The Revelator

[_son of Ishmael]

Ok, so Runtu and Bob are the same people?

"Bob Loblaw" was a sockpuppet I used in the past when I was feeling snarky. "Bob Bobberson" is someone else.

Oh, was I like the only one who did not know that?

[_Spanner]

I too am really enjoying reading the Bobberson series and this story. You guys are so talented, I hope we see a few more. I can see a kindle collection of short stories in the future.

On the down side, I am never going to get my marking done!

[_Runtu]

"Have we any apricot jam left?" Alex called from the breakfast table.

"No, dear heart," Jean called from the kitchen. "I've put what we have left out on the table for you."

Alex stared at the two jars. "Green Fig Conserve." What is that? he thought. He recognized the other jar: Jean's rose-hip jam. Pushing the jars away in disgust, he buttered his toast and ate it quietly as he logged into his email account.

A week had passed, and things were already moving. As he had made clear to Craig, they needed to take their time.

Tanner was in, just as Alex had expected him to be. All it had taken was a subtle appeal to his vanity, the same way it had with Craig. Most people were pretty easy, weren't they? Alex understood such things, and he prided himself on being unmoved by such things, though heaven knows others had tried many times. But he wasn't in it for personal glory--though there had been quite a lot of that, he had to admit--no, it was only the glory of God and the progress of truth that mattered to Alex.

The note from Tanner was predictably long, his enthusiasm and apparent anger rising with each sentence. Good, thought Alex. People make mistakes when they're angry. Perhaps Craig had been right to invite Tanner first.

There wasn't much of interest in the email, mostly Tanner pledging his loyalty and cursing their enemies, but buried in all that had been a couple of sentences Alex had almost missed:

"My friend has a tentative identity for Sidious, a name and address, though he has not yet confirmed this information. Be assured that, if my friend is correct, Jared Richards of Sandy, Utah, will wish he'd never crossed us."

Alex smiled. That bit of good news might even get me through sacrament meeting, he thought.

Later, Alex sat with his phone and thought how best to reply to Tanner's message.

Jean nudged him sharply with her elbow. She whispered, almost hissing, "Put that away, and pay attention! Sister Niekirk has put a lot of effort into the lesson."

They sat in the Relief Society room, where a large woman stood in a frock that was obviously designed for someone much younger. She was clearly nervous, her carefully sprayed hair starting to wilt a little while tiny beads of sweat forced their way through what he imagined were several layers of makeup. On the table in front of her, several pages of notes were spread out, along with a tattered lesson manual. In the midst of the sprawl stood an elegant crystal vase holding several pink roses carefully arranged.

Typical, Alex thought, smirking. They never get to the meat of the doctrine, but at least they have their floral arrangement.

"... the meek: for they shall inherit the earth," she was saying.

It was a nice thought, Alex had to admit, but the meek always ended up like Arlen Compton. People who want light discipline are unlikely to inherit the earth, he chuckled to himself.

He had once felt meek, though it was more fear than meekness. At 19 he had dutifully submitted his mission papers and had been called to, of all places, Córdoba, Argentina. He had spent two months in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, USA, where he had felt completely disoriented. Most of the missionaries were kind to him, but others could sense his fear. They mocked his accent, apparently mistaking him for a posh Englishman. But mostly he had just been overwhelmed. He had thought he understood the doctrines of the church, but the others, mostly from Utah and Idaho, seemed to belong to a different religion than the one he had known in South Africa.

Each week they had walked up the hill to the temple, where he once again recoiled when he had to pantomime having his throat cut or his heart torn out as "penalties" for not keeping the temple covenants secret. The food did not agree with him, and the long hours had exhausted him mentally and physically. And, no matter how hard he tried, he could not keep up with the others in learning Spanish. At a low point, he had heard his instructor tell his companion, "Just try and encourage him. He just doesn't have the talent or intelligence to pick up the language or the discussions easily. Keep him in your prayers."

When he arrived in Argentina, his American companion had told him, "I'm out of here in a month, so don't give me any crap." They had done very little missionary work, and Elder DuPlessis had spent most of his time memorizing the discussions. But with almost no interaction with real Argentinians, he hadn't really learned the language. When he did give a discussion, he rattled through it quickly, leading some investigators to laugh at him. "¡Mirá, hablá castellano, che!"

Early on, he had felt humiliated by Catholics and Evangelicals who obviously knew more about the Bible than he did, and he had sputtered angrily when he could not counter their attacks.

"Don't worry about it," his companion had said. "You're not going to convert anyone by bashing."

No, but he would never let them get the upper hand again. The rest of his mission he had worked harder than he had thought possible, and eventually he could carry on a conversation in Spanish, though some people still made fun of his accent. But no one could touch his knowledge of the gospel. He had pored over the scriptures, reading them through twice in English, twice in Spanish, and every siesta, while his companions had slept, he had systematically studied gospel topics according to the Topical Guide and Bible Dictionary. He had even managed to get a full set of Joseph Fielding Smith's Doctrines of Salvation.

He had come home with a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the gospel and a fondness for dulce de leche and yerba mate.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." Sister Niekirk's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

Sometimes he thought the Savior must have had MIC in mind when he had said that on the Galilean mount two thousand years before. They had been sorely persecuted, he knew, but he knew that a great reward in heaven would await him if he could just endure to the end.

He looked to his right and saw that the two sister missionaries, both American, were staring into their scriptures. He wasn't entirely sure, but one of them--definitely the better-looking one, he thought--looked as if she were sleeping. She didn't have Jean's elbow to keep her focused.

After priesthood meeting--a yawner about magnifying your calling--Alex had made his way out to the carpark, where Jean and the boys waited next to the car.

"I don't know why you lock it," Jean said, obviously unhappy that she'd been made to wait in the heat. "No one is going to steal a ten-year-old Ford."

Alex started the car in silence.

As they rounded the corner onto Walter Sisulu Road (the name still irritated Alex), Jean turned and said brightly, "Wasn't that a lovely Gospel Doctrine lesson from Sister Niekirk?"

"Oh, yes, lovely," he agreed absently.

"What was your favorite part?" Jean asked.

"So much of it was wonderful,' he lied. "I couldn't possibly choose a favorite. What part did you like best?"

"That last part about loving our enemies and doing good to people who hate us. The world would be so much better a place if we could all learn to do that, don't you think, dear?"

"Yes, yes," he said, thinking. "I am convinced that we show our love best when we combat hate and error with truth. Standing boldly for the truth, no matter the consequence, is the greatest love we can show."

Jean shook her head, "No, Alex, I don't think it's that at all. We are to turn the other cheek and pray for our enemies. Jesus never said anything about fighting back."

"Allowing people to remain in ignorance of the truth is not love," Alex said, glaring at his wife.

She sat silently for several minutes. As they neared the last turn before the gate, she smiled brightly. "Weren't those flowers beautiful? Sister Niekirk said she'd be happy to give me a cutting. They're a lighter shade than the Love Knot but darker than the new ones your friends sent us. They'll make a perfect transition between them."

"Hello, sir! Glorious day, isn't it?" Zanoxolo said, grinning broadly. "And you, Ma'am, you're looking radiant this afternoon!"

"Just open the gate," Alex said, staring straight ahead. Jean gave him a dirty look, but he pretended not to notice.

[_Kishkumen]

This is great!

[_Equality]

As they rounded the corner onto Walter Sisulu Road (the name still irritated Alex)

Love this.

[_Runtu]

Part VII

Craig was beginning to think this was all pointless. What exactly was he supposed to be gleaning from the emails Alex was forwarding him from Tanner? The kid alternated between bravado and a weird, almost childlike, deference to DuPlessis. Nothing had been leaked so far, but then Craig hadn't expected anything. After all, the revelator was busy spying on Tanner Scott at the behest of Alex DuPlessis. Wrap your head around that, he thought. It felt strange just thinking about it, as if he were Bérenger watching the people around him mutate, only these guys were turning into angry, paranoid cranks afraid of their own Inboxes. I'd rather be a rhinoceros, Craig thought.

He'd had a long day full of meetings (Mormons like their meetings, don't they?), and stuck in traffic on traffic on Beck Street near the refineries, he had noticed that the clutch on the BMW had begun to chatter. As he stepped out of the car into the hot garage, he could smell it: the pressure plate was going. He'd bought the car during the first of what now seemed like an endless series of midlife crises. Oh, well, that one had just saddled him with a hefty car payment and a ruined clutch. This latest one had turned his world upside down.

Ana had left a note saying she was off with the girls getting some potting soil for a Young Women's service project. Craig never seemed to have time for such things anymore.

He sat down at the kitchen table, opened the laptop, and started reading the surreal exchanges between Tanner and DuPlessis. Each email to or from Tanner had been dutifully forwarded to Craig, with relevant portions highlighted in yellow. He felt like a zoologist observing the grooming rituals of a pair of chimps in the wild.

He never knew how to respond to these reports, so he would limit himself to brief comments such as “keep up the good work” or expressions of gratitude that DuPlessis had given him the honor of working with him.

"Whatcha doing, Dad?" Porter asked.

"Nothing that can't wait," Craig smiled, snapping the laptop shut. "What's up with you?"

"Nothing much," Porter shrugged.

"How's the garden going?"

"The tomatoes are much bigger, and the serranos are starting to look like real peppers--tiny, dark green ones, but they finally look like they should."

"That's a good sign," Craig said. "How's your friend--Loren, was it?"

"Much better. I think I've figured out how to deal with those guys." Porter grabbed a cookie from a bag in the pantry.

"Oh? How'd you do that?" Craig took a couple from the bag, too. Ana wouldn't be happy that he was blowing his diet, but then a good father had to make sacrifices when opportunities for father-son bonding arose.

"I just figured I'd make it more painful for them than it is for Loren. I'm bigger than any of those guys, and they know they'd get caught if they ganged up on me. So, I decided to take them on, one at a time. Every time someone bothered Loren, I bothered him. Whoever knocked him down got knocked down. By yours truly." He seemed pleased.

"Don't they tell the teacher?" Craig took a pair of glasses from the cupboard, retrieved a jug of milk from the fridge, and filled both glasses.

"They would, but then everyone would say they were the pussies. The funny thing about it is that Loren is actually pretty strong, and pretty soon he realized he didn't need me anymore. Still, they're not going to take both of us on, so we stick together." He dunked his cookie into the milk.

"Well, officially, I can't condone any physical violence, but I'm proud of you for standing up for Loren. I know what it's like to be bullied when there's no one around to help." Craig dunked his cookie, for good measure.

"We've become friends, Dad. I thought he was weird, but he's just quiet. Really funny when he does talk, though. I've been helping him with the flowers because there's too much work for just one person. I even brought some roses home for Mom after school." He pointed at a Mason jar with half a dozen pink roses on the counter. "I never knew you had to give them so much attention and care. My teacher says if you don't prune and water and fertilize them just right, they grow wild, and the flowers are small and kind of ugly."

"These are beautiful. You guys must be pretty good at it."

"Yeah, just don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to protect." Porter laughed, taking another cookie from the bag. Craig took one, too. For the boy, he said to himself.

Later he opened yet another long rant from Tanner about how the "good guys" might have taken a few lumps, but they'd come back in fighting form. Craig had long believed that Tanner had never been able to distinguish between religious faith and team sports. Being an apologist was for him like being a season-ticket holder to BYU football, though very few BYU fans engaged in the kind of trash-talking and taunting that Tanner did. Suddenly it hit him: Tanner was a child, with the temperament and maturity of a pre-teen. He would gladly put Porter up against him any day. Tanner bullied those he perceived as weak, but Porter would defend them every time. It was Tanner who was weak, he could see that much.

He had taken a risk having DuPlessis invite Tanner first, but rather than proceed carefully, as Craig would have done, DuPlessis seemed to be egging him on every time he flew off the handle. Was DuPlessis actually feeding the kid's rage? It sure seemed like it.

When Tanner speculated about the leaker, naming names, DuPlessis encouraged him. "Yes, I've never been convinced he was entirely on our side. Maybe your friend can find out more about him for us." He had even agreed when Tanner suggested that Dalton Kane could possibly be the mole. DuPlessis had seemed almost delighted when Tanner referred to Kane as "that fat old blowhard."

At the same time, DuPlessis went out of his way to stroke Tanner's ego. "I reached out to you because I know I can trust you. You're not the like older guys, who have divided loyalties because over the years they've become too friendly with the enemy. You've always stayed on the right side of the line."

Apparently sensing that Craig might not approve of all this, DuPlessis had written, "I have to make him believe he's safe with me. Until then, he will always have his guard up. We've got to convince him we aren't setting him up."

This made it official: Despite his well-known ego and self-proclaimed wit, DuPlessis was, well, quite an idiot. If any of the exchanges with Tanner ever made their way to Kane and the others, DuPlessis would be finished as an apologist. From Craig's position, DuPlessis was risking everything--his reputation, his position among the apologists, and his most valued friendships--and there was no potential reward for the risk. The best DuPlessis could hope for would be that no one would ever find out about his plan. But it was plain that DuPlessis not only didn't realize the risks he had taken but had not understood how foolish the "plan," if it could be called that, was. For now, however, Craig let him play at puppetmaster, hoping that Tanner wouldn't shoot his mouth off at the wrong moment.

It needs to be more painful for them, he thought.

"How long do you plan on keeping Tanner in the dark?" he had asked DuPlessis after he had received another email of play-by-play commentary on Tanner's rising zeal.

"One month is enough," DuPlessis had replied. Craig wondered how he had arrived at this arbitrary time limit, but then nothing DuPlessis was doing made any sense. Well, that wasn't entirely true. It made perfect sense if DuPlessis were an angry dimwit, which he was, of course.

After three weeks, Tanner had pretty much attacked the characters of every member of the Short List, including Craig.

"I've met Craig," Tanner had written. "I don't like him. He tries so hard to be 'nice' but we all know it's an act. I don't even know who invited him to the list in the first place. I wouldn't have, anyway. The condescending bastard."

Craig had met Tanner exactly twice, first at a dinner honoring Dalton Kane, when Tanner had sat across from Craig and had talked for two hours straight. Amused, Craig had let him talk, interjecting only to nod at appropriate moments. And then there had been the night he’d seen him at the church before the Young Women in Excellence program. As far as he could recollect, he'd never communicated directly with Tanner by email, phone, or any other way. Oh, well, he thought. Not exactly the kind of friend I want to have.

Ana looked over his shoulder. "I thought you were done with that stuff. You promised." She set some bags from Home Depot and one from VerDon's Crafts on the counter.

"I know I did," he said, sheepishly. "It's a long story, but I have to stop some bad things from happening."

"What bad things?" she asked.

He tried to explain it all, from the attack on Arlen to Tanner's mysterious friend to the collapse of the list. But it all sounded so silly, like the plot from an old episodes of The Avengers, a British TV show he’d watched as a boy after school. Only he wasn't Steed, and he didn't think Dalton Kane would look very good in a leather catsuit. He told her about Porter's class and how he felt he was in the same position to do something about the bullies, but he didn't sound convincing, not even to himself.

"I don't understand any of it," Ana said. "Those people are nuts. I've been telling you to walk away from that for years, but you never listen."

"I know," Craig said. "I'm sorry."

"Do you really think something bad is going to happen?"

"Not if I can help it," he said.

"You're like children," she said, shaking her head in disgust and walking away. "Time to grow up!"

She and the girls went out to the backyard to work on their project. Even Porter went out to help.

Craig went back to the emails, feeling a little slimy by the time he finished. He went out to the back patio to see how the project was coming. Porter was putting the last of the miniature rose plants into small ceramic pots.

"They're for a program at the nursing home." Ana said. Once a quarter, each ward in the stake was assigned to provide a "family night" at a nursing home within the stake boundaries. Craig had always thought the place was depressing, but the flowers might cheer things up until the next time the Angel of Death came calling.

As they loaded the trays of flowers into the back of the SUV, Craig wondered why he couldn't force himself to be interested in something worthwhile. A few years before he had briefly volunteered as a Spanish translator at the county's free medical clinic, but his schedule kept changing and he couldn't keep it up. The only constant in his life, it seemed, was his obsessive-compulsive participation in these pointless message boards.

Tanner's tirade continued over the next week, and Craig was starting to get bored. A child throwing a sustained tantrum isn't interesting even at the beginning, and once the tantrum has reached its peak, even the most attentive parent learns to tune it out. Craig had stopped caring what Tanner was saying, but he wondered how long Tanner could sustain the ranting. Surely, he'd get tired eventually. Then he reminded himself that DuPlessis had maintained an unmatched level of righteous fury for some twenty years without interruption. Once, an apologist, trying to be charitable, suggested that DuPlessis may not have started out angry and nasty but had been pushed to it by constant attacks from anti-Mormons.

No, Craig had been there when DuPlessis had arrived on the old listserv boards, as angry and spiteful as he would ever be. Nothing had changed since then. Craig had been fresh out of grad school then and was still dating Ana. Since then he'd landed his dream job, married and had four beautiful children, and had lost his faith along the way. But had anything really changed?

Maybe it was time to give DuPlessis' plan a little nudge to shake things up a little.

[_palerobber]

The only constant in his life, it seemed, was his obsessive-compulsive participation in these pointless message boards.

don't be so hard on yourself, Runtu : )

by the way, i keep trying to guess what Craig's end game is here, or if he even knows it, but i'm no good at spy novel twists.

...For the boy

[_Runtu]

don't be so hard on yourself, Runtu : )

by the way, i keep trying to guess what Craig's end game is here, or if he even knows it, but i'm no good at spy novel twists.

...For the boy

Sometimes the best planned end game turns out to be irrelevant to what actually happens.

[_Runtu]

Part VIII

The meeting had dragged on longer than one of those never-ending priesthood leadership training broadcasts, at least to Alex it felt like it. He stole a glance at his watch while the finance officer reviewed each section of the power company's quarterly report: tariff income from business and residential users, operational and maintenance expenditures, consumption rates, outages and failures, and so on and so forth. He could recite the figures for his department almost from memory. It had been a good quarter, as his work on fault-tolerance had reduced downtime and had unexpectedly made it easier to discover illegal taps into the system. Management had been pleased when he had reported the data a week before, and he had been duly flattered by their praise. He hoped that this meeting would give him a chance to shine in front of the important people. But after nearly three hours in a conference room, he was now just bored. If he'd been in a darkened chapel watching the video feed from Salt Lake, he would have discreetly fired up his smartphone and caught up with the boards, but he was stuck here.

He knew from long experience that the taps were a result of squatters, who usually occupied land that wasn't theirs and stole services, such as water and electricity, from the good citizens who were paying for them. These people were shameless, and he was glad he had helped catch them. I caught them, he thought, smiling. And I'll find out who has betrayed us. After all, such people were all the same, abusing the trust of decent people, and it was up to people like him to make things right.

The finance officer was still droning along in a soft voice that seemed to clash with his broad shoulders and Afrikaner accent. He paused occasionally to push his gray-plastic-rimmed glasses up to the bridge of his nose, but each time they slid back to their original resting place halfway down his bell-shaped nose. On his lapel, the man wore a tiny pink rosebud.

Alex wished he could be just about anywhere else, as outside of this stuffy conference room, things were really starting to move. Tanner had shared some news the night before: His mysterious friend had confirmed Sidious' identity as one Jared Richards of Sandy, Utah. Further investigation revealed that Jared's CPA license had been suspended a few years ago for underreporting a client's tax liability. The client had been audited and fined by the US government, and they had sued Richards. Jared hadn't contested the suspension, but he had prevailed in the subsequent lawsuit, showing pretty conclusively that his clients had hidden income from him. It didn't matter, though. He had been officially censured by the Board of Accountancy. Alex smirked. Who am I to say it wasn't intentional fraud?

Alex had asked Craig's advice, which had been that they should hold onto the information for possible future use but not allow this to distract them from the task at hand: finding out who was feeding the revelator.

He had been lost in thought when he heard the finance officer discuss the ongoing fight against illegal taps. Here it comes, he thought, straightening himself up and preparing himself to humbly receive everyone's thanks and congratulations.

"Fortunately, our efforts at improving fault-tolerance have helped us more easily discover illegal taps into the electrical grid," the man said, his wispy blond mustache fluttering with each word. "Moving on ..."

That's it? He tried hard not to show any outward emotion, though he could feel his face flushing. The meeting lasted another half-hour, and it had taken that long for Alex to settle himself. He left the room silently, hoping to get out while he was still calm.

In the corridor, the finance officer had shaken his hand. "Thank you for attending. I'm not sure that you needed to be there, but I appreciated the support."

"My pleasure, sir," Alex said, forcing a smile. He wanted to shove the rosebud down the man's throat.

"Your department did a wonderful job tracking down those taps. It just shows you what can be accomplished when we work as a team." With that the man had walked away.

Jean noticed his sour mood when he walked in from the front garden. "How was your day, dearest?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," he grumbled, hoping that by now she knew when not to press things.

"I'm sorry, dear," she said sympathetically. "I've been in the garden all day. Perhaps you could join me tomorrow. It would do you a world of good. Besides, the roses are needing a little attention, as am I."

"Mmm-Hmm," he said absently.

He sat at the table and opened the laptop to his email. An unusually large number of messages from his fellow apologists sat in the Inbox. The first read simply, "What gives?" Inside was a link to the MormonDiscourse board.

"Secret Combinations Afoot?" had read the title of the revelator's latest post.

"A strange thing has happened to the Short List email list. Its steady current of peer-reviewed gossip and faith-promoting blackmail has all but disappeared, my sources tell me. Nothing has been distributed to the list for several weeks, which appears to confirm my last report about its activities and suggests that the boys in the apologetics club may no longer trust each other. Members of the late, lamented list have, however, been communicating with each other individually and through back channels in an effort to rebuild the group and try to uncover the mole(s). One has to admire their resilience!

"Oddly, however, one member of the group, junior-executive hatemonger Alex DuPlessis, has cut off all forms of communication to the rest of the group. My sources tell me that the normally spittle-flecked South African's total silence has unnerved more than a few people. They worry that he may be planning some sort of revenge on the rest of the group for having spilled the beans about his clumsy attempt to use MD posters' sex lives against them. Some suspect that DuPlessis might be leading a smaller, even more exclusive list, though what its purpose might be no one can guess. One source, who naturally requested anonymity, stated, 'DuPlessis is capable of anything. He doesn't care who gets hurt, as long as he can protect his position. Heaven help us all if he turns on us.'

"Thus far, Brother DuPlessis has not been available for comment."

He knew he shouldn't feel rattled, but he couldn't help it. It was just vague enough to suggest a stab in the dark, but what if it wasn't? What could the revelator know, and how? He began composing an email he could send to the entire group, assuring them of his friendship and loyalty and pledging that he would do his utmost to uncover whoever was doing them such harm.

But would that make Alex look desperate and guilty? Would he believe a denial like that? No, probably not. So, what to do? How to stop this from ruining everything? Craig will know what to do, he thought.

Craig's response was brief and sensible. He warned Alex that sending out a mass email to the entire group would jeopardize the plan they had set in motion with Tanner. "Keep calm, and stay the course," Craig wrote. "I will contact our friends individually and tell them what I know of your honesty and integrity."

He knew he could count on Craig. What a brilliant move it had been to involve Craig in the plan.

Checking the MD board again, he noted that the swine were once again discussing him by name, spreading the most malicious kinds of character assassination. He knew he should just stay out of it, but he couldn't resist. He started typing.

"It seems you lot cannot last more than a week or two without sullying my name and dragging it through your loathsome sty. The accusations made against me, once again, are so vile and outrageous that they do not merit comment. I would, however, ask that the moderators remove all references to my name in accordance to the stated board rules. I shall now leave you to resume your disgusting hog-pile."

Barely three minutes later, Sidious/Jared had responded. "Give me a break. Everyone here knows your name, Alex DuPlessis. You yourself have used it here, so stop having a fake hissy-fit. It just makes you look worse than you already are. We may be a sty, but we're not the ones peeking in someone else's bedroom. You have no basis by which to judge anyone here, as no one here has sunk as low as you have. So, go crawl back under your rock and save the histrionics for someone who gives a damn."

He thinks he can get to me, Alex thought. Not a chance. He typed, "Again, I respectfully request that my name be removed from this board."

Sidious had responded, "Alex DuPlessis."

"Stop using my name, you swine." He couldn't believe this mental midget had managed the self-discipline to become an accountant.

"Alex DuPlessis."

"I demand my right to privacy, the same as anyone else on this board." He could feel his face flushing again.

"Alex DuPlessis."

The scumbag was taunting him. Well, I know more about you than you imagine, Alex thought. He composed the message carefully.

"Through sad experience, I have learned that my personal information and privacy must be guarded with vigilance. Anti-Mormon posters here and elsewhere have long shown that they will try whatever they can to destroy me and anyone else who dares stand up for truth. That you are willing to use my personal information to attack me shows the depths of your depravity.

"How would you feel if someone shared your information on a place like this? Would it trouble you if someone brought up a certain Mr. Richards who was disciplined by a professional licensing board for possible fraudulent behavior? Would you be fine with such things being discussed freely here?"

That will shut him up, he thought, smirking.

He ate his steak and potatoes quietly that evening. Jean tried to make conversation about her rose cuttings, but Alex's mind was somewhere far away.

"The boys are doing wonderfully in football, aren't you?" Jean said cheerfully.

"Yes, Mum," said William. "Mr. Zanoxolo has been teaching us how to pass the ball while running at full speed.'

Alex looked up. "I've told you I'm going to show you how to do it myself! I don't want you going to anyone else but me!"

The three of them stared at him.

"Please, forgive me," he said, feeling ashamed. "It's been a rough day. Tell me about your football practices." He tried his best to listen attentively as they talked about how much they had learned. William insisted he was a much better player than Daniel. "I have more natural talent," William had said. "Mr. Zanoxolo told me so."

"I'm sorry I haven't been there," Alex said apologetically. He looked up and tried to sound cheerful. "I promise I'll spend some time with you every evening until you've learned all I know. Except Sundays, of course."

He meant it, and he hoped the boys knew he meant it.

As Jean put the dishes into the dishwasher, Alex looked in on the board again. He opened Sidious' response and was shocked at what he read.

"What Brother DuPlessis has written is true. My name is Jared Richards, and I live in Sandy, Utah. Four years ago my license was suspended by the Board of Accountants of my state when I was accused of possible fraud by some clients." He went on to describe in detail the complaint against him, the decision by the licensing board, and the subsequent lawsuit. He even went so far as to provide links to the board's decision and the court record of the lawsuit against him.

The post had concluded. "Obviously, this episode wasn't the highlight of my professional life, or my personal life, for that matter. But I own what happened, and I refused to make any excuses. If anyone has questions about any of this, I will answer them as long as doing so doesn't hurt anyone else."

The board had then erupted in condemnations of Alex's actions. All the words he had used--swine, scumbag, depraved, disgusting--came right back at him, even from people he had previously thought were reasonable.

He needed to respond, so he clicked Reply. A message popped up: "You have been suspended from further participation on the board for violations of board rules. We will meet and discuss whether the suspension will be temporary or permanent. We expect all posters to behave with at least minimal civility, and we will not tolerate such invasions of other posters' private lives. You will receive an email within the next day advising you of our decision. --The MD Moderating Team."

[_son of Ishmael]

Isn't it time for another installment??????