The 2084 Precept

THE 2084 PRECEPT (A Novel)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and the stupidity of the human race, and I'm not quite sure about the former."
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Jesus Christ (The Christian Bible, Luke 23-34)

What would you do if you met a businessman in a London coffee shop, who made you a ridiculous offer of €500,000...merely for you to participate in a series of interviews? Would you assume the offer to be that of a deranged person, a fraudster or a joker? And irrespective of that, for €100,000 in advance and non-returnable, would you attend an initial meeting? Well.....would you?
And if you did attend the initial meeting, and your interviewer claimed not only to be a successful businessman but also a discharged inmate of an institution for the mentally ill? And if he was suffering from the delusion that he was an extraterrestrial student, and that he wanted to interview you for his thesis on the dominant lifeform on this planet? And if the €100,000 advance turned out to be real? Would you report him to the authorities as a deranged person in dire need of care?

Or if you postponed reporting him, and the ensuing payments were also real and continued to flow, what then? And would you stop if subsequently questioned by an obscure department of the national security forces?

Interesting questions for cynical business consultant Peter O'Donoghue. Would you have done as he did?