by Ray Deeg
Now mesmerized, Randall discarded his grandfather’s sketch haphazardly on the passenger seat. The drawing slipped in between the seat and door. As he exited the parking lot, the drawing slid down farther, ending up under the passenger seat. The expressions of sadness were more obvious down here in this dark place. They had been let down by someone in whom they’d placed great trust, left to wallow in the loneliness of their own disillusionment.
CHAPTER 5
THE MAGNIFICENCE AND grandeur of the Waldorf Astoria lobby is eclipsed only by its incredible legacy. The art deco building towers forty-seven stories over Park Avenue, its two thousand rooms covering an entire city block. Designed by the architectural firm Schultze and Weaver and built in 1931, the Waldorf was engineered from the ground up to provide guests with the finest amenities on the planet. Today, the terraces outside the hotel’s royal suites provided incredible views of midtown. Everything was quiet, except for the sound of birds chirping just outside.
The morning breeze, passing through the French doors with the strong scent of destiny still lingering, brushed past the pockmarked cheeks of Esha Durga, a tall East Indian man who was always thinking. Esha opened his eyes, smiling thankfully for the wind, and then continued painting. It was a rather gruesome scene he was painting on a canvas that rested on an easel. A nearby table held half-eaten plates of eggs Benedict and crab cocktail with toast points. Esha held his brush tightly at the ferrule and allowed the hairs of the toe to create a wide line of thick Jasper-red paint. “The visions are becoming clearer,” he said to his two henchmen. “This was my vision last night.” The painting depicted the body of a man lying on the floor in a pool of blood in what appeared to be an antique shop. “Just another pawn in the game,” Esha said. “If you move your bishop instead of your knight, you might finally win—but playing at all is a fool’s errand.” Esha added a line of Jasper red to the silver dagger resting on the floor near the body. He studied the painting, pleased.
With deliberate efficiency, Esha poured hot water into a cup. Red paint lingered on his fingers as he gingerly sifted through small envelopes of exotic teas. Finally, he selected one and unwrapped the envelope and then dropped the teabag into his hot water. Esha was unrushed. He didn’t mind his two subordinates, Ashok and Chandran, silently waiting, staring, hanging on his every movement. The two jet-lagged henchmen looked at their phones and checked their fingernails. Chandran was a slender, smart-looking man. Ashok was large and muscular, a sturdy fellow. Nothing in his appearance suggested great intelligence, but his associates had learned not to judge a book by its muscles.
Esha watched both men’s focus deteriorate while he patiently sipped his tea. His voice broke the silence. “So long as you are ignorant of who you are, what this place is,” he said with sobering authority. “So long as man is tied to this endless cycle of birth and death, to becoming and ceasing to be, we shall wander aimlessly, forever feeling the emptiness of this purgatory. And you will be stuck in places like this, at tables like this, trying to make sense of your silly little lives. You’ll spend your lives scrambling to get three percent raises or improve your FICO scores, and you’ll fumble and stumble with impatience—looking at your fingernails, feeling guilty about not going to the gymnasium—just waiting to die. You’ll wonder when your real life will begin and when you’ll stop waiting. But instead of doing anything different, you’ll fall asleep and slip deeper into the pattern. You’ll expend your energy on your debts, on your demons, on your status in the book of faces, or on any other little thing that can keep you from becoming. You came into the world empty, and you shall leave emptier still.”
Ashok pushed his phone into his pocket, and Chandran stood up straight. Esha clapped twice, sharply. “Wake up, and understand: human pursuits are menial.” Now he had their attention. “Don’t let their rat race be yours.” Esha paused to take another sip of tea. His dark eyes scanned Ashok and Chandran’s now-attentive faces without an ounce of mercy. He held each man’s gaze for an uncomfortable moment. That was the thing about Esha’s brown eyes—they could bend light. “You’ve wasted your time on meaningless pursuits,” he continued. “Squandered the gifts bestowed on you, and this is not your first or second or third time. Your failures stack higher than all the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world, but I am willing to help you break free of this maze. You are on the path with me now, and together we can achieve what we’ve set out to, but you must focus. You both have technical knowledge. This will redeem you. Your knowledge of physics, magnetism, quantum mechanics, microtubules—the design of designs; nature’s blueprint, God’s fingerprint—this is why I chose you. So, tell me now, my brothers, what you wish of me. Focus!” Esha took another sip of his tea and stared at the ceiling, waiting for their response.
Ashok and Chandran spoke in unison, just as Esha had taught them. Their voices were crisp and disciplined. “From the unreal lead me to the real, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to deathlessness.”
“Good,” Esha said. “You can do anything when you are present and stop juggling so much emptiness. And have either of you come to know why there is an entire universe instead of nothing at all?” He waited for an answer but saw only blank stares. Esha placed his teacup on the table and then raised a round mirror to his perfectly discordant face. He saw nearly five decades of life reflecting back. He recognized the discontent growing inside him. It’s the face of my father and mother, the face I was given, but it’s not really me. “My brothers, what you see here is an illusion.” Esha stretched his arms out, palms up like Christ in glory, so as to encompass everything. “A lie, a grand hologram. And you and I have been trapped here like rats in this maze, seeking an exit since time began. Our lives here are the same, empty and meaningless. Frail indeed are those rafts of sacrifice and little their merit. Fools who rejoice in them as the highest good fall victim over and over to old age and death. The seeds of old age and death have been sown inside you, and you are part of an endlessly recurring pattern you cannot see because you’re standing at its center. Reflect now, in your mind, on the most foolish person you’re able to summon.” Esha used his finger to tap his head. “Think about an ignorant man. Impatient, selfish, greedy, irresponsible, lazy, unable to focus, scared. A man without direction, a glutton. His fear and doubt make him noisy and opinionated, and he’s easily offended by ideas that don’t match his own. He speaks when there is silence to prevent his failures from tearing him to shreds. His grains of sand stack even higher than yours, and his sharp opinions are all he has left. I speak of a man who long ago squandered anything of worth. A man laden with guilt, yet ignorant of the wrong he’s done. A waste of skin, a passing stain leaving a wake of mediocrity and sadness. And there are billions like him. Do you see the man I speak of in your mind?”
“Yes,” Ashok and Chandran said again.
“Good,” Esha said. “That man you see is a reflection of you, and the reason your vision is so clear is because the man is so recognizable to you. Each one of us is this man, except when we summon all of our abilities and energy, all our waking moments, to fight against the gravity of that state. You have been infected by ignorance, a highly contagious disease. Look at this world today. In just the last few decades, a colossal plague of ignorance has descended and is spreading. We broadcast and share and sell this ignorance, crawling like snails through filth infecting one another. We believe we have reached life’s purpose, but we never come close.”
A hotel butler sauntered toward the table. He was a little fellow, nearly dwarf size, and his handsome head seemed too large for his little body. He had curly blond hair that bounced over his dark-blue eyes. “Is everything OK, gentleman?” he asked.
“We are fine,” Esha replied.
“Can I bring you more hot water, sir?” the butler asked.
“No, nothing more,” Esha insisted, waving the man off.
“Might I get either of you two anything else, or interest you in some of the hotel’s history?”
Ashok perked up, and Chandran nodded.
The butler continued. “You know, this is a very famous suite—”
“They are fine; leave us now.” Esha banged his hand on the table.
“Certainly, sir,” the butler replied subserviently, backing away with his eyes fastened on Esha’s gruesome painting.
Ashok smirked. Chandran couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Oh, by all means. Laugh like hyenas, distracted again from your purpose by every silly thing. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. I’m sure your destiny will wait until you are ready.” Ashok and Chandran straightened up once more. Esha waited an extra moment, to punish them for the outburst, and then continued. “The great Swami Vivekananda in his most recent reincarnation has shown us the path, left us a doorway as only the twentieth century could provide, and it’s ours to claim. We do not need to continue aging and dying again and again. No longer do we need to stay bound to the world of superficial appearances where the dead bury their dead. We can break the endless cycle, get back to our true destiny and onto the path of greatness once again. I selected you because you possess unique talents and knowledge. Together, we can escape this fish bowl.” Esha opened an ornate book, and the two henchmen gathered closer.
CHAPTER 6
THE PINE-SCENTED SOAP mixed with steam, clearing Tom Hartger’s head. The buzzing in his ear was drowned by the warm shower spray. It rolled off his body, the soapy water swirling like a galaxy spiraling down the drain. He stepped out, relieved to leave behind his dreamlike state—one foot in this world and one in the other. He flexed in the mirror, inspecting his pecs, and then examined some minor lines around his eyes. He dabbed some eye cream on the problem spots and laughed at himself. He was in good shape, and for many years he’d enjoyed an insight many never learn: he was in the prime of his life, and he knew it.
But one thought bothered him. He’d spent so little of his last twenty years pursuing the things that truly nourished his soul: science, reading, museums, art, walks in the park, good wine, slow time. Each time he took inventory of his life, he could only see himself as a hamster running on a wheel, working sixty hours a week for the company his grandfather founded. He’d taken on the obligation with pride and dedication, but as time passed, he was overcome by a lingering fatigue he couldn’t easily shake off anymore. It was a burden that had been thrust upon him soon after graduating college. Tom was rich by any definition, but that didn’t stop his never-ending anxiety. The pace was relentless, and the grind was wearing at him. Each day he went in ready for battle, and the cycle began again. It would never be enough.
For a long time, he had accepted this as just the way things are. After all, he was just one man. Who was he to change the world? His acceptance made the grind easier, but, despite his innate hopefulness and sense of duty, there continued to be a growing sense of repetition and time passing. He often wondered whether Rube Goldberg was in charge of operations down here, dead set on making a mockery of human ambition, rubbing our faces in our frivolity like a dog’s nose in his own feces. Tom was well aware of what was happening to the world; he was part of it. Over the past few decades, he had come to feel that humanity was being driven by technology, not vice versa. It was a technology that seemed to divest itself of any character or personality; it homogenized itself, pushing its infrastructure outward, spreading itself to remote lands around the globe to assimilate people and their cultures. We’re all staring at screens all day now. It had an inertia that was unstoppable because it fed on man’s pursuits. And while some of it was good, all of this technology had become to man’s consciousness a sort of mechanical thing, a force of its own, a fate that renders no account of itself. Tom suspected that humanity would inevitably be tested as to what it had learned, but for now it was required to produce, to continue moving forward traversing this period, navigating the empire of law, money, and the tension between dwindling resources and growing consumption that gave the period its tone. He was finally becoming aware that this frantic pace that all men must succumb to was what gave souls their experience here. Earn your keep. Life in these times developed the principle, the stamina, the strong fiber and energy necessary to propel the soul forward. But more often now, he was seeing patterns that wore the soul down, drowning it in a sort of noisy, overpopulated hopelessness.
But he couldn’t be bothered with saving mankind right now. He had to put his own anxieties aside. It was time for him to step onto his own hamster wheel and focus on things he disliked for at least the next ten hours: the employees, the legal battles, the competitors, the bills—his grandfather’s legacy. Still, he remained grateful for the sweet and the sour. He knew you had to have the one in order to have the other. The heights of the peaks defined the depths of the valley. Otherwise, life would be a flat line. He’d realized many years earlier that every one of his life experiences, both happy and sad, the peaks and the valleys, was an integral part of this, his unique journey.
Tom’s walk to work was just three blocks. The main offices of Empyrean Ventures were located on the top five floors of a nondescript sixty-story building just off Madison. Tom’s grandfather, Phillip Hartger, founded the company in the 1950s, and at last count, Empyrean Ventures had 1,479 full-time employees.
Empyrean Ventures, designing a better tomorrow.
His grandfather had coined the tagline, which was still in use today. It was, admittedly, a tad hokey. But as one of the largest holders of intellectual property in the world, Empyrean had never been a consumer-driven business; the tagline had never evolved with the times. The company owned most of the patents it licensed to commercial clients, although it also worked as an agent, a clearinghouse for patent holders who sought to license their IP. Empyrean’s offices had recently been remodeled by the prestigious New York design firm Roman and Williams.
As Tom stepped out of the elevators, he took in the smell of fresh paint and new furniture. Metal seemed to be the new theme; he saw silver paint, silver photos, and a silver metallic facade on the walls. The offices looked industrial now, almost like a science lab. He walked by a receptionist, who smiled as he passed. “Good morning, Mr. Hartger,” she said.
“Good morning, Becky.”
“I really like the new look,” she said.
“It’s a little cold, but it’s certainly clean,” he replied.
“You have that talk at Columbia today, remember?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said as he rounded the corner. His desk faced a large floor-to-ceiling window with a superb view of the Hudson River and downtown skyline. As Tom peered outside, he felt the electric noise inside his ear buzzing again. He imagined the light filtering into his childhood bedroom, saw the model train in his basement going around and around. He looked away, and the noise stopped. Maybe I need to see a doctor. The right side of the window offered a less desirable view. Tom peered into the adjacent window, at the now-familiar bald man in glasses. He was already working tirelessly at his computer, stopping only occasionally to explore the depths and contents of his nostrils. I wonder if I can have blinds installed.
Tom sat at his desk, feeling smothered by the heat and smell, a combination of new furniture, paint, and plaster. He cracked the bottom pane of his window, and a cool wind filled his nostrils.
Tom’s early-morning meditation was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Hartger,” the receptionist said. He motioned her in. “This envelope just arrived for you. The courier said it was urgent.”
He opened the golden yellow envelope. It had a red stripe and a clear window on the front. He unfolded the single sheet of paper and began reading.
Nestled along the banks of the Delaware River, the village of New Hope, Pennsylvania, is just a ninety-minute drive from Manhattan. It offers quaint countryside scenery, troves of treasured antiques, and tranquil riverside dining. An Ideal place to catch up, reflect on life, and enjoy uninterrupted conversation with that special someone.
Tom turned the letter ov
er.
J. P. Morgan Trust and Fiduciary Services.
He looked around the room, confused, and then threw the paper and envelope in the trash bin. That was urgent? He sighed and prepared to tackle his inbox but was interrupted again. “What?” he snapped at the man peering into his office.
It was Conrad Perth, an old friend from college and a trusted colleague. Conrad was wearing khaki pants with a chalk-white sweater over a red pinstripe shirt. “Stressed already? It’s too early for that,” Conrad said. “Good news. I just closed Samsung, with exclusivity on the data-parsing license.” Conrad’s shirt sleeves protruded from his sweater, and his pants appeared uncomfortably tight.
Tom turned his chair around to face him. “What Samsung executive would sign a contract with a guy who dresses like a candy cane?”
“I closed it over the phone. Never even met with their group.”
“Thank God for that. What’d it come in at?”
“As you predicted, they wanted exclusivity. So seventy-five K, or one percent of gross a month—whichever’s higher. Seventy-two-month term with an option,” Conrad replied as he made eye contact with the man in the adjacent building.