Part one of a story I was working on but shelved a while ago.  It might prove to be pretty long, and it's hard to say how good it will end up... there's a certain silly absurdity to it, but just under the surface things are pretty dark, and I suspect these qualities don't work well together.  Anyways, this part is basically just the introduction.

Long delayed edit: I changed the title, but to a logical inconsistency which will make a little more sense in part two.