The Courier Book I: The Shamans, the Story-The Courier Book I

My name is Jean. I’m a screw-up of the first water. I’m not going to tell you how or where I screwed-up, but I’ll say that it was bad—it cost me and others I cared about much. Since then, I’ve lost my vector. I don’t know who I am, anymore, or what I believe in exactly. I have an abstract faith in God but it doesn’t amount to a practical impetus in my life.I find myself at loose ends in Oceanside, drifting aimlessly and out of a job—which may have been at Camp Pendleton. My notably few friends, besides some key contacts on the Marine base, include an eccentric landlady and the uncannily-mature kid who manages a local pizza joint and routinely provides me with free burnt pizzas and sage council. With a background in police work and physical security, I gravitate to the periphery of law enforcement; I get a shiny, new P.I. license. Summoned to a Carlsbad mansion, an enigmatic host solicits my services as a courier of a mysterious package. I am told to become a catalyst for change—not only in myself, but more importantly in others. I am enjoined to dig and dig deeply for the answers to my questions and fulfillment of my needs. I am encouraged to delve deeply to holy scripture—particularly the Book of Genesis--and into nature for understanding. I am charged to experience the ocean for inspiration and direction. The host doesn’t tell me what’s in that payload I’m to deliver, and he—or it could be she--doesn’t even tell me who or where the recipient is—I’ll have to figure that out from a fat envelope jammed with goofy clues, like a bandolier of syringes of veterinary vaccine, a Shoshone medicine pouch, a canister of fairy shrimp winter eggs, a newspaper article on the Rosenberg spy trial, a cumulative impacts chapter from an E.I.S. on geothermal mining, and a copy of Mao…