by Glenn Cooper
“Jesus,” Alex whispered. “Prove it and they will come.”
The Butler County sheriff was in meltdown mode. He didn’t know the governor, didn’t much like him, and sure as hell hadn’t voted for him, but now the man was calling him every hour. The sheriff took the call on his mobile, his car parked in the middle of the state road a mile to the east of the Bolz farm. A row of deputy sheriffs’ cars completely blocked both lanes. He had a second roadblock in place a mile or so west of the farm. He’d caused a traffic jam, the likes of which he’d never seen.
“Yes, sir, I understand the importance of controlling the situation, but there’s not a lot we can do about folks just pulling off the road and driving through the damn fields to get to Bolz’s farm.”
He massaged the back of his aching neck with one hand while listening to the governor yell at him.
“Yes, sir, I understand that people can’t drive across private property but I’ve only got so many deputies down here.”
There was more yelling as he watched hundreds of red taillights moving at speed through the dry cornfield.
“Hell yes, Governor. Send the state patrol in. Send everyone you’ve got. This is way over my pay grade.”
Alex woke Jessie, Sam, and Steve. Erik was waiting for them on the porch. The night air carried sweet hints of spring. His wife, LuAnn, offered food and drink but Alex had something else he wanted to do. Erik led him and the others out back where the small camp from the morning had morphed into something altogether different.
It was no longer possible to see where back yard ended and tilled field began because hundreds of stationary headlights and taillights were there, fanning out into the darkness, merging into one huge glowing dome.
Steve tried to persuade him to hold back but Alex insisted. “They want to see me and I want to see them.”
He waded into this makeshift campground where he was recognized immediately.
Men and women poured out of their cars, trucks, campers, and RVs to see him, talk to him, touch his sleeve, tell him about the way Bliss had changed everything. People waved sticks of Bliss at him, laughing, crying. Surrounded by the adoring masses, Alex turned to Jessie with tears in his eyes. “I called them … and they came.”
Alex sat around the farmhouse kitchen table with Sam, Jessie, and Steve. They were giddy about the explosion of people around them and after a hearty supper they were in high spirits.
“It’s time,” Alex said suddenly, leaning his chair back on two legs.
“Time for what?” Jessie asked.
“The clock stands at seven days. I want to tape two messages: one to be played tonight, the other to be played on Day Zero, just in case I’m not here to do it myself.”
“What are you going to say?” Steve asked.
“Ah.” Alex sighed. “What am I going to say? It’s time I told you, my loyal kitchen cabinet.” He smiled, waving at the pots and pans. “You’ve earned the right to know my intentions.”
The others put their silverware down, kept themselves still.
He stood. It seemed appropriate to be proudly upright. “Today, I’m going to tell people we have seven days left to contemplate the world with all its flaws, its warts, its meanness and cruelty. I’ll tell them that Bliss has shown us a new path to inner peace and enlightenment: that this world of ours is transitory and base; that the afterlife is permanent and glorious. I will tell them that in six days a new era will begin, the Inner Peace Era, and that this era will change everything we know—for the better.”
He gazed out the window. In the evening light rose a cloud of dust from the continuous cascade of cars busting the blockades and coming in over dried-out fields.
He turned back to the kitchen table. “The bible says that God created the world in seven days. It’s laughably primitive, but it’s evocative, isn’t it? Let’s turn it on its head. We started the clock twenty-three days ago. Since then Bliss has literally exploded. Who knows how many people have used it! Millions? Tens of millions? Its impact has been enormous: spiritually, socially, economically … the pump is well-primed. Today, let’s reverse that biblical seven days. Let’s begin the last phase of the countdown. In seven days, we’re going to start again and return to God.”
“What’s going to happen, Alex?” Jessie asked in a dry, hushed voice.
“In seven days, I’m going to tell people that their day has come: that their wait is over. That it’s time for them to cross over forever and join their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, friends—all the dearly departed ones waiting for them. I’ll tell them how much Bliss they need to take. I’ll tell them to fly off buildings, use gas, open veins, string a rope, use any means of their choice to leave this world and enter the next. For good.” His eyes danced. His voice rose. “And think of it! If ten million people or more act, if it’s only a fraction of that, the world will never be the same again. It’ll be a post-Bliss society where those who choose to stay won’t live for a single hour without thinking about those who chose to leave. Many will turn to Bliss, perhaps trying it for the first time, and more will choose to cross over. The tide will have turned. Mankind will be focused on its spiritual future rather than its mired past. The world won’t look the same or be the same. It will be a new golden age. It will be glorious.”
No one spoke.
The evening wind carried the sounds of children playing in the nearby field.
Finally, Jessie asked, “Will we leave too?”
“It’ll be your choice, everyone’s choice; but I’ll be going. My father’s waiting.”
Jessie’s voice sounded like the chirping of a little bird. “If I go too, will you be there?”
“I’m sure of it,” Alex promised. “I’ll be there for you.”
Cyrus’s phone rang, muffled. He felt for it and just before it went to voice mail he found it on the floor near the bed, under Emily’s dress. It was a Saturday afternoon and he’d been sleeping.
Stanley Minot was on the line.
Cyrus listened then hit the switch on his bedside lamp. Emily emerged from under the covers with a squint and heard his end of the conversation. When he was done he tossed the phone back onto her clothes pile.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“We’ve found Alex Weller.”
“That’s good, no?”
“Not exactly,” Cyrus said, slipping into his boxers. He got up, opened his blinds and went back to bed to slide his palm over her bare back. “Thank God you’re in my life.”
Fifty-one
6 DAYS
Who will stop the rain, who will stem the tide?
In the morning sun, Alex walked through the community he’d begun to call New Rising City, thinking about the forces of nature.
I can’t be stopped either.
There were thousands of people.
Thousands.
Erik’s tilled field was full and more were coming, spreading out into adjoining fields, forming neighborhoods and villages within the larger city. Responding to Alex’s message, they’d brought provisions, food, water, propane: enough to sustain themselves for a good week.
“I’m Alex,” he said to a young family cooking eggs and bacon on a propane grill beside their tent and pickup.
“We know who you are,” the woman said, holding her baby up. She wanted Alex to touch her head and he obliged, stroking the girl’s silky hair.
“I’m glad you came,” Alex said.
“Can’t think of anywhere else we’d rather be,” the man avowed. “Will you eat with us?”
“Thank you. I’ve got to visit with others. There’re so many.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Will you continue to follow me?”
“Yes, we will,” the woman affirmed, giving her breast to her baby. “We seen your new message. Six days now. We’re with you. God bless you, Alex.”
Alex puffed out his chest and proceeded to the next encamped vehicle.
Erik Bolz used his aut
hority as landowner to attend to organization and he was good at it. He didn’t much care about his precious land anymore but he was concerned for all these souls, and as their host of sorts, he felt some responsibility for their well-being. Big Steve Mahady fell easily into place as his right-hand man. Early in the morning, the two rode a tractor into the mass of humanity in the direction of a curiously loud voice. Outside a camper covered in Bliss bumper stickers they found a fellow with a bullhorn and confiscated it for the greater good.
People were willing to help. There was no shortage of men with pistols and rifles and a militia was formed in quick order to patrol the perimeter and prevent the media and law enforcement from coming onto private property. Steve assembled the ragtag squad of farmers, tradesmen, students, salesmen, even an accountant and a lawyer, and addressed them proudly. They were the movement’s minutemen, citizen-soldiers willing to fight and die to protect Alex Weller’s mission to bring a new age of spirituality to the world. Alex, he told them, was fearless. He knew the authorities were after him and that they’d do anything, including fabricating charges, to suppress the movement—but he was comfortable in revealing his presence at Rising City; surrounded by so many like-minded people, he felt safe and secure. So exchange mobile numbers, Steve told them. Keep in touch, keep vigilant, stay strong.
When the men dispersed to take on the perimeter of New Rising City, Erik remarked, “Impressive, Steve. You ever been in the military?”
“Close,” he replied. “I was a public school teacher.”
Erik threw himself into more prosaic tasks. He took his backhoe and chose the location for latrine pits and garbage tips. Then he and a crew of men strung hoses from the barns to make outdoor showers and watering spots.
“I don’t know if this is enough,” he declared to his wife at the end of the day, “but it’s better than nothing. Never seen anything like this.”
“It’s like Woodstock,” LuAnn said, shading her eyes to the setting sun.
“This ain’t a rock and roll crowd,” he pointed out. “Looks more like the infield at the Indy Five hundred.”
Then there was the delicate problem of suicides. People brought Bliss with them—a lot of it—and though there was a whiff of cannabis here and there and plenty of beer cans about, the predominant drug at the farm was Bliss; and with it, the inevitable few were overwhelmed by rapture and decided to overdose or take their lives in other ways, some messy, some clean.
When the first body was found that afternoon, Erik used his bullhorn to ride through the fields asking if there were any morticians or funeral directors in their midst. There was one. An older man named Jennings came forward and was proud to take responsibility for laying out the dead and burying them in a remote corner.
Alarm bells went off in Washington as soon as Alex’s call for assembly went out. The news media with their bird’s-eye view helicopters buzzing the Bolz farm was a better source of real-time information than the static views at the law enforcement roadblocks. Every bureaucrat glued him- or herself to a cable channel of choice to follow along.
The Bliss Task Force met telephonically in emergency session. It was decided that there was nothing inherently illegal about a mass gathering on private property and the vigorous enforcement of narcotics laws was not a winning strategy. The target of law enforcement efforts had to be Alex Weller. He was a known fugitive with a federal arrest warrant and therefore the operation to capture him was placed in the jurisdiction of the FBI with support from the U.S. Marshals. Bob Cuccio would be in charge of the exercise and manage it locally. The White House chief of staff was on the call and warned, “Do what you have to do, but for God’s sake, we don’t want another Waco.”
Cyrus rang Cuccio after the conference call was over. “Bob, I want in.”
“Don’t you think it’s too soon?”
“I’m already back at work. When Weller’s in custody, I’ll do my mourning.”
“Okay, Cy. You’re on the team. See you in Nebraska.”
Fifty-two
5 DAYS
Cyrus rested his head against the cold plastic window of the Learjet. Below him the land looked like a brown-toned patchwork quilt.
“The Earth is flat,” he said.
Emily craned to see out his side. “No, Nebraska’s flat.”
They were alone in the cabin. The pilot came over the intercom. “Well be landing in Lincoln in fifteen minutes.”
Cyrus didn’t give a damn about conflicts of interest. He was beyond that. He approached Stanley Minot and told him he needed a consultant psychiatrist at his side in Rising City to help him chart the best course with Alex Weller. He recommended Emily Frost for her expertise in the psychology of death and her direct knowledge of Weller’s personality. He neglected to mention that he and Emily were sleeping together and he didn’t much care if that lack of disclosure ever came back to bite him. Besides, they’d save the U.S. government the cost of a hotel room.
It was a magnificent sunny day and Alex was in a splendid mood, spending a rare few minutes on his own. That morning he’d toured New Rising City and was treated like a king visiting his subjects. The settlement had spread onto one of Erik’s western fields and now a full eighty acres was filled with acolytes. No one had a good count but it didn’t matter; Alex knew there were thousands and they were still coming.
More armed men were recruited to patrol the perimeter and they held their ground, keenly watched through high-powered binoculars by FBI agents who’d obtained permission from neighboring farmers to set up their own perimeter. Between the two groups was a no-man’s-land of untilled fields.
Helicopters crisscrossed overhead. Their constant droning was irritating at first but now was part of the permanent soundscape and Alex hardly noticed them. Some were news choppers; others were FBI and state patrol. When Alex walked among his flock he held an open umbrella over his head to protect himself from being a target. Everyone with an umbrella opened theirs too. From the air, umbrellas appeared to be sprouting around the farm like flowers opening in the morning sun.
After lunch, Alex took Bliss and when his trip was over and Jessie left for the kitchen, he lay propped on the pillow utterly peaceful and mellow. He opened his laptop set on his belly. Sam told him he’d posted a new magazine article on the IPC website and thought Alex would want to read it.
Alex found the piece from BusinessWeek. “Is Bliss a Threat to the Global Economy?” A photo of an executive carrying an attaché case and opening a glass office door was captioned, Are your employees members of the Inner Peace Crusade?
Scott Truro, vice president of human resources at Manhattan-based French-Casper Publishing, is a worried man. Three times in the past month, he’s had to tell his boss, CEO Charlotte Giddings, that staffing problems were acutely affecting the company’s ability to produce product and compete for business. The problem isn’t labor unions or workplace illness. The problem is Bliss, the mind-altering drug that produces a spiritual high. Twice in two weeks Truro had to face critical manpower shortages at the company’s Newark production facility, literally shutting down the presses. It doesn’t stop there: In the company’s tony midtown offices, the no-show rate in the ranks of designers, writers, and editors has been astronomical.
Across the country and the rest of the industrialized world, similar scenes have been playing out in shop floors and office. Fanning the flames of this disturbing trend is the elusive and murky organization known as the Inner Peace Crusade, founded by a Harvard doctor, Alex Weller—now wanted by the FBI for murder—which seeks to turn as many people as possible to their version of the path of righteousness. Using the Internet as its trumpet, the IPC has recruited unknown hundreds of thousands of followers into this virtually structureless organization. Like a latter-day Timothy Leary, the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out LSD guru of the sixties, Weller has galvanized the movement with his erudite and personalized accounts of glimpsing the afterlife and has promulgated an enigmatic Internet countdown clock, now standing at fi
ve days, which has rattled the nerves of authorities around the world as to its intent. Weller now claims to be inside a spontaneously growing tent and camper community on a farm in Rising City, Nebraska, which has swelled to thousands of occupants. Surrounded by federal officers, there are mounting fears of a Waco-style standoff.
As the country heads back toward certain and deep recession, the ripple effects are being felt throughout the global economy. Bliss abuse in Europe and Asia hasn’t quite caught up with America but it’s gaining steam. Throughout Europe’s economic centers— Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Geneva, London, and Madrid— output is down and all indices of economic productivity point to a distracted and disaffected workforce. Even Japan, a bastion of workplace loyalty and stability, is experiencing a wave of Bliss-induced production delays and plant closings.
One person whose business has been thriving is Dr. Vincent Desjardines, one of the country’s leading experts on the behavioral effects of Bliss. Spotting a need, the psychologist left his practice and set up Desjardines Associates, a consulting company that works with corporate clients to prevent Bliss abuse in the workplace and attempt to deprogram the hooked. Desjardines admits that prevention is easier than converting a user. “You have to understand,” he says, “this is a very powerful drug. For many people, their day-to-day existence becomes intolerably ordinary and inconsequential. Waking up in the morning and going to work seems pointless. If they don’t opt for suicide, which is fortunately not terribly common, they tend to hang around their homes, taking repeated doses of the drug and spending down their savings. We’ve not had much success in winning these people back, even with immersion therapy techniques. The real hope, like many things in medicine, is prevention rather than cure.”
What kind of preventative measures work? So far, Desjardines claims that intensive mandatory companywide seminars to educate employees of the dangers of Bliss, complete with vignettes of suicides and family breakups, slow the rate of spread through an organization. But the most important maneuver, he claims, is to root out and expel any employees who seem to be followers or members of the Inner Peace Crusade. Desjardines gets animated when he talks about the IPC. “Some people who take Bliss don’t drop out and withdraw into a shell. Instead they become obsessed with spreading the word like missionaries looking for converts. They tend to be extroverts, people with strong convictions and beliefs to start with. Make no mistake about it: once they formally or informally ally themselves with this movement, they become a dangerous and destructive fifth column within a company. Through persuasion or actual sabotage they will get converts.”
