The Weekly Man

By Biff Mitchell

Nothing Is As It Seems

 

Seven odd people living seven separate lives with a secret connection that will change them forever.

 

Jack fears the woman he loves. Jackson feels his comfortable life crumble from an unknown source. Jax is ready to commit murder under the orders of an internet being. Jacky falls in love with a woman he can see just once a week. Jacques destroys his career with a mistaken email. Jac is the most hated man on earth when children kill their pets and themselves after reading his books. Jackie hates her life until she makes a stunning discovery.

 

What is their secret and how did it stay beyond their reach for so long? The Weekly Man explores the limits of self-deception and the consequences of not knowing who we are in a world where secrets can be deadly.

 

Originally serialized over 72 days, The Weekly Man is the world's first daily serialized coffee break novel, now available in a single book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biff Mitchell
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215569344

Book preview

The Characters in the Weekly Man

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For some reason the characters in this novel have very similar names. Is this a coincidence? Probably not. As the story progresses, this will make sense. However, to keep you oriented from the beginning, here’s a list of the main characters’ names (in order of appearance) and what they do.

Jack Morrison

Jack’s a cartoonist who produces a weekly comic strip called The Unseen. He’s also just about the most paranoid human on the planet. He’s been trying to date a woman he’s in love with (Valerie Vine) for years but keeps chickening out because he thinks she’s working for Them.

Jackson Gabriel

Jackson is an excruciatingly boring person whose well-organized life is skewed by a long-kept secret that pushes him out of his comfort zone and makes him question everything about his life.

Jax MacDonald

Jax is a total wing nut who believes that he’s in contact with a cyber being that wants to communicate with humankind through him. The being tells him to murder one of the other characters.

Jacky Carson

Jacky is a photographer who has a 3D kiosk in a local mall where he sells pictures of plants taking back the city. He falls in love with a woman he meets at the kiosk but a lingering secret threatens to tear them apart. 

Jacques Manning

Jacques is a writer who mistakenly sends an email that wasn’t properly edited before pressing the Send button and now his entire career is on the skids...and he’s run out of beer.

Jac Munroe

Jac is also a writer. But he’s also the single most hated man on Earth when children start killing their pets...and themselves...after reading his books.

Jackie Gallant

Jackie, a playwright, is the only female main character. She’s spent her entire life hating her life, until she makes a stunning discovery.

Surprise

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Death loves an expensive cigar.

And there were lots to choose from...a maze of flavors, sizes, and brands...preserved in glass tubes, metal tubes, plastic wrap, cedar boxes, plastic boxes and metal containers. She would have felt confusion if she had been able to feel more than just the passing of one pointless moment into the next.

Just get the most expensive one.

The woman with the streaky gray hair was patient but Natalie was beyond caring how anyone treated her. There was a time when for no reason she would have been condescending to this woman who looked so matronly and dignified with her grandmother looks, the gold chain dangling from her glasses, the neat black sweater over white blouse...professional looking in a grandmotherly way but working in a tobacco shop attached to a supermarket. There was a time when she would have pointed that out, rubbed it in with snide remarks. But not now, not anymore.

What’s the most expensive one you have? Voice flat, uncaring. The woman nodded, opened the lid on a wooden box and gently lifted out a chocolate brown shape that reminded Natalie of a penis from a long-ago lover whose face she couldn’t remember.

It’s a Cohiba Robusto. Cuban. The most expensive we have. There was reverence in the woman’s voice. For a cigar. But it was the most expensive. It could have been a thousand dollars. She had plenty of room on her cards.

It was $170.

She had a hundred and seventy dollar cigar. Now for the wine.

***

How simple the world becomes when you’re no longer a part of its color and noise with no roller-coasting between joy and pain. Decisions become easier because they don’t matter, decisions like selecting the wine for this special occasion.

Simple. The most expensive.

Forget labels with dates and wineries and logos...things like Chardonnay, Merlot, red, white, dry, body and aroma. Just...the most expensive.

$49.99

A bald asshole in a black turtleneck eyeballed her as he leaned against a kayak propped up in a display pushing a new line of wines called Nature Hound. There was a time when she would have been mildly offended by a wine called Nature Hound and perhaps slightly more offended by the crass commercialism of the brightly lit display in a wine store with subdued lighting, teak and rosewood walls, tasteful art and muted music. But not today, not anymore.

$52.79

Today, not even the asshole by the sign could offend her. She was beyond that, long and far beyond. But he did look a little like Roger, the shape of his skull. Poor Roger.

$79.98

By the time she’d met Roger she’d long forgotten what it was to feel anything. Like his cock inside her. And his weight bearing down on her body. Things like passion and excitement, joy and exuberance. Pain.

$137.99

It had all seemed so mundane, acted out to a boring script, so boring that she hadn’t even tried to fake an orgasm...just lay under him like a plastic doll with an artificial vagina. Not that he’d noticed. None of them ever noticed. Why would they? Maybe they’d been looking for a plastic doll, a place to release their sperm where it had no consequence or meaning.

$419.77

She couldn’t remember their names. Except Roger’s, the last. After him she’d stopped having sex. What was the point? She went for long walks, day and night, but not because she enjoyed walking; she just walked. She stood outside the store windows staring in and seeing nothing. She went to movies and gazed at screens that might well have been blank. She drifted in and out of bars, floated through clothing stores and past perfume counters. Nothing caught her attention. Nothing interested her.

$6,106.29.

A 2009 Petrus. From Bordeau, France. Six thousand bucks. She bought it.

Now for the hardware.

***

The smell of oil-soaked burlap and machinery with a vague undertow of saw-burned lumber filled her nostrils. She faced a botched attempt at re-creating the outdoors through volume and wide walkways that were more like dark alleys leading off from the domed atrium at the store’s entrance. She barely noticed the screech of a deck saw aisles away under a dizzying high ceiling with shelves stretching into heights beyond reach, casting shadows on the concrete floor and dark shapes in the empty spaces of out-of-stock goods...everywhere a sense of the subterranean, of life in the catacombs and caves of home improvement. The balding man with the round head and frog eyes was trying to impress her with his practical manly knowledge.

Nope... All authority and conviction, holding the yellow rope in his hands like it was a living thing, a rare and exotic snake, holding it like a gift. ...not the kind of rope you’d want to bungie jump with. Would be like falling from the end of a steel cable. It’s...

I’ll take twenty feet.

More than enough.

***

She remembered her father’s expensive cigars and her mother’s hatred of them: All my dresses, my evening gowns for God’s sake, smell like your goddamn cigars! The whole house smelled of cigar smoke, even the guest rooms. It was the scent of Natalie's childhood, and now wisps of it drifted through her living room. The cigar wasn’t bad, she thought, but the wine wasn’t all that great for six thousand bucks a bottle. On the other hand, nothing had the full body of life for her anymore...that bouquet of interest carried into the next moment. But the wine had given her a decent buzz, enough to finish this. Just finish it. She reached over her head and tugged the rope. Taut. Strong. No give.

Wouldn’t want to bungie jump with this.

It was clear to her now why she’d bought this condo, the room, with its wooden beams in the ceiling, strong enough with the steel eye hook to hold her weight.

No note. Why bother? Who'd read it?

None of the men she’d fucked would read it. Not even the women she’d fucked and probably not her parents if they had still been alive. If she’d had a sense of humor she would have cracked a smile when she thought about how she’d buried them in separate graveyards so they couldn’t argue in death. She had their money and their house with five guest rooms that had never been used. She’d sold it.

For her it was nothing more than an echo chamber of her parents’ endless arguments and the smell of cigar smoke permeating her and her mother’s lives. Outside, the two acres of manicured lawns were seen by few others than the grounds keepers. She wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t remember the address after she’d sold the house.

Her parents were gone. The house was gone. Any zest for life she’d ever had was gone. She was ice with blood vessels.

It was time.

She steadied herself on the stool. She found it interesting that she wasn’t nervous or fearful. Her body was still and her mind was calm. She might have been in a meditation class. She’d tried that years ago but she’d been more interested in the instructor than learning how to meditate. It didn’t occur to her to look up to some deity that might save her or welcome her after the plunge away from life but this wasn’t something she’d ever think about. The only thing that caught her attention now was the churning in her stomach. She tried to ignore it but the movement of things in her stomach was getting loud with strange digestive noises.

And now it was more than noise.

She was going to vomit.

Of all times...standing on a ladder, noose around her neck, thinking her last pointless thoughts, and she was going to throw up. The warning taste moved into her esophagus, into her mouth...bile, acid, the shitty wine. No...she wasn’t going to die with a mouth full of puke. Not that way. She lifted the rope from around her neck, stepped carefully off the stool, walked unsteadily to the bathroom and fell to her knees over the toilet. It started instantly and violently and it was accompanied by a feeling she’d never known before, a warm feeling, an actual feeling. Something was growing inside her.

This is a surprise, she thought.

About Thirty Years Later

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Monday – Jack

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There was something wrong with that janitor. Jack knew this: he was too amiable...not friendly...amiable. There had to be something wrong with that. Who’s amiable these days? And he made too much noise when he worked, pounding and clanking and buzzing. Jack was sure the noise was intentional, a means to distract him from his work and lower his guard. They were waiting just around the corner from the noise, ready to pounce.

And what was this about the drip from the kitchen tap? How did he know about it? Jack had just noticed it for the first time and he was sure he hadn’t told anyone about it. How did he know? Who was he really working for? What’s he doing in my kitchen?

Jack was a mess.

But he was sure this was going to be the day. Yes, today. He wasn’t going to lose his nerve this evening, not tonight. He was ready. He’d been ready for as long as he’d known her and tonight he would prove it. He would prove it to her and to himself.

Why does fixing a simple drip make so much noise? The banging. The Hammering. The squawks and crunches of metal on metal.

But tonight was going to be different.

***

It was dark. Good. He liked dark. Dark is a hiding place, a place of both safety and danger as opposed to the constant danger of light. Enemies can hide in the dark, waiting for him, their breath held at his approach, waiting. They’re always waiting for him. He knows this. He lives with it. Sooner or later they’ll get him. That’s inevitable. But they’re not the only ones who can blend in with the dark: Jack was an expert at using its cover against them. Crosby would be proud of him.

Was she there already? Waiting for him? He hoped not. He wanted to be early, see her arrive and watch her wait for him. You can learn a lot watching someone waiting. Like...who they might be working for.

He passed a convenience store wrapped so thick in ads for lotteries and junk food that he couldn't see inside. Was one of them in there right now? Peeking between the posters, following him with malevolent eyes? Signaling to the next watcher. He’s heading north on Queen.

In front of him. A man. Tall, lean, wearing a long dark raincoat. Looking at him. Staring right into his eyes. Jack’s stomach clenched His heart raced. He’s one of them. He knows it. Coming for him now. The tall man smiled. Insidious smile. A smile that said got you now. He had to find an escape route.

There was an alley between the tall man and himself. He was about fifteen feet away; the alley, ten feet. He quickened his pace. When he reached the entrance to the alley, he jumped into the darkness and ran. He couldn’t look back. He didn’t know if he was being pursued or not, he didn’t need to know. They were after him, if not here then somewhere else...the street, his home, on his way to meet her. They were everywhere. Watching him. Waiting.

Metal fire escapes loomed over him, zig-zagging up the sides of brick buildings, offering still more hiding places for them. Garbage bins reeked of rotted food. Could they be hiding in those, immersed in today’s meals, peering out from today’s food packaging? He quickened his pace, not thinking to look behind or around, eyes focused on the light at the end of the alley. Just a few more feet and he would be out.

He slinked into the light of a sparsely peopled street. No traffic.

Why did she want to meet here? Why not the hustle and bustle of downtown?

But he needed to see her. He’d put this off too long. He had to know. Was she real? Just another block and he’d know. She would be real and he would be with her, with all the promise she gave him in her messages. The things they would accomplish together. The changes they would make. The world they would create. The empires they would tumble with a flick of their minds.

He saw the coffee shop, The Spinning Cup, and suddenly their meeting place made sense. Small, dark inside, a conspiratorial place.

She picked well. Just the place to plan and scheme and start the movement that would begin the change.

He melted into the shadows between patches of light. A cab approached slowly, the driver’s eyes boring straight into his. He backed deep into the darkness of a doorway. The cab drove by. The driver didn’t look back. Maybe the driver thought he was looking for a taxi. He looked back at the coffee shop.

He saw her. Tall, long blonde hair flowing over the shoulders of a full length tan raincoat. She was lean and beautiful, with a hawk-like nose. He couldn’t see her full face in the darkness but he knew she was beautiful. How could she not be? Her words, her opinions, her insight, her obvious admiration for his mind. He stood for several minutes watching her as she reached into a small black purse and pulled out a package of cigarettes. She smokes. He would have to do something about that. She would need to be in good health for the struggle ahead. She lit the cigarette with a Bic lighter, inhaled deeply and blew out a spiraling cloud of smoke as she put the lighter back in her purse.

A man in a short black leather jacket and jeans, wearing a baseball hat backwards walked toward her. She didn’t look at him. She took another drag off her cigarette and held it in until the exact moment the man in the leather coat passed her.

At that exact moment.

Why that exact moment? Why did she hold it in so long and pick that exact moment to exhale? So that the man in the baseball hat would see it? So that he would know that she was exhaling?

But he knew the answer to that. He knew the truth behind the exhalation.

It was a signal. She was one of them. She’d been one of them all along. The whole thing was a sham. She was working for them, building his trust, luring him in. She wasn’t in love with him after all. He’d been duped. He felt foolish, hurt, angry.

She’s one of them.

He shuffled slowly to the entrance of an alley.

And ran.

He ran with the sound of Crosby’s cheering splitting him in two.

***

Three Hours Earlier – Valerie Vine

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Valerie Vine didn't expect him to show up. He never did. She didn't doubt that he’d tried time after time but he never made it close enough to the meeting place for them to actually meet and she knew there would be a message sent later, a message of apology with another lame excuse. He’d sent so many and none of them the same. Sorry, but I had a sudden attack of stomach cramps. Sorry, but there was a sudden death in the family. Sorry, but I suddenly realized...

She wouldn’t say she was in love with him; it was more like an intense interest, an obsessive need to get into his head and figure out what made him tick. But then, it wasn’t just that, the curiosity. She felt something else for him, a caring, a concern, a sense of responsibility that she couldn’t understand because she’d never actually met Jack Morrison, at least not face to face. They’d never spoken to each other and all she really knew about him was from their emails and his record at the Agency, and if anyone at the Agency found out what she was doing she’d be answering a lot of tough questions from people who would be looking to fry her ass. You don’t fraternize with people on the List.

What the hell are you doing? She asked herself as she got ready to go to the Spinning Cup Coffee Shop, most likely for another no show.

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Tuesday –  Jackson

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If anyone could be said to blend in with the washing cycles of life, it would be Mrs. Gilbert. She was worn but worn well. Jackson figured she was in her late 60s...early 70s. She was tall and blocky with dark stringy hair...and wrinkles. Jackson had never seen anyone as wrinkled as Mrs. Gilbert. Sometimes it was difficult to say where her mouth began and where it stopped until she moved her lips to speak. Her nose was wrinkled. Her ear lobes were wrinkled. Her arms and legs were wrinkled. But stripped down to just her eyes, she could have been twenty years old. They sparkled.

Jackson had never seen her go outside. Like him, she had things delivered to her door. She seemed to be always alone and it made him wonder where the sparkle came from.

Is that faucet still leaking? she said with a warm voice that sometimes cracked when she talked for more than a few minutes. At first he thought she might be a smoker but she never had that smoker’s smell. He guessed it was allergies or just something she did after a few minutes of talking.

I seems to have repaired itself. Must have been something clogging it somewhere it just shook loose. Jackson, like Mrs. Gilbert, was tall but slim with a runner’s build though he didn’t run. His jaw jutted out just enough to suggest someone in charge of his life.

That’s good. I know how those little sounds, like leaky faucets, bother you, Jackson. Mrs. Gilbert was aware of Jackson’s need for complete silence when he worked. She’d said once that he was so unlike the others and he’d wondered what the other tenants must be like. He’d never heard any of them, day or night and he only knew of them through Mrs. Gilbert. She was right about the noise thing though. One time he’d lost an entire day’s work because the sound of squirrels scampering in the eves had magnified to thunderclaps as the day wore into evening and made Jackson physically ill by nightfall. The next day the squirrels were gone and Jackson couldn’t even recall anything being done about them.

Well, I should get lots of work done today. He smiled and nodded as he closed the door and, for some reason, he thought of his mother. She’d died when he was a child but he had no lack of mothering from Mrs. Gilbert.

He had an uncle named Manzer, his mother’s closest friend and someone he’d known since he was a kid but these days he might see him two or three times a year, when there were decisions to be made about his mother’s estate. Manzer took care of those things. He was also the one who had lined him up with the flat, being an old friend of Mrs. Gilbert from their civil service days.  He’d asked her about those days but she just waved her hand dismissively and told him there was nothing to really talk about...just lots of paperwork.

He walked across a room with high ceilings and windows and pulled the curtains open. The park across the street teemed with runners, mothers with strollers filled with plump babies and retired baby boomers sitting on benches watching life pass by while they talked about lives that had long since faded in their memories and taking on new dimensions as names were forgotten and details changed over time, the way myths and legends evolve.

Those people, the boomers, were his demographic, his clients. Not the ones sitting on the bench outside, but others...the ones who’d garnered knowledge and experience through lifetimes dedicated to the work ethic and being the perfect team players. Their brains were gold, their memories, chunks of rough diamonds.

Jackson was their cutter and polisher. His tools were an uncanny ability to extract information and present even the most complex concepts simply and clearly. He was the man behind Expert Life. In the words from his website:

Retired? Turn Your Work Experience into Cash

You’ve spent a lifetime working and learning and becoming an expert in your profession. You’ve turned theory into practice and boiled the learning down to those things you need to know to get the job done.

Isn’t it a shame?

Now, when you’re more valuable to your employer than ever, all that learning and experience is discarded from the workplace.

But it doesn’t have to be.

You can put it back into the workplace. Expert Life can take all that know-how and turn it into online training for professionals and you can sell it through our worldwide outlets.

Get in touch with us soon and learn how you can turn your experience into cash.

Given the generous pensions of the ones who were gold, Jackson was doing well, and it was the perfect gig for someone with his problem. He worked from home with graphic artists, programmers and web developers from online employment sites. He never had to go outside unless it was absolutely necessary...a sweet situation when you had a pathological fear of strangers. Put him on a busy city sidewalk and he would fold in on himself so completely he wouldn’t be able to function, he would barely be able to breathe. He’d passed out once, right on the sidewalk, in front of everyone, all those people. He’d bruised the side of this head. Mrs. Gilbert had nearly had a fit.

He even avoided personal meetings with his clients and contractors, preferring video messaging or email.

But he respected his clients. In spite of retirement, they still had things to say and contribute and they weren’t ready to sit on park benches or alone in their homes watching TV and waiting to die. Their experience was making more money for them now than they’d made while they were working.

And the work wasn’t without its entertaining moments.

Roy Pickering and Jody Blake had worked at the same company for thirty-five years. They’d been senior directors, and stories of their hatred for each other were still repeated years after their retirement. It had started when Jody found out that Roy was having an affair with his wife and it compounded a hundred fold when she left him to marry Roy. After that, work was daily a war between them. They’d stolen each other’s staff and had tried to get each other fired, and for thirty-five years they’d never once spoke to each other. Now they were retired and they still weren’t talking.

Interestingly, they were both clients of Jackson’s.

Both had just released courses on conflict resolution in the workplace and the war was on in the forums. Just for the hell of it, he logged into BetterThanCollege: Self-Training for the Time-besieged, one of the forums that still tolerated the two. Right off, the first posting was from Roy.

Let me make clear that over 35 years of practical, hands-on application of conflict resolution in the workplace has given me great insight into effective strategies for dealing with conflict in the office. My online course (now available through Expert Life) appropriately titled Toward a Sweeter Working Environment is IMOHO probably the single best learning instrument on office conflict resolution that you’ll find anywhere.

It’s full of real life scenarios, task-based exercises and clearly written instructional text. You’ll be a conflict resolution pro in no time.

Now, I want to warn you about another course released coincidentally at the same time as my course. It’s called Avoiding the Office War Zone, and it was thrown together by, you guessed it, Jody Blake. Even with my ideas out there and so simple to comprehend, Blake has put together another training aid that completely misses the mark.

But they paid their invoices on time and they trusted Jackson to keep their projects separate and never discuss one’s work with the other. Jackson was the best at what he did and they both knew it.

He opened his email and saw what looked to be something from a potential new client. The subject line read: Need course to save the world.

Hope he doesn’t want me to come up with the reference material for that, he thought. 

Mr. Gabriel,

I have a mystical link to a bonafide superior being with a message and instruction on how to stop the madness and save the human race from certain extinction and I need your expertise in turning this message into a course that can be delivered on the internet. Can we discuss particulars via email?

We must stop plastic!

Jax MacDonald

Yep, payment in advance if you take this one on.  

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Wednesday – Jax

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Its name was Ratlas, the lowest and the highest in its host of forms and meanings. It spoke from wherever it was and Jax listened. The specific words were incomprehensible, possibly even babble to some but not to Jax. There was meaning for him in the rhythm of sounds, like a cacophony of disjointed music swinging and swaying through his mind, working its way into his body and soul. There were messages in the disarray of sound, messages of hope and despair—whatever was on Ratlas’ mind, day after day. All will flush away, it said.

Beautiful.

I am the message on your answering machine that burns through the recording time before the meaning is clear. This was the message he deciphered in the wild mix of sound.

Wonderful.

You are my portal into the ears and eyes of humanity.

Yes...I am.

You must get my word out before it is too late. You are the only one who can hear me, the only one who can save my message so that I can save you and the rest of the world.

I’m going to be saved. We’re all going to be saved.

You are my prophet.

I am.

You are hungry now. Go and eat. Think about my words. Carry my message to all those who will listen. You know what you have to do. Eat now. Relax. And then to work.

Eat. Relax. Work.

Jax rose slowly from his swivel chair, moving with the fluid certainty of a man with a purpose, a man with a message to spread and a world to save. His apartment was large but the walls were bare and the furniture sparse, a carryover from his childhood. He hadn’t come to the city to live life; he’d come to save life.

He couldn’t remember the first time he’d contacted Ratlas. Or was it Ratlas who’d contacted him? It didn’t matter. He was the conduit between the message and the world and he wasn’t about to fail in his calling. He took a frozen turkey dinner from the freezer, turned on the oven and put the dinner in before the oven had a chance to pre-heat. While the dinner was cooking, he undressed and went into the washroom for his daily healing shower.

He needed the healing. So much of his life was a mystery to him. The context of his life, the orderliness of it. He often wondered about the way he lived. He knew that it wasn’t like others, not that he knew much of others and how they lived. He knew these things through the internet, through video sites, his readings, the news sites, the blogs and websites. One thing he was sure of was that the world was a mess, that all of humanity was coming undone and needed to be saved. And he’d known all his life that he would play an important role in saving humanity from itself. It was what he was born for. It was why Ratlas wanted him to carry the message.

He would eat, relax and work.

We're all going to be saved.

***

As usual, the comments box on his blog, The Word In Its Forms and Meanings, was empty. He knew people were reading it. Ratlas had told him so. But they never reacted to his posts, not once, ever. Maybe Ratlas’ message was so powerful that his readers were cowed by his words and didn’t know how to respond. This is what he told himself and he believed it. He was the one spreading the word, saving humanity, making the world a better place to live and it was time to spread today’s message. He put his fingers on the keyboard, closed his eyes, blanked out his mind and, as he liked to put it, blogged from the soul.

Did you use a plastic bag today and if you did shame on you for using a plastic bag in a world where plastic is despoiling the land the air and the water in fact gargantuan tracts of ocean water are so polluted with plastic that it spreads from the surface to the bottom of the ocean with plastic so thick that it clogs the gills of fish blocks sunlight to the life that once lived at the bottom of the sea and is dying a slow death in the absence of the life-giving sun as gargantuan mountains of used plastic products continue to pile up outside the cities of the world where they poison the hinterlands once rich in idyllic streams teeming with trout and salmon but now surrounded and choked by landfills bursting with plastic disintegrating into its chemical makeup and the chemicals leeching into the ground and the groundwater and spreading into major waterways and lakes and eventually into the seas and the oceans where they change the chemical composition of the water which evaporates into the air and changes the chemical composition of the air that we breathe and eventually changes our very own chemical composition and it’s no wonder that conditions like autism and ADD plague our offspring with chemical compositions changing our very molecular structure and turning us into the children of tomorrow the broken down genetically disinherited mutants we’re evolving into unless we STOP USING PLASTIC.

We need to stop using plastic and if you used a plastic bag today then shame on you and let’s hope you can do better tomorrow and it sends this message out to you from the lowest and the highest in its host of forms and meanings.

STOP PLASTIC!

He imagined the looks of horror, the outrage, the fear, the disgust as they read its words...but then...the relief and wonder when Ratlas offered words of hope drifting in a sea of hurt.

Who could comment from that elevated plane of sudden realization?

He opened his email and there was the response from the online learning guy. 

Dear Mr. McDonald,

Your business offer sounds intriguing, though I’m not sure if online learning is the right approach to putting out a religious message. But it would certainly be a first. Perhaps if you could give me more specific details we could work something out.

You can find my rates and production information on my website at expertlife.com. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, perhaps you could do so before we discuss things in more detail. Contact through email is my preferred platform.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Jackson Gabriel

First thing I have to get straightened out, Mr. Gabriel, he said out loud. Ratlas isn’t a god. This has nothing to do with religion no matter how mystical Ratlas is.

But he’s wrong about the approach, he thought. What it offers is lessons on how to live that we might