maintain the purity of the luck is to live a life filled with honesty and integrity and selflessness. To live without judgment or fear or desire. Even the smallest of temptations can pollute your luck, especially in the United States, where judging your neighbors is a God-given right, fear is propagated by the media, and desire is plastered on twenty-five-foot-tall billboards and advertised on commercial breaks.
Like any rule, there’s always the exception. I’m sure any luck Gandhi or Joan of Arc or the Dalai Lama might have had was cleaner than that of your average lucky person. But since they’re either dead, martyred, or living inexile, I’m guessing they’re not the target of Tommy Wong’s reward offer.
I walk up to Union Square and stop to look around at all of the tourists enjoying their vacations, unaware of the bounty that’s been placed on their potential good fortune. Specifically, I’m noticing the families. The ones with young children eating ice cream and pointing at homeless people and throwing tantrums. Laughing and crying and staring in wonder. Reacting to a world that hasn’t yet beaten them down and crushed their spirits.
The only way to get Pure is to poach it from those who aren’t yet adults. Ideally from those who haven’t reached puberty and had their innocence corrupted with hormones and sexual desire and the discovery of self-gratification. Who still believe in magic and heroes and the idea that anything is possible.
I’ve never poached Pure. Never even considered it. And I don’t need the memory of the look of longing and disgust on my grandfather’s face to keep me in line. Taking luck from children is taboo among poachers. Although not as perverse as child pornography or pedophilia, it definitely has a pervasive stigma attached to it. Like kicking a dog or hitting your wife or masturbating in public.
But five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money.
Enough to live on comfortably for at least five years. Enough to help buy a way to protect Mandy. Enough to challenge the beliefs of any poacher. Especially someonewho might be able to get rid of the bad luck in his system by poaching pure, untainted good luck.
I never was good with moral dilemmas.
But finding a kid with Pure isn’t easy. Unless some ten-year-old boy or eight-year-old girl makes the news for cheating death or some other stroke of luck, it’s virtually impossible to find such a child. It’s not like poachers can hang around outside of schools or day-care centers without attracting unwanted attention from teachers and parents and the police. So to claim Tommy Wong’s reward, someone would have to find an innovative way of drawing children to him. Or to her.
In Union Square, in front of the Dewey Monument in the center of the square, a woman is dressed like a clown. Not a circus clown or a killer clown from outer space but a friendly one, with bright clothes and blue hair and a big red Rudolph bulb of a nose.
She’s making animal balloons and handing them out to the children gathered around her, their eyes watching her and their faces filled with expectant smiles. Chances are she’s just a normal person who enjoys kids. A teacher or an aspiring actress who likes to make animal balloons for a few extra bucks.
Or she could be one of Tommy’s hired thieves, a luck poacher, looking for an underage mark.
The same way I can tell that Doug was born with good luck, poachers can sense the energy of luck flowing througha person by making the slightest physical contact—the brush of a hand, the tap of knuckles, or an inadvertent touch. What you feel is a static buildup. A low-level charge. Nothing that would cause your hair to stand up or your hand to flinch back in surprise.
But in the case of top-grade soft, being within touching distance is enough to get a reading. And the electric charge given off by someone carrying Pure would cause a definite physical reaction.
Such as laughing. Or breaking out in a sweat.
Like any rule, there’s always the exception. I’m sure any luck Gandhi or Joan of Arc or the Dalai Lama might have had was cleaner than that of your average lucky person. But since they’re either dead, martyred, or living inexile, I’m guessing they’re not the target of Tommy Wong’s reward offer.
I walk up to Union Square and stop to look around at all of the tourists enjoying their vacations, unaware of the bounty that’s been placed on their potential good fortune. Specifically, I’m noticing the families. The ones with young children eating ice cream and pointing at homeless people and throwing tantrums. Laughing and crying and staring in wonder. Reacting to a world that hasn’t yet beaten them down and crushed their spirits.
The only way to get Pure is to poach it from those who aren’t yet adults. Ideally from those who haven’t reached puberty and had their innocence corrupted with hormones and sexual desire and the discovery of self-gratification. Who still believe in magic and heroes and the idea that anything is possible.
I’ve never poached Pure. Never even considered it. And I don’t need the memory of the look of longing and disgust on my grandfather’s face to keep me in line. Taking luck from children is taboo among poachers. Although not as perverse as child pornography or pedophilia, it definitely has a pervasive stigma attached to it. Like kicking a dog or hitting your wife or masturbating in public.
But five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money.
Enough to live on comfortably for at least five years. Enough to help buy a way to protect Mandy. Enough to challenge the beliefs of any poacher. Especially someonewho might be able to get rid of the bad luck in his system by poaching pure, untainted good luck.
I never was good with moral dilemmas.
But finding a kid with Pure isn’t easy. Unless some ten-year-old boy or eight-year-old girl makes the news for cheating death or some other stroke of luck, it’s virtually impossible to find such a child. It’s not like poachers can hang around outside of schools or day-care centers without attracting unwanted attention from teachers and parents and the police. So to claim Tommy Wong’s reward, someone would have to find an innovative way of drawing children to him. Or to her.
In Union Square, in front of the Dewey Monument in the center of the square, a woman is dressed like a clown. Not a circus clown or a killer clown from outer space but a friendly one, with bright clothes and blue hair and a big red Rudolph bulb of a nose.
She’s making animal balloons and handing them out to the children gathered around her, their eyes watching her and their faces filled with expectant smiles. Chances are she’s just a normal person who enjoys kids. A teacher or an aspiring actress who likes to make animal balloons for a few extra bucks.
Or she could be one of Tommy’s hired thieves, a luck poacher, looking for an underage mark.
The same way I can tell that Doug was born with good luck, poachers can sense the energy of luck flowing througha person by making the slightest physical contact—the brush of a hand, the tap of knuckles, or an inadvertent touch. What you feel is a static buildup. A low-level charge. Nothing that would cause your hair to stand up or your hand to flinch back in surprise.
But in the case of top-grade soft, being within touching distance is enough to get a reading. And the electric charge given off by someone carrying Pure would cause a definite physical reaction.
Such as laughing. Or breaking out in a sweat.
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