The Lonely Man Article v2.1

Sto­ry first writ­ten for Uni Class in August 2013.
This revi­sion is dat­ed Novem­ber 2013.

INT. COZY RESTAURANT — NIGHT #1#

JACKSON John Jones (32, aver­age Aus­tralian guy) sits in a small, trendy restau­rant by him­self. A fierce storm rages out­side, the occa­sion­al flash of light­ning bright­en­ing the room, but oth­er­wise the restau­rant is warm and cozy.

Jack­son waits, look­ing out the win­dow into the stormy night, check­ing his phone for mes­sages, check­ing his cal­en­dar to make sure he is in the right place. Check­ing his watch, wait­ing for some­one. He has been stood up. Again.

ALEX (ear­ly 30’s) a wait­er approach­es Jack­son’s table.

ALEX

Going to order any­thing Jack?

JACKSON

More wine?

ALEX

I think you’ve had your fill.

JACKSON

(defeat­ed)

The bill?

Alex takes out a note pad and pre­tends to add up Jack­son’s total.

ALEX

Two bot­tles B.Y.O. Two hours wait­ing. Hmm, look at that, exact­ly zero dol­lars.

Jack­son looks up and forces a smile. He gets up and gath­ers his coat and rain­bow coloured umbrel­la.

JACKSON

Thanks Alex. I owe you one.

ALEX

If I weren’t already tak­en.

Jack­son makes his way to the exit of the restau­rant, Alex fol­lows.

JACKSON

You would not. We both know I’m not your type. But thank you for the kind­ness any­way. Say hel­lo to Toad for me.

Alex smiles and gives Jack­son a quick hug. Jack­son heads out into the dark wet night.

EXT. ROAD SIDE — NIGHT #2#

Jack­son walks in the rain, rain­bow umbrel­la keep­ing him most­ly dry, cars dri­ving past on the near­by road. The light from pass­ing cars flash­ing over Jack­son as he walks.

A large truck speeds past and splash­es mud­dy water all over Jack­son. Jack­son just stops and looks up at the sky.

JACKSON

Real­ly? Was that nec­es­sary?

A sin­gle page of wet news­pa­per slaps into Jack­son’s face. As he pulls the news­pa­per away his eyes catch one line of print.

JACKSON (V.O.)

The wet news­pa­per slapped into his face.

Jack­son looks at the paper in sur­prise. Anoth­er car splash­es water over him. He folds up the paper and shoves it in his pock­et con­tin­ues on his way home in the rain.

INT. JACKSON’S APARTMENT — NIGHT #3#

Jack­son arrives at his 1940’s style apart­ment, wet from the rain, the storm con­tin­ues out­side. He turns on the light in the kitchen, he fills a ket­tle with water and puts it on the stove.

While he waits for the water to boil he unfolds the sog­gy news­pa­per page on the iron­ing board and leans over it to read.

JACKSON

(read­ing the paper)

After anoth­er nor­mal and dull day at work the lone­ly man was look­ing for­ward to his date that evening. He wait­ed at the cafe for his date to arrive. Two hours, no sign, no response to his text mes­sages, he hol­low­ly accept­ed that the guy was not com­ing. Don’t feel too bad lone­ly man, that was­n’t the right guy for you, you will meet your match in 12 days. He walked home in the rain, his rain­bow umbrel­la use­less when a truck splashed mud­dy water all over him. A sin­gle sheet of news­pa­per was tossed and turned on the cold stormy wind of fate. The wet news­pa­per slapped into his face. As he pulled the wet page away his eyes glanced the sen­tence ‘The wet news­pa­per slapped into his face’. Feel­ing slight­ly bet­ter about the world for the strange coin­ci­dence, he took the wet paper home with him. 12.

(NOTE: Every full arti­cle fin­ish­es with a count­down num­ber.)

Jack­son turns the page over, look­ing for more of the arti­cle, but that is all there is.

JACKSON

Can­ber­ra Echo, today’s date.

Jack­son shakes his head as he looks over the page again.

JACKSON

Can’t be.

Jack­son scrunch­es up the page and throws it in the bin where is lands on top of a hol­i­day brochure for Hawaii.

INT. JACKSON’S BATHROOM — DAY #4#

Jack­son is get­ting ready for work the next morn­ing, show­er­ing and talk­ing to him­self.

JACKSON

No, it’s too stu­pid.

He steps out of the show­er and tow­els off.

JACKSON

It was print­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing…

He pulls on his work jeans and walks into the kitchen, he retrieves the scrunched up news­pa­per from the bin. He spreads it out on the iron­ing board again, but the print is now almost impos­si­ble to read.

JACKSON

It could have been about any­one.

He throws the news­pa­per back in the bin and then irons his shirt, unknow­ing­ly get­ting ink stains in the mid­dle of the back of his shirt from where the news­pa­per had been rest­ing on the iron­ing board.

INT. COFFEE SHOP — DAY #5#

Jack­son waits for his cof­fee to be made by HOLLY, the young barista. He notices copies of ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’ avail­able and picks one up, flick­ing through it for the arti­cle.

HOLLY

Jack­son — long black, three sug­ars.

Jack­son picks up his cof­fee and folds up the paper and puts it under his arm.

He fish­es in his pock­et for some change and pulls out a few coins and hands them to Hol­ly.

JACKSON

For the paper.

EXT. BUS STOP — DAY #6#

Jack­son thumbs through the paper as he waits for the bus with the oth­er com­muters, try­ing to bal­ance his cof­fee as he turns the pages. It is clear from the way he fum­bles that he does­n’t usu­al­ly read the paper.

INT. BUS — DAY #7#

Jack­son sits on the bus, head­phones in his ears as he pages through the paper, sip­ping his cof­fee. He final­ly finds the arti­cle.

JACKSON (V.O.)

When the lone­ly man had arrived home he’d spread the wet news­pa­per out over his iron­ing board and exam­ined it, but even as he read the account of his day he was not con­vinced. In the morn­ing on his way to work he bought a news­pa­per for the first time in eleven years. He found the arti­cle described the events of his life, so engrossed was he that he missed his stop.

Jack­son looks up, yelps and lunges for the stop but­ton.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — OFFICE BUILDING — DAY #8#

Jack­son rush­es across the foy­er, past a large sign for ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — ELEVATOR — DAY #9#

Jack­son push­es the but­ton marked ‘BB’ — the dou­ble base­ment. The lift drops down quick­ly.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — DOUBLE BASEMENT — DAY #10#

Jack­son nav­i­gates a maze of cor­ri­dors, filled with old office equip­ment and long since aban­doned pneu­mat­ic tubes. All while try­ing to drink his cof­fee and read the news­pa­per at the same time. He stops at a door with an old hand paint­ed sign that reads ‘Pneu­mat­ics and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions’, this sign has been crossed out and a new­er, but still old, sign read­ing ‘Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Group’ is attached below. Jack­son push­es the door open.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — I.T. DEPARTMENT — DAY #11#

The room is a sham­bles, old anti­quat­ed com­put­ers stacked on shelves, dull fluro lights. Pneu­mat­ic tube next to the com­put­ers. Jack­son sits down at a desk, putting his cof­fee and news­pa­per down and taps a few keys on his key­board.

Across the room from him sits ANDREW (ear­ly 30’s), he watch­es Jack­son arrive.

ANDREW

And good morn­ing to you too sun­shine.

Jack­son looks up and sheep­ish­ly smiles.

JACKSON

Morn­ing Andy.

Jack­son looks back at his screen and starts open­ing files and win­dows, look­ing for some­thing.

ANDREW

This is, what, the sec­ond time I’ve ever got­ten to work before you? Ever? What’s up? Did the date go well then?

Jack­son grunts and shakes his head as he keeps typ­ing on his key­board. Focused on what is on the screen

JACKSON

Guy nev­er showed.

ANDREW

Ah.

Jack­son keeps typ­ing.

ANDREW

So what’s got you all dis­tract­ed first thing in the morn­ing then, huh?

Jack­son picks up the paper and waves it around. Andrew scoots his chair over to Jack­son’s desk and takes the paper.

ANDREW

Isn’t this our paper?

Jack­son final­ly looks away from the screen and towards Andrew.

JACKSON

Yeah, it is, I was read­ing it on the bus and -

ANDREW

(cut­ting off)

You actu­al­ly bought a copy of the paper we get free in the cafe­te­ria?

JACKSON

(exas­per­at­ed)

Yes, and I was read­ing it on the bus, and I missed my stop.

Jack­son points to a small arti­cle at the bot­tom of page 13.

JACKSON

Here, I was read­ing this.

Andrew looks at the indi­cat­ed arti­cle.

ANDREW

Ooh, Lone­ly Man, I love this guy, he is so … unfor­tu­nate.

Jack­son finds this curi­ous.

JACKSON

You know about this?

ANDREW

Yeah, sure, even heard a rumor they were going to make it into a movie or some­thing.

Andrew looks more close­ly at the paper. Jack­son turns back to his com­put­er.

JACKSON

Sec­ond para­graph.

ANDREW

(read­ing from the paper)

In the morn­ing on his way to work he bought a news­pa­per for the first time in eleven years. He found the arti­cle describes the events of his life, so engrossed is he that he missed his stop.

Andrew chuck­les.

ANDREW

So you missed your stop because the lone­ly man missed his?

Jack­son frowns.

JACKSON

What? No. Because I was engrossed, read­ing the paper at the time.

Andrew looks at the page again.

ANDREW

And what… you jump to the con­clu­sion its all about you? It could be about any­one. It could be about no one. Hell it could have been me last week.

JACKSON

You don’t get the bus.

ANDREW

Last week I did.

JACKSON

Did you miss the stop?

ANDREW

Well, no, but you know what I mean.

Andrew looks back at the arti­cle again.

ANDREW

And real­ly? Eleven years?

Jack­son shrugs.

JACKSON

Prob­a­bly, school assign­ment.

ANDREW

It’s just a stu­pid coin­ci­dence mate. This sort of stuff hap­pens to thou­sands of peo­ple every day.

Jack­son shrugs again.

JACKSON

Yeah, maybe, but I’m still gonna check it out.

Jack­son points at his com­put­er screen.

JACKSON

Do you have any idea how to use the arti­cle archive sys­tem?

ANDREW

(par­rot­ing)

You’re just here to install the com­put­ers and make the print­ers work. Leave the impor­tant stuff to the peo­ple upstairs.

Jack­son smiles at that.

JACKSON

Upstairs… Shela!

Jack­son is up out of his chair and across the cramped room. He stops, walks back, plucks the paper out of Andrew’s hands and then walks out.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — OFFICE — DAY #12#

Jack­son knocks on the door of She­la’s office, SHELA is late 30s, large but not fat, earth toned skirt and shirt, sen­si­ble shoes and a bead­ed wood­en neck­lace, fem­i­nist cliché.

Shela looks up from her desk.

SHELA

Jack­son? What did I break this time?

JACKSON

(smil­ing)

This time? Noth­ing, that I know of. But I’m here to cash in one of those ‘if you fix this it will lit­er­al­ly save my job’ favours.

Shela rais­es an eye­brow, but extends her hand and motions him in. Jack­son clos­es the door behind him and sits, he holds out the paper, opened to the Lone­ly Man arti­cle. He points at the arti­cle.

JACKSON

I need to know who writes this, where is comes from. Any info we have basi­cal­ly.

She­la’s eye­brow rais­es high­er.

SHELA

The Lone­ly Man? Seri­ous­ly, its not even that well writ­ten.

JACKSON

I just want to get in touch with the writer.

Shela looks the arti­cle over and then looks Jack­son up and down as if the man is out of his mind.

JACKSON

Do I need to men­tion the USB stick inci­dent?

Shela smiles and shrugs.

SHELA

Must be seri­ous if mild man­nered Jack­son is will­ing to resort to threats.

Shela access­es the files about the arti­cle on her com­put­er, adjust­ing her glass­es and leans in clos­er to the screen.

SHELA

Oh, not much here I’m afraid, its a syn­di­cat­ed arti­cle, part of a pack­age deal from the moth­er com­pa­ny.

Jack­son leans for­ward to look at the screen, he can see that the ‘author’ and ‘con­tact’ details are blank.

JACKSON

Well, it must come from some­where.

SHELA

Yeap, New York office. Some odd stuff here about pub­li­ca­tion date lim­i­ta­tions, but oth­er­wise just a bor­ing feed from the States. Any­thing more than that and you’d need to talk to some­one at their office.

Shela grins and looks back at Jack­son.

SHELA

And I don’t think the USB sto­ry will get you any trac­tion there.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — ELEVATOR — DAY #13#

Jack­son reads the paper as he push­es the ‘BB’ but­ton.

JACKSON (V.O.)

Still fix­at­ed on this arti­cle, the Lone­ly Man had no luck find­ing any­thing out about it at work. Time­zones where caus­ing him trou­ble. When he got home he made a few phone calls to the New York office.

JACKSON

That’s actu­al­ly not a bad idea.

INT. JACKSON’S APARTMENT — NIGHT #14#

Jack­son is on the phone. While he talks on the phone he is work­ing on repair­ing an old mechan­i­cal clock.

JACKSON

No. I want to talk to some­one in arti­cle syn­di­ca­tion.

(pause)

I don’t know their name, just any­one in that depart­ment.

(pause)

If I knew the num­ber I’d have rung them direct­ly.

(pause)

I’m from the Can­ber­ra Echo. You know, in Can­ber­ra. The capi­tol of Aus­tralia?

(pause)

No Syd­ney is not the capi­tol.

(pause)

Yes I’m sure.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — I.T. DEPARTMENT — DAY #15#

Jack­son walks into the office and throws the news­pa­per across the room at Andrew.

JACKSON

So appar­ent­ly today I’m going to take the blame for some­thing you did?

Andrew picks up the paper and reads it.

ANDREW

You know you can read this thing on the web­site right?

Jack­son sits at his desk and opens the ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’ web­site and after a few clicks has found the Lone­ly Man arti­cle.

JACKSON

I sup­pose I should have thought of this.

ANDREW

Giv­en that you main­tain the web servers, yeah.

Jack­son clicks a few more and does a web search.

JACKSON

Wow, there are whole web­sites and forums ded­i­cat­ed to talk­ing about this arti­cle.

ANDREW

Rule 43. Prob­a­bly rule 34 too.

( NOTE: In inter­net slang Rule 43 is often defined as: “You can find any­thing on the Inter­net if you are will­ing to look for it long enough.” And Rule 34 is defined as: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” )

JACKSON

I hope not.

INT. TRENDY WINE BAR — NIGHT #16#

Jack­son is out with some friends, Andrew from work is there, also present are SIMON (ear­ly 30’s) and TERRI (ear­ly 30’s). They are sit­ting around drink­ing wine and relax­ing. The bar is qui­et, oth­er cus­tomers in the back­ground.

TERRI

So… Andy, reck­ons Jacks is this Lone­ly Guy or what­ev­er?

ANDREW

No, I did­n’t say that. I said Jack thinks he’s the lone­ly man. I’s start­ing to think he’s the crazy man.

Simon looks up at the men­tion of Lone­ly Man.

SIMON

The Lone­ly Man?

Simon looks Jack­son up and down.

SIMON

I always imag­ined him old­er.

TERRI

Oh, so you’ve heard of this guy too?

SIMON

Has­n’t every­one?

Jack­son leans for­ward and pulls the now crin­kled news­pa­per out of his pock­et and waves it around.

JACKSON

I had­n’t, until a few nights ago.

Simon reach­es over and takes the paper, he opens it up and reads the arti­cle.

SIMON

(read­ing the paper)

The late night phone calls to New York had only served to keep the Lone­ly Man up past his bed­time and make him sleepy and cranky in the morn­ing. At work he got called into the boss’s office and got strips torn off him for a cowork­ers mis­take. He was­n’t in the mood to fight back, so he took the blame. Anoth­er favour his cowork­er owes him.

ANDREW

Oh yeah, what was that all about?

JACKSON

All that porn you’ve been down­load­ing at work.

ANDREW

My porn? Does­n’t the boss know you’re gay?

JACKSON

Appar­ent­ly not.

(to Simon)

Keep going.

SIMON

(con­tin­u­ing to read)

The lone­ly man sus­pects there was more to this lit­tle news­pa­per arti­cle, but his work kept him busy with menial tasks. After work he caught up with 5 of his friends.

Simon stops and looks up.

SIMON

See, its wrong. There are only three of us here.

Alex (the wait­er from scene 1) and his boyfriend TOAD (ear­ly 30’s) arrive.

ALEX

Hey there par­ty peo­ple, thought we might find you all here.

TERRI

That makes five!

Simon shakes his head more.

SIMON

Na, no way. Its just a fluke.

EXT. TRENDY WINE BAR — BALCONY — NIGHT #17#

Jack­son is out on the bal­cony, look­ing out over the small city. Alex steps out­side and gets a cig­a­rette out of his pock­et as he walks over to Jack­son.

ALEX

How ya doing Lone­ly Man?

Jack­son smiles half­heart­ed­ly.

JACKSON

Fine.

ALEX

Yeah, bull­shit.

Alex leans against the rail­ing as he lights his cig­a­rette.

JACKSON

You ever gonna quit smok­ing?

ALEX

Yeap, just as soon as you stop feel­ing sor­ry for your­self.

JACKSON

(to him­self)

If I knew how…

Alex sucks deeply on his cig­a­rette.

ALEX

Do I real­ly have to go all ‘fair god­moth­er’ on you here? Its easy. It real­ly, real­ly is. Find some­thing that takes you out into the world and do it. Don’t go look­ing for love, just live and be open to what­ev­er comes.

JACKSON

You sound like a self-help books.

ALEX

I’m seri­ous, all you got­ta do is get off your butt and do some­thing?

Jack­son shakes his head, more to him­self.

JACKSON

Like what huh?

ALEX

(with a smile)

Like this Lone­ly Man thing.

Jack­son rais­es an eye­brow.

ALEX

Well, you’re obvi­ous­ly got a but up your arse already about it, fol­low it up.

JACKSON

I’ve done all I can.

ALEX

I real­ly doubt that. Did­n’t you do a semes­ter of inves­ti­gate jour­nal­ism at uni?

JACKSON

Next step would be to actu­al­ly go to New York.

ALEX

So?

JACKSON

I can’t just drop every­thing and trav­el half way around the world.

ALEX

Because? And don’t say mon­ey.

Jack­son opens his mouth to respond, but can’t think of any­thing to say.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — I.T. MANAGERS OFFICE — DAY #18#

Jack­son knocks on the door and enters. Jack­son’s boss, NOBEL (late 40s, heavy, going through a mid-life cri­sis) looks up.

NOBEL

What?

Jack­son walks into the room a lit­tle. Intim­i­dat­ed by Nobel.

JACKSON

I want­ed to talk to you about tak­ing some time off.

Nobel puts his pen down and leans back in his chair. Typ­i­cal author­i­ty play tac­tics.

NOBEL

Good. HR is bit­ing my head off. You have too much leave owing.

JACKSON

(nod­ding)

Yeah, well, I need to take off. Next week?

NOBEL

(shak­ing his head)

Nope. No good. The new print­ers arrive. You need to install them.

Jack­son’s shoul­ders slump fur­ther.

JACKSON

Andrew and that new guy can do it, its not even urgent.

NOBEL

Yes it is.

Jack­son turns to leave, but stops and turns back to Nobel.

JACKSON

So, are you going to tell HR that you denied my leave request? Or should I?

Nobel rais­es an eye­brow.

NOBEL

The only way you’re get­ting next week off is if you quit.

JACKSON

I’m owed what? About four weeks?

NOBEL

I guess.

JACKSON

In that case, I quit. I’m giv­ing you four weeks notice. And I’m tak­ing a four week hol­i­day.

Jack­son turns and leaves the room, Nobel blinks in sur­prise.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — MENS TOILETS — DAY #19#

Jack­son is lean­ing with his back against the wall in the emp­ty room, shak­ing and try­ing to steady his hands. Delib­er­ate­ly try­ing to slow down his breath­ing and get over the shock of actu­al­ly stand­ing up to his boss and cut­ting all sense of finan­cial secu­ri­ty. Hav­ing a ‘What have I done?’ moment.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — CUBE FARM — DAY #20#

Jack­son is walk­ing through the office.

KYLIE (ear­ly 40s, woman) pops out of her office cubi­cle just after Jack­son walks past.

KYLIE

Jack­son? Just the man I’m look­ing for.

Jack­son stops, turns around with a forces smile and walks over to Kylie.

JACKSON

What can I do for you Kylie.

KYLIE

It’s this data basey. I can’t get in again.

Jack­son reached over to Kylie’s desk and picked up a note bad.

JACKSON

How about I right it down for you?

Jack­son notes down the 7 steps that Kylie always for­gets. Jack­son’s hand­writ­ing is dis­tinc­tive and neat.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — I.T. DEPARTMENT — DAY #21#

Jack­son is at his desk, gath­er­ing his things. Andrew is watch­ing from his desk.

ANDREW

You sure about this?

JACKSON

You think he’d let me un-quit?

ANDREW

(shak­ing his head)

Not a snow­bal­l’s chance.

Jack­son picks up a box with his per­son­al things inside.

JACKSON

I just hope he does­n’t dish this out on you.

ANDREW

Don’t wor­ry about it. I’ll be fine.

Jack­son walks across the room, past Andrew’s desk. Andrew reach­es out and stops Jack­son.

ANDREW

I still don’t get why this arti­cle thing is so impor­tant.

JACKSON

I know.

ANDREW

Just some­thing you got­ta do?

Jack­son nods.

ANDREW

I hope you find what­ev­er the hell it is your look­ing for Jacks.

Jack­son smiles warm­ly.

JACKSON

I’ll be in touch.

INT. CANBERRA AIRPORT — DAY #22#

Jack­son reach­es down for a copy of the ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’, he hes­i­tates, but picks it up any­way. He brows­es the shop and also picks up a sudoku book. Alex and Toad walk behind him.

TOAD

See, told you. He’s buy­ing the paper.

ALEX

Yes yes, your very clever. Shut up.

Jack­son turns to them.

JACKSON

What the hell are you two doing here?

TOAD

See­ing you off.

ALEX

Isn’t that what friends do? Come on, we’ll buy you a drink, help set­tle your nerves.

INT. CANBERRA AIRPORT BAR — DAY #23#

Jack­son, Alex and Toad are sit­ting at a table and drink­ing. Alex is dis­tract­ed by a group of hand­some guys stand­ing at the bar.

JACKSON

I was hop­ing to just slip away qui­et­ly.

ALEX

Like you always do.

JACKSON

Hey, its my thing.

ALEX

Your thing is why your still sin­gle.

Toad reach­es out and puts a hand on Alex’s. Alex looks at the hand and then up at Toad.

ALEX

(to Toad)

I am being nice.

(to Jack­son)

Any­way, you remem­ber Pen from Uni?

JACKSON

Pene­lope? Yeah. She was kin­da hard to avoid. I think she still thinks I was just act­ing gay to get rid of her.

(beat)

Why?

ALEX

Well… She’s liv­ing in New York now. I was talk­ing to her last night and I kin­da told her you were going to be over there soon.

Jack­son is very sur­prised at this news.

ALEX

She’s mar­ried now.

Alex looks back over at the guys by the bar.

TOAD

I’ve been read­ing the old­er arti­cles on this Lone­ly Man thing…

JACKSON

And?

Alex isn’t even pay­ing atten­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion any­more.

TOAD

Are you sure its you?

Jack­son is non­com­mit­tal.

One of the men at the bar walks past the table. Alex’s leans over to Toad.

ALEX

(whis­pers)

I’ll be back.

Alex gets up and fol­lows the man.

JACKSON

Why do you put up with him when he does that too you all the time?

TOAD

That is very com­pli­cat­ed. Let’s just say we have an under­stand­ing. And you are avoid­ing my ques­tion.

JACKSON

I dun­no. I read through the old arti­cles too. There are no peo­ple or place names at all. Its very vague. But it feels like me.

Toad does­n’t seem con­vinced.

TOAD

Can I make a sug­ges­tion?

JACKSON

I’ve nev­er been able to stop you before.

TOAD

Don’t go telling every­one your the lone­ly man. Peo­ple that don’t know you might not under­stand.

JACKSON

I was­n’t going to go shout­ing it in the streets you know.

TOAD

I’m just say­ing be dis­crete. Tell them your look­ing into the arti­cle for … a sto­ry your writ­ing or some­thing. Any­thing to not sound like a crazy fan­boy.

INT. AIRPLANE ECONOMY SECTION — DAY #24#

On the plane, Jack­son has an aisle seat. Sit­ting next to him is BETH a mid­dle aged busi­ness woman.

Jack­son is rum­mag­ing around in his car­ry-on back­pack for some­thing.

BETH

Lost some­thing?

Jack­son looks up.

JACKSON

Um… I don’t seem to have a pen. Don’t sup­pose you have one I could bor­row?

BETH

Bor­row? No. I nev­er leand things I don’t expect back.

Beth looks through her bag and pulls two pens out and holds them up.

BETH

Which one do you want? Brain can­cer or menopause?

Jack­son reach­es over and hes­i­tates.

JACKSON

That’s some choice. I guess I’ll take menopause.

He opens up his sudoku book as Beth watch­es.

BETH

Not fond of fly­ing huh?

Jack­son starts to fill in the puz­zle.

JACKSON

No. But its fine if I can take my mind off it.

Beth reach­es over and pats Jack­son on the arm.

BETH

You just off to Hawaii for a hol­i­day?

Jack­son looks up.

JACKSON

Just a stop over on the way to New York actu­al­ly.

BETH

Real­ly? You should check Hawaii out. You nev­er know what you might find. It’s where I met my part­ner.

INT. HONOLULU AIRPORT — NIGHT #25#

Jack­son drags his lug­gage through the ter­mi­nal. Tick­ets in hand, look­ing at indi­ca­tor boards, try­ing to find his con­nect­ing flight.

Up ahead a large crowd has gath­ered around the check-in coun­ters.

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)

Ladies and Gen­tle­men, we are hav­ing trou­bles with our elec­tron­ic check-in sys­tem. Our tech­ni­cians are work­ing on it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. If you could be patient and wait qui­et­ly I will let you know just as soon as I know more.

Jack­son looks up at the blank depar­tures screens.

JACKSON

(to him­self)

I need to find a bar.

SALLY, a young woman, walks his way, smiles and trips.

Jack­son drops his bag and instinc­tive­ly catch­ers her.

SALLY

Oh, opps, serves me right for check­ing out the cute guy.

Jack­son is lost for words. He helps Sal­ly back to her feet.

SALLY

Thanks.

Sal­ly walks off.

Jack­son shakes his head picks up his bag and heads off towards the near­est bar.

KANOA, a young man dressed as a 1940’s reporter, watch­es Jack­son and Sal­ly walk off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. He fol­lows sal­ly.

INT. HONOLULU AIRPORT — BAR — NIGHT #26#

Jack­son is sit­ting at the bar drink­ing a whiskey. He is read­ing his copy of ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’.

JACKSON

Short delay my arse!

JACKSON (V.O.)

After a short delay the Lone­ly Man resumed his quest. Hav­ing com­plete­ly missed four sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties while in Hawaii.

JACKSON

(to the paper)

You could­n’t be a bit more vague could you?

Kanoa walks up and sits down next to Jack­son. Jack­son puts his copy of the ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’ on the bar.

KANOA

(to Jack­son)

I think you lost this.

Kanoa puts Jack­son’s phone on the bar.

Jack­son pats his jeans pock­et and realis­es it is his phone. He reach­es out and accepts it.

JACKSON

But… where did you…

Jack­son glances back in the direc­tion of his run in with Sal­ly.

FLASH — JACKSON ENCOUNTER WITH SALLY

Rewind to Jack­son’s catch­ing Sal­ly, as Sal­ly stum­bles and falls against Jack­son she slides his phone out of his pock­et.

BACK TO THE BAR

JACKSON

And, what do I owe you?

Jack­son puts his phone back in his pock­et. Kanoa smiles.

KANOA

Its not like that. You don’t owe me any­thing at all. But I would­n’t say no to a drink, and maybe your num­ber.

Jack­son blinks in sur­prise, not used to being hit on so direct­ly.

Jack­son nods to the bar­man and ges­tures to his glass.

JACKSON

One for my friend here.

Kanoa smiles wide and turns in his chair to look Jack­son up and down slow­ly.

KANOA

You did­n’t ask what I want­ed.

JACKSON

(shrug­ging)

I’m buy­ing, you’ll drink what I get you.

KANOA

Yes sir.

The Bar­man pours anoth­er whiskey.

Jack­son takes a moment to look Kanoa up and down.

JACKSON

So what are you dressed as then huh? Nine­teen for­ties detec­tive?

Kanoa points to the piece of paper pok­ing out of the rib­bon of his Fedo­ra. On the paper is print­ed the word ‘PRESS’.

JACKSON

Ah, Nine­teen for­ties reporter. I can’t seem to escape news­pa­pers. You’re still in the wrong cen­tu­ry.

(beat)

Don’t sup­pose you know what’s going on here then?

Jack­son indi­cates the crowd of pas­sen­gers all wait­ing at the tick­et coun­ters.

KANOA

Yeah, some sort of colos­sal fuck up of the check-in sys­tem. I don’t think they will have it fixed tonight.

JACKSON

Great.

Jack­son fin­ish­es his whiskey and gets the bar­man to refill his glass.

Kanoa sips his.

KANOA

What do you mean you can’t seem to escape news­pa­pers?

JACKSON

I worked for that one until I quit yes­ter­day. And I’m on my way to New York to vis­it the head office.

KANOA

You a reporter?

JACKSON

No. I thought about that once, but the pol­i­tics of it did­n’t appeal. I just fix the com­put­ers.

Kanoa looks Jack­son up and down.

KANOA

Ah, a tech guru. I like your accent. Aus­tralian?

Jack­son is caught off guard.

JACKSON

Are you flirt­ing with me Mis­ter Reporter?

KANOA

Yes. Mis­ter Guru, yes I am.

JACKSON

Oh. Um.

KANOA

It is work­ing?

They are both qui­et for a moment, sip­ping their drinks.

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)

Pas­sen­gers trav­el­ing with Tran-Amer­i­can Air, we have just been informed that the check-in sys­tem will not be able to be repaired this evening.

The noise lev­el of the crowd wait­ing in the check-in area gets loud­er.

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)

We will arrange accom­mo­da­tion for every­one tonight and alter­na­tive trav­el arrange­ments for you all tomor­row. If you could move up to the coun­ters in an order­ly fash­ion then we will get through this as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

JACKSON

Great.

Kanoa grins.

KANOA

Rather than hang around here for hours while they sort out hotels for every­one, why don’t you stay at my place?

Jack­son leans back and frowns, not sure that Kanoa is seri­ous.

JACKSON

Are you this deter­mined with every guy you hit on?

KANOA

No. Just you.

Jack­son looks out at the queue of peo­ple.

JACKSON

How com­fy is your sofa?

Kanoa shakes his head.

KANOA

Who said any­thing about the sofa?

JACKSON

(rais­ing an eye­brow)

Oh? And exact­ly where will I be sleep­ing then?

KANOA

My bed. With me.

Jack­son looks Kanoa up at down again.

JACKSON

We may not get much sleep.

Kanoa gets up and pulls some mon­ey out of his pock­et, he puts it on the bar for the drinks and then picks up Jack­son’s bag. He holds his oth­er hand out for Jack­son to take hold of.

KANOA

That’s kin­da the idea. You can sleep on the plane.

Jack­son takes the offered hand.

INT. KANOA’S KITCHEN — DAY #27#

Kanoa is cook­ing pan­cakes, wear­ing just a pair of box­er shorts. Jack­son walks in with a tow­el around his waist, hair still wet from just hav­ing had a show­er.

JACKSON

Have you seen my undies?

Jack­son stops and notices what Kanoa is wear­ing.

JACKSON

Oh. There they are. So what am I sup­posed to wear then huh?

Kanoa flips a pan­cake.

KANOA

Top left draw­er of the dress­er, your pick. Bor­row any pair that takes your fan­cy.

Jack­son leaves the room.

JACKSON (O.S.)

Bor­row?

KANOA

You can give them back when you come back this way.

JACKSON (O.S.)

What if I want to keep them?

KANOA

Buy me a new pair in New York.

Jack­son walks back in, now wear­ing a blue pair of jeans.

JACKSON

One night togeth­er and your want­i­ng presents?

Kanoa sets a plate stacked with pan­cakes on the table.

KANOA

Yes. That’s how this works.

JACKSON

(smiles)

If you say so Mis­ter Reporter. I don’t usu­al­ly do the casu­al sex thing with guys I don’t know.

KANOA

Real­ly? Cause you seem to know what you were doing. For the record, I fuck around a lot. But I’ve nev­er made any of them break­fast.

Jack­son sits at the small kitchen table and picks up a copy of the local news­pa­per that is there. It is the ‘The Chron­i­cle’.

Kanoa walks over and kiss­es Jack­son’s fore­head.

KANOA

Have your break­fast while I show­er and then I’ll dri­ve you back to the air­port.

Jack­son nods and starts on the pan­cakes.

Kanoa leaves the room, the sound of a show­er run­ning can be heard.

Jack­son opens the paper and stops on a page.

JACKSON (V.O.)

After a short delay the Lone­ly Man resumed his quest. Hav­ing com­plete­ly missed four sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties while in Hawaii.

Jack­son frowns.

EXT. HONOLULU AIRPORT — DAY #28#

Kanoa dri­ves his small car up to the drop off point and gets out, help­ing Jack­son get his bags out of the boot.

KANOA

Have fun in the Big Apple. I expect dai­ly updates.

JACKSON

Are you like this with every guy you have a one nighter with?

KANOA

No. Just you.

Kanoa pulls Jack­son into a tight hug. Jack­son squirm, not used to pub­lic shows of affec­tion.

JACKSON

I could just can­cel my flight and stay here you know.

Kanoa shakes his head.

KANOA

No no no. Your on your secret mis­sion. The soon­er you go the soon­er you can come back.

Jack­son tries to squirm out of Kanoa’s hug, but Kanoa is hold­ing on tight.

JACKSON

Your gonna have to let go then mate.

Kanoa final­ly lets go.

INT. HONOLULU AIRPORT — DAY #29#

Jack­son stops at a newsagent and buys a copy of ‘The Chron­i­cle’.

He sits down at the depar­ture lounge and opens the news­pa­per, look­ing for the Lone­ly Man arti­cle.

JACKSON (V.O.)

After a short delay the Lone­ly Man resumed his-

Jack­son flips back to the front of the paper to make sure it was today’s date.

JACKSON

But that was yes­ter­day’s…

He checks the date on his phone and finds that it match­es the paper.

Then he checks his wrist­watch and finds that it is a day ahead.

JACKSON

Well they can’t both be right.

INT. KANOA’S KITCHEN — DAY #30#

Kanoa walks in, drops his car keys on the small table and sits down. He pulls the news­pa­per across the table and sees that it is open to the Lone­ly Man arti­cle. He smiles hap­pi­ly at that.

INT. HONOLULU AIRPORT DEPARTURE LOUNGE — DAY #31#

Jack­son pulls his phone out of his pock­et, calls Andrew and holds the phone to his head.

INT. ANDREW’S BEDROOM — NIGHT #32#

A dark bed­room back in Can­ber­ra. A phone screen lights up and the room is filled with the ring tone. Andrew reach­es over, looks at the screen and then answers the call.

ANDREW

Jack­son?

INTERCUT — PHONE CONVERSATION #33#

JACKSON

Hi Andy, how’s things?

ANDREW

I dun­no… I was asleep.

JACKSON

Oh, shit, sor­ry.

ANDREW

What do you want?

JACKSON

Tech sup­port, need­ed a sec­ond opin­ion. Assum­ing they’re not bro­ken, why would my watch be a day ahead of my phone?

ANDREW

(pause)

Seri­ous­ly? You rang me at 1AM to dis­cuss the inter­na­tion­al date line?

JACKSON

Ah.

ANDREW

For a bright guy you can be a bit dim some­time. You know this counts as one of those favours I owed you right? Don’t call this late again.

JACKSON

Sor­ry mate-

ANDREW

Sec­ond thought, three more calls like this and we’ll be even.

Oth­er pas­sen­gers start to line up at the gate.

JACKSON

Got­ta go, thanks for the nudge in the right direc­tion.

Jack­son hangs up the phone and gath­ers his bags and goes to the gate.

INT. NEW YORK — COFFEE SHOP — DAY #34#

Jack­son is sit­ting at a table, drink­ing a cof­fee and play­ing with his tablet com­put­er.

PENELOPE (ear­ly 30s, styl­ish and sophis­ti­cat­ed, all in red) walks in, makes a bee-line for Jack­son and sits down oppo­site him.

PENELOPE

Of course your ear­ly.

JACKSON

Ear­ly? I’m a day late. I got dis­tract­ed in Hawaii.

Pene­lope puts a copy of the ‘Dai­ly Post’ on the table, fold­ed open to the Lone­ly Man arti­cle.

PENELOPE

So I see.

Jack­son grabs the paper and starts read­ing.

JACKSON

(read­ing)

The lone­ly man had got­ten very lit­tle sleep as the gym­nast man had kept him awake most of the night show him inter­est­ing new posi­tions that he had nev­er tried before. Per­haps the gym­nast man was just show­ing of his strength and flex­i­bil­i­ty. What­ev­er the rea­sons, the Lone­ly Man enjoyed the dis­play.

Jack­son looks up from the paper.

JACKSON

Alex told you huh?

PENELOPE

He nev­er was good with secrets.

Jack­son agrees.

PENELOPE

Still gay?

JACKSON

Yes Pen. Still. And always. Besides, aren’t you mar­ried now?

PENELOPE

Just check­ing. So what ya gonna do about this whole lone­ly guy thing.

JACKSON

Going to walk in the front door of the Dai­ly Post build­ing, find out who does this arti­cle and get all the answers from them.

INT. DAILY POST — HEAD QUARTERS — DAY #35#

Jack­son walks across the large foy­er, a few busi­ness peo­ple walk­ing around.

Jack­son walks up to an infor­ma­tion counter. JERRY, a man in his late 50s looks up.

JACKSON

Hi, I want to talk to some­one in arti­cle syn­di­ca­tion.

JERRY

(pause)

Okay, what you need to do is take the lift up to 14, head to the east side of the build­ing and fol­low the signs to weath­er.

JACKSON

Weath­er?

JERRY

New CEO, depart­ment rearrange­ment. They haven’t fixed the signs yet.

INT. DAILY POST — LEVEL 14 ELEVATOR FOYER — DAY #36#

GRAHAM (a busi­ness man) is wait­ing for an ele­va­tor, the bell dings, the doors open.

Jack­son steps out of the ele­va­tor, not look­ing where he is going as he checks some­thing on his phone.

Jack­son bumps into Gra­ham as they pass.

Jack­son’s hold on his phone slips. The phone hits the car­pet­ed floor of the ele­va­tor and bounces, it spins in the air.

Jack­son and Gra­ham watch­ing it in slow motion.

The phone hits the floor again bounces off the met­al track of the ele­va­tor doors. It spins more and falls, per­fect­ly slid­ing into the gap between the build­ing floor and the ele­va­tor floor.

The sound of the phone clink­ing its way down the 14 storey ele­va­tor shaft is the only thing that fills the silence.

Jack­son is lost for words.

GRAHAM

Sucks to me you.

Gra­ham push­es the ‘close door’ but­ton and the ele­va­tor doors close leav­ing Jack­son alone in the ele­va­tor foy­er.

INT. DAILY POST — SYNDICATION DEPARTMENT — DAY #37#

Jack­son walks into a cramped office. Tow­ers of stor­age box­es tak­ing up most of the space in the room.

KATRINA (late 20s, pro­fes­sion­al, kind) looks up.

KATRINA

Hel­lo?

JACKSON

Hi. Is this the syn­di­ca­tion office?

Kat­ri­na waves her hands around at the mess.

KATRINA

It will be once I get it all sort­ed out. So you bet­ter hope the answer to your ques­tion isn’t in a box I haven’t got­ten to yet. What can I help you with?

Kat­ri­na waves her hand towards the chair oppo­site her desk. Jack­son sits down.

JACKSON

This may sound strange but I’m just after infor­ma­tion about the writer of the Lone­ly Man arti­cle.

KATRINA

You’re not one of those con­spir­a­cy web­site wack­os are you?

JACKSON

Con­spir­a­cy web­site? No, no.

(think­ing)

I’m from the Can­ber­ra Echo, one of your sis­ter papers. I’m look­ing into the back­ground of the Lone­ly Man.

Jack­son pulls his wal­let out of his pock­et and shows her his staff card.

KATRINA

Does­n’t real­ly change any­thing. It’s one of the most often asked ques­tions, all these poor guys think­ing they are the Lone­ly Man. It’s a bit sad real­ly. But the truth is I don’t have that info. We get the arti­cle from ‘Glob­al Press’. All they send us is the text of the arti­cle itself.

JACKSON

Right, then. Glob­al Press HQ is in this city isn’t it?

KATRINA

Yeah, but good luck get­ting in there. If you do end up find­ing out, let me know, I’ve been curi­ous about the Lone­ly Man for ages. And it would be good to be able to tell all the guys that ring that they aren’t him.

INT. NEW YORK — COFFEE SHOP — DAY #38#

Jack­son is read­ing some­thing on his iPad when his phone mes­sage alert goes off.

SUPERIMPOSE: Hey there Mr Tech Guru How goes New York?

Jack­son smiles at his phone. And types a reply.

SUPERIMPOSE: Run­ning in cir­cles, no luck with the first option. Next stop Glob­al Press.

Jack­son goes back to his iPad but is get­ting frus­trat­ed, the screen show­ing the mes­sage “Account Invalid”

Jack­son brings up Andrew’s con­tact entry on his phone, his fin­ger hov­ers over the ‘call’ but­ton, but he stops and checked the time­zone instead, the local Can­ber­ra time is list­ed at 6.00AM.

He puts his phone back in his pock­et and orders anoth­er cof­fee.

INT. GLOBAL PRESS — HEAD QUARTERS — DAY #39#

Jack­son walks into a large foy­er, lots of busi­ness peo­ple rush­ing through, but all hav­ing to stop and swipe their ID badge to get through a secu­ri­ty gate.

Jack­son sees this and then walks over to the infor­ma­tion counter. BATHANY, ear­ly 20s, just out of col­lege look.

JACKSON

Hi, I want to talk to some­one in arti­cle syn­di­ca­tion.

BATHANY

Okay, do you have an appoint­ment?

JACKSON

No.

Bathany frowns.

BATHANY

Well, do you know who it is you want to talk to?

JACKSON

Any­one in that depart­ment will do.

BATHANY

Sor­ry, with­out a name I can’t call them. Com­pa­ny pol­i­cy.

JACKSON

I’m with the Can­ber­ra Echo.

Jack­son shows his ID again.

BATHANY

I don’t care if your mar­ried to a Kar­dashi­an. I ain’t gonna screw up sec­ond day on the job. It took way too long on intern­ship to get here.

JACKSON

Well, thanks any­way.

Jack­son nods and turns to leave, he walks back across the foy­er.

INT. APPLE STORE — NIGHT #40#

Jack­son walks up to the ser­vice bar and talks to ALISTAIR (mid 20s, clean cut) a staff mem­ber.

JACKSON

I need a new phone.

Jack­son puts a brown paper bag down on the counter. It makes an odd crunch noise.

ALISTAIR

Of course sir. Do you have your old phone here?

Jack­son tips the bag out onto the counter. The shat­tered remains of his iphone spill out of the counter.

ALISTAIR

Ah. I don’t think this is cov­ered by the war­ran­ty.

INT. NEW YORK — COFFEE SHOP — NIGHT #41#

Jack­son and Pene­lope are sit­ting at a win­dow table.

PENELOPE

You did­n’t expect it to be that easy did you?

JACKSON

Easy? I’ve flown half way around the world.

PENELOPE

Well then, there is the oth­er half still to go isn’t there.

Jack­son does­n’t have an answer for that so he plays with his new iphone.

PENELOPE

Did you say some­thing about intern?

JACKSON

The girl at the counter had been one… why?

PENELOPE

Just an idea.

Pene­lope reach­es into her bag and pulls out a copy of the ‘Dai­ly Post’.

Jack­son noticed the paper was fold­ed open to the ‘Lone­ly Man’ arti­cle.

Pene­lope opens the paper out and flicks through the pages, fold­ing it down and pass­ing it over to Jack­son. An add for hol­i­day jobs in Hawaii sits above a large ad for intern­ships at Glob­al Press.

JACKSON

I’m not look­ing for a job.

PENELOPE

No. Your look­ing for a way into the build­ing. They are doing inter­views and trails every day this week.

Jack­son looks more close­ly at the ad

INT. JACKSON’S HOTEL — NIGHT #42#

Jack­son is sit­ting at a small hotel table in his room, look­ing at his tablet and the error mes­sage again. He takes his phone out and calls Andrew.

INT. CANBERRA ECHO — I.T. DEPARTMENT — DAY #43#

Andrew answers his phone.

ANDREW

When you said you’d be in touch, I did­n’t expect calls every day you know.

INTERCUT — PHONE CONVERSATION #44#

JACKSON

Yeah, well, this time your the only per­son that can help. I can’t get onto the Can­ber­ra Echo web­site.

Andrew types on his key­board.

ANDREW

Hmm, seems your login has been ter­mi­nat­ed. You know your access is lim­it­ed to while you work for the com­pa­ny right?

JACKSON

Yeah, but I am cur­rent­ly on leave, so I tech­ni­cal­ly still work there.

ANDREW

Well then I will tech­ni­cal­ly re-acti­vate your account. You know how it goes still right?

JACKSON

(par­rot­ing)

Your account has been acti­vat­ed, please allow up to a hour before try­ing to log in.

Jack­son types on his tablet and push­es the login but­ton.

ANDREW

Yeah, all that but it usu­al­ly…

JACKSON

I’m in.

ANDREW

Why do you want to get into this any­way?

JACKSON

The papers here are a day behind you guys, so all I can get is yes­ter­day’s arti­cle.

ANDREW

So you haven’t read tomor­rows yet?

JACKSON

No… why… have you?

ANDREW

Well, I had to have a look did­n’t I. But I’m more inter­est­ed in what have you been up to the past 24 hours then huh?

JACKSON

Well, end­ed up stay­ing the night in Hawaii.

ANDREW

Oh yeah, what was he like?

JACKSON

He was amaz­ing. Hey… I should nev­er have told you about this arti­cle.

ANDREW

Too late for that. What did you and the gym­nast get up to?

JACKSON

Best blow job I’ve got­ten in years, pos­si­bly ever.

ANDREW

Hey!

JACKSON

Your straight now remem­ber, you told me that one no longer counts. Besides, he was a lot bet­ter.

ANDREW

Fine. And what’s this about an intern­ship?

JACKSON

I could­n’t get past the front desk at Glob­al, so I’m gonna get a job and then do some nos­ing around inside. What are they going to do? Fire me?

ANDREW

You real­ly are crazy you know. Maybe you should just give up on all this and go back to Hawaii for the rest of your hol­i­day?

JACKSON

It’s bloody tempt­ing. But I start­ed this, so I got­ta try at least. When I run out of leads I’ll stop, but till then I’ve got­ta fol­low this through.

ANDREW

Alright mate. I still owe you two so, call any time.

JACKSON

Thanks again Andy. Lat­er.

Jack­son ends the call.

INT. JACKSON’S HOTEL — CONTINUOUS #45#

He taps on his tablet and loads up the Lone­ly Man arti­cle on the ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’ web­site.

JACKSON (V.O.)

The lone­ly man had got­ten very lit­tle sleep as the gym­nast man had kept him awake most of the night show him inter­est­ing new posi­tions that he had nev­er tried before. Per­haps the gym­nast man was just show­ing of his strength and flex­i­bil­i­ty. What­ev­er the rea­sons, the Lone­ly Man enjoyed the dis­play. Lat­er in the day the Lone­ly Man had had no luck at all in the weath­er depart­ment. Across town he had realised his only way for­ward was to become an intern. 7.

Jack­son smiles wide­ly at this and pulls his phone back out of his pock­et, he selects Kanoa’s entry and push­es ‘CALL’.

EXT. KANOA’S KITCHEN — DAY #46#

Kanoa is sit­ting at his kitchen table, lap­top open, pages of notes in a dis­tinc­tive and neat hand­writ­ten scat­tered across the table. Kanoa’s phone rings and he answers it.

KANOA

Hi there Mis­ter Tech Guru

INTERCUT — PHONE CONVERSATION #47#

JACKSON

Hi Mis­ter Reporter. Strange ques­tion for you, but are you a gym­nast?

KANOA

I used to be, back at col­lege. Made it to the nation­als… Why?

JACKSON

Ah, noth­ing, was just won­der­ing.

KANOA

No. No fair. You got­ta give me more than that.

JACKSON

Its just this thing I’m chas­ing up.

KANOA

How can what­ev­er it is your doing in New York have any­thing to do with weath­er I’m a gym­nast or not?

Kanoa picks up the copy of the ‘The Chron­i­cle’ from his kitchen table, the news­pa­per open at the Lone­ly Man arti­cle.

JACKSON

There real­ly is no way I can answer that with­out sound­ing like a 100% nut job.

KANOA

You know I like nuts right?

JACKSON

I don’t know you well enough to tell you all my secrets.

KANOA

Hmm, fair enough I guess. But you’ll have to tell me some­time.

JACKSON

Deal.

KANOA

How did your hunt today go any­way?

JACKSON

Slow­ly. Oh, while I have you on the phone. Do you know any­one inside Glob­al Press?

KANOA

Nope. The most use­ful thing I know in news­pa­pers is how to get into the secret base­ment at The Chron­i­cle.

JACKSON

Oh, is that the paper your work for?

KANOA

Work for is per­haps a strong way of putting it, but yeah.

JACKSON

Secret base­ments sound like fun. Maybe you could show me around… as long as we wont be inter­rupt­ed.

KANOA

Are you try­ing to be sug­ges­tive­ly dirty Mis­ter IT?

JACKSON

I was doing more than just try­ing.

KANOA

Good boy.

EXT. NEW YORK — STREET — DAY #48#

Jack­son walks down the street read­ing the lat­est Lone­ly Man arti­cle from the ‘Can­ber­ra Echo’ web­site on his phone and not pay­ing atten­tion to where he is walk­ing as he walks towards the curb.

JACKSON (V.O.)

Don’t step off the curb!

Jack­son stops just as a large bus pass­es that would have hit him.

SERIES OF SHOTS — JACKSON GETS A JOB #49#

JACKSON (V.O.)

The Lone­ly Man nar­row­ly avoid­ed being hit by a bus on his way to the intern job. He suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged to bluff his way into the intern inter­views, which was sur­pris­ing­ly easy con­sid­er­ing he had nev­er done a job like this before. Turns out it most­ly involves mak­ing cof­fees and pho­to copies. Just before lunch time the Lone­ly Man finds him­self in an ele­va­tor by him­self and notices a famil­iar sym­bol.

–Jack­son walk­ing through the foy­er of the Glob­al Press build­ing.

–Jack­son being hand­ed a ‘glob­al press’ note pad and pen­cil.

–Jack­son mak­ing drip cof­fee in a small kitch­enette.

–Jack­son using a large pho­to­copi­er.

–Jack­son wait­ing for an ele­va­tor.

INT. GLOBAL PRESS — ELEVATOR — DAY #50#

Jack­son looks at the indi­ca­tor but­tons for the floors and notices the last one on the pan­el is list­ed a ‘BB’ — a dou­ble base­ment. He push­es ‘BB’.

INT. GLOBAL PRESS — BASEMENT — DAY #51#

Jack­son steps out into a dim­ly lit base­ment and looks around. The cor­ri­dors are filled with box­es and old equip­ment. Old pneu­mat­ic tubes snake across the ceil­ing and down the walls.

Jack­son makes his way cau­tious­ly down the cor­ri­dors towards the only room with a light on. He should­n’t be down here, and does not want to get caught.

As Jack­son walks past a pneu­mat­ic tube it makes a loud click sound.

Jack­son stops and looks at the per­spex hatch with ‘9 Month Archive’ print­ed on the per­spex.

He reach­es out and opens the hatch door, which comes off com­plete­ly.

Jack­son looks up and down the hall­way to make sure no one saw him break the hatch. He looks around for some­where to hide the hatch, but when not find­ing some­where he stuffs the per­spex hatch cov­er into his shoul­der bag.

He con­tin­ues on his way down the hall as if noth­ing had hap­pened.

INT. GLOBAL PRESS — I.T. DEPARTMENT — DAY #52#

A room that looks sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the IT Depart­ment of the Can­ber­ra Echo, but with more pneu­mat­ic tubes. Two tech­ni­cians are work­ing at dif­fer­ent com­put­ers, backs towards the door.

Jack­son pokes his head through the door and knocks on the door.

JACKSON

Excuse me? Hi.

Both tech­ni­cians look up from their screens. Jack­son watch­ing them like a ten­nis match.

TECH #1

Oh, a vis­i­tor?

TECH #2

We don’t get vis­i­tors very often.

TECH #1

When was the last time some­one came down here?

TECH #2

Last year?

TECH #1

Yes, def­i­nite­ly last year.

TECH #2

Was just before thanks­giv­ing.

TECH #1

Oh yes, that was it, that cute lit­tle Jossie woman. Some­thing to do with the let­ter ‘p’ not work­ing on her key­board.

TECH #2

I went and had a look at it, worked fine.

TECH #1

Nev­er saw her again.

Jack­son steps into the room. To cov­er his ner­vous­ness he picks up a jum­bled rubics cube from the near­by desk and fid­gets with it.

JACKSON

Wow, you boys don’t get out much.

TECH #1

You’d think with news­pa­pers going online that they would have more respect for us now.

TECH #2

But no, they get con­sul­tants in for all the inter­est­ing stuff.

TECH #1

Were just here to make the print­ers and pho­to­copiers work.

JACKSON

Tell me about it. I’ve worked in I.T. before.

Both the Tech­ni­cians are sur­prised and sus­pi­cious of this. Look­ing Jack­son up and down. Ful­ly acknowl­edg­ing his pres­ence for the first time.

JACKSON

Quit my job a few days ago, and now I’m an intern here. Thought I’d pop down the the base­ment and say hel­lo to the peo­ple that real­ly run the place.

TECH #1

What is it you want exact­ly?

JACKSON

To say hel­lo.

(beat)

Hel­lo.

TECH #2

And?

JACKSON

Does there have to be an and?

TECH #1

Course not.

TECH #2

Nev­er has to be no noth­ing.

TECH #1

But there is. There always is.

Jack­son is get­ting nowhere fast. He plays with the rubics cube more firm­ly.

JACKSON

I was hop­ing to find out some info on one of the arti­cles your organ­i­sa­tion runs.

TECH #1

There see, what did I tell you.

TECH #2

No one comes down here unless they want some­thing.

TECH #1

And usu­al­ly they don’t want oth­ers know­ing they were look­ing for help.

TECH #2

Only ask for emp­ty favours and bro­ken promis­es.

Jack­son had many sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences when work­ing in IT, frus­trat­ed to be on the receiv­ing end for a change.

JACKSON

Some­times favours can be cashed in… if you remind peo­ple. But I have no favours to give, no promis­es to make.

The tech­ni­cians both seem to accept the truth of this.

TECH #1

We prob­a­bly could­n’t help you.

TECH #2

We don’t have access to the arti­cle man­age­ment sys­tem.

TECH #1

We look after the serv­er. That’s it right there.

TECH #2

We do all the back­ups and upgrades.

TECH #1

And keep it run­ning.

TECH #2

But they don’t give us access.

TECH #1

No login accounts.

JACKSON

It was a long shot any­way. Thanks.

Jack­son sets the solved rubics cube down on the table between the tech­ni­cians and then walks back towards the door.

The tech­ni­cians look at the solved cube, they had been try­ing to solve that for months.

TECH #2

Which arti­cle was it you were look­ing for any­way.

Jack­son stops and by the door.

JACKSON

The Lone­ly Man.

TECH #1

Ooh, that poor guy.

TECH #2

You need Rodriguez in syn­di­ca­tion.

TECH #1

8th floor, room 8113.

JACKSON

Thanks guys, I knew you’d be able to help.

Jack­son leaves.

TECH #2

(shouts)

Mit­tens.

INT. GLOBAL PRESS — SYNDICATION OFFICE — DAY #53#

Jack­son knocks and then enters the office. No one else is around. The office is neat and tidy.

Jack­son walks over to the only desk and sits down. He taps the key­board, the com­put­er screen lights up and requests a pass­word.

Jack­son frowns and shrugs. He spins around in the chair, he checks his watch and looks towards the door.

Jack­son turns back to the com­put­er. He types in ‘1234’ and hits enter, but gets an error mes­sage.

He tries again, this time with ‘pass­word’ but gets the error mes­sage again.

He then notice a framed pic­ture of a cat by the com­put­er. He types in ‘mit­tens’ and it is accept­ed.

JACKSON

Real­ly?

Jack­son sorts through the apps on the com­put­er and quick­ly find the arti­cle man­age­ment sys­tem. He puts in a search for ‘Lone­ly Man’ and find 265 entries. All the pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished arti­cles.

He then opens up details about the syn­di­ca­tion. All the time glanc­ing at the door as he works.

JACKSON

I know all this. Where does it come from?

Jack­son notices a but­ton labeled ‘source details’. He moves the mouse to click on it.

Un-notice by Jack­son, RODRIGUEZ (large, mid 30s, man) walks into the office.

RODRIGUEZ

Who the hell are you?

Jack­son it star­tled.

JACKSON

I’m um. I’m. An intern.

RODRIGUEZ

Not for long. Get away from my com­put­er.

Rodriguez pulls the chair Jack­son is sit­ting on away from the desk. Jack­son clicks the but­ton just before the mouse is out of reach.

Rodriguez looks at the screen.

RODRIGUEZ

This is sen­si­tive.

(frowns)

Real­ly, this stu­pid arti­cle.

Rodriguez clicks the mouse and the screen goes black giv­ing Jack­son too short a glimpse of the details he was look­ing for.

Rodriguez picks up his phone.

RODRIGUEZ

Secu­ri­ty.

EXT. GLOBAL PRESS — HEAD QUARTERS — DAY #54#

Jack­son is rough­ly pushed out of the build­ing by two large secu­ri­ty guards.

SECURITY GUARD #1

We see you again and we’ll tell the cops we caught a ter­ror­ist.

Jack­son gets up, shak­en and turns and walks away quick­ly.

INT. NEW YORK — COFFEE SHOP — DAY #55#

Jack­son is surf­ing the net on his tablet and sip­ping slow­ly on a large glass of water. His phone chirps with a text mes­sage.

Jack­son gets the phone out of his pock­et and looks at it.

SUPERIMPOSE: “Hows your day going Mr Tech Guru?”

Jack­son smiles and types back.

SUPERIMPOSE: “Fine Mr Reporter, until I got kicked out of the build­ing by secu­ri­ty.”

Jack­son moves to put the phone down on the table but it rings before he lets go if it. He answers it a lifts it to his ear.

INT. KANOA’S BEDROOM — DAY #56#

Kanoa is sit­ting on the edge of his bed wear­ing noth­ing but Jack­son’s undies, hold­ing his phone to his ear.

KANOA

What did you do?

INTERCUT — PHONE CONVERSATION #57#

JACKSON

Just because I hacked into some­one’s com­put­er and was caught access­ing stuff I should­n’t have been.

KANOA

Wait… what? Hacked?

JACKSON

Its not as impres­sive as it sounds.

KANOA

Your not just Tech Guru… your a… Wiz­ard.

JACKSON

Wiz­ard?

KANOA

Yeah IT Wiz­ard Jack­son. You should get that on your busi­ness cards.

JACKSON

Now I know your just teas­ing me.

KANOA

A lit­tle. But are you okay.

JACKSON

I’m fine. I was so close too. The infor­ma­tion was on the screen for less than a sec­ond. All I saw were the let­ters “HI” but that could be almost any­thing.

KANOA

So you going to tell me what it is your look­ing for yet?

JACKSON

You’ll think I’m crazy.

Jack­son con­tin­ues to surf the net on his tablet while talk­ing on the phone.

KANOA

I already think your crazy. For­tu­nate­ly I like your kind of crazy.

JACKSON

Fine then. You ever heard of The Lone­ly Man?

Kanoa paus­es.

KANOA

Yes. Very. I’ve read every arti­cle as it hap­pens… why?

JACKSON

I am the Lone­ly Man.

Kanoa paus­es again.

KANOA

Thought so?

JACKSON

See, no one ever believes me. Hey wait… what?

KANOA

Hey… if your the lone­ly man… that makes me…

JACKSON

The gym­nast, yeap.

KANOA

Well, I nev­er expect­ed to actu­al­ly be a char­ac­ter in the arti­cle.

JACKSON

You real­ly don’t think I’m crazy?

KANOA

Oh, I’m sure your still crazy. But that does­n’t mean your wrong.

JACKSON

Its prob­a­bly sap­py of me, but that means a lot.

KANOA

So what exact­ly is it your look­ing for in New York?

JACKSON

Try­ing to find out where this arti­cle comes from. I want to talk to the writer. Find out how they know what I’m going to do before I even do it.

KANOA

Why don’t you just get on a plane and come here and we can sort this out togeth­er. You said you ran out of leads in New York right?

Jack­son frowns at his tablet screen.

JACKSON

New York. Yes. But I might have just found some­thing in San Fran­cis­co. A bunch of the fans are get­ting togeth­er for a ‘Lone­ly Men’ con­fer­ence.

Kanoa paus­es.

KANOA

That’s a thing?

JACKSON

Appar­ent­ly.

KANOA

Is there any chance I can talk you out of this?

JACKSON

Prob­a­bly not. Besides, your the one that said I had to fin­ish my mis­sion.

KANOA

If your the real lone­ly man, then all you’ll find at the con­fer­ence is a bunch of wannabes.

JACKSON

They might know some­thing about it. Its kin­da on the way. If I find noth­ing at the con­fer­ence then I’m on the next flight to Hawaii. How does that sound.

KANOA

When is this con­fer­ence on?

JACKSON

Tomor­row.

KANOA

Hmm, I guess I can wait.

EXT. NEW YORK — SOHO STREET — DAY #58#

Jack­son is walk­ing down the street when he notices two cute guys, hand in hand, walk out of a shop.

He looks at the shop and sees that it is a spe­cial­ty shop for mens under­wear.

Jack­son walks in.

INT. UNDERWEAR SHOP — DAY #59#

Jack­son brows­es the store, look­ing at all the very brief under­wear. JUAN, a young shop assis­tant dress very fash­ion­ably, looks Jack­son up and down.

JUAN

I don’t think we have any­thing for you.

Jack­son is tak­en aback.

JUAN

You should try Wal-Mart. They have things your… style.

JACKSON

My out­fits not that bad.

MALCOLM (mid 40’s, slim and fit, fash­ion­able), steps in front of Juan.

MALCOLM

Ignore him. We don’t dis­crim­i­nate in this shop. We hap­pi­ly take any­one’s mon­ey, be it pink or

(looks Jack­son up and down)

Not.

Jack­son is more put out. He turns on his heal and walks out of the shop.

EXT. NEW YORK — SOHO STREET — DAY #60#

Jack­son gets his phone out of his pock­et and types on it.

SUPERIMPOSE: “Is it okay if I show that surf­board pic of you to some­one else?”

Jack­son leans against the shop win­dow for a moment. His phone chirps.

SUPERIMPOSE: “Why?”

Jack­son types his reply.

SUPERIMPOSE: “Its a secret.”

His phone chirps again.

SUPERIMPOSE: “Anoth­er secret? You have a few too many of those. But I trust you.”

INT. UNDERWEAR SHOP — DAY #61#

Jack­son walks up to the counter, his phone still in his hand.

JACKSON

First off.

(point­ing to him­self)

Gay. Sec­ond, I’m not look­ing for undies for me.

Jack­son holds the phone so that Mal­colm and Juan can see a pho­to of Kanoa lean­ing against a surf­board.

JACKSON

I need to find a fun pair for my boyfriend here.

Juan looks at the pho­to and is lost for words.

MALCOLM

We have some items over here for spe­cial cus­tomers.

EXT. NEW YORK — SOHO STREET — DAY #62#

Jack­son exits the shop car­ry­ing three shop­ping bags.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO AIRPORT — DAY #63#

Jack­son col­lects his bag­gage from the con­vey­er belt. ROLAND (ear­ly 40’s, large over­weight man) walks up.

ROLAND

You must be Jack­son.

Jack­son lifts his bag onto his shoul­der and turns around.

JACKSON

Roland?

Roland nods.

ROLAND

Yeap. Must say I was might sur­prised to get your mes­sage, and com­min all the way from New York just for our lit­tle shindig.

JACKSON

From Aus­tralia actu­al­ly, but this was on my way back to Hawaii.

Roland nods again and leads the way through the air­port.

JACKSON

So where is this con­fer­ence held any­way. The web­site was very vague.

ROLAND

Oh, its at the sec­ond Hilton.

Jack­son frowns.

JACKSON

You have two?

ROLAND

We have three.

JACKSON

That must get con­fus­ing.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — DAY #64#

The room has sev­er­al dozen peo­ple milling around and talk­ing. An amaz­ing­ly wide range of most­ly men, but there are a few women there too. Every­one is wear­ing name tags.

A large ban­ner hangs across the room and reads: “Wel­come Lone­ly Men”

Roland and Jack­son walk in and make their way through the crowd, Roland lead­ing the way.

Roland and Jack­son stop at a table with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent peo­ple sit­ting at it. CHIEF Lone­ly Man (late 50’s, slim tall man) and the oth­er peo­ple at the table turn to see to new arrivals.

ROLAND

Chief, this is the guy I was telling you about.

Chief gets up and holds out a hand. Jack­son auto­mat­i­cal­ly shakes it.

ROLAND

Jack­son, this is our leader, Chief Lone­ly Man. Chief this is Jack­son. He’s from Aus­tralia.

CHIEF

Ah, Lone­ly Man Down Under. You’ve come a long way.

JACKSON

Um, yeah. You know we don’t actu­al­ly use that phrase right?

CHIEF

That’s not real­ly the point.

Chief turns to one of the peo­ple at the table. ANOREXIC Girl Lone­ly Man (young over­ly thin woman), is already writ­ing on a name tag. She hands it to Chief.

CHIEF

Thank you Anny.

Chief sticks the name tag onto Jack­son’s shirt before he can protest. The tag reads: “Down Under Lone­ly Man”.

CHIEF

There much bet­ter.

Chief turns to Roland.

CHIEF

And what hap­pened to yours?

ROLAND

Oh, I took it off. Secu­ri­ty a the air­port was look­ing at me fun­ny.

Roland pulls a crum­pled up tag out of his pock­et and puts it on his shirt, it reads: “Big Gay Lone­ly Man”.

CHIEF

There’s always some­one try­ing to put down our hap­pi­ness.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #65#

Jack­son is sit­ting at a table next to Roland.

JACKSON

Is it just me, or are most the guys here not even gay?

ROLAND

Yeah, most of them are straight.

JACKSON

Have they even read the arti­cle? How can they think it might be them?

ROLAND

Your miss­ing the point. No one here actu­al­ly believes they are the Lone­ly Man. Well… except Bil­ly, he’s a bit strange, his name tag reads “The Real Lone­ly Man”. Best off avoid­ing him.

JACKSON

Most of these peo­ple are real­ly nice. I just don’t get it.

ROLAND

Your still very new to this aren’t you?

JACKSON

Six days ago I had nev­er heard of the Lone­ly Man. Now here I am with a bunch of wannabes. They would­n’t know if the real one was here or not.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #66#

Jack­son is now talk­ing to CONSPIRACY Lone­ly Man.

CONSPIRACY

Oh, he’s hear alright. He would­n’t miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty like this. Best way to hide.

JACKSON

Hide? Does­n’t he want to be found?

CONSPIRACY

Found. Not found out. There’s a huge dif­fer­ence.

JACKSON

Found out? You make it sound like he has a plan.

CONSPIRACY

He must. No one would pub­lish one arti­cle a day for 266 days with­out break unless they knew what they were doing.

Jack­son is uncon­vinced.

JACKSON

I wish I knew what it was.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #67#

Jack­son is now talk­ing to PREACHER Lone­ly Man.

PREACHER

All we need to know is that there is a plan for every­one.

JACKSON

I wish I could believe.

PREACHER

The pow­er of the Lone­ly Man does­n’t require you to believe my son. Just to fol­low your heart and to try your best.

JACKSON

What hap­pens when what your heart wants changes?

PREACHER

You have to walk many paths before you find your des­ti­na­tion.

JACKSON

Why can’t I just skip to the end?

PREACHER

Des­tiny does­n’t work like that.

Jack­son is unim­pressed with this.

JACKSON

I’ve been going around in cir­cles.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #68#

Jack­son is now talk­ing to SEXY Woman Lone­ly Man.

SEXY

You think you got it bad. Here I am, hot as all hell, a room full of lone­ly guys and I still can’t get any atten­tion.

JACKSON

At least your rea­son for being here makes sense.

Sexy leans in clos­er and put her hand on Jack­sons chest.

SEXY

I’m sure I could help all your trou­ble float away.

Jack­son picks up Sexy’s hand and removes it from his body.

JACKSON

Your real­ly not my type.

SEXY

What? Why not?

Jack­son is get­ting more frus­trat­ed with the con­fer­ence.

JACKSON

I play for the oth­er team.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #69#

Jack­son is now talk­ing to BASEBALL Lone­ly Man. Base­ball has his hand on Jack­son’s leg.

BASEBALL

Oh yeah? Which team is that?

Jack­son removes Base­bal­l’s hand.

JACKSON

The team that is already tak­en.

BASEBALL

How about a quicky then?

JACKSON

I’ve had more than enough of them in the past.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #70#

Jack­son is now talk­ing to FATCHICK Lone­ly Man.

FATCHICK

What about you? What you look­ing for?

JACKSON

If you’d asked me that a week ago I would have said a fit hot mus­cu­lar guy that’s hung like a horse.

FATCHICK

That’s kin­da shal­low. What changed?

JACKSON

I met some­one.

FATCHICK

You bet­ter watch it, talk like that and you wont be an offi­cial ‘Lone­ly Man’ any­more.

JACKSON

I could be half way around the world with the man of my dreams.

FATCHICK

Then what the fuck are you doing here?

Jack­son was won­der­ing the same thing.

JACKSON

It had seemed so impor­tant at the time.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — SECOND HILTON — LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — LATER #71#

All the lone­ly men are seat­ed, fac­ing towards a podi­um at which Chief is address­ing the gath­er­ing.

CHIEF

Before we wrap up this Lone­ly Men’s club we will play a round of Last Lone­ly Man stand­ing. Every­one to their feet.

Every­one stands. Jack­son is amongst the crowd, stand­ing next to Roland.

CHIEF

For those that are new here today, the rules are sim­ple. As I read each line of the arti­cle from today for yes­ter­day, sit down if the events did­n’t hap­pen to you.

The crowd cheers.

CHIEF

(read­ing)

Don’t step off the curb!

CHIEF

Well that’s not an event so we’ll skip that bit.

CHIEF

(read­ing)

The Lone­ly Man nar­row­ly avoid­ed being hit by a bus on his way to the intern job.

Chief paus­es and looks up, 2/3 of the crowd sit down. The rest hes­i­tant­ly stay stand­ing.

CHIEF

(read­ing)

He suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged to bluff his way into the intern inter­views, which was sur­pris­ing­ly easy con­sid­er­ing he had nev­er done a job like this before.

Chief paus­es again, all but 4 peo­ple sit down. Jack­son is one of the few still stand­ing.

CHIEF

(read­ing)

Turns out it most­ly involves mak­ing cof­fees and pho­to copies.

Chief looks up, but no-one sits down this time.

CHIEF

(read­ing)

Just before lunch time the Lone­ly Man finds him­self in an ele­va­tor by him­self and notices a famil­iar sym­bol.

Chief paus­es as two peo­ple sit down, only Jack­son and IT Lone­ly Man still stand­ing.

CHIEF

(read­ing)

In the depths of the build­ing he gets the advice of two wiz­ards before get­ting kicked out by secu­ri­ty. Two.

Chief fin­ish­es. IT Lone­ly Man sits down, leav­ing just Jack­son. The crowd is hushed and all look­ing at him.

CHIEF

Wow. We have a win­ner. This has nev­er hap­pened before.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — GAY BAR — NIGHT #72#

Jack­son is at a bar with Roland. Lots of hot guys drink­ing and chat­ting. Jack­son is absent­ly play­ing with a book of match­es with ‘The Clos­et’ writ­ten on the back.

JACKSON

Well, the con­fer­ence was inter­est­ing. I hope every­one isn’t too mad at me.

ROLAND

They just can’t accept that some­one else might be the lone­ly man. They’ll get over it. Or not. Either way, not your prob­lem.

JACKSON

I’m still no clos­er to find­ing out where this arti­cle comes from.

ROLAND

If you are the lone­ly man I’m sure you’ll find it. Its almost as if the arti­cle is guid­ing him some­times.

Jack­son puts the book of match­es in his pock­et and gets his phone out and opens to the arti­cle.

JACKSON

You seen what it has in store for me?

Roland glances at the phone and then looks away.

ROLAND

I try not to read the future issues. When­ev­er I do I just get dis­ap­point­ed when things turn out dif­fer­ent.

JACKSON

(read­ing)

A sim­i­lar­ly lost soul takes the Lone­ly Man out to the best night spot in town. After hav­ing already ruined one par­ty today, the Lone­ly Man was not in the mood.

ROLAND

This is hard­ly the best night spot in town.

JACKSON

It gets bet­ter.

(con­tin­u­ing to read)

At 8 pm the lone­ly Man gets hit on by exact­ly the kind of guy he had always lust­ed after.

ROLAND

The arti­cle does­n’t often get so spe­cif­ic.

Roland looks at his watch.

ROLAND

Its almost 8 now.

JACKSON

(read­ing)

He-

Jack­son is inter­rupt­ed as MATT (fit, hot, sexy guy).

MATT

You look like you could use some com­pa­ny.

JACKSON

Sto­ry of my life.

MATT

Well I got here just in time then.

Roland looks at this watch and holds it up so it can be seen to read 8:00.

Jack­son smiles and pulls Matt in close to whis­per to him.

JACKSON

Have you heard of The Lone­ly Man.

MATT

From the papers? Yeah. Why?

JACKSON

My friend here thinks he is the Lone­ly Man, but the arti­cle says at eight tonight he gets hit on by a sex god.

Matt glances in Roland’s direc­tion.

MATT

He can’t be the lone­ly guy, he’s too cute.

JACKSON

It would real­ly make his night if you chat­ted to him for a bit.

Matt is sur­prised and impressed.

MATT

That has got to be the classi­est brush off I’ve ever had.

Jack­son smiles again and push­es Matt towards Roland.

MATT

So big boy, if I said you had a good body would you hold it against me?

Roland sput­ters his drink. Jack­son dis­crete­ly leaves the bar.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO — HOTEL LOBBY — NIGHT #73#

Jack­son runs in from the street and across the loby. His phone in his hand. He skids to a halt at the recep­tion counter.

The CONCIERGE (young, polite woman) looks up as he arrives.

CONCIERGE

Can I help you sir?

Jack­son puts his phone on the counter and points at the opened Lone­ly Man arti­cle.

JACKSON

This here… I’m not read­ing this wrong am I? This is an address?

The Concierge looks at the screen.

CONCERIAGE

(read­ing)

The Chron­i­cle Build­ing

404 Kuhio Ave

Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii 96813

(look­ing up)

Yes sir. In Hawaii.

Jack­son is anx­ious and excit­ed.

JACKSON

I need to get to Hon­olu­lu as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

CONCERIAGE

Your are booked on a flight that leaves tomor­row morn­ing.

JACKSON

Is there any­thing soon­er?

The Con­ce­riage taps on her com­put­er for a few moments.

CONCERIAGE

There is a 10.30pm flight.

Jack­son leans over the desk to look at the com­put­er screen.

JACKSON

Change my book­ing to that flight. And organzie for some­one to dri­ve me to the air­port ASAP.

CONCERIAGE

Yes sir.

Jack­son turns to leave, but then turns back.

JACKSON

I’ll be back down here in 5 min­utes.

CONCERIAGE

I’ll have every­thing ready sir.

INT. HONOLULU AIRPORT — DAY #74#

Jack­son walks across the depar­ture hall and out into the Hawai­ian sun.

EXT. HONOLULU AIRPORT — DAY #75#

Jack­son stands at the curb and hails a cab.

JACKSON

The Chron­i­cle build­ing, thank you.

EXT. THE CHRONICLE — OFFICE BUILDING — DAY #76#

There are a hun­dred peo­ple all gath­ered around the entrance to the build­ing.

A taxi pulls up and Jack­son gets out.

Peo­ple in the crowd are push­ing each oth­er as secu­ri­ty pre­vents any of them from get­ting into the build­ing.

CROWD #1

I’m the Lone­ly Man.

CROWD #2

No, I’m the Lone­ly Man.

CROWD #3

Your both wrong. Its me.

Jack­son stands there with his bag slung over his shoul­der not sure how to pro­ceed when he is tapped on the shoul­der. He turns to find Kanoa.

Kanoa is dressed in his 1940’s style report out­fit, a old-fash­ioned leather brief­case under his arm.

Before Jack­son can say any­thing Kanoa pulls him into a big bear hug.

Jack­son coughs a lit­tle and push­es Kanoa.

JACKSON

Damn your strong.

Kanoa releas­es his hug and grins.

KANOA

Missed you.

JACKSON

Its only been four days.

KANOA

Missed you a lot. And what’s with not telling me you were com­ing to the island?

Jack­son grins.

JACKSON

I want­ed to sur­prise you.

KANOA

Might have worked, if there was­n’t a news­pa­per arti­cle about you every day.

Kanoa takes Jack­son’s hand in his and leads him down a side street.

JACKSON

Where are we going?

KANOA

Back door. I do work here you know.

INT. THE CHRONICLE — OFFICE BUILDING — DAY #77#

Kanoa and Jack­son enter a main hall­way and Kanoa stops.

KANOA

So, you got into the build­ing. What’s your next step huh?

Jack­son frowns.

JACKSON

Find out who­ev­er writes the Lone­ly Man arti­cle I guess.

KANOA

And just how are you going to do that?

Jack­son frowns again.

JACKSON

Um.

KANOA

You are too cute.

Kanoa reach­es up and puts his hand to either side of Jack­son’s head and pulls his head for­ward so he can kiss the short­er man’s fore­head.

KANOA

Have you con­sid­ered ask­ing some­one? Maybe some­one you know? That works here?

Jack­son grins.

JACKSON

Okay Mr Report, any ideas?

KANOA

Secret base­ment.

JACKSON

You just want to get me alone and do rude things.

KANOA

That too.

Jack­son looks around, but does­n’t have a bet­ter idea.

JACKSON

Lead on then.

Kanoa looks at his watch.

KANOA

Not yet.

Jack­son frowns.

JACKSON

Oh you tease.

Kanoa grins.

KANOA

Come on, I’ll show you my desk.

INT. THE CHRONICLE — OFFICE — DAY #78#

Kanoa leads Jack­son into a stan­dard cubi­cle office and to his desk.

KANOA

This is me.

Jack­son nods as he looks at the per­son­al knick-knacks that Kanoa has on his desk.

MULBERY (late 40s man) pops his head up over the par­ti­tion.

MULBERY

Kay, your back.

JACKSON

Kay?

Kanoa grins and nods.

KANOA

Yeah Mul­bery, what’s up.

MULBERY

I can’t get this stu­pid thing to print.

JACKSON

(auto­mat­i­cal­ly)

Have you tried turn­ing it off and on again?

Mul­bery growls.

MULBERY

Very fun. Are you the new IT guy then?

KANOA

Go on Mis­ter Tech Guru, show us your stuff.

Jack­son frowns but walks around the par­ti­tion to exam­ine the print­er. After a few sec­onds he nods.

JACKSON

Your prob­lem is an over­ca­pac­i­ty buffer, its leak­ing cache into the grid.

Kanoa tries to keep a straight face. Mul­bery is tak­ing it very seri­ous­ly.

JACKSON

The mem­o­ry address­es have been reversed, and the fuser assem­bly needs to be depo­lar­ized.

Jack­son reach­es over and switch­es the print­er off.

JACKSON

Just need to let it recal­i­brate.

He turns it back on and looks at his watch.

JACKSON

Any sec­ond now.

The print­er starts to hum and print out pages.

MULBERY

Wow, I take it back.

Jack­son walks back around to Kanoa’s desk and leans against it.

KANOA

That was impres­sive.

HAYNES (mid 60s, white hair, short man) walks up and claps.

HAYNES

Indeed it was. You should put your name down in for the IT posi­tion. We still haven’t found any­one that can han­dle anti­quat­ed equip­ment we have here.

KANOA

(to Jack­son)

This is Mis­ter Haynes, he owns the Chron­i­cle.

(to Haynes)

This is my boyfriend, Jack­son.

Jack­son rais­es an eye­brow.

JACKSON

Well I am between jobs at the moment.

HAYNES

Excel­lent, excel­lent.

Haynes turns and walks off before any­one can say any­thing.

JACKSON

Did I just acci­den­tal­ly get a job? Hey wait… you said boyfriend!

Kanoa pulls Jack­son into a kiss. Mul­bery sees this from across the office space.

MULBERY

Hey. No frat­er­niz­ing in the office.

They break apart, both embar­rassed at get­ting caught.

JACKSON

So why are we wait­ing around?

KANOA

We need to wait until eleven.

JACKSON

Because?

KANOA

That’s when they serve the donuts in the break room.

Jack­son does­n’t see the con­nec­tion.

KANOA

And no one will notice us slip into the jan­i­tors clos­et.

INT. THE CHRONICLE — HALLWAY — DAY #79#

Kanoa leads Jack­son down the hall­way.

Kanoa stops at a Jan­i­tors clos­et, opens it and steps inside, tug­ging at Jack­son’s hand to come with him.

JACKSON

Seri­ous­ly?

Jack­son steps in and Kanoa clos­es the door.

INT. THE CHRONICLE — CLOSET — DAY #80#

Kanoa turns on a bare light bulb hang­ing in the small clos­et.

JACKSON

Did you real­ly just drag me into the clos­et?

KANOA

I guess I did, yeah.

Kanoa opens a door at the back of the clos­et and leads Jack­son into a stair­case that only goes down.

JACKSON

Big­ger on the inside huh?

INT. THE CHRONICLE — SECRET BASEMENT — DAY #81#

The base­ment is dark. Kanoa throws a switch and a lot of old elec­tric lights warm up. Pneu­mat­ic tubes and equip­ment from the 1940s are every­where.

JACKSON

No one else knows this is down here?

KANOA

Its a leg­end that there are parts of the old build­ing still here under the new build­ing. But no one takes them seri­ous­ly.

Kanoa leads the way down the cor­ri­dors.

JACKSON

How did you find it then?

KANOA

I noticed the jan­i­tors clos­et on the plans was a lot big­ger than the real thing.

JACKSON

So Mr Gym­nast is super sexy, and clever too huh?

KANOA

I try not to let it show.

Jack­son stops and pulls Kanoa to a stop too.

JACKSON

Don’t.

KANOA

Don’t what?

JACKSON

Hide who you are.

KANOA

From you? Nev­er. No secrets. Not after today.

JACKSON

Deal. Besides, I think I’ve fig­ured out who the writer of the Lone­ly Man arti­cles is.

KANOA

If you think its me the your only part right. The truth is always more com­pli­cat­ed.

INT. THE CHRONICLE — OFFICE — SECRET BASEMENT — DAY #82#

Kanoa and Jack­son enter a large office space, most things are cov­ered in decades of dust, but there is one table and chair that have been cleaned.

Jack­son sits down at the desk and notices an ‘in’ and ‘out’ pneu­mat­ic tube. The ‘out’ tube has seen bet­ter days. A red light on the ‘out’ tube flash­es slow­ly.

Kanoa puts his leather brief-case on the floor next to the table.

JACKSON

Your ‘Out’ tube looks bro­ken.

KANOA

Yeah, some­thing wrong with it. But the ‘In’ tube works.

Jack­son lifts his shoul­der bag onto the desk and tips every­thing out. All the ran­dom bits he has been col­lec­tion tum­ble onto the desk. His bro­ken iPhone, a pen, a notepad, a book of match­es, the hatch from the pneu­mat­ic tube in New York.

Jack­son rum­mages through the odds and ends. He picks up the hatch and holds it over the ‘out’ tube, but it does­n’t fit very well.

KANOA

What are you up to?

JACKSON

Just mak­ing repairs.

Jack­son find a wood­en yo-yo in his things and starts to take the string off it. Using the var­i­ous items he has col­lect­ed he makes some changes to the hatch and then reat­tach­es it to the out tube.

The red light stops flash­ing and a green light lights up.

KANOA

How the hell did you know how to do that?

JACKSON

Dun­no… just good with stuff like that I guess.

Kanoa pulls a pock­et watch out of his waist­coat, looks at it and then smiles at Jack­son.

KANOA

Should be here in about 40 sec­onds.

JACKSON

What should?

KANOA

I found this about place 9 months ago. Scared the crap out of me the first time. Though the place was going to come down on top of me.

Sounds of old machines start to rum­ble soft­ly in the dis­tance.

JACKSON

Okay.

KANOA

That was when the first mes­sage arrived. I’ve been com­ing here at this time every day since then.

The sounds of the machines get loud­er, some of the pneu­mat­ic pipes start to shake a lit­tle.

KANOA

I nev­er expect­ed I’d actu­al­ly meet you, or bring you here.

The rum­bling of the machines gets loud­er and loud­er, the pipes shak­ing more and more.

KANOA

Here it comes.

The noise gets deaf­en­ing. Jack­son cov­ers his ears as Kanoa just stands there calm­ly like this is nor­mal.

The nois­es and the shak­ing all stop. There is a sin­gle clank sound and one of the pneu­mat­ic tubes deliv­er­ers a con­tain­er onto the desk.

Jack­son looks at it in sur­prise.

Kanoa reach­es out and picks up the cylin­der and hands it to Jack­son.

KANOA

Open it.

Jack­son twists the end of the tube and tips the con­tents onto the table. There are three envelops and a book of match­es from the same San Fran­cis­co club. Writ­ten on envel­op it reads: “For: The Lone­ly Man”. On anoth­er: “Stay”. And on the last: “Go”.

Jack­son picks up the envel­op address to the lone­ly man.

JACKSON

Hey. This is my hand writ­ing.

KANOA

Yeah, I though it might be. The first one hand my name on it. This one seems to be for you. Open it.

Jack­son opens the enve­lope and reads the note inside.

JACKSON

(read­ing)

Don’t freak out Jack­son.

Jack­son drops the note and steps back.

JACKSON

Shit.

Kanoa bends down and picks it up.

KANOA

Yeah I did that the first time too. Want me to read it?

Kanoa reads the note.

KANOA

(read­ing)

Don’t freak out Jack­son. By now you will have trav­elled to the oth­er side of the world and back. You will have already fixed the ‘out’ pneu­mat­ic tube. If every­thing has worked out Kanoa is read­ing this to you now.

You’ve already worked out that Kanoa is the one who has been pub­lish­ing the Lone­ly Man arti­cles. And you have worked out that you are indeed the Lone­ly Man.

The ques­tion is do you want to be the Lone­ly Man for­ev­er, or are you ready to become some­thing more?

What I know you haven’t worked out yet is how Kanoa knew so much your life. The answer is you told him. You wrote it all down and sent it out in the pneu­mat­ic tube and it arrived on Kanoa’s desk nine months ago.

You will write and send this very mes­sage nine months from now. I don’t know how it works either. It does­n’t mat­ter. With­out the Lone­ly Man arti­cle you and Kanoa would nev­er have meet.

There is only one choice to make. Now that you have meet, will you stay or will you go?

Kanoa holds up the oth­er two envelopes. One with “stay” and one with “go” writ­ten on it.

Jack­son is unde­cid­ed, he looks from one enve­lope to the oth­er, and then looks at Kanoa. He pulls Kanoa into a force­ful, pas­sion­ate kiss.

KANOA

Please stay.

Jack­son grabs the enve­lope marked “go”.

Kanoa is frozen in place, hold­ing his breathe, unsure of Jack­sons inten­tions and not want­i­ng to break what­ev­er spell has brought them togeth­er.

Jack­son picks up the book of match­es, lights one and sets fire to one cor­ner of the enve­lope. It bursts green and burns away to noth­ing in a flash.

They embrace and kiss again, this time lov­ing­ly, deeply, gen­tly.

INT. KANOA’S KITCHEN — DAY #83#

SUPERIMPOSE: “Nine months lat­er.”

Jack­son is sit­ting at the kitchen table hand writ­ing with a pur­ple menopause pen on a San Fran­cis­co Hilton note pad.

JACKSON (V.O.)

Nine months from now The Lone­ly Man will write this, the last arti­cle. This is where the sto­ry of the Lone­ly Man ends. There will be no more arti­cles. For the Lone­ly Man is no longer Loney. To his deep sur­prise he has found com­pan­ion­ship, a man to love and love him back.

But what about all of you? The read­ers? You may not believe this, but if it was­n’t for you the Lone­ly Man would nev­er have found his part­ner, his boyfriend, his soon to be hus­band. Most of you helped sim­ply by read­ing this sto­ry. Some of you helped in a much more direct way.

My thanks go to you all, but par­tic­u­lar­ly to: the data entry clerk in LasVe­gas who shut­down an air­line for 24 hours, the Flori­da pool atten­dant who let an old man in for free, the Seat­tle house hus­band who got the radio com­pe­ti­tion wrong, and most impor­tant­ly to the news­pa­per man who con­vinced his boss to pub­lish the sto­ry in the first place.

Kanoa walks in, still in his wet­suit, hair wet.

JACKSON

How were the waves?

KANOA

Was rolling real­ly sweet out there today. Not that that means any­thing to a land­lub­ber like you.

Jack­son smiles.

JACKSON

The words, no. The way you say it. Tells me every­thing.

Kanoa sits down and looks at what Jack­son is writ­ing.

JACKSON

Just fin­ish­ing the last arti­cle.

KANOA

Its so weird to watch you write some­thing for the first time, when I read them all nine months ago.

JACKSON

After this one we are free of it. No more arti­cles telling us what hap­pens next.

Kanoa notice the unsealed envelopes on the table. One marked “Stay”, the oth­er “Go”. He picks up the “Go” one.

KANOA

What are you going to put in here?

Jack­son fin­ish­es his writ­ing and tears the page off the notepad. He grins as he tears the next page, which hap­pens to be the last page, off the pad and leav­ing it blank he folds it and puts it in the “Go” envel­op.

KANOA

What if you had cho­sen that one?

JACKSON

Then I would not have deserved an answer. Besides I will always always always choose you.

THE END<

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My D&D character

I Am A: Neu­tral Good Human Wizard/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Lev­el)

I Am A: Neu­tral Good Human Wizard/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Lev­el)

Abil­i­ty Scores:
Strength-11
Dex­ter­i­ty-13
Con­sti­tu­tion-12
Intel­li­gence-16
Wis­dom-12
Charis­ma-11

Align­ment:
Neu­tral Good A neu­tral good char­ac­ter does the best that a good per­son can do. He is devot­ed to help­ing oth­ers. He works with kings and mag­is­trates but does not feel behold­en to them. Neu­tral good is the best align­ment you can be because it means doing what is good with­out bias for or against order. How­ev­er, neu­tral good can be a dan­ger­ous align­ment when it advances medi­oc­rity by lim­it­ing the actions of the tru­ly capa­ble.

Race:
Humans are the most adapt­able of the com­mon races. Short gen­er­a­tions and a pen­chant for migra­tion and con­quest have made them phys­i­cal­ly diverse as well. Humans are often unortho­dox in their dress, sport­ing unusu­al hair­styles, fan­ci­ful clothes, tat­toos, and the like.

Pri­ma­ry Class:
Wiz­ards are arcane spell­cast­ers who depend on inten­sive study to cre­ate their mag­ic. To wiz­ards, mag­ic is not a tal­ent but a dif­fi­cult, reward­ing art. When they are pre­pared for bat­tle, wiz­ards can use their spells to dev­as­tat­ing effect. When caught by sur­prise, they are vul­ner­a­ble. The wizard\‘s strength is her spells, every­thing else is sec­ondary. She learns new spells as she exper­i­ments and grows in expe­ri­ence, and she can also learn them from oth­er wiz­ards. In addi­tion, over time a wiz­ard learns to manip­u­late her spells so they go far­ther, work bet­ter, or are improved in some oth­er way. A wiz­ard can call a famil­iar- a small, mag­i­cal, ani­mal com­pan­ion that serves her. With a high Intel­li­gence, wiz­ards are capa­ble of cast­ing very high lev­els of spells.

Sec­ondary Class:
Sor­cer­ers are arcane spell­cast­ers who manip­u­late mag­ic ener­gy with imag­i­na­tion and tal­ent rather than stu­dious dis­ci­pline. They have no books, no men­tors, no the­o­ries just raw pow­er that they direct at will. Sor­cer­ers know few­er spells than wiz­ards do and acquire them more slow­ly, but they can cast indi­vid­ual spells more often and have no need to pre­pare their incan­ta­tions ahead of time. Also unlike wiz­ards, sor­cer­ers can­not spe­cial­ize in a school of mag­ic. Since sor­cer­ers gain their pow­ers with­out under­go­ing the years of rig­or­ous study that wiz­ards go through, they have more time to learn fight­ing skills and are pro­fi­cient with sim­ple weapons. Charis­ma is very impor­tant for sor­cer­ers; the high­er their val­ue in this abil­i­ty, the high­er the spell lev­el they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dun­geons and Drag­ons Char­ac­ter Would You Be?, cour­tesy of Easy­damus (e‑mail)

The Found Phone

My repro­duc­tion 1980’s dig­i­tal wrist-watch counts its way towards 5pm, and clos­ing time.

I watch the watch.

‘16:34:46‘

‘16:34:47‘

‘16:34:48‘

The soon­er it gets there the soon­er I can leave. The soon­er I can leave the soon­er I can for­get all about my work and all my oblig­a­tions to oth­er peo­ple.

My repro­duc­tion 1980’s dig­i­tal wrist-watch counts its way towards 5pm, and clos­ing time.

I watch the watch.

‘16:34:46‘

‘16:34:47‘

‘16:34:48‘

The soon­er it gets there the soon­er I can leave. The soon­er I can leave the soon­er I can for­get all about my work and all my oblig­a­tions to oth­er peo­ple.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “The Found Phone”

Escape Goat

*Unem­ployed. Again.*

Joe burst out of the build­ing, into the small dark lane, the sun not yet high enough to pierce the deep gul­lies between the office build­ings. His scuffed black leather boots, the clos­est thing he had to busi­ness shoes, slapped loud­ly on the cob­bled lane way. One, two, three steps, his legs unsteady, he stopped. He need­ed to get away from here, but his legs would not work. He stead­ied him­self, rest­ing his left hand on the grimy red brick wall.

*Unem­ployed. Again.*

Joe burst out of the build­ing, into the small dark lane, the sun not yet high enough to pierce the deep gul­lies between the office build­ings. His scuffed black leather boots, the clos­est thing he had to busi­ness shoes, slapped loud­ly on the cob­bled lane way. One, two, three steps, his legs unsteady, he stopped. He need­ed to get away from here, but his legs would not work. He stead­ied him­self, rest­ing his left hand on the grimy red brick wall.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Escape Goat”

21st Century Matchmaker

“Worst. Date. Ever.” The voice sobbed at him through the phone.

Ethan sat naked on his bed in the dark room rub­bing one side of his head with one hand and hold­ing his old iPhone to the oth­er side of his head with the oth­er hand. *Stu­pid. Should not have answered the phone. Very stu­pid.*

“Trace, its two in the morn­ing, can’t this wait?” *More stu­pid, should not have asked a ques­tion.*

“Worst. Date. Ever.” The voice sobbed at him through the phone.

Ethan sat naked on his bed in the dark room rub­bing one side of his head with one hand and hold­ing his old iPhone to the oth­er side of his head with the oth­er hand. *Stu­pid. Should not have answered the phone. Very stu­pid.*

“Trace, its two in the morn­ing, can’t this wait?” *More stu­pid, should not have asked a ques­tion.*

Con­tin­ue read­ing “21st Cen­tu­ry Match­mak­er”

Christmas Factory — Chapter 1

First Chap­ter of my sto­ry “Christ­mas Fac­to­ry”

# The day of bor­rowed shirts

Nate walked through the morn­ing city rain under a small bright­ly coloured umbrel­la that was clear­ly not the sort he would nor­mal­ly use. His most­ly dull black and blue clothes con­trast­ed with the bright rain­bow of the umbrel­la. His shoes and the low­er half of his jeans were soaked.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Christ­mas Fac­to­ry — Chap­ter 1”

Standing Desk?

I’ve no idea if this is a good idea. But I’ve been read­ing a lot of peo­ple write about stand­ing desks and the health and moti­va­tion­al effects they can have.

I’ve no idea if this is a good idea. But I’ve been read­ing a lot of peo­ple write about stand­ing desks and the health and moti­va­tion­al effects they can have.
I realised that my work set up could be con­vert­ed into a impro­vised stand­ing desk and as its a very short work week this week, I’ve decid­ed to com­mit to giv­ing it a go.
Work week this week is only three days, so here I am on Wednes­day stand­ing at my desk. A few hours in and my feet are unsur­pris­ing­ly sore, but I think that is to be expect­ed.