The Falling Ascent of Adrian Loft
By T.L. Peters
()
About this ebook
A secular young attorney receives a mysterious message challenging him to do something he does not want to do. As he struggles against the divine Will, what will he learn? What secrets will be revealed, and how will he respond?
"The unfolding of thy words gives light, it imparts understanding to the simple." Psalms 119, vs. 130.
"An amazing book. A must, Five-Star read."
"Very inspirational and powerful. Makes you think about your faith in a deeper way."
"A thought-provoking Christian message about redemption, forgiveness and obedience in an increasingly secular world."
"I read this book in two hours. It was two hours well spent."
T.L. Peters
"There's no question that Peters is a master wordsmith." Gerry B's Book Reviews About the author: T.L. Peters is an ex-lawyer who enjoys playing the violin and giving his dog long walks in the woods. In between, he writes novels.
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The Falling Ascent of Adrian Loft - T.L. Peters
The Falling Ascent of Adrian Loft
By Tom Peters
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2015 Tom. Peters
Smashwords License Notes
This e book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The unfolding of thy words gives light, it imparts understanding to the simple.
Psalms 119, vs. 130.
This short novel is very inspirational and powerful. It makes you think about your faith in a deeper way.
A powerful Christian statement in an increasingly secular world.
To read more about the author and his other books, go to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tlpeters.
Chapter 1
Around two-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon in conference Room 6C, after the other lawyers had all slithered back into their cubicles, and while Adrian Loft was munching down the last of the firm's complimentary stale glazed donuts, because he had worked thirteen hours straight without a decent meal, which was unusual for Adrian since he was a slacker of some note, the following Word came to him:
Hurry down to the corner of State and Main, between Jake's Tavern and the brothel masquerading as a jazz club, and pick up the black leather-bound book lying on the rusted manhole cover, open it to page 126 and read aloud in a strong voice the text beginning at chapter 1. Continue reading until you come to the end of the passage on page 171. If you finish the entire assignment, place the book back onto the manhole cover and your task is complete. If for any reason you are unable to finish, take the book with you and complete the assignment later, either all at once or in installments. Remember that you must read the text aloud in a strong voice in the presence of strangers. When you have read the entire passage in this way, return the book to the manhole cover. Your job is done. Do not be alarmed. You are, after all, a halfway decent lawyer. You can do this. It is really not all that hard.
Adrian Loft was not a fanciful fellow. Had he been prone to raving fits, these strange words would no doubt have battered his ears like legions of disemboweled voices—the conventional method by which lunatic revelations are communicated to the slightly unhinged, at least if the academic authorities on the subject are to be believed. But to his credit Adrian, a logical creature if there ever was one, heard no strange voices, no heavenly proclamations, no angelic exhortations, not even a demonic whisper or a muffled trumpet blast, nothing but the faint trace of his own breathing. The message, you see, was transmitted visually.
This is what Adrian concluded anyway after witnessing it all with his own shifty pair of fish-colored eyes, tinged red at the corners, the pupils mildly dilated from overwork. Having just spent the last two-point-three hours proofreading an addendum to a multi-party sale-leaseback financing agreement, all of which he was happily billing to the client, whose name he had forgotten, at his customary hourly rate of $575, Adrian had begun to massage a nasty kink out of his neck when he spotted the message flying through the poorly ventilated air, right above his narrow balding skull.
You should understand at the outset that this was not your typical vision, or fantasy if you prefer more contemporary terminology. Had it been so, Adrian would have instantly dismissed it as some quirky psychic spasm, which occasionally afflicted him at times of great mental distress, such as when he was required to proofread any legal document longer than five pages. Indeed, the strange message might have heralded the onset of another of those pesky digestive flare-ups that Adrian routinely experienced after long periods sequestered with his fellow legal drones in the sterile innards of conference room 6C.
There were plenty of ways Adrian could have written off the entire episode as some inexplicable trick of his senses unworthy of his attention, but Adrian had an open mind about such things. He was a lawyer, after all. It was his business to be engaged in the wide ranging affairs of mankind, no matter how speculative or fantastic they might at first appear. Adrian was sure that he had seen something, as sure as he could be anyway, but what exactly was it that had hurtled past him with such ferocity? It had all happened so fast.
After a moment or two of frantic analysis, an explanation of sorts began to take shape in Adrian's mind, an explanation which he found difficult at first to put into words, but which for purposes of his own clarity of thinking he attempted to do anyway, if only as vague and whispered mutterings to himself. It seemed to Adrian as though the message had somehow rolled up from the backside of the world, then slowly gained momentum before whipping past his startled vision at terrific speed in one massive glob of instantaneous communication—a swift unfolding of words if you will.
He even recalled detecting a stiff wind stinging his pale red cheeks for a moment, although he was not completely sure of that, for Adrian was not prone to rash judgments. Ultimately, however, it was of little concern to Adrian if the message had kicked up a breeze or not. Atmospherics did not interest him. What mattered, at least at first blush, was that the message, if it really was a message and not some morsel of undigested soy sauce roiling his intestinal tract, was clearly directed at him, there being no one else in the room.
To a corporate grunt like Adrian, such an odd event would have been unimaginable in normal circumstances, which only served to enhance its credibility, at least in his own mind, which he had long regarded, perhaps with some justification, as a masterpiece of rationality. He had, after all, attended a preeminent northeastern law school and done rather well, earning the distinction of magna cum laude and serving on the prestigious law review. Aside from a few adolescent fantasies, which are hardly relevant here, Adrian did not, as a rule, daydream. He had no reason to. There were enough hard facts and even harder personalities in his life to engage his attention. He had senior partners to flatter and fawn over, clients to bamboozle, fellow associates to out-maneuver in the fevered and sometimes vicious race for partnership. There was plenty to keep Adrian busy. He did not need to make stuff up. As a result, he tended to believe, at least up until that afternoon, what his eyes told him to be true and what his brain corroborated as authentic, or at least as warranting further study.
All that was well and good for a typical day at the office, but what about this fleeting package of words that had assaulted his bleary eyes for a few confusing moments and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared? Was the whole thing simply too bizarre to be taken seriously? Perhaps so. Even Adrian would have conceded as much. Yet this singular message, at the moment of its arrival anyway, had seemed to Adrian no less real and potentially life changing than a senior partner's disapproving shake of the head, or an attractive woman's lingering smile.
How else could he explain the massive blocks of wavy italicized letters in standard Times New Roman font charging past him? Each word had looked hard and solid enough that for an alarming instant Adrian believed that he could have grabbed the bottom end of any one of them in his tender, whitish arms and held on for dear life—perhaps even flown off with them, like some heroic fool in an old Hollywood movie, if only he had had the guts to reach out. But Adrian, a lawyer not only by training but by temperament, and therefore hardly a beacon of courage, had done none of that. All he could manage was to whirl himself about and watch the words crashing silently one-by-one into the cherry paneled wall behind him, and then to gawk wincing and blinking as the entire message was swallowed up into the smoothly varnished wood.
Nonetheless, Adrian believed that he had gotten the gist of the message, or at least he thought he did. And why not? He was, after all, reputed by even the most churlish of the firm's senior partners to be a rather quick study, at least when he wanted to be, which admittedly