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SUMMARY: This is a prologue to my latest novel project.

Sometimes Mark wondered. He wondered whether he would ever find the love of his life. He wondered whether he would ever be rich, or famous, or both. But right now, Mark was only wondering about one thing. Exactly how many career opportunities were available for a council worker?
Mark's utility was leaving a long trail of dust above the meandering, confused roads of country Australia. Pockets of scrub and fields of yellow grass bore the brunt of Mark's dust trail.
The Yulumson job was just another meaningless, slightly degrading, task that he was set to do that day. There was a blockage in the infrastructure of the community's water facility, or so he had been told. Which meant, in council worker terms, that there was a fucking clog in the pipes which would have to be shoved out, if any one was to have a shower.
And people would be showering that day, although it would have nothing to do with keeping clean. It was set to hit forty-six degrees Celsius, and the pool was shut (probably due to ‘a blockage in the infrastructure of the community's water facility'), which meant people would be having quite a few cold showers.
The utility rolled onto a segment of sealed road as Mark approached the outskirts of Yulumson (that is if a town of four hundred had outskirts). The dust trail drifted into nothingness behind him.
Mark would net about forty bucks for this job, which might take three hours or more. That was just plain fucked, but there wasn't a lot Mark could do about it. The unions didn't much care about council workers in the good ole' Makaletti Shire (and only god knew where that name had come from).
All in all, Mark would take home about two hundred bucks that week. If he just gave up his job he could probably get more on welfare... but Mark was far too lazy to make the one hour drive to Roma just in order to bum sum money from the government who were technically the ones giving him his paycheck anyway. At least if he worked for it he would have something to do, other than sitting at home and thinking of things to do, that is.
Life was shithouse in Yulumson. Really fucking shithouse.
The water tower was the first thing Mark saw as Yulumson approached, which made sense. After all, it was the only building over two stories in the entire town. It's plain metallic lining reflected the sun back into a mostly cloudless sky.
He swung his utility around the first corner into town (without dropping a single kilometer of speed) and was in front of the tower within seconds. After all, the town was only about a thousand meters end to end, and that was moving diagonally. Mark pulled up in front of the unfenced tower and stepped out onto unshaven grass. That was probably his next job...
He walked around to the back of his utility and got out his toolkit. The only thing Mark actually thought he would need was something to undo the bolts around the bloody water main, but why not take the whole lot and make getting up the ladder a little bit more interesting? If he fell and died he would be famous for at least a couple of days.