Peter

Pearl Skala

You've known for some time that tonight would be special.

Why else would Chris be going to all this effort? Most of your friends aren't even religious, let alone Jewish. Hell, Chris isn't even all that religious. She must be planning something big tonight.

But you're getting ahead of yourself. Ahem. Your name's Pearl Skala. Nice to meet you.

You work at the Three Diamonds Foods Corporation. For those of you keeping track, that's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi. Lots of people think it's funny to see the Mitsubishi logo on a can of tuna. When you work there, the humor kinda runs thin after a week or two.

Three Diamonds mostly deals in fish; more specifically, you catch, process, and pack tuna. It's a tightly-run, highly profitable business. After all, canned tuna is far and away the most popular fish product in North America.

You've been working for corporations since you graduated from Yale Business School. Your sister, Andrea, likes to tease you about it - she routinely refers to you as "the corp in the family." It doesn't bother you. You and your sister may have disagreements, but you have the utmost respect for one another.

Andrea is a marine biologist, and so is her husband Eric. You and Andrea have always had ... somewhat differing views on world affairs. For example, a few years ago, she got involved with some hippy-dippy environmentalist group called the "Preservation and Unity Association," the acronym for which sounds roughly like your reaction to it.

In fact, it was Andrea who introduced you to Chris Carpenter. She'd met her somehow or other, and heard she was starting this thing called the MAGE Institute. It was a political think tank, very very far-left. Once you met Chris, you immediately liked her. She had a feeling about her - you just knew she was a good sort of person. Of course, in those days you weren't interested in any of that left-wing stuff your sister was always spouting, so you didn't pay too much attention to MAGE.

By that point, you were working public relations at Three Diamonds. It wasn't a bad job, and you're a pretty smooth operator, so it was a natural fit for you. You were popular in the office, and you were getting all the tough cases too - in other words, work was basically your life.

Then news started to spread around about this pending lawsuit involving your company. Seems that Three Diamonds had wanted to start a fish farm on this site in southern California. They had all the land bought up, except this one small parcel smack in the middle owned by a guy named Halvorsen. He was holding out for a bigger sum than the company wanted to pay.

So what did Three Diamonds decide to do? Flood the area, that's what. Needless to say, Halvorsen was furious. He threatened a lawsuit, but your company was one step ahead on this one: they actually had the gall to sue Halvorsen for "wrongful entrapment," whatever the hell that means. And since the Three Diamonds lawyers are no dummies, they had the case sewn up before it even went to court: judge bought and paid for.

Now the thing is, Three Diamonds was hoping to avoid the media catching wind of the story. That's where you figured into this whole thing.

The whole deal stunk to high heaven. You'd been asked to deal with a few unpleasant things before, but never anything quite so completely amoral. You struggled with it. You didn't want to talk to Andrea about it, since you knew what she'd say, and you certainly didn't want to talk to your co-workers. Finally, you decided to go to a completely unbiased party: your rabbi.

Rabbi Roth listened intently as you related the story to him. After you finished, he folded his arms and sat back, silently thinking for a moment. Then he leaned towards you and spoke.

"Pearl, your situation reminds me of a story. There was a man, Samuel, who had only one goal in life. He wanted to own his own business and be his own master. He worked for years and finally opened a little deli in the business district. He was doing alright, when a big sandwich chain opened up across the street from him. His customers started trickling away. He stayed up late nights, counting bills over and over again. He prayed for something to happen to save his business. Only a few weeks after the chain shop opened, it burnt down, and his customers started to come back. At first he was grateful. It was a big sandwich chain, so it certainly wasn't hurting the big company. Then, one day he was walking to work, and he saw a man begging on the corner. It was the owner of the other sandwich shop. The owner of the other shop told Samuel that Samuel's son had lit the fire to save Samuel's shop. Samuel went home and asked his son if this was true. His son said 'I did it for you, dad. The chain didn't need the money, you did.' Samuel said to his son 'Go tell that to the man begging on the corner.' Pearl, what are you going to do about the man begging on the corner?"

The rabbi's words cut you like a scalpel. You knew perfectly well that he was right, but hearing it put like that shook you up pretty hard. You thanked Roth for his advice and quickly took your leave.

That night, you had a dream. You and a boy were walking up a mountain. He asked where you were going, and you replied that you were going to make a sacrifice to the Lord. "But Mother," the boy said, where is the animal for the sacrifice?" You told him not to worry - He would provide. You walked for a time, and then you arrived at the chosen place. You told your son to lie flat on his back. You removed the knife from your robe, and brought it down swiftly...

...and the plastic bag you'd filled with fake blood burst open. Corn syrup mixed with red food coloring splashed onto your son's clothes and your arm. You shot one last knowing glance at your son as you turned away and started down the slope.

Then, suddenly, you found yourself in G-d's presence. You quaked with fear, knowing that He would be angry with you for thinking He could be so easily deceived. But somehow, you had managed to fool Him! He smiled down at you and congratulated you on a job well done.

You woke up knowing what you must do. You called your sister Andrea and told her you'd like to meet with her and Chris as soon as possible. The next day, the three of you met at a coffee shop near your office during your lunch break. You outlined your plan, and the two of them agreed.

A month later, the story broke: Three Diamonds was trying to screw a poor farmer out of his land! Your management was furious, but when they reviewed the case, they had to agree that you had done everything you could. It was simply that the document storage company you'd hired, Carpenter Systems, had suffered a break-in a week prior due to an entirely unrelated case they were also storing documents for. The crates of documents the thieves had shipped off to NBC happened to also contain the Halvorsen materials. A case of corporate espionage, yes, but not directed at Three Diamonds. Stroke of bad luck.

After that, you were sold. You joined the MAGE Institute, although never officially. You're its corporate espionage branch, so it wouldn't do for you to be on the record as an officer. That, of course, hasn't stopped you from going to every meeting and helping out in every way you can. Through the Institute, you've clandestinely broken dozens of stories, mostly dealing with corporate negligence, that wouldn't have otherwise been reported.

And through it all, you've actually found yourself drifting a bit to the left, particularly on environmental issues. The recent flooding of some coastal cities really opened your eyes, and with the privileged information you have access to, you know that the corps doing the polluting know perfectly well what harm they're causing, and don't care. That pisses you off more than anything else.

More recently, a new recruit, Eve Matthews, showed up. Her story was eerily similar to yours: she worked for Chevron, and found out about an oil spill that Chevron didn't want anyone to know about, but her conscience got the better of her. You helped her get that story on the blogs, and since then, she's been helping you as well.

Unfortunately, your bosses at Three Diamonds finally caught wind that something might be up with you lately. They called you into the human resources office and gave you a dressing down - accused you of all kinds of nasty things, which were, of course, completely true. You denied everything: knowing that you've been covering your tracks well, you gambled that they couldn't have anything real on you.

You were right - this time. But you need to be careful. Particularly since several of the executives of your company were killed in a nasty accident shortly after you spoke to them. Nobody in MAGE has confessed to this, but the timing is suspect - and it certainly hasn't lowered suspicions at work. Now that Three Diamonds is on to you, you may have to start laying low for awhile and letting others handle the lion's share of the espionage.

All that brings you back to tonight. It's the first night of Pesach, and you're spending it with Andrea and the rest of the MAGE Institute. You're looking forward to it - but you can't help feeling a bit of trepidation too. What can Chris be up to?

Anyway, you know that this night really will be different from all other nights. Have fun.

Who You Know

• Chris Carpenter - You're still not entirely comfortable with the radical politics of the group, but you have to admit Chris is a genuinely good person and seems to actually be making a positive difference in the world.
• Barry Magdalene - You actually met Barry once when he was on Capitol Hill - that was before a sex scandal ended his Senate career. He was one of the few politicians you really respected. Now he's become a MAGE member too, and a few months ago, he and Chris married. You couldn't be happier for them.
• Andrea Skala - Your dear sister. Like you said, although the two of you don't always see eye-to-eye, you have a mutual detente that keeps things civil.
• James Papadopoulos - One of the two Papadopoulos brothers (that phrase NEVER gets old). James likes to think of himself as Sherlock Holmes to John's Dr. Watson, but it's really more like Cain and Abel. You can take the James out of the Marines, but you can't take the Marines out of James.
• John Papadopoulos - In stark contrast to his brother, John is a high school English teacher who sees the world as if it were made of candy and flowers and everybody loved each other. He also sets off your gaydar something fierce.
• Phillip Harrison - One of those wacky "true believer" types, Phillip is a Protestant preacher who works with the needy. He's definitely got "some of my best friends are Jews" syndrome.
• Frank Bartholomew - One of the needy that Phillip works with. He's one of those sad cases of post-war syndrome.
• Tamasa Valappil - A recent transplant from India. Tamasa is intelligent, honest, and straightforward - but having come from rich India, you're not sure if she quite understands how bad things are here.
• Jamie Schreiber - Hopelessly devoted to Chris. Jamie is effectively, though not literally, Chris's sister. She's religious and a little bit nuts, but you can't question her dedication.
• Eve Matthews - You were actually a big Eve Matthews fan back when she was playing for the Rays. She was the first woman to play major league baseball, and she was great too, until that car accident left her crippled. Now you've taken her under your wing and are teaching her everything you know about corporate espionage.
• Simone Cylima - Simone is a bit radical even for the MAGE Institute. She comes to you by way of China and Rwanda, where they clearly didn't raise her right. Spends a lot of time with Jude, ugh.
• Judah Isaacson - A nice guy, and you'd better be nice back to him - he's responsible for the Institute's money!
• Jude Fairchild - A bit of a gun nut and a loner; you're pretty sure something bad happened to him some time ago. Jude seems to be the de facto leader of MAGE's radical wing.