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at Frankie’s?” Julia asked. “I already talked to nine or ten people on MSN last night about Frankie’s being poison.”
    â€œI’m talking the Internet, and I’m talking MSN, but I’m not talking about just a few people,” I said. “How many people do you have on your contact list?” I asked Julia.
    â€œI don’t know exactly, but maybe 140 or 150.”
    â€œAnd you, Oswald?”
    â€œEighty or ninety.”
    â€œI’m about the same. Now, what if we all put out a mass e-mail, a blast, to everybody on our contact lists. In that blast we have a message saying why Frankie’s food is bad and asking them to stay away from Frankie’s on that Friday.”
    â€œTwo Fridays from now, right?” Oswald said.
    â€œIt doesn’t have to be then, but I thought the timing was about right. We can call it Frankie’s Free Friday.”
    â€œThat’s catchy,” Oswald said.
    â€œThat was why I chose a Friday. There’s something about the sound of all those
f
‘s.”
    â€œOkay, so I send out a blast to 140 people and you two send out another 90 messages each…so what?” Julia asked. “That’s like 320 people…actually less because we have a lot of the same people on our contact lists, so some people would get three messages, one from each of us.”
    â€œWe do have a lot of people in common,” I agreed. “I’m thinking maybe only forty people on each of our lists would be different from the others’.”
    â€œSo you think 120 people are going to make a difference?” Julia asked.
    â€œNo, I was thinking less than that. Probably half of those people will just delete the message and put it in their trash.”
    â€œSo it’s a waste of time,” Julia said.
    â€œNo, it’s a
start
. What if those 60 people who do respond send out a blast to everybody on
their
contact list? That would mean 60 people with 40 contacts each is 2,400 people. And then if half of those people do a blast of40 people, there would be 48,000 contacts who receive the message.”
    â€œThat can’t be right,” Oswald said.
    â€œYes it is. Look.” I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and unfolded it. “See for yourself.”
    Oswald and Julia looked at my figures.
    â€œAnd you see that by the sixth generation— the sixth time it spreads out—the message could reach three hundred and eighty-four
million
people.”
    Julia looked up at me. “This actually could work, couldn’t it?”
    â€œIf the message goes out to that many people and only some of them listen, you can make a difference in how many people eat at Frankie’s. We actually could make it a Frankie’s Free Friday.” I paused. “So?”
    â€œSo, I think we should do it,” Julia said.
    â€œOswald?” I asked, although I knew Julia had already given
his
answer.
    â€œI’m in. What do we do now?” he asked.
    â€œLet me draft the letter and then I’ll MSN you both tonight and we can go for it.”
    â€œTonight?” Julia asked, sounding surprisingly hesitant.
    â€œNo point in waiting. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
    â€œIt’s just that Oswald and I were going out,” Julia said.
    â€œHopefully you won’t be going out all night.”

Chapter Six
    I sat down at the computer. I needed to write the letter we were going to send out. I knew what I wanted to say—sort of, but not exactly. This had to be perfect. The success, or failure, of this whole project depended on what I wrote. I had been thinking about it a lot, and I knew what I wanted to write. I just had to write it.
    Here it goes.
    Hello Friend,
    Â Â Â 
This is not a junk letter and I’m not trying to sell you something. I don’t want your money.
    Â Â Â 
I want to tell you about something and invite you to take part in something