The Immortal Story

Late nineteenth century Macao. Mr. Clay is an aged wealthy merchant, who is unaware that he is disliked because of his ruthless business dealings and thus largely alone in the world, about which he probably would not care regardless. His only companion is his clerk of seven years, Elishama. Clay believes in history, not in prophesy. During one of Clay and Elishama's evening social sessions together where Elishama generally reads from his accounting records, they discuss a story concerning a wealthy aged businessman, his young wife and a sailor that both have heard, that has largely circulated through the seafaring community, and that they now believe to be an old sailors' tale. As such, Clay wants the story to become a prophesy come true by his doing. He entrusts Elishima with finding a young woman to play his wife, while he himself will find the appropriate sailor within the streets of Macao. His goal is to have the sailor be able to tell the story as it happened to him and thus become a widespread story on reality. Who Elishima finds to play the wife is Virginie, who used to live in the house Clay currently owns and in which she has not been since she was a child. Virginie has her own motives for agreeing despite despising Clay. Similarly, Paul, the young Danish sailor Clay finds, has his own reasons for following Clay. The question becomes if Clay, Virginie, Paul or even Elishima for that matter will come out of the scenario what they wanted going into it.