Imagine, all satellite-based media in the United States suddenly stops functioning. In an instant, you can’t place or receive a phone call, access the Internet, watch TV, even operate a GPS. More alarming still, all your media devices begin displaying brief, cryptic messages… from something called “The Real Deal.”
You feel a shiver of anxiety. You try to phone your spouse at work or text the kids at school, but all you get are more short messages.
You hear sirens, helicopters, and the scream of a low-flying F-16. You rush outside, where your neighbors—cell phones in hand-- are gathered in frightened groups. No one can get a line out or receive anything other than the strange messages.
All communication in the country has been hijacked.
In your panic, it may or may not occur to you that the seemingly disparate Real Deal messages are, in truth, related. Each message contains a “fact,” one shocking statistic regarding the actual condition of the world today.
The messages come faster and faster. Incredibly, they seem not to repeat. The cacophony crescendos, it threatens to overwhelm you.
And then… it’s over, as suddenly as it begun.
What then?
THE REAL DEAL opens with this attack, seen through the eyes of 17-year-old Mouse Mussendon, a misfit senior at a posh, private school in Los Angeles.
Blisteringly funny and hyper-articulate, sensitive and self-critical, Mouse couldn’t be more unlike her sunny and privileged classmates. Her distinctive Emo hair and caustic Goth humor have served her well as protective coloring. But now, with graduation only weeks away, Mouse finds herself frightened of the future, frozen by the choices that adult life demands.
Then, one sunny spring afternoon, The Real Deal happens, and Mouse is inexplicably “hooked” by the messages, almost to the point of obsession. While the country convulses with conspiracy theories and the Feds launch a worldwide manhunt, Mouse embarks on her own adventure. Her mission? Uncover the truth behind the mysterious Real Deal messages.
Like “Crash,” THE REAL DEAL follows multiple story lines as Mouse and her classmates, parents, teachers and their spouses respond (or choose not to respond) to the Real Deal.
THE REAL DEAL is part mystery, part contemporary satire, part techno thriller and part call-to-action. Ultimately and finally, it is the chronicle of one brave girl’s journey towards self-discovery… towards the Real Deal.
