Pomaika'i's Furious Trail

Chapter 8

About three years prior to the main events of the story, and strangely, on the exact same day in the calendar as the day the captain's ship sank (albeit several years later), a young woman of 20 sat very bored in one of the classrooms of the University of California-Los Angeles's Haines Hall at 34.072513 N, -118.441127 W, looking out at one of the campus's quads.

It was a particularly sunny day, but the occupant of the seat by the name of Julia Rosalina Vidic, or, Julie. Her importance, if you have been reading so far, is extremely important. For she is set to be departing on an expedition to some godforsaken island in a matter of weeks for a semester-long trip.

And while she had to remind herself that she was, of course, weeks away from her life-changing trip, she was mere seconds from receiving a harsh reminder from her teacher in 3... 2... 1... now.

"Ms. Vidic!" the teacher shouted with such ferocity to interrupt not only her, but her entire class. His shout forced her to sit up straightly while making a feminine 'eep' sound and make nervous eye contact with the teacher's very irritated look. "Find anything interesting out there?"

Julie was reminded of unfortunate moments in grade school, when her teacher would call her out for similar transgressions. "Not really," she said.

"Having another Jane Porter daydream or something?" he asked, making her cringe at her interest in a particularly old-fashioned, romantic, and pretty racist literary character and his adventures in a fictional version of Africa.

"No," she replied.

"Perfect! Then perhaps, you can tell us what we were talking about."

Julie happened to look just for a microsecond at the desk to her right, belonging to a young woman whom she'd had a few testy conversations with over body image, and particularly how she saw and called Julie a "walking fatshamer" just because her arms happened to be toned. The notes had a single, simple word, but that word carried enough baggage to fill 15 Boeing 747s, and none of it was good: "Jonestown".

"Jonestown," she said confidently.

"So either you've been listening, or you were lucky," he said, having been looking away when Julie looked at her already-unhappy neighbor. "What do you know about it, aside from the painfully-obvious blue whale in the room regarding that topic?"

"That it showed all the warning signs of a destructive cult as time went on," she replied, while stopping herself from making it sound like a question.

"Yes, and what ARE those warning signs?" he asked while making a gesture that subtly said, 'I want you to answer this, or I am going to humiliate you in more ways than one, because you deserve it this time'.

"They... are really, really controlling over their members' lives?"

"Go on."

"They have to abide by ethical double standards?"

"Yes..."

"Their only purpose is to recruit new members? Wait, that doesn't sound like Jonestown."

"Kinda depends," said the teacher. "Early on, they were like any mainline Christian denomi—keep going!"

"They're usually very exclusive and the leader claims to be innovative? Okay, I KNOW that's Jones."

"You're on the right track."

"The leader claims to be messianic, which I know perfectly fits Jones."

"Much better."

"The leader likes to keep the focus on themselves. Jones would often test his followers' loyalty to him, and the... Flavor-aid... was one of those tests."