The faxes came into James one by one. There was quibbling and squabbling about the details. He’d expected that and didn’t mind at all. Negotiations sometimes brought about their own peculiar excitement. Besides, this was a very welcome change of pace to the usual dry boardroom stuff. They were trying to chart some unexplored territory here, after all. The biggest thing to decide was what constituted a Wonder.

There was a sense that, like pornography, they would know one when they saw it. The internet was an obvious Wonder of the World and it attracted billions but it wasn’t in the spirit of the thing. Virtual reality was shot down too. A decision was made to limit the technology involved. It was a subjective point, but one that they all understood.

Each Wonder must be made to last hundreds of years. They wanted to create a certain dignity and timelessness. It was suggested that each have a nonprofit organization created to oversee it in perpetuity. This was quickly adopted for tax purposes if nothing else.

The idea of keeping each one in their own backyard was fine with everyone. Each saw an advantage that they could use. James was thrilled with this as he knew that silly state rivalries can push otherwise sane people to greater lengths. Besides a contest like this was improved by some geographic diversity. It created more variety and if two of their Wonders were crowded together it would hurt both of them.

The worst arguments were about how to count the tourists. It wasn’t fair to judge each region the same and he’d known that from the start. In the end a formula was agreed upon that counted tourists as if they were ratios from the nearest metropolitan area. Lydia had been the most upset about this because she was counting on a natural advantage from parking her Wonder within walking distance of millions. She’d been outvoted though and that was that.

The other issue was one that had never crossed James mind. Should they publicize what they were doing? Of course when you build something as large as a Wonder, it’s hard to keep it under wraps. Word was bound to leak. What they really needed to decide was whether to publicize the bet or not.

Opinion was sharply divided on this. Lydia was on the side of making it public. Casey was surprisingly aggressive on this subject, himself. The strongest holdout was James, and he didn’t have any real argument beyond it not being the way that he’d pictured it. Finally, they agreed to let the world know what they were doing. They did agree to do it at a mutually decided time though.

After awhile the idea grew on him. What if the public really started following what they were doing? It felt strange that regular ordinary people might root for his efforts. Even more strange that they might root against him.

Lydia had talked about some cable channel even running a special on the whole thing. Maybe with a presentation show when the final numbers were announced. He supposed that they might televise his poor panel of experts, too. Would it be easier to find people if they thought that a rare chance at the spotlight was up for grabs? He would just have to find that out.

They’d come to an agreement on the judges, too. Each of them would select three members. The panel would rate each wonder on a scale from best to worst. The ratings would be tallied and the winner would be selected. Whether the acknowledgement would be in the newspaper, like he proposed or on live TV was still under debate but either way would be fine. That wasn’t any kind of deal breaker.

In the end, all seven of them had decided to play. That was a mild surprise as he expected at least one person to beg off. Peer pressure must have played a part. Or maybe he just caught all of the other six at the very best time of their life for this type of thing. Whichever it was, he was glad. This was the type of contest that was ‘the more the merrier’.

Along with the blizzard of correspondence between the contestants and their lawyers came the thumbnail sketches of each design. Rex called them the ‘dib sheets’ and the name stuck. He was still staying with his Labyrinth. Xian was building something that she called a Wind Chime Garden. Sam was building a Tower. Lydia had leased some space and was busy designing a Temple of Beauty. Roger faxed in a mere name, ‘Machinery of Warfare’. No one was sure what that meant but everyone understood that his boys had been part of the selection process. Casey simply said that he was doing something with islands and left it at that.

James was pleased that no one had taken his idea and more than a little proud of the competition. He’d hoped that his months of thinking about this would give him more head start than it actually did. Looked like they were going to make him work for his money. He smiled at the thought. Guess he’d have to go out and beat the best.