Copyright 1996 - All rights reserved
Introduction
This is a story of life for those in American society who were born and raised in the shadow of the "baby boomers", a story which revolves around that most central theme of human existence, sharing love.
Why write about love?
Born in 1959, on the very trailing edge of the baby boom, I have lived my life in a pause, arriving on scene after the moral and physical carnage carried out by my elders but before the looters arrived to fight over the scraps. The same story has repeated itself over and over again, in grade school, high school, college, and as my career with Highly Profitable InkJet Inc. has progressed. Standing athwart the gap between the boomers and the busters, I've observed the worlds of both, and I find that the central difference between them is their attitude toward love.
Boomers tend to take it for granted, because growing up they were surrounded by love, immersed in love, nurtured with love. As is so often the case with something possessed in over abundance, they came to despise what they had and destroyed it.
The busters, on the other hand, have rarely or never known it. More often than not they have mothers who have aborted their brothers and sisters for convenience sake, fathers who couldn't be bothered to stick around, were abandoned to ever shifting child care providers by parents fulfilling themselves rather than their children, came home to empty houses after school, and ate frozen dinners thawed in a microwave. They've never experienced sacrificial, selfless love, and go out into the world with no expectation of finding it. The expect only to look after themselves, and no one else. Yet they want love, they need love, and they search without searching for someone who will "love only them" without knowing why they do so.
In what seems to me an infinitely sad condition, busters have no expectation of actually finding, they aren't certain that they should be searching, and they can't articulate exactly what it is that they aren't searching for.
The world has changed in America since the 1960's, more dramatically than anyone over 40 realizes, due more to their efforts than they will admit. The lives of most young adults are chaotic and senseless, drifting from one experience to the next. This story is written to communicate that chaos, and to offer a way out of it, a way to joy.
Corvallis Oregon is a prosperous, small city in the Willamette Valley on America's left coast. It is home to a major technology and manufacturing center for thermal inkjet devices, as well as Oregon State University and several smaller firms. Writing a book about life in such a locale will inevitably lead to some curiosity about the "real" identities of characters in this book. Rest assured, the characters are all composite and are not intended to be direct portraits of anyone.
Paul Harmon
Albany, Oregon
1996 AD
Section I
Begun 05/02/96 9:20 am
First Draft 10/01/96 10:39 PM
Second Draft 10/05/96 6:34 AM
Third Draft 11/29/96 1:15 PM
A publisher for this story is actively solicited. If you are a
publisher and you are interested in this story, please contact the author
at pharmon@proaxis.com in
Corvallis, Oregon. You might also check out The
Executive, an update of Machiavelli's The Prince.