“This is hell. Just pure hell.”
He realized he had no choice. He had to run.
Throwing on his Ray-Bans and stuffing a few essentials—his notebook, cash, and a suspiciously labeled jar of “herbal inspiration”—into a backpack, Tonny climbed out the window and bolted into the jungle.
The branches whipped his face, sand sucked at his feet, and the voices behind him grew louder:
“He’s running! Get your phones out!”
Finally, he reached the other side of the island, where he found a fisherman willing to take him to an even smaller, even less hospitable island—for a price that could have bought him a used car in Manhattan.
Weeks later, exhausted and still paranoid, Tonny found himself in the shadow of the Himalayas, hiding out in a forgotten mountain inn in northern India. The place was almost entirely abandoned, thanks to the pandemic.
“I want every room,” Tonny told the owner, an elderly man with the kind of wise gaze that could pierce through souls—or just appraise wallets.
The man nodded slowly. “No neighbors,” Tonny added firmly.
The old man raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering what kind of lunatic had wandered into his life, but eventually shrugged and handed over the keys.
For the first time in weeks, Tonny felt at peace. He brewed a cup of chai in the inn’s tiny kitchen, watching the mountains rise like silent sentinels beyond the horizon.
“This isn’t the Bahamas,” he muttered to himself. “But it’ll do. No one can find me here.”
He sipped his tea, savoring the silence, and thought, Maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally outrun the world.
Chapter 3: The Info-Baroness and Her “Flow”
It was the year of COVID, when half the world lived in pajamas, and the other half spent their days watching webinars in, well… pajamas. To his eternal shame, Tonny Rugless Pinchchitte Jr. belonged to the latter group.
One lazy afternoon, while scrolling through social media feeds crammed with sourdough bread and conspiracy theories, he froze. A bold, obnoxiously colorful ad demanded his attention:
"Neurographica for Creators: Draw Your Life. Find Your Flow!"
The ad featured a woman with unnaturally straight hair and a smile so dazzling it could double as a weapon. Her eyes gleamed with the unshakable confidence of someone who not only had all the answers but also knew the questions you hadn’t yet thought to ask.
“Draw my life…” Tonny muttered, squinting at her picture. “What if my life already looks like a vandalized alley wall?”
Still, something about the words “creator” and “flow” hooked him. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was the existential despair that came from realizing he’d already tried everything from digital life coaches to Tibetan “meditation elixirs” (which, in his case, were more like “disappointment tonics”).
With a resigned shrug, he clicked “Enroll.”
The course was led by an enigmatic info-preneur named Madura Shanti. In reality, her name was Marina Shapovalko, and her clipped vowels betrayed her origins somewhere near Cleveland—or maybe Kyiv. But her pseudonym had just enough exotic flair to spark hope in the desperate.
“Jest draw ze lines!” Madura chirped from the screen, her voice dripping with saccharine enthusiasm. “Feel ze flow! Smile—it is your weapon!”
“Weapon?” Tonny thought, raising an eyebrow. “Against what? Common sense?”
Nevertheless, he armed himself with a marker and a sheet of paper.
