SWNOVELS Chapter 9
The tall tower of the Chronix Bay News building loomed over the daily routine of the urban dwellers passing on the streets below each heading to their respective destination. While almost no one could tolerate the pressures of the high stakes news business in the city, the beat belonged to hard-witted reporter, investigative journalist, and anchorperson Sylvia Armstrong. She knew since she was a small child that she was meant to cover the mean streets and report the most important news to the public. Her eyes widen from the vantage on the twenty-eighth floor as she just barely makes out a mugging in broad daylight. A man in a hooded sweatshirt grabs an old lady’s purse and runs off into the distance.
“Crime statistics truly are up in Chronix Bay” thinks Sylvia to herself as she sits at her desk facing the large full-sized wall window in her office.Sylvia is a tall woman dressed in a royal blue pant suit and pearls. Sylvia peers at the glistening visage of “the ivory city over the water.” The city maintains that name being called that often as a term coined first by Sylvia’s great grandfather, Stanton Armstrong, one of Chronix Bay’s founding fathers. Sylvia wonders how much the city has progressed, this great municipality since those bygone days. The stories of adventure and pioneering days that were passed on by her forefathers were drilled into her head since childhood, notably supporting the reason that she chose this career to pursue the truth at all costs.
“As the tides of time sweep over man and country so does the weeping of its most vital component,” a man’s hoarse voice echoes behind Sylvia as she turns to see her boss, Michael Oppenheim, standing there. Michael is a tall lanky man of Eastern European descent with a flamboyant and jovial personality.
“Hey Mike” Sylvia says turning back to the window.
“Your ancestor often speaks those words. We wouldn’t have what we have today if it had not been for the sacrifices made by him and others like him” says Michael.
“That I know … I’m not worried about the past. I’m just worried about the future. We’re facing a very real possibility of a growing divide in our community. Rich vs. poor, white vs. black, old vs. the new way of doing things and we may be losing the war. There is little we can do.” Sylvia speaks cautiously as she faces her boss and mentor.
“As reporters we only find and tell the truth, not make it,” says Michael.
“Maybe we ought to” says Sylvia turning back around facing the ‘ivory city over the water’. “In every one of us there lays a revolutionary” she thinks to herself.