Stalking The Average Man

At the request of a friend, I met a beautiful woman whose interests lay in the design of destiny, miracles, and as I discovered, me: Bonnie dangled mystical intrigues from her novel-in-progress in an obvious effort to secure my help adapting it for the screen, but she revealed only that her story involved a rescue mission of such massive proportion and intricate design that rescuers had to undergo rigorous training. Without this knowledge, she insisted, the mission would sound like pure fantasy, and it was for this reason that the precise target was kept from students until they were ready to hear it. She went on to subtlety imply that a man of my dire experiences was a perfect candidate to go through these lessons, which I mistakenly interpreted to mean “worldly wizened and prepared,” in order to accurately portray a trainee’s development. This was so important to her work, she reluctantly admitted when I hesitated, that she was willing to split the profits fifty-fifty. As an average looking man, whose naiveté had been savaged while working for television news in places like San Salvador and Beirut, I reasoned that a romance between us was no less absurd an idea than the esoteric premises she already embraced: I blatantly pursued her affections while we discussed supernatural precepts she had cleverly woven throughout her story, while she kept me at bay like a bemused fox playing with a myopic rabbit. The friction this circumstance generated was not quite reason enough to quit, until Bonnie began using my beliefs as examples of why the mission was necessary. Coincidentally, I began having unusual cognitive experiences, just as she said I would, from undergoing her screenplay character’s lessons. Although these interesting interludes did not balance against what I viewed as unwarranted assaults on my character, they did reduce my knee-jerk rejection of magical premises. Then she made a claim too ridiculous to contemplate, even in jest. Bonnie claimed her story was true: she had been contacted by an ancient teaching Spirit who told her that mankind has reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac. This was the time of the Second Coming, being both a misnomer and not the end of the world. It was the end of the “world cycle” in which we were now repeating historical lessons unlearned: we were on the cusp of a universal intervention in our ways, and our return to sanity would begin by awakening masterful emissaries to their purpose. When I pressed her to admit that her ludicrous, but persuasive, presentation was part of our role playing, she said only that the training entailed discovering a design in the student’s life - a purpose. I knew then that I had been chasing a brilliant lunatic, and I decided to cut my losses… soon. While gathering the courage to abandon her otherwise delightful companionship and our challenging discussions, I began having an increasingly curious experience. On the fourth occasion, which was coincidentally the same day I planned to let Bonnie go, I demanded a miracle and received it as proof of Spirit’s existence. Between breathing hard and hardly breathing, my mind raced to grasp the significance of what had happened, and by morning’s light I accepted that I had no choice but to believe everything Bonnie had written and said. Later that morning, to my incredulity, Bonnie said I was the first target of the rescue mission, then she explained why this was so. Two things then became abundantly clear; I needed the help, and the emissaries of change were already here.