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PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 28, 2000

Excitement surrounding the expected announcement of  construction of the Millennium Gate, a multi-billion dollar development project, in Portage Creek reached a fever pitch

yesterday as town officials welcomed The Gate's Development Committee yesterday.  The Millenium Gate Commission, a project spear-headed by NASA, seeks to construct a completely self-sustained environment within a structure that would be one-mile high.  The structure, if built as proposed, would be visible from space and would serve as a prototype and precursor to future settlements on Mars.  While both officials and area residents have enthusiastically have welcomed the project, some question remained as of yesterday whether or not it would be allowed to proceed.  One local business owner, Henry Janeway of Alexandria Books had at press time still refused to sell his land.  Millennium Gate officials require all downtown land to be sold in order to proceed with the landmark project. 
    "We're still talking with Mr. Janeway, and we're hopeful," said John Moss, a representative for the Millennium Gate.  "We think he will see the tremendous benefits that the Gate will bring not only to Portage Creek, but the entire area."
    Mr. Moss brushed off questions surrounding the Gate's future if Mr. Janeway does not sell his land.  "Right now, we have a very tight construction and budgetary window that doesn't extend much beyond the beginning of the New Year, but it's certainly too early to begin speculating on 'what ifs'." Moss said.

INSURANCE PROVIDERS EXPRESS HORROR AT MINOR CAR ACCIDENT
PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 28 2000/
A minor car accident ruffled the feathers of local car insurance providers companies on Thursday, when one car collided with another in downtown Portage Creek.  While damages were assessed at only $200, the car responsible for the accident, registered to Shannon O'Donnell of no fixed addressed was not insured. 

O'Donnell explained to the other driver involved in the fender-bender that she had simply allowed "run out".  Local insurance providers shook their head upon learning of the incident.

"Making sure your vehicle is insured is an absolute necessity, especially if you're making a long trip this holiday season as Ms. O'Donnell apparently is," said Richard Berman, an industry analyst.  O'Donnell, who stopped in Portage Creek for food, lodging and gas is on her way to Florida.  During the holiday season when there typically more people travelling on the roads, Mr. Berman said it was "profoundly disturbing" to "imagine how many accidents are occuring on the roads where the damages aren't covered by insurance."  Berman described himself as being "horrified, horrified" when he heard of the incident. 
   Some area residents were unruffled by the incident.   "I saw the accident, and frankly neither of those vehicles were much worth insuring." Said Kendall Biller, a local dentist. 

O'Donnell, when reached for comment outside her vehicle shrugged off calls for her to renew her car insurance.  "Car insurance really wouldn't be appropriate, now would it?" O'Donnell asked.

"After all, as anyone can plainly see, this isn't a car." 
    When asked to clarify what, exactly she thought her '87 station wagon was, she simply replied "It's a rocket ship," before abruptly ending the interview and entering her vehicle.

CONSTRUCTION TEAMS ARRIVE IN PORTAGE CREEK
PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 28, 2000

Construction teams, in anticipation of the Millennium Gate's groundbreaking ceremony in Portage Creek early in the new year, arrived in the town late Thursday night. Patrons of a local

bar were startled out of their typical Thursday night drunken stupor when the bulldozers arrived in town creating unusual noise disturbances to the downtown community. 
   Both local and out of town contractors were licking their lips at the potential of the Millennium Gate coming to Portage Creek and sought to establish their services in the community before the ground breaking ceremony, expected some time next week.  Construction of the Millennium Gate is expected to create thousands of jobs in the region, which has traditionally experienced severe job shortages over the past few years.  The Millennium Gate Commisssion, whose parent body is administered by NASA is operating on a tight budget which means that much of the work will be contracted out to local construction outlets.

STARLING REPORT: 

LOCAL INTERNET USERS DISMAYED, DISGUSTED AT RECENT SPAM E-MAIL

PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 29, 2000
By Henry Starling/Staff Reporter
The cold, cruel realities of living in a "wired" world revealed themselves to many area residents yesterday when many of them accessed their personal e-mail accounts.
 Expecting to find glad tidings and expressions of festive good will from friends and family, what many found disturbed them.  Mass e-mails, known to the net savvy as "spam" had arrived in their mailboxes, dissing the plans for the Millennium Gate no less!  If it weren't bad enough that human technological progress should get a bad name in the message sent to thousands of local internet users, many of them found themselves simply unprepared to have a social issue addressed in the calm and security of their mail Inbox.
  "I was just startled," says local internet user Liesel Klink.  "The discussion of pertinent and pressing social issues has a proper forum, but it's not on the internet."
   Other locals were similarly disconcerted at having their vulnerabilities exposed to social activists.  "I can't believe someone would have the gaul to push a social issue down my throat like that, and over some little thing like the town being bulldozed," said Brandon Braga.
   Braga for his part agrees that while its unfortunate Portage Creek as we know it has to go in order for the Gate to be built, events of the past have to be forgotten to allow for new development, an opinion this reporter shares.  "I hate to say 'here, let's press the re-set button on the whole town', but you know, it's time for something new and that Millennium Gate building just sounds really jazzy."  When asked to speculate who might have circulated the e-mail, Braga had no shortage of theories.  "It's that Henry Janeway @$$^%*#, I just know it."
   While Janeway has, in recent weeks, voiced his opposition to the project, it remains unknown how the bookstore owner, who is a technophobe, could have composed an e-mail much less transmitted it to thousands of local residents regardless of their internet service provider.
   For many internet users, what this comes down to is an issue of personal security.  "It's like a home invasion.  You go into your Inbox everyday like you go into your own house: you expect the same old thing," said resident Michael Gerard Taylor. "You know, a few personal letters, maybe a few of those hilarious forwards sent from the office, but when you get something like this, jeez, it just shakes your entire sense of security.  How could someone you don't know, in good conscience, send you an e-mail loaded with issues and questions relevant to our local community and the aims and goals held by society in general?  It was just too much."  Taylor said that the e-mail, which derided plans for the construction of the Millennium Gate and discussed the change that it would mean for our community went "straight into the Trash box.  I guess that's the great thing about the internet.  If you get some junk mail you don't want to read, you can just throw it in the garbage, just like in real life."  While Taylor described himself as "disturbed" by the social activism spam that arrived in his Inbox, his faith in the the integrity of e-mail messages as a whole has not been shaken, and said he was looking forward to following up on the non-solicited "TRIPLE HOT, TRIPLE XXX GIRLS WAITING FOR YOU" notification he received via e-mail earlier in the week.
Henry Starling's CyberBeat appears weekly in the Portage Creek Daily Reporter.

AS DEADLINE DRAWS NEAR, CANTON MENTIONED AS DARKHORSE ALTERNATE
PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 30, 2000
With Henry Janeway still unwilling to close his bookstore or sell his downtown plot of land, Millennium Gate officials were reportedly considering alternate locations for the construction of the multi-billion dollar project in face of the January 1, 2001 deadline.

Channel 3 Action News' reporter Marci Collins was able to catch up with John Moss, representative for the Millennium Gate's Development Commission, but he would not comment on the validity of

recent reports which suggest that Canton, Ohio was willing and prepared to accept the Gate's development into their community.  Henry Janeway must be agree to sell his land by midnight, January 1, 2000 in order to ensure 
that the Gate's Development remains in the Portage Creek community.

JANEWAY UNLIKELY TO BUDGE ON GATE, 'SELF-DELUDED'
PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 31, 2000
Henry Janeway took his case to the airwaves today, denouncing plans for the construction of the massive, self-contained Millennium Gate in Portage Creek today.

Raving about how he intended to stand like Rome against the Barbarians, Janeway was nearly unintelligible in his statements, something most experts found surprising, given the

obsession with reading books that many experts agree is at the root of this crisis.
   Meanwhile, those familiar with Henry Janeway's mindset came forward to comment on his opposition to the Millennium Gate.  "He's not a bad man," said Shannon O'Donnell, "but despite the fact he is well-read, he's ignorant to the outside world.  He objects to the construction of the mile high Millennium Gate because he's never been in an elevator in his life.  He is self-deluded.  In hat bookstore of his, he lives in a world where he opens up a pop-up book and he really thinks he's dining in Paris.  It's sweet really, but also kind of sad."
   O'Donnell, an aerospace engineer by profession, admitted that it was her technical know-how that was behind this week's spam mail scandal.  "Henry is caught up in a sense of grandeur, he's taught his son about the heroes of ancient Greece all his life, and he sees himself as one of them right now; up against the most impossible of odds.  I don't think there's any room for compromise." O'Donnell said.
   This comes as bad news for those hoping for a last minute resolution to the detente that has crippled plans for an immediate start to the construction of the Gate, which cannot begin without the consent of all downtown land-owners.  Mr. Janeway is the only hold-out.

LOCAL KID DESCRIBED AS 'EXCITED' AT RECEIVING PHONE CALL
PORTAGE CREEK/DEC. 31, 2000
Jason Janeway, son of local bookstore owner Henry Janeway was described as "excited" to receive a phone call while manning the cash register at Alexandria Books, the notorious store that stands in the way of the multi-billion dollar Millennium Gate development project.

Kid In Crisis: Jason Janeway lives in fear of his  father's iron fist.

"I saw that kid answer the phone, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone be quite that desperate to have some kind of connection with the outside world," said an unnamed source, who asked not to be identified.

All of this comes as mounting evidence that Henry Janeway is not just a grinch who seeks to spoil the lives of his neighbours but is also a tyrant trying to keep his own son subjugated within the dusty confines of the bookstore that has been in the Janeway family for generations.
 Alexandria Books, which hasn't had a customer in weeks 
despite the holiday season, when retail sales traditionally peak, has remained open while its neighbouring stores have put up the shutters.
     Janeway-fils has continued in attending school despite his father's opposition to the drastic plans that would re-shape the Portage Creek community, but has become something of a pariah and has been increasingly isolated over the past few weeks.
   The phone call came as a desperately needed morale boost to the young Janeway boy, who is described to have eagerly answered to phone after the first ring.  The ensuing conversation, according to phone company records, lasted approximately 23 seconds.
  Janeway's spirits were said not to have been dampered by the brevity of the conversation, despite the fact that the phone call was a wrong number.