Content: exploitation

Summary:

This story is a modern-day fantasy about a burned out salesman who checks out of an insane asylum to go on a quest to find the world’s greatest peace maker and save him from being assassinated. Why would anyone want to kill someone like this? Because most people don’t really want peace. Oh, they say they do, but what they really want is more money, more control of their lives, more love, more sex, more of any and all of the best things in life, including no more problems that get in the way of getting more stuff. The disillusioned hero, Morgan Shores, is joined on his quest by Mina Van Cortland, a plein air artist. His mentor, Virgil Wiggins, is dead but is brought back to life on a smoke screen monitor by using a secret alchemy process. Along the way, Morgan and Mina catch glimpses of a magical sunrise atop the Great Wall of the Manitou in the Catskill Mountains and take a Shaman’s vision quest in Ecuador’s Amazon forest. They also discover how conflict was born into the world and delivered to the Lord of the Sky in the Tien Shen Mountains on the far side of China. Near the end, while wearing special glasses grafted to his head, Morgan sees parasites clinging to human beings that slowly drain and warp a person’s desire for soul satisfying pleasure and happiness. In the end, the peace maker dies in the arms of his would be champion. What the survivors are left with is the wisdom required to create a force for peace no one can kill.

Chapters: