Living in the Past - Faraway Town's Dark Secret

MORTONBURG: We all know about Faraway Town, that one distant suburb in the middle of nowhere. We all know the basic facts: it has a sizable population with educational, entertainment and religious facilities to match, nor does it have a single tunnel to its name.

But when you dig deeper, you realize that you don't know much more. None of the buildings are marked on Maps. Not the restaurants, not the schools, not the hotels. Of course, this means we can't find any reviews about these establishments either. Satellite imagery of the place appears to be glitched, showing up as a barren patch of land. Street View strangely doesn't cover the place, nor do we have any actual photos of the town aside from the few physical photographs left behind by some residents who have ventured out.

But why is that? Are the residents just secretive? Or is there a dark conspiracy at play? We'll be thoroughly documenting our experiences as we visit Faraway Town ourselves to find out just that.

A blurry photo of a suburb in Faraway Town, one of the few photographs we have.

While I would like to say that our trip to Faraway Town was uneventful, we encountered a small hiccup: what we think was an electromagnetic pulse struck our van, disabling all of our electronics. While the van's battery died, it was fortunate that we had a spare on hand, or we would have been stranded in the middle of nowhere. When our phones came back on, we realized that we no longer had any reception. Even with our satellite receiver, we were unable to connect. We could still receive GPS signals, but even those were scrambled. Thus, we suspect that some of the electronics in our devices, likely the antenna interface, may have been damaged.

Upon arrival, the first thing we noticed was how quiet everything was. There were a few pedestrians here and there, but they just kept walking and paying us no mind. We did notice that they had good pedestrian etiquette by not using their phones as they walked.

Another thing that caught our eyes was the lack of advertising around us. Even if this town was far away from the city, we would expect posters, flyers or signs here and there, but the only signage to greet us was a poster with the recycling logo on it.

Looking for an inn, we entered a nearby hobby shop named Hobbeez, only to realize that this was instead a retro antique store themed as a hobby shop. All the posters on the walls were for decades-old games. Similarly, all the figurines and CDs on display were also old, and yet in mint condition. While we would expect these items to be priced high, they were surprisingly still being sold for retail price. There was also a CRT television behind the counter, instead of the usual LCD, which we thought was a nice touch.

The owner of the antique store was friendly, and although we did not buy anything, he gladly answered our questions. It was revealed that there was no inn in this town after all, so we decided that we would leave in the evening.

As we were starting to feel hungry, we walked to Gino's Pizza next door. This restaurant looked like a classic pizzeria, complete with a jukebox. We sat next to a group of children who were huddled around a large table gorging themselves on food. The pizza itself was delicious, though one of our staff decided to eat a submarine sandwich instead.

As we made our way to Faraway Park, we were accosted by a group of kids who wanted to challenge us to a "pet rock battle". We had to decline, as none of us had the toy, leaving the children sulking as they left. We found it interesting that the community surrounding the decades-old toy was still well and alive here.

Poking around, we discovered a lake behind the park. It was a serene place, though it was cordoned off. We sat on a picnic blanket nearby and took in the scenery until the sun started to dip.

We found ourselves in a house after helping a lady locate her garden shears, leading to her inviting us for dinner, which we graciously accepted. We noticed that the house was rather old fashioned, with landline phones, old computers and CRT televisions. Even the calendar had not been touched, still displaying the date from decades ago. We tried to ask about this, but our host merely brushed off our questions. It appears that our host did not know much of the surrounding towns either. We thanked her for the dinner and left.

The day was ending, and so we got back in the van to leave. We thankfully did not have any issues with our electronics this time, and our cellular reception came back just fine later on. It was at that point that we realized we did not find out any useful information. Additionally, all the photos we took were either corrupted or missing, likely due to the damaged electronics from earlier. We resolved to return to Faraway Town another time and better prepared.