Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

  Melissa was not on hand for this, but Clare Downes was, and was seated next to Ananda. Surveying the room, before the light dimmed, Ananda saw the now familiar class filling the hall, along with not a few members of the faculty—some of whom he now recognized. He also noted three men by the door, slightly aside from the rest, who, for some reason he could not put his finger on, appeared to him sinister, perhaps because they seemed to make an effort not to.

  The light dimmed.

  Again, she opened the lecture with that one word that had caught the entire hall’s attention in her opening lecture, and now did so anew:

  “Stillness.”

  Once voiced, she watched it settle on her audience, deeply.

  “The consumer world of today would have you believe that there is no such thing as true stillness, or that if there indeed were such a thing, it certainly would have nothing to do with happiness.

  “On the contrary, look around you in any store, watch any commercial, any advertisement, take in any billboard, you are being told, loudly, colorfully, and cleverly, that one,” she held up a finger, “you are not happy. Two,” a second finger, “that being unhappy—that is to say, unsupplied with this particular item, whatever it is, a television set, a new computer, a two-pound steak the way only we can make it—is not only utterly unnecessary, but also uncool. And three,” a third finger, “it’ll hardly cost you anything, for we not only finance but will give you zero payments for the first twelve months.”

  Again, she looked around the room. Smiled at Ananda and at Clare. “Does it sound familiar?” she asked the class.

  A susurrus of agreement.

  “We are told again and again, in guises more varied than you can easily spot, that happiness depends on consumption, that consumption breeds happiness, that they in fact are synonymous. Happiness is consumption.

  “Yet, this happiness of eating, drinking, acquiring, consuming, is at best fleeting, and at worst, a disaster, something you could not afford, and which not only didn’t make you happy but also exceeded your budget and gave you heartburn, to boot, perhaps even an expensive doctor’s visit to top it off.

  “What you obtain when you buy happiness this way is basically a ton of garbage to effectively muffle, conceal, and even outright drown your true happiness, your stillness.”

  Ananda felt more than saw heads nodding at this, yes, they were tracking with her nicely, she made her point well.

  “We are over-consumers to an obscene degree,” said Ruth. “In fact, one of the saddest elements of this consumption society is that while almost half of the world’s population goes hungry, here in the western, developed world we have to advertise food, and stage sales, to get rid of it. Obesity is a scourge, a runaway epidemic, while emaciation is the balancing act performed by much of Africa and now Asia as well, especially after these many and terrible drought-years.

  “How much goods can you accumulate? Check your garage, or check your parents’ garage. Notice how there is no longer room for a car, even in a two-or three-car garage. And what doesn’t fit in the garage, has now been carted off to some nearby storage facility—with more of them springing up all the time to house more acquisition overflow.

  “These are things you don’t use but tell yourself you may need someday. Well, you never needed them in the first place and would have realized as much had you stopped to consider it before you gulped them down.

  “The stillness is still there, but now is buried under a mountain of acquired but unnecessary things. And not only under a mountain of things, more and more these days, but also under a flood of prescription drugs, coming, as you know, in all manner of shapes and for all manner of purposes. They’ll calm you down, they’ll put you to sleep, they’ll make you happy—yes, if you’d care to look, or reflect, you’ll see that this is one of the most repeated pharmaceutical slogans today: ‘We will make you happy.’

  “Happiness for all those who may, in their heart of hearts, suspect that things cannot make you happy, and now feel depressed about it. One pill, three times a day, they promise, will fix this nicely. Consult your doctor. He’ll be only too happy to help.

  “And, yes, for the first day, or week, it seems to work, until the side-effects of this new pill breaks you out in hives or make you unable to sleep or relax, calling for more drugs that will help you in that direction, which, of course, have their own side-effects and which may or may not mix at all well with drugs already in the system—all the while the stillness is not only forgotten but so obscured as to now be impossible to sense or find.

  “I view the pharmaceutical epidemic as just that, a threat to true happiness as insidious and as real as obesity and over-consumption. We in the Western world are burying ourselves alive, we are doing all we can to kill the unkillable, and we’re doing a pretty good job of it.”

  Her voice, over the last sentences, had risen to almost a shout. So when she said nothing more, the silence was palpable.

  But in this silence Ananda heard something that made him turn his head. It was the soft murmur between the three men by the door, one of whom was filming Ruth’s lecture—an unlikely candidate for that, is what Ananda thought. The words whispered back and forth held agitation, an urgency, reinforcing Ananda’s uneasy feeling about them.

  He tapped Clare’s shoulder and looked back at the men. “What do you make of them?” he whispered.

  Clare turned. Took them in. Turned back to Ananda, but before she could speak, Ruth said, “Man for man, woman for woman, we were happier two hundred years ago, with far less product to consume. With far fewer—if any—drugs to suffocate the stillness.”

  Then she paused again, and Clare looked back over her shoulder at the three men. “Agents of some sort,” she said.

  “Agents?” Ananda’s whisper was too loud, more like a soft shout. Ruth even looked in his direction.

  “I’ve learned to spot them,” said Clare. “It comes with my professional territory. That’s either CIA or FBI or some other Internal Security Outfit.”

  “Government agents?” Ananda clarified, as Ruth said:

  “If we are ever to return to, or find, true happiness, we need to join ranks with the mystics and learn to renounce this avalanche of product. We must learn to live simpler lives that do not require drugs to get us up in the morning, and drugs to tuck us in at night.

  “The stillness cannot die, cannot be killed, no matter how much you may have been convinced that it can. It is still there, within each and every one of you, intact, alight. But you need to slow down, you need to still the avarice that drives you to consume, you need to take a trip out to the ocean, or over to the mountains and listen to nature for a while, and know that this is what nature sounded like a hundred years ago, a thousand, a million years ago, still unperturbed though a little sad to see the folly of man, the supposed rulers of the earth.

  “If you allow it, your inner stillness will shake its shackles, will displace even mountains, and rise to prominence once again. Nowhere else will you find true happiness.”

  After another brief survey of her class, she ended in her usual way: “Questions?”

  Even before the lights undimmed the line had formed. Many questions. Ananda knew that she had touched a nerve, and at just the right time—considering the lectures she had given them to date. This was the precise thing to convey.

  Turning to the line of students, Ananda also caught the last of the three men leaving the hall, apparently in a hurry. He tapped Clare’s arm again, and she turned. But they had gone.

  “Are you sure?” said Ananda. “Government agents?”

  “Positive,” said Clare.

  :

  “It’s not so much what she says. From what I can gather there’s really nothing new there, but it’s how she says it. The kids, and the adults as well, lap it up and in, they take it as gospel. I’ve never seen kids listen so hard.” Agent Roth was back at his car, cell phone stuck between cheek and shoulder while he was opening the driver-side door. Fis
k and Johnson were heading for their car a few rows over.

  Fisk looked back, gave Roth a see-you-back-at-the-office wave. Roth waved back in the affirmative.

  “What do you mean, how she says it?” Anderson, his direct report at the other end of the line, spoke with a southern accent, Texan through and through, and proud of it.

  “She is, well, spellbinding,” said Roth.

  “Spellbinding?”

  “Yes.”

  “As in sorcery?”

  “Now that you mention it,” said Roth.

  “Get your ass in here,” said Anderson. Not kindly. Not unkindly.

  :

  Filing out of the hall with the rest of the audience, Ananda discerned more than one whisper of “The Buddha” among the young men and women surrounding him. He looked over at Clare to see if she noticed as well, but she seemed wrapped in her own thoughts.

  Another phrase caught Ananda’s ear, and more than once. It was “Messenger.”

  :

  Ruth’s office, in stark contrast to other staff offices on both sides of hers, was free of clutter to an almost sterile degree. Pristine is the word that always occurred to Ananda.

  Ruth, who greeted them standing, now sat down behind her desk, and motioned with her hand for Ananda and Clare to pick a chair each—there were four or five to choose from, to accommodate small informal student conferences.

  “Wow,” said Clare. “You really have their ear.”

  Ruth smiled and nodded. Looked over at Ananda. “Yes, it’s going well.”

  “There were many adults in the audience as well,” Clare observed.

  “The faculty,” said Ananda.

  “Curious at first,” said Ruth. “Now quite sincere. Interested.”

  “It may be going a little too well,” said Ananda.

  Clare seemed to know what he was referring to, but Ruth did not. “Always one to worry,” Ruth said. “What do you mean, Ananda?”

  “There were government agents in the back of the hall this time.”

  Her smile faded and Ruth took a long hard look at Ananda. Then over at Clare. Asked her, “Were they?”

  “Yes, definitely. No question,” said Clare.

  “Should I worry, or leave that to Ananda?” she said.

  “I think,” began Clare, and then looked over at Ananda as if to garner agreement. Ananda nodded slowly.

  “I think,” said Clare again, then followed it with: “that you should not not worry.”

  “Meaning?” said Ruth.

  “Meaning, government agents do not normally monitor university lecturers. They are here for a reason, Ruth, and that might well be a cause for worry.”

  “I guess you don’t disagree,” said Ruth to Ananda.

  “This is not a joke,” said Ananda.

  “I didn’t mean for it to be.”

  “You are attracting an awful lot of attention,” said Ananda. Then added, “Again.”

  “I have a job to do,” said Ruth.

  “I know that.”

  “Have you been stepping on any toes?” asked Clare.

  “Toes?” Ruth and Ananda spoke in near-unison.

  “Yes. These people usually don’t show up unless someone’s rights, or territory, has been violated, or infringed upon.”

  Ruth and Ananda exchanged searching glances. “No,” said Ruth. “I don’t think I have stepped on any toes.”

  “Well, you’ve earned someone’s official interest,” said Clare. Then added, “And that’s not necessarily a good thing.”

  :: 108 :: (Los Angeles)

  A decade or so before he was recruited by the FBI—he had just turned twelve at the time—George Roth became a celebrity, at least in some circles, when he discovered and reported a supernova in the constellation of Orion.

  At eight, he had decided he would be an astronomer when he grew up. At nine, with his interest in stars not abating, his parents (who were pretty sure that astronomy was not a well-paid occupation, if indeed it provided work at all) grew concerned.

  At ten, after many subtle, then not-so-subtle attempts to dissuade him from his chosen stellar path, his parents finally humored him and helped pay for a used Meade, 12” telescope, which George would carry up to the roof of his suburban apartment house any night that was—or might prove—free of clouds.

  At eleven he grew what his parents would refer to as “obsessed” with supernovae and began to scan the skies for them.

  A supernova, should you be lucky enough to have your telescope trained in that direction (though distance will, of course, have bearing on its brightness—one spectacular supernova in 1604, for example, made a star so bright it was visible during the day for over three weeks), will simply appear as a bright though short-lived star among the endless sea of permanent stars in the skies. And who’s to say that a field of millions of supernova-free stars yesterday has a brief guest today, unless you notice a change—ever so slight, obviously—in the fabric of the star-field.

  George Roth had that remarkable ability. And not only with stars. He could spot disruptions or changes in even the most intricate patterns. “Just a knack, I guess,” he answered one interviewer after his reported supernova had been confirmed by three independent (and official) observatories.

  He had been scanning Orion for the week prior, section by section, memorizing (and recognizing) the pattern of each, looking for that small disturbance that might, that just might, be the brief flash of that giant explosion so incredibly many light years away.

  Returning for a tenth scan of the constellation, he viewed section one (no change), section two (no change), section three (no change), but section four had changed. The flicker was, to him, unmistakable. And it had not been there the night before. How could he be certain? Well, he just was.

  He made a careful note of the position in his log, then packed up his telescope and went down to his computer. Not only did he email all of his astronomy-buffs friends, but he also reported his sighting to several astronomical societies both in North America and in Europe.

  Two hours later he had one official confirmation, from Hawaii. Yes, that was indeed a supernova.

  The following night, it shone a little brighter, and the night after that, brighter still. Then it began to fade, and after a week, it was gone.

  George felt like a hunter who had just slain his most elusive prey. Walking on clouds.

  Word spread fast that a twelve-year old had beaten the combined astronomical profession to the Orion supernova punch, and for the next week or so he grew quite famous. Three television crews arrived within hours of each other. The national papers carried his picture. The local papers did several stories, both about him and about his parents, and about astronomy in general.

  It was a big deal.

  But as such excitements do, this one soon died down as well, letting George get on with what he liked the best, training his telescope on the night-sky in search of mammoth explosions.

  This all changed one sweltering August night when his mother was killed by a stray bullet.

  George had walked with her to the nearby grocery store, and was now helping her carry the bags home. One moment she was talking to him, asking him something, the next moment she, mid-sentence, fell silent.

  She sometimes did this—when thoughts struck her, which they did now and then—so for the first fraction of a second George sensed nothing wrong. Then she dropped her bag, and she dropped to the sidewalk. That is when George turned his head and saw that something terrible had happened. He also saw the speeding Audi, and those inside that car.

  There were several other witnesses to the shooting, most of whom reported a speeding car, one of whom confirmed it was an Audi, but none of whom could with any degree of certainty tell even how many people might have been in the car, much less what they looked like.

  All except George. He had not only noticed the three men in the car, he had noticed the gun in the hand of the front seat passenger.

  Initially, the police did
not take him seriously, there was just no way. It had happened too fast. No one else could identify them. George insisted.

  In the end, George did clearly identify the shooter, who eventually, as part of a plea-bargaining deal, confessed to aiming for (and missing) his intended target, and accidentally killing George’s mother.

  This marked the end of George’s interest in astronomy. His priorities had changed, is how he put it to his father. He had decided to deploy his talent more constructively, he wanted to join the police force. Wanted to become a detective.

  Long story short: he succeeded. And so spectacularly, that he soon caught the attention of the local FBI office, who felt that his talents could be better utilized at the federal level. His seniors at the department (though somewhat reluctantly), as well as George himself, agreed.

  And so: Agent George Roth. Pattern wizard extraordinaire.

  Now assigned to detect what kind of disturbances this apparent genius named Ruth Marten might cause in the relatively peaceful societal fabric.

  :: 109 :: (Los Angeles)

  Phil Anderson rose his well-exercised six feet to his usual impressively straight as Roth knocked and entered. Anderson folded his arms. Unfolded them. Joined his hands behind his back. Then made to sit down again, but remained standing.

  “So, George. What have you got?”

  Roth closed the door behind him, and took a quick look around Anderson’s office, just to make sure they were alone. Nervous habit. Then thought about taking a seat, but since Anderson remained standing thought it best to do the same.

  “Well, she certainly has their ear. In a big way.”

  “In a dangerous way?”

  The question took Roth by surprise, or, rather, the intent of the question. He saw his assignment as a more or less routine check-up on someone of rising popularity, they always warranted a closer look. There had been no mention of danger, or threat to any one or thing; or of whatever his boss was certainly implying. Until now.

  “Dangerous?”

  “That’s the question, yes.”