Background

There was a war, but I bet you didn't notice.

I certainly didn't. No one I knew noticed. I only started noticing because Grace pointed it out to me in ways I couldn't deny. Kinda changed my life.

There was a war... and we all lost. Now we're just picking through the rubble trying to figure out what's left.

I don't know what happened; I was still Sleeping when everything went down. Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Rapture... something, but what is clear is that, like when a neighborhood starts to go bad, everyone with the ability to get out did. The Masters are all gone, the Gurus, even the Technocratic bosses have abandoned their posts. Oh, don't get me wrong, there are mages running around, even techno-mages, but for the most part, the accumulated knowledge that they had about the True workings of the world have vanished... lost.

It's all lost. We're all lost.

I find myself stuck pondering the twin truths - "Ignorance is Bliss" and "The Unexamined Life is not Worth Living." I glad to know what I know and have the power I have, my life-pursuits are very rewarding. But, my world before was much more... content, secure.

Until I woke up, I was a doctor, a surgeon. I was an master artisan with a knife and sutures... I was a cosmetic surgeon, a plastic surgeon, a chop-doc. Some say I was the best in the world. I know I was among the best. I worked in L.A. and worked on movie stars, quietly. I was filthy rich because people from all over the world paid me scads of money to fix what they felt was wrong with their bodies. I lived next door to movie stars.

I had everything I ever wanted in life, always had. I grew up in a moderately well-to-do home just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Went to a good school, got into Harvard, pre-med, then stayed on there for medical school. I graduated with honors and began my internship and residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California because I learned in med school what I was really good at and what I really wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a cosmetic surgeon for really rich people... using my considerable talents sculpting the flesh of people who would pay anything for me.

That time in my life flew by.

And then Grace showed up. How can I describe Grace... She's...

Grace showed me a different world, a world without knives

"Oh my," she said to me, "You have seriously no guile! Baby, we're going to have to work on that."



I surrendered my medical license

I sold my place in Bel Aire

I used the proceeds to buy a building just north of downtown Seavan and have converted it into both my home and my haven. The top two floors are

I've

Right now the spa employs four female and two male massage therapists on a semi-regular basis. My two senior therapists, Jean-Paul Cloutier and Pheobe Parker, are Awakened, and I've been teaching them what little I know of the Universe. Grace doesn't seem to like the arrangement, but there are times when she does what I tell her, and getting along with them is one such.