I met a beautiful woman whose interests lay in the design of destiny, miracles, and me-an average looking man whose naivet had been savaged while working for television news organizations in places like San Salvador and Beirut. Given our divergent views on the nature of our world, this meeting was a predictably bizarre exchange of explanatory experiences during which Bonnie dangled mystical intrigues from her novel-in-progress to secure my help adapting it for the screen. In addition to her clear interest in my personal exploits, her subsequent reluctance to reveal her plot made little sense: in spite of my persistent prodding, by evening's end I knew little more than her story involved a rescue mission of such massive proportion and intricate design that rescuers had to be stealthily recruited and indoctrinated to its methods before they were told what they were up against. Without this preparation, she apologetically explained, the quest would sound like pure fantasy. There was one other mystifying caveat for me; volunteers weren't welcome. In spite of these restrictive conditions, Bonnie flirtatiously cajoled me into role-playing a trainee's development to fulfil what she described as a critical element that was missing in her story. I blithely assumed this was because I articulated my cynicism well, and she recognized that her work needed a grim counterpoint to her Disney-like views. For the next four months we worked closely, occasionally combatively, discussing the supernatural precepts her characters were studying without revealing the mission's ultimate goal. Finally, she made a claim too ridiculous to contemplate, even in jest: Bonnie said 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: Our biblical characters had been here on many occasions, and it was the end of times "cycle" in which we were now repeating historical lessons unlearned. Awkwardly, I nudged her to admit that her cleverly persuasive staging was part of our role playing, but even when I adopted intimidating postures she steadfastly said only that her character's training entailed discovering a design in his life - a purpose. Reluctantly accepting that I had been chasing a brilliant lunatic, I decided to cut my losses and civilly left her home thinking about how I could quit our arrangement without becoming her final straw; she was so invested in her story as to be living it, not just for it. However, while gathering the courage to abandon her otherwise delightful companionship and our challenging discussions I demanded of the Universe, and immediately received, an experience that proved her ancient Spirit's existence. Later that same day, Bonnie said I was the first target of the rescue mission, beginning with exploring what I was really like. She said my reactive behavior was a consequence of extreme experiences that had been long ago seeded in the average man's beliefs, and nurtured by governments and cultural contrivances until they reached their final manifestation of apocalyptic behaviors. It followed that to excavate the core influences upon my values, which had become so harmful as to threaten to destroy me, would be to reveal how an otherwise intelligent race had managed to perch itself on the brink of annihilation. As I understood my circumstance, I was the metaphor for the self-destroyer, which constituted half of my life's quest. The other half was to learn how to heal myself - a process that did not end when I stopped being an idiot. I could also experience the realm of the emissaries if I had the courage to learn what they all had to know, before gaining access to knowledge that was true power. This second volume in the Stalking series deals with these lessons.
