a fight with Percival. Later she would claim to George that Percival had hit her, and this resulted in George hunting down and shooting Percival dead.

 

Margaret would later confess that she lied, would never forgive herself, and moved away from the island. Her eventual fate remains unknown.

 

After George went to jail, William Quincy, inheritor of the Quonset Garage would step up and become the town mayor.  William, Town scoutmaster, and head of the island's masonic lodge, would be mayor for another 18 years before he died un-expectantly in a tuna trawler accident. Control of the town would pass to Albert Flem, who also took over the island's masonic lodge. He appointed his lodge brother J.R. Shields as chief of police, and the other members of the lodge became the Coastal Town Planning Board.

 

They would become the most corrupt political force Great Bear had even seen. Their ties to organized crime and smuggling became a thing of legend and the worst kept secret on the island. While everyone knew what was going on, they also made sure everyone's palms were well greased, and no local was willing to stand up to them. They then shifted the town's focus to fishing and tourism as a means of laundering their money and helping to cover for being a way station for smugglers coming from Asia.

 

A running joke was that the cabin rental company was called Key Rentals, because when you rented a cabin, it came with a key of cocaine.

 

Things were going very well until 1988, when the entire Masonic Lodge was meeting in the Stone Church one Saturday evening. Someone had planted a fragmentation device and the resulting explosion killed everyone and blew out the corner of the church. In the resulting federal investigation all the smuggling operations had been uncovered and while no one would ever be arrested for the mass murder of masons, it is thought that a rival drug cartel ordered the hit.

 

In the aftermath, the town almost disappeared, only to be brought back to life in the year 2000 when large tracks of the mostly abandoned coastline were bought up by Myron Rogers, Who would join forces with Sarah Quincy, the then owner of the Quincy Quonset.

 

He made a deal with local logging interests and worked to build up an ACTUAL fishing and tourist industry along the coastal road. He started the annual Ice Fishing competition that, while never super popular, did bring in a good deal of much needed off island funds to the local economy.

 

The annual ice fishing competition was well underway when the first flare hit. The subsequent earthquake that occurred along with the flare dislodged a fish mounted on a wall, hitting Myron in the head and killing him instantly. Everyone agrees, that is exactly how he would have wanted to go out.

 

Since the flare, the town was abandoned until The Quonset manager came into town, reincorporated the town, assumed squatter's rights, and reopened the Quonset Garage. Since then the old town planning board has returned as shadowy apparitions, hell bent of the resurrection of Coastal Town, at any cost.

 

In a surprising turn of events, local Car Battery, CB, was elected to be the new town mayor, thus being the youngest, and most inanimate object to hold the office. CB is very progressive in his view of the future of Coastal Town, where as the Town Planning Board are rather reactionary, what with them being the physical manifestation of hate filled darkness. This has caused the planning board and the mayor's office to butt heads over more than one zoning issue.

 

Still, while Coastal Town's past may be grim, the future is looking bright. The mayor's office has many new plans to help the town. For example, he plans on claiming the coastal town is a riverboat that ran around in hopes of applying for federal disaster relief.

 

Whereas the Planning board thinks that opening a new curling rink would be a better way to go. When asked who would actually use the curling rink, considering everyone is dead, the Planning board's jaws became unhinged and dropped open, stretching their faces to impossible lengths. Their tongues, that could only be described as "The Color Of Spite", lashed out and flayed the soul of the person who dared to ask the question. In a flash of un-light, he became a statue made of grey ash, that softly and silently crumbled away, leaving behind only a nondescript smudge as evidence that he ever existed.

 

So I'm going to put that down as a "No Comment".