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Plotting get-rich schemes
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Plotting get-rich schemes
  I just finished watching a TV program where a main character was not only a government agent, he was also a writer. The plot in this program involved an unknown fan who somehow obtained a copy of a book that was still in progress and began systematically killing off important characters who were thinly-disguised real people. Of course this was a problem that threatened both of his careers, but was solved in the requisite one-hour time limit of the program. And it prompted me to take a crack at that genre in this column.  As for the thin disguises, Michael Moody, a smalltown journalist and photographer from Engleton, Texas, and his journalist wife Susan Birdwall, who left the big city to get away from her idiot editors, operate an Internet-only newspaper. They're not getting rich, but do have a steadily expanding fan base. One morning they find a mysterious washtub full of $100 bills on their front porch. After some gnashing of teeth, they jointly decide (mostly) to turn the money over to the police in hopes that the money actually belonged to an orphanage, or some other charity, instead of the more probable evil politician or drug smuggler. Of course they already knew that if the money wasn't claimed within a certain length of time, they could claim it for their own, with only a small amount (50 percent or better) going to the IRS. Still, the prospect of getting half a washtub full of $100 bills was enough to elicit a joint spontaneous response with many loud and happy expletives, along with a version of dancing that looked like the Hamster Dance from an old episode of Saturday Night Live.  The problem was, like some sort of perverse time loop, the wash tub full of $100 bills showed up on their porch the day before a column about it was to be published. After a lengthy investigation, which involved calling all of their friends and telling them about it, it turned out a fan had hacked into their web host because the columns were most often placed on a page up to three days in advance and the page itself was then turned on for general view on the day of publication. The fan just couldn't wait that long to read it.  He then went to the bank and withdrew what was less than one tenth of his savings account and put it on the porch. After he was found out, and went through several unnecessary psychiatric evaluations ordered by his poorer relatives, he decided the two journalists should keep the money anyway because they were really cool. I checked the porch several times yesterday and this morning, but the washtub has still yet to appear. There are a few minutes before I turn on the page and I'm keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that, unlike the actual old cliché, fiction is stranger than truth.   |
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