"That all sounds very compelling", says Carl. "But you never found out who was behind any of this?"
"Oh, but there's more", says Aaron, looking now very wise and rather menacing. "I had been living there just a few months, and life was not getting much easier. Just a couple of weeks after I moved to that house, my mother was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Back then, the survival rate was still very low, between five and ten percent, so I was dedicating a lot of energy and time to supporting her, while working and while maintaining the house and land, since there was a lot of work involved in upkeep and maintenance. There was something very sad, broken and malevolent about that place, yet it seemed like God's choice for starting a new Christian community. But the problems were only just beginning.
"On my way home from work in the Downtown Eastside every day, I had the custom of walking through Gastown along Water Street and stopping in the Waterfront Station. Vancouver's first Starbucks was located there, just before it mutated and metastasized into the monster chain of international coffee houses that completely cornered the market and all but destroyed local café cultures. I was sitting there nursing a cup of dark roast from somewhere in Africa or Indonesia, when a young man stopped by to start chatting with me. He said his name was Jeremy and he was visiting on business from Winnipeg. He said he was twenty-six years old. I told him a little bit about where I lived, and suddenly he invited himself out with me that same day. Since I was not one to forbid hospitality, I invited him to bus out with me that same day.
"I still have no idea who he was, or why he wanted to talk to me, or what compelled him to want to see where I lived, but to this day, I believe that he had been observing me, and was part of a network that had me under observation, and that he had his own reason for wanting to see where I lived..."
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