Dark City - Portrait Of An Urban Mercenary As A Young Man

Everything I know about living off the grid, I've learned from F. Paul Wilson might be just a bit of an exaggeration. Still, I was just a bit disappointed that there were no new tax tips from Repairman Jack in Dark City.  One of the other characters had some good tax advice, if your life takes a certain path, but I'll give you some background first.

You Don't Know Jack?

Repairman Jack is sometimes referred to as "an urban mercenary".  He is a little like Zorro or the Lone Ranger saving the innocent and outwitting the bad guys.  "Repairman" is a metaphor that Jack reluctantly embraced.  What he fixes are situations where basically decent people need help, but cannot go to the authorities.  Suppose, for example, someone steals an historic sword from you.  Jack might help you recover it.  The authorities, on the other hand, are under the impression that it really belongs in a museum.  Jack tries to keep a very low profile.  When the fix is complete he does not want someone to say "Who was that masked man ?".  He would prefer "WTF?" The other difference is that Jack charges for his services – handsomely.

Jack lives in contemporary Manhattan.  If you need his services, you will have to luck into a referral.  The other thing you need to know about Jack is that he is a critical part in a much larger story, which is referred to as The Secret History of The World.  Most of the events of history for the last several thousand years are the result of a struggle that many people have intimations of, but few have the faintest idea of its true nature.  Our world is a very small part in a great struggle. It is not the eternal struggle between good and evil.  It is the very long struggle between not so bad and incredibly awful.  Jack has a special role to play in the struggle, but he is being dragged kicking and screaming into it.  His preference would be to just take care of himself and the few people he cares about.  It is really annoying to him that in order to do that he might have to save the world.

Those Cannons In Hamlet