Jill had never been a material girl; money was not her motivator; she had a higher purpose.  She knew that the novelty of her rebrand of this travel agency would wear off, but soon the truth of the world would be recognizable to even more people.  But thoughts of franchising had been something she might put on her vision board soon.

She looked around the current set up and shook her head, the fraud was about to come to an end.  Jill’s recently departed Aunt Nancy had been profited off the globe earth scam for years.  But soon the charade was going to stop.  Soon she and her company would no longer take part in this nonsense.   Granted her employees were not going to like it, there had already been grumblings about her beliefs, but they would come around.  The truth was powerful.

“Jill phone call line two.” Raul the office manager said waving a phone at Jill.  “It’s your Social Media Consultant.”

It looked like Jill was lost in thought.  As if she had a thought in her empty blonde head Pam thought.  The girl was a real space cadet.  Did anyone use that particular insult anymore Pam thought to herself but in this case the label was so appropriate.

“I will take it in my office Raul.”

“Line two.”  Pam yelled at the back of the blonde.  “That the blinking light with the two on it.”

“Her office.”  The sad tone from Raul was very clear.

“Well, she owns seventy percent of the business now so it’s her office now.”  Pam said in a tone that echoed her co-worker’s unhappiness.

“Who is this Social Media Consultant?” Raul asked.

Pam moved back to her desk which was next to Raul’s.  “Some fruit loop, his website has been up for six months.”  Pam said sitting down.  “She” Pam said with a contemptuous tone. “wants to ‘rebrand’ the company.”  He said using his fingers for air quotes.

Pam watched Raul pull out a red marker and made and x on his calendar.  The man was counting down the days till his next trip when he would fly far as South as possible, and he would have walked on all seven.  The cold desert had been Pam’s fourth continent she had stepped on, she knew Raul would love the penguins.

Pam rolled her eyes thinking about the ‘rebrand’.  She knew how much the business the company did.  The travel agency was one of the most profitable agencies in the tri-state area.  They were continuously having to turn away new business to other agencies because they were so busy.  The late Nancy had not only built this sucessful business, but she was a really nice lady as well.  She had treated everyone so well and finally made Raul and herself part owners of the company.  Then she passed away on that trip and her estranged niece had inherited the business.

The same niece she had not talked to in years.  The niece from her alienated sister.  Whereas Nancy was well traveled, well read and well liked.  Nancy had once described her sister as a homebody, an isolationist, the only book she read was the Bible, and about as pleasant as a sauerkraut lime tripe pie.  That sister had raised Nancy’s niece, who believed the Earth was flat.  The niece who called the moon landing a fantastic hoax, N.A.S.A. a bunch of criminals and dismissed the whole idea of trips to Antarctica as CGI.

That niece was now in the only private office here and was planning to make major changes to this very sucessful business.

Pam sighed and wondered if the 2^nd most succsesful travel agency in the area was hiring.  She had steered enough clients to them in the last couple of years.

“So, is everything set for the launch Fred?” Jill asked while doodling on a map on her desk with a red pen. Jill nodded at the response coming from the phone.  “I am really happy with the new logo; the deflating earth animation is great as well.”

Jill nodded listening to her friend/consultant gush over his artist.

“Well, I have got to go, I will talk to you tomorrow.”  A pause. “T-minus 3 days to our rebranding launch.”

Jill hung up the desk phone.  She could not wait till everyone was talking about her agency all around the country.

Three days later:

“You would think there would be more people, I said it was a big announcement.”  Jill said looking out towards the parking lot.  She had traffic cones placed sectioning off three parking spaces in front of the business so that the reporters would have someplace to stand, and the camera crews would have plenty of space.  There were only two  people standing in those three parking spaces now.  One was a kid from the local township paper that covered kids sporting events, main street parades and had a full page of coupons and recipes.  The other was a wanna be internet journalist who was both a camera operator and commentator.

“Time for our announcement.”  Fred said.

“Shouldn’t we give the local reporters more time to get here.”  Jill said hesitantly.

Fred huffed.  “Local news is so 20^th Century.  What’s important is  all your social media blitz.  As soon as you finish, we are going to go live with your announcement.  Facebook, X, Tik Tok, Little Red Book, Instagram, Twitch, Snapchat and all the rest. Will we bet viral by dinner time.”

Jill nodded and approached the podium and adjusted the microphone.  “Hello everyone thank you all for coming.”   Looking out at the two strangers and Fred’s camera person which looked surprisingly like a young female version of Fred.

The local township paper reporter made a note on his electronic notepad. The Internet journalist keep his face hidden behind his large digital camera.  “My name is Jill Townsend and I am the primary owner of this company, Global Treks.”  She paused.  “I recently inherited it from my Aunt the late Nancy Parker.  While my Aunt Nancy was a sweet generous woman, she was widely naïve and possibly dishonest.”

This got the local journalist’s head to pop up from his notepad.

The blogger kept his camera steady.

“My Aunt Nancy was part of the problem that faces all of mankind. She continued the myth, the cover up that the earth is a sphere.  She traveled enough to know the truth of the planet, but instead she opened this business and used the fable of the spherical planet to make money off the gullible and brainwashed.”

She thought Fred’s cameraperson was laughing but she could not be sure as the camera was on a tripod.

“But all that ends today.  I am taking a stand, this company, my company will no longer participate in the indoctrination for profit off the great lie.  The earth is Flat, so my company will now be called,”  Jill turned and saw Fred was ready to pull the cord. “The True Earth Travel Agency”   The banner with the new artwork unfurled behind her.  It had a new business name with a logo of deflating globe underneath, with the subtitle ‘Sending You Out To Discover Reality’.

She smiled proudly but then saw that both reporters were laughing,  and the girl behind Fred’s camera was definitely laughing.

Jill shook her head.  “I see you folks believe the propaganda put out by the controlled media and the corrupt educational system.”   She shook her head again in anger.  “If you are not part of the solution, if you refuse to open your eyes, if you refuse to believe in the wonderful words of the Holy Bible and common sense, if you continue to propagate the immoral and beliefs pushed by the Rockefeller funded education system then you are part of the problem.”    With that she turned in a huff and left her own press conference.

24 Hours Later:

“I turned off my ringer.”  Pam stated as she sipped her coffee in the minuscule break room.

“I don’t think you can do that.”  Raul started opening the cardboard box to see what donuts were left.

“Well, I just turned the volume to the ringer way down, same thing.”  Pam said.  “Although that means I accidentally picked up the phone to make an outgoing call and I got one of the people calling in to make a snide remark.”

Raul pulled a plain unadorned brown donut out of the box, it was the last one, except for the one covered in coconut flakes.  “Eeeewww  coconut.  He said voicing his thought.  “What psycho picked that one to be in the dozen?

Pam made a face in agreement.

Jill came in and went straight for the box.   “Oh good no one took my favorite.”  She said as she took the last donut in the box.

“So, lots of new business coming in, I have heard the phones ringing off the hook since I came in this morning.”

“New, no new clients.”  Raul said with an overt level of sarcasm.  Pam rolled her eyes.   Raul just gave a slight shake of his head.

Jill chomped on the donut oblivious to the looks exchanged between her two employees.

Pam spoke up first. “Most of the calls are pranks,  mostly making fun of your announcement yesterday.”

Jill nodded as if she knew something that no one else did.  “Typical, but soon we will get all kinds of new clients who know the truth and who will trust us for our honesty and bravery in confronting the travel industry head on.”

Jill again missed the looks between the two and finished her donut. “But no new clients yet, huh?  I am a little bit surprised by that, not a one.”

Raul spoke up. “Well, there was one that wanted to know if we were offering any excursions to The Ice Wall? I offered them a trip to Antarctica.”

Jill appeared deep in thought for a full minute at this.  “Well, everyone knows that the military does not allow anyone to travel to the Ice Wall, but maybe in a year we will gain a large enough client base it might be a possibility in the future.”

Pam’s mouth flew open in shock.

Raul was about to say something to defuse the situation when Pam anger had bubbled over.  “You dumb, dumb stupid woman.”  Raul heard the anger coming out. “I have been to Antarctica, twice with two different tour groups.  There is no military there, no armed forces keeping people out.”  Her voice continued to get louder as all the pent-up anger came out.  “This was a nice place to work, your Aunt.”

Raul piped in. “God rest her soul.”

Pam looked at Raul angrily but then nodded in agreement and then turned back toward Jill.   “Your Aunt was a Flight Attendant traveling all over the world, then she opened this agency to share her love of travel with people.  And now you want to destroy it with your stupid moronic beliefs.”

Jill was looking at Pam with total shock so much that she had stopped chewing the last mouthful of coconut donut.

“This agency, helped people travel all over the earth, school groups traveled to Paris, church groups on missions troops to build schools and feed people,  veterans visiting battlefields in Europe, and newlyweds off to exotic places like Fiji, Easter Island and Bismark, North Dakota.”

“Bismark?”  Raul said aloud.

“Fly fishing, weird couple.”  Pam said quickly.  “We have not been able to get any work done, because people have been calling making fun of us all morning, ordering pizzas, wanting pancakes and for some reason making density jokes.”   Pam said running out of steam.

“I don’t like your tone.”  Jill said.

Pam rolled her eyes.  “Well, I don’t like your moronic beliefs, but that is the slightly oblate spheroid world we live on.”

“You are fired.”  Jill said finally.

Raul raised his hand as if to object to Jill.

“Are you sure you want to do that?  I mean you are foolish and have idiotic beliefs and I will take every opportunity to undermine your beliefs every chance I get.”

“Absolutely. You are fired.”  Jill said smugly.

Pam nodded, put her coffee mug down on the countertop and walked out of the small room.

Jill nodded.  “Good riddance.”

Raul shook his head.  “You should not have done that.”

“Why not, I am the boss, and what I say goes, we are a Flat Earth travel agency and I will not have her negative attitude to destroy what I am trying to create here.”  Jill said standing there with her hands on her hips.

Raul shook his head as he watched Pam leave the office with her coat and purse.  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Jill turned towards him.  “And why not?”

“Well, if you had read the employment contract that I told you about last week you would know that now you have to pay her either ten percent of the value of the business within six months or pay her five percent of the profits for the next three years.”

Jill turned on Raul.  “What?”

3 Days Later:

Raul looked over the numbers from his agents, most who worked from home and had been unaffected directly by the craziness of the office. Unfortunately, after Pam left the craziness stepped up a notch, the internet had gotten hold of the footage and it had been nonstop e-mails and phone requests for interviews from news shows and internet personalities. Raul had tried to say no statements but once Jill heard him turn down an interview with a major network, she had told him to forward all requests directly to her re-branding guy.

It had gotten so bad that he had gone in without approval or authorization and changed the website to redirect all media requests to Jill’s “PR” guy.

Pam had texted him and said that she was going to start working for their competition. Raul had kept this to himself as Jill had a throbbing vein in her neck every time Pam’s name was mentioned. Raul was saving the news of the former agent’s new job till the end of the day so he could send Jill home with a headache.

Along with the Pam news he also was saving his weekly report of no new clients till the end of the day as well.  Normally when Nancy had been running the place they could usually count on at least one, maybe two new clients a week but since her Flat Earth announcement they had not had a single new signing. New client usually came  through referrals. So, despite the huge uptick in incoming phone calls and the avalanche of e-mails on the server, no new business was coming in. As the office manager he was always concerned with workload ratios and currently the work completed was dwarfed by the incoming ridiculing, pranking, and some downright harassing emails and phone calls.

One Month Later:

“And since our re-branding, we have exactly one new client sign a  contract with us, who then promptly terminated the contract within the forty-eight-hour window of signing the document.”  Raul stated not having to look at his notes for this portion.   “Also, the local high school has terminated their contract with us, for their German, Spanish and French Clubs.”

He looked over at Jill who was polishing her nails with a buffer.  The woman had no shame.  Raul looked around the room at his remaining travel agents.  This was their regularly scheduled semi-annual meeting, one of the few times all the agents were in one room as opposed to their home offices.  All the remaining faces were looking defeated and crushed.  Some of them were holding onto clients with just their personal relationships alone which they had built over the years.  But with no new clients coming in they were despondent, and their friends moving to other agencies was disconcerting as well.

The long pause had somehow gotten Jill’s attention.  “Is that all Raul?”

Raul looked around the room, he wondered if this was the time, if this was the place.  “No.”  He said quietly just above a whisper.

“What did you just say Raul?”

Raul took a deep breath and looked Jill dead in her eyes. “No that is not all.”  His tone caught everyone in the room by surprise and all his employees turned optimistically towards him.

“Your Aunt worked to build this agency up to the most respected, most trusted travel agency in the area and in the five weeks since your announcement you have not only crashed this agency into a cement wall, you then lit this wreck of an agency on fire, dumped a load of manure on it to put out the fire then proceeded to soak that pile with kerosene and light it on fire again.”

There were happy expressions around the room from the assembled employees.

Raul saw that the anger vein was a deep purple on Jill’s neck.

Raul while not usually confrontational, but he took one more look around at his admiring employees and decided to continue and say everything he wanted, it had turned out for Pam. “You are an uneducated, willfully ignorant person, who cannot understand that every interviewer  that you met with since your ‘big reveal’ has been making fun of you.”

He took a breath.  “Your nonsensical beliefs have made us a laughingstock of the travel industry.  There is an article coming out from Travel Agent Magazine listing us as the biggest joke in the Northeast and possibly in the country.”   Raul said.  “This was the same magazine that two years ago rated your Aunt Nancy as one of the most trusted travel agents in the fifty states.”

“Travel Agent Magazine is not read by our clients.”  Jill said flatly.

“Yes, but it is read by people who work with us, and when that article comes out it is going to kill any other agency from working with us or giving us referrals.”  A hush had fallen over the room.  Raul stopped looking at Jill and turned towards the remaining employees.  “My friends, I suggest you leave and find employment as soon as possible before the article comes out.”

There was murmuring around the room.

Jill stood indignantly.  “You are fired, and I am not paying out your contract, you are destroying my business plan and no court will force me to pay you off after your attempts at sabotage.”

Raul rolled his eyes.

Jill turned away from Raul towards the assemble travel agents. “It is always darkest before the dawn.   Things were bound to take a downturn, but soon, very soon people who know the truth will be flocking to us.”  Jill stated in a pleading tone.  “We are on the edge of the great reveal about the true nature of the earth.  People are beginning to wake up to the deceptions and lies that have been plaguing mankind since at least the fifties when the Rothchild’s education system took hold.”

A couple agents had closed their notebooks, one lady was gathering up her purse.  One person pushed their chair back from the big conference table and left the room.

“Please don’t go; I am right.  You will all see very soon; does it really feel like the earth is moving?  Or has anyone really measured the entire earth?”  Three people had gathered their stuff and nodded to Raul as the left the room.

Jill sounded even more desperate. “People are waking up to N.A.S.A.’s lies and the conspiracy by the Mason’s.”

Raul noted that the one last serious holdout that had not moved a muscle finally had it with that statement.  Raul knew her husband was a Shriner as she was member of the Order of the Eastern Star. She looked at Jill and shook her head and nodded at Raul as she left, leaving the two alone.

Jill looked like she was about to cry as the last travel agent left the room. “But you don’t understand you have all been tricked.”

Raul shook his head.   Jill now had her head in her folded arms on the table and he could hear her sobbing.  Raul walked quietly towards the door but decided to say one last thing.  “Oh yeah my trip to Antarctica is paid in full I will just print my tickets from home, you can just mail me my last check.”

Categories: My Views On The Real World, Outrageous Lies and Tales, Uncategorized, You Are Not Special

Tags: The Flat Earth, travel, Travel Agency, travel articles