“But there’s one way they were no different than you and me,” Saverly said. Manny turned to face him. “They were consumed by fears. Fears of being found out for the posers they were, and of the world crashing in on their heads, fear of the future and what it might hold, fear of not being able to make their way in the world, fear of inadequacy.”
The screensaver of Saverly’s desktop computer took Manny through “the year in pictures,” flashing one scary alien world after another; each one made him flinch. “And the ones not ruled by fears, were ruled by their emotions, drowning in kneejerk reactions to them with rational mind having little chance of intervening. Assuming they weren’t outdone by both fears and emotions.”
The “year in pictures” slide-show continued to make Saverly’s point for him, triggering much the same reactions of which he spoke. “And they were so fortified up in their heads… well, it would take a Hartman to navigate them around all the traps and pitfalls they erected in their minds.”
Manny rescued himself from the hypnotic allure of the slide-show, brought his eyes back to Saverly. “I guess you couldn’t have known he’d turn around and subject them to drugs of his own design.”
“No. God, no.” Saverly paused to reflect. “The irony is, he cured the ones he managed to get the drug into. And if he’d done the same to himself, all may have worked out well. I admit, a complete personality reboot is rather drastic, but as last-ditch efforts go, beats the hell out of electroshock, and some of the equally draconian measures we do take around here, with far less successful outcomes.”
Saverly’s eyes went to short phrases etched into the wooden surface of his desktop. Manny had to imagine they were aphorisms put there to help pop his balloon when he got a little too full of himself.
“Cured from your perspective, doc, not from his.”
Saverly nodded. “Yes, without the ability to deconstruct their reality in a Derrida-like fashion, they would never be cured as far as Hartman was concerned.”
“And what about Chad?” Manny perused the file on him. “From what I can make out on him, I’m not so sure he needed curing.”
“Chad was our next Unibomber. The more his passions boiled over, the closer he felt to the truth. When the pacifist factions of the People’s Movement failed to gain any traction, trust me, he would have spearheaded the activist movement, teaching reality-deconstruction in an entirely different vein.”
Manny chuckled. “If you say so. And Adam? How can turning a genius into Captain Ordinary have helped him?”
“Adam?” Saverly drew inward, remembering. For some reason Adam made him sadder than the rest, or, perhaps, made him feel even more impotent to save him. When he finally emerged again, he said, “Adam was a savant. He could stare at computer code all day and see patterns in it you, I, and every supercomputer on the planet could never see. He was the darling of every Fortune 500 company that could get its hands on him. As a consequence, he was richer than God from the age of seven. But that’s all he was, a glorified adding machine. Couldn’t tie his shoes, couldn’t enjoy the bloom of a flower.
“Adam was Hartman’s worst nightmare, the personification of what we’d all turn into in a technological age: ever more specialized; ever more keyed to the technologies we serve; ever less human; ever less the social animal. Spend five minutes with Adam, and you’d become a loyal Hartmanite faster than any amount of Hartman’s jaw flapping could convert you.”
“Listening to you talk, I’d have to say Hartman was right.” Manny threw the files down on the desk.
Helping Manny articulate his own position better, finishing his thoughts for him, Saverly said, “All these miracle cures coming down the pike, science working wonders for us… What does it all add up to? A more comfortable, carefree life? One that puts even more of the world under our control? But in the absence of higher consciousness, what does that mean, exactly? Other than we’ll be even more entombed than before. Even more buried beneath our own bullshit, until we’re unable to see ourselves for the wretches we are.”
“Precisely.”
Saverly kept overselling the car after the deal was closed, in his own inimical manner. “Kind of like the English aristocracy in turn-of-the-century England who looked down on the rising middle class for actually working—who couldn’t see their own airs and affectations and their pettiness if you held up a mirror to their faces. So we make everyone into the equivalent of aristocrats, instead of a precious few with technologies to fill the gaps that humans once did of the numberless vassals serving the gentry. What have we done but amplified everything that’s unholy?” Saverly looked him in the eye. “I suppose the moral of both stories is the path to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Maybe if we all did our part…” Manny suggested.
“The short-sightedness of any one cure for the human condition we each offered up would be compensated for by all the others. A lot of partial cures are a lot of options for people to choose from.”
“Who knows?” Manny said. “Maybe someone’ll choose to be an Adam, as he was in his first incarnation, as a break from normalcy.”
“I see you share Hartman’s egalitarian spirit.”
“And what about Hartman himself?” Manny picked up the Harlequin doll on the soft-cloth mustard yellow sofa, squeezed its neck repeatedly like a stress ball. “What made you think he’d continue to check his impulses?”
Saverly explained, “Hartman had a save-the-world complex I always knew was going to get him in trouble. We all start out that way, and it’s right that we do. There’s nothing more healing than living a purposeful life, and nothing more purposeful than saving humanity from itself, if only in some small way, one Sister Theresa act after another. But most of us learn to temper our expectations with prolonged exposure to the world, realizing we’re more like one more wave of the ocean wearing against the rock.
“Instead, Hartman just grew more zealous over time. Like you, he chose to keep rising to the challenge, rather than compromise. He grew, like you, a good deal smarter each day because of it. Let’s not undersell the quest for the Holy Grail as a self-transformative tool.”
“I gather you were okay with him following that trajectory.”
“In the end,” Saverly said, “I suppose the only thing that separates a hero from a villain is patience, and not forcing things. You can do your best, but the rest you have to leave in God’s hands. Have faith that you’re not alone in your assault against man’s incorrigibility—or in carving out your own soul. You have to believe that God Himself is coming at the subject from every angle, every vantage point, embodied in each of us, His children, and with every chance occurrence and meeting each of us has with remarkable men, and folks not so remarkable.
“Hartman understood that the quest was as much spiritual as philosophical. But most philosophers end up talking about God sooner or later, which is why I held out hope. And the fact he realized as much, was all the more reason to hang in there, have faith things would work out.”
Manny ran his eyes along the walls of Saverly’s office, saw the diploma. “You’re a Cal Berkeley alum.”
“We try to take the future with us wherever we go,” Saverly said. “Most of our funding comes from Berkeley, as well, in the form of private trusts dedicated to pioneering approaches which won’t go mainstream for some time.”
“Speaking of which, Doc… Why didn’t you have faith in your own methods over Hartman’s? Your scenario games strike me as able to succeed where he failed.”
“Let’s hope. This technology is ahead of its time, Manny, or perhaps, just-in-time, depending on how you view the state of the world. Sadly, Hartman and his students predate these new methods.”
“All this is going to make it hard on me to entertain vengeful thoughts against Big Brother. If scenario-usage is in the nature of how corporations and governments work, they’re arguably an even more powerful force for enlightenment than enslavement.”
Saverly smiled, Manny felt, in o
rder to betray his ulterior motive of driving home that very point.
He leaned forward on his chair. “And now I need you to have some faith. You lasted three days. You’ve got to last three months. And it’s only going to get worse. Now that I’ve come clean, you’re going to start feeling safe again with the staff. And I can’t have that. I have to keep you off balance. I can’t respect your limits. Rest assured, people will try to kill you. I will try to kill you. Sorry, I can’t afford to coddle.”
“No, offense, doc, but if you’re willing to escalate to violence, what’s the difference between your method and Hartman’s?”
“Here, we keep the bake in the oven longer to help procure the necessary changes; namely, to shockproof your psyche against any possible stressors the future may throw at you; to have you turn stress into a fun stimulus to grow beyond yourself. As you see your inner monologue changing in response to the external stimuli, you’ll begin to grasp what I mean. Admittedly, the Catch-22 is actually surviving what is no longer entirely just a simulation. But every one of my patients is made to face this existential crisis; otherwise, no matter what happened here, they’d feel too safe; and so we couldn’t push them out of their comfort zone.”
“And what if I manage to kill somebody?”
“One of the hard things about being in my chair is anticipating your next move. That’s why we take time to learn everything about you we can before enacting scenarios. It’s why there are hidden cameras everywhere, and we have staff befriend you so you’re comfortable baring your soul. We need to know you better than you know yourself. That’s easier than it sounds when you consider it’s your blind spots you can’t see into that we’re most eager to address. We already have an advantage over you when it comes to recognizing them.”
“Still, it could happen,” Manny said, not threatening, just stating a fact.
“You’ll find everyone on this floor answers to me and is entirely complicit. Nothing will leave this floor that I don’t want leaving. Without everyone being on the same page, we couldn’t do what we need to do. For a conspiracy nut like yourself, this really is your worst nightmare.”
THIRTY-SIX
Robin and Drew held hands as they walked down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, near the university entrance. What a difference a tiny gesture made. Callow souls drawn here from the burbs, hoping to store up the charge of so much excess personality drained off the locals—just enough mind you to make them the toast of the town back home without actually offending—couldn’t help smirking as they lowered their eyes from the couple.
“Sorry, I’m playing hell with your designer living sense,” Robin said in earnest, knowing how much a picture perfect presentation to the world of the good life mattered to her. She’d inherited the affectations from her English upbringing as landed gentry. Maybe the sentiments came with wealth, in general, as insulation from guilt for having more than others. Maybe the pressure of being perfect was a burden they accepted on behalf of the rest of the world so the commoners would have something to admire. Maybe it was their sick idea of social work, allowing others to vicariously live the fantasy through them, which was the only way they could. Maybe there was a noble sentiment of self-sacrifice underlying it all.
Robin rather fancied there was something to the self-martyrdom, considering that Drew was a beautiful soul, too beautiful perhaps to be held in the crude vessel of a male or female form. Instead it pushed her towards androgyny, to the perfect state of yin-yang balance indicative of a soul-infused life. Robin admitted, on a good day, that was his rationale for why they were both currently in hermaphroditic form, and why neither would remain forever in either male or female guise, but would likely bounce back and forth the rest of their days between the two extremes. None of that ideation, had he expressed it, would have done much to tranquilize Drew, whose tension he could feel in the grip of her hand as they promenaded past each scornful face.
“It’s just a temporary situation,” she said, undoubtedly already envisioning their completed metamorphosis back into the perfect wedding cake couple, only having reversed roles, with Robin as the female, and Drew as the male. “Soon we’ll be back to feeling superior with the papers to prove it.”
Robin smiled. He knew her well enough to know that that remark had actually been self-deprecating.
The Hare Krishnas bobbing up and down and chanting, “Hare Krishna,” helped to drown out further self-deprecating thoughts. Their vibrant oranges joined the field of wild-flower colors emanating from Telegraph Avenue of tie-dye tee shirts, and peacock feathers attached to jeweled earrings in display cases and on decked-out divas. The sunny day was already pumping enough vitamin D3 to Robin and Drew’s brains to cure moodiness.
They each grabbed a sixteen ounce, fresh-squeezed carrot, celery, and parsley juice combo from one of the many health conscious establishments, the owners oblivious to the homeless men displaying scurvy and lesions on the sidewalks in front of the store.
Robin felt giddy from the carnival atmosphere; his idea of heaven. The Rastafarian with dreadlocks down to his lower back had the widest row of the whitest teeth he’d ever seen. His marijuana joints dangled in his hair for both easy reach and decoration. The Indian woman with olive skin in a sari with a red dot on her forehead was walking eyes closed, mouthing a prayer in her native language as part of a meditation. The tarot readers on the avenue looked up at her, impressed, though possibly not enjoying being upstaged. By all rights, they were supposed to be the most centered people, able to navigate with just their third eye. “You think paradise is any easier to survive than hell?” Robin asked.
Drew smirked. “It’s certainly no less work to endure.” They were both highly cognizant of the fact, Robin felt, of just how much work it took to keep their minds in the zone. The positive ideation necessary to live a good fulfilling life meant constant monitoring of one’s mind, constant exorcisms of self-destructive memes that, left untended, would trigger moodiness and the roller coaster of ups and downs as one was yanked about by every errant thought, good and bad, bouncing around inside the mind. Those who kept themselves chronically depressed had to work just as hard at it as those who kept themselves chronically happy, and were no doubt just as frustrated with the difficulty of it all.
It didn’t take Robin long to realize he was trying to allay his guilt for not checking in on Manny at the hospital, wondering about his personal hell. Maybe he was just trying to feel in sync with him as he endured his own trials of owning paradise before he got booted out of it. Being more open to blessings flowing into his life each day involved a lot of auto-suggestion to that end, including Robin’s own personal mantra, “Every day, in every way, I’m better and better.” That was followed by, “I allow more blessings to flow towards me, and through me to others.” Drew smiled, overhearing the affirmations.
Maybe it was knowing how much was involved—what a lifelong course in unfolding, accessing higher consciousness was—that made Robin suspicious of scenarios and other crash-courses in enlightenment. Then again, Berkeley was nothing less than an open psych ward. So the long-slow method was no guarantee of success either. A crashed global economy was rapidly turning Berkeley’s reality, nonetheless, into a more ubiquitous one that could be found anywhere in the world, taking some of the special shine out of his alma mater. So who exactly could avoid the crash course in enlightenment?
What’s more, under prevailing herculean social pressures, Robin could feel his own blossoming accelerating like a flower tilting towards the morning sun, as he leaned into a new niche for his investigative work, the pursuit of the new Renaissance men. God knew, with all the budget cuts in government, they needed to think in terms of private investigative work, and finding a niche for themselves that played to their strengths. Drew was as much about living a full, well-rounded life as he. The niche would suit Robin as much as her, once he’d sold her on the idea. She’d seen the relevance of the turn in the bend career-wise for Robin, just hadn’t quite owned it for herself
yet.
This was an age of revelations and rebirth for one and all, for embracing a destiny based on passions and strengths and inner drives, on a genuine sense of a mission from God, a purposefulness that made life worth living. It was the end of “jobs” as everyone knew them, and the beginning of “callings.” If so, then why shouldn’t Robin chase after those failing spectacularly at the task despite having more than an unfair advantage over everyone else out of the starting gate in the race to become more whole, more multi-faceted, and so more able to be a man for all seasons and all occasions? Why shouldn’t he do so before the failures of these would-be Renaissance men proved to be just as epic as their undertakings, taking out half the planet with them?
The would-be Renaissance men, the posers, may have started out hoping to survive an ever more demanding marketplace, as they were called to reform and remake and reinvent themselves just to hold down the next hard-to-find job. But, they would have gotten lost along the way and, instead of turning inward and drawing on that bottomless well that was God within, the true fountain of youth, they grew more self-destructive, more scheming, more Machiavellian.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 63
