The town of Pleasantlife wasn’t small or idyllic by any means. It was just practical. There were four “main roads”, two running north-to-south, two running east-to-west in a big tic-tac-toe grid. Smaller roads littered the map, some in line with the grid pattern, others wound their way around in twisting diagonals, but over all it was easy enough to get around.
The largest park in the town sat in the center square of the grid, it was two miles wide on every side, an expanse of rolling green hills littered with fragrant wild flowers and dramatic willow trees full of sweet song birds. Ponds of varying sizes scattered around, the largest placed precisely in the parks center, a crystal pupil in the town’s dark eye. The water in all of these ponds was clear and and clean blue. Fish of every color swam through the water’s shining bands of light. turtles and frogs sun bathed on the lily pads, storks meditated at the shores.
The very edges of the park were lined by Pleasantlife’s municipal buildings. Town hall, a modest brick building, was at the center-north end of the park. Every year, the people of Pleasantlife voted on what color to paint the brick building. One year they voted to paint it orange like a sunset (but it came out looking more like a traffic cone), one year it was lilac to to match the bushes outside, one year year it was blue to match the park pond water. One year, when Mrs. Madeline died (a wonderful woman who had become beloved by many in the town for her long career as a secondary school reading and writing teacher and had spent her later years, post-retirement, baby-sitting for all her former students and hosting block-parties and volunteering at the library), the town people almost voted to paint the building black to reflect their collective sense of mourning, though town opinion was swayed when Madeline Blanco (named for Mrs. Madeline herself) suggested they instead paint the building rainbow, to reflect the colorful books Mrs. Madeline kept on her shelves and the flowers in her front yard and the clothes she used to wear. Madeline B’s testimony moved some of the towns’ people to tears, and it was agreed upon unanimously that the building would be painted rainbow, even if it took all of that year to complete.
The library sat on the north-east corner of the park, down the street from town hall, it was also a modest brick building, not painted ever, the bricks still rich and red and vibrant as ever, 7 decades after its construction, despite Pleasantlife’s reputation for sunny weather. Unlike the exterior, the contents of the library were anything but modest. In its two floors, the library held volumes upon volumes of literature both classic and contemporary, volumes of research papers and educational texts in every academic concentration, as well as several sets of up to date encyclopedias. Every month new books came into this library by truck, and when ever the library ran out of room, they would give all the old and outdated copies to the people of the town for free. The people of Pleasantlife went wild for the library-give-away parties because they were all collectors of literature and knowledge. Nearly every resident was involved with at least one book-club at any given time.
The rec center was on the opposite side of the park, on the south-west corner. Like the library this building was also red brick, but it was larger and boxier, for it housed multiple gymnasiums, weight rooms, yoga studios, steam rooms, and the indoor pool. The swimming hole is right outside the rec center. It’s a pond of a nice size, not as big as the one in the middle of the park by any means, but still, pretty big. Big enough that the whole town could come out on a summer day and everyone would have their own space on the shore without feeling crowded. In the winter, the swimming hole became the ice rink, where lovers came to skate around and make eyes at each other.
The community center occupied the south-east corner, this building was the most grand of all. It was a tudor inspired building, like something from the time of Shakespeare. It was mostly just home to one grand auditorium, however, it was reliably where the town gathered most often. People could not be counted on to show up to every single thursday-night town hall vote, because every single one of those votes took a lot of critical thought and effort. On the other hand, every Tuesday night, the town youth flooded the town center for the teen club (where they all sat around the stage and the front row seats eating pizza and talking about school and their family lives)– , every Wednesday night the couples and old folks flooded the stage for community dance lessons, and on Saturday afternoons all the people in town gathered at the community center. On Saturdays, the younger kids all gathered backstage to play games or sometimes they would go outside and clean up or tend to the park’s gardens. Everyone else sat in the auditorium seats, and they would listen to their neighbors as they took turns taking to the stage. Each week a different person in town would tell a story from their life, one where they learned a valuable lesson about what it meant to be a friend, or a lover, or a community member– a story where they learned to love or forgive or find happiness. Afterwards, they would take another half-hour to discuss the story as a group. People were allowed to ponder what they would do in a similar situation, and ask if there was more than one right answer. After these talks, everyone in the town always felt closer to one another, and everyone always felt inspired to be a little better than they were a week before. Often, after these gatherings (unless the weather could not permit), the town people would gather in the park for picnic snacks and team sports (usually kickball or volleyball, though sometimes they were bold enough to take on football or the like). The games were never organized and rarely were there ever real teams (let-alone winners or losers), but at sundown, everyone parted ways wearing a wide smile (even thoughts baring bruises and scrapes) and warmth radiated out from the hearth.
The people in Pleasantlife didn’t buy things. Most of them had, aside from the extremely elderly, had never even heard of a concept. Similarly, the people in Pleasantlife didn’t really have jobs, so to speak. Though all of them maintained perfectly busy schedules. Do not be confused, there were plenty of tasks to be done, and if nobody did anything, the town would certainly not run as smoothly as it did, but the delegation and execution of these tasks was designed so perfectly that no one in the town ever really felt bogged down or overworked. After many votes, the town’s people discovered that the ideal work schedule for both children and adults was 4 hours, 3 days a week. So the children went to school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the adults were able to pick any three days (except Saturday) to get in their hours (A good amount of people opted to mimic the school schedule either for the sake of their family or just because they were used to it, however many people opted for the latter half of the week, and many others spaced their days out instead of taking them all in a row, so it almost always worked out that about a third of the town was working on any given day). Jobs related to general town upkeep were distributed on a rotating schedule, almost everyone got a turn collecting trash, sorting recycling, bagging groceries, painting buildings. Specialized jobs, however, were only given out via election, jobs like teachers, medical doctors, town administrators. For some specialized jobs, a person could run every year, and sit in that position every year, until they are ready to retire (like Mrs. Madeline), however for other jobs (like town administrator) a person could only have the position once for one year.
No one got paid, but then again, it wouldn’t make sense to pay anyone, because everyone had what they needed. They had enough food from their gardens and farms for everyone to share. They had enough houses for everyone to live in (and when they ran out they had enough willing workers to build more). With so much free time, the artisans were able to craft to their hearts content, they kept their favorite creations and gave the rest away for free. The writers had time to write novel after novel and play after play, and the the directors and actors had hours and hours to practice and preform. In fact, with so much free time, everyone in Pleasantlife eventually found their creative side.
There were shops where people held the things they had made and were willing to part with, and sometimes people sat inside and played shop keeper, but usually, they just left the door unlocked and let people take what they like.
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