Jamie watches the old guy struggle across the road, he's thin and fragile, a wafer of fine crystal. People walk past him as if he doesn't exist. It seems a game, this criss-crossing of the street to avoid the man, the featureless blocking out the aging—don't see it, you won't catch it.
The voyeur Jamie doesn't know how many times his mind repeated it was wrong before it finally registered, but he finds himself next to the man who dons a worn brown suit. He wants to ask how he managed to get his arm in a sling but that would be rude, so he offers to help. The man snaps back catching Jamie off guard, telling him to keep away. It's a reaction that normally sets Jamie off. He can't explain why it doesn't this time, maybe it's the sheer surprise of blowback from an old man, but all he sees is a frightened animal in front of him, so he steps aside, and reiterates his original offer.
“Oh,” says the man reconsidering, “not used to help.”
“Can I?”
The old guy checks out Jamie, this unkempt youth. “You're not going to run away are you?”
“Lunch meat and tomatoes aren't my thing.”
“Comedian, are we?” The guy stares at him, “How do you know what I have?”
“I was behind you at the mart.”
“Observant kid.”
“Not really.”
“Gonna trust my instincts here.” He gives Jamie the bag. They make eye contact. A man with stories, thinks Jamie, unsure whether or not he wants to listen to them. He has little choice now; he's stepped in, or, stepped up. The guy points, he doesn't live far and lets Jamie know of his problems; the time in hospital, his wife long gone—not to feel sorry for him—he had money once, went up to Canada to drive the big moon trucks in the oil sands and blew it somehow.
The house is brown like the man's suit, but older and more delicate. Jamie helps him up the decaying stairs to the front porch. Developers have tried to tear down the block over the years, he tells Jamie, but they're still there, hanging on. It's dark and musty inside, the stained burgundy carpet unchanged in fifty years. They look after themselves, the man tells him, no one else will. Jamie admires the man's defiance. He allows Jamie into his tiny room and unpacks a couple of items from the bag. All he has to show for his seventy-odd years is here; his single bed with a flat screen, a couple of knick-knacks, and a Hawaiian shirt for happier times. The modern world doesn't make for possessions, or so the guy believes, and with a wink he tells Jamie not to believe what they're selling. He excuses himself for a moment and takes the bag with the rest of the groceries across the wide entrance hall. Jamie follows his travails forgetting to offer help, his eyes preferring to scan the relative squalor. He's surprised by the man knocking on a door and asking for a Mrs. Palmer. Jamie hasn't quite twigged the set up here. The man enters the room, the door open enough for Jamie to see a frail elderly woman in bed.
“Got what you wanted Mrs. P—except the strawberries—they weren't looking all that hot.” The woman coughs a sick thank you. “This nice gentleman out there helped me.”
Jamie's struck, he's not used to being talked of in such terms, or anyone, for that matter, conversing with respect. His world is curt and harsh. Long ago humankind started barking at one another in one hundred and forty characters and never stopped. The house begins to cave in on him, and finally it dawns; all the rooms in this old house are shared by the elderly. Those unable to look after themselves are looking after one another. This broken man fetching groceries for an infirm woman strikes an acute sadness within. He has to escape. It's all Dickensian, the world's gone forward and backward at the same time. Jamie says his goodbyes. He wouldn't normally.
He walks away with his two bags of chips and local lager and hurries past the indie mart looking for a place to inhale. There was another reason to escape, a more selfish one, Jamie was seeing his future. Time passes in a blank before he focuses on a poster; the band The Future of Happiness is playing in a couple of weeks. He shakes his head at a society obsessed with happiness yet spirals in the opposite direction. Maybe he'll go see them.
*****
No one answers. He's been banging on the black door for a while because there's no bell. The irony of his former kidnappers who had so much to say and now shutting him out doesn't go unmissed. Jamie sits on the cold concrete, letting his frustration slide. It occurs to him they may have moved on. He toys with the idea the abduction was a dream—or worse, the product of his bored imagination and his scars from the straps self-inflicted. Sleep had eluded him the night before, Demon Keeper no longer held interest in the vacant hours, and not getting the old man's name niggled. He didn't want return to the brown house. Get involved in their lives. It gave him knots in his stomach. Not something he did. It was matched now by the futility returning to Ray and Po. They spoke a language—nay—believed in theories and philosophies of a different time. He had researched John Charles Cavour and found him largely discredited. Initially easy to ignore Cavour, Jamie knew the searches he had taken were public. There were other searches he could do, private one's, the underground wiki's avoiding the arms of governments and corporations but he deemed the risk too great for its reward. If Ray and Po had found him, others could find him too. If he was going to leave a trail of crumbs they better be small. His rule of thumb was to go underground as a last resort—another community he didn't identify with. Despite the resistance Jamie was here waiting for Ray and Po. If they were so interested in him a few days earlier, they would still be now, and to experience their side of the fence would allow exploration of a fuller truth.
And there on the cold steps, he had flipped his doubts one-eighty. He knew who he was; he didn't have to buy anyone's propaganda to be a whole human being. He had nothing to fear. The waiting was probably another test, something as innocent as determining his patience. He reassured himself he had a plausible excuse to return. He didn't want them to think he was actually interested. Jamie had left his watch behind on the first visit. In fact, he was surprised they never contacted him to return it.
Billy Gonzalez opens the black door. Half an hour of waiting and mulling over, Jamie estimates. Billy strikes Jamie as a string bean of a fellow, an odd man. He doesn't apologize for keeping Jamie cold and skips sentences when conversing, expecting Jamie to fill in the gaps, and it becomes ludicrous when Billy comments about a need for goulash completely out of context. It was a good thing waiting on the concrete had calmed him. He was strangely focused, eyes and ears tuned. This time he wasn't going to miss a beat.
Po's not too happy to have Jamie back and pulls him away from the equipment, she reminds him of Grace.
“Do you know you have a twin?”
Ray interjects. “We all have one somewhere,” he says. He had been monitoring Jamie's movements from afar.
“Maybe you irritate women?” retorts Po.
“You qualify?”
Her snarl gives way to a sarcastic smile.
“So, you're curious,” says Ray, an obvious and vain attempt to defuse the situation.
“I've got time on my hands.”
“What a privilege.”
It’s enough to put Jamie on the back foot.
“What do you want to know?” Ray asks.
“I'd like my watch back to start.”
“Yes, of course, accept our apologies, we didn't mean—”
“I'm sure.”
“And beyond your watch?”
“I want to know everything.”
“Beware of the man who seeks all.”
Ray suspects Jamie's insincere about his return to them, but allays deep suspicions because the most important thing is that he's back. Po hands Jamie a release form. They're going to need him for a few days.
“This is where it gets dangerous,” she says. She's not lying or misleading. “You may want to think twice about going ahead, people with your condition are vulnerable.”
“What condition?”
“Denial,” says Po.
“I'm here, aren't I?” And he signs the forms in defiance.
It's time for Ray to get serious. Po steps back, allowing him to explain how the next tests are transformative and involve a highly concentrated form of energy to the degree they have to siphon off power from surrounding neighborhoods. Like Jamie, they're wary of drawing attention to themselves. Billy has his uses beyond goulash. He shows Jamie into the ionizer, a chamber with padded white walls used in the first stage of training and capable of generating everything he needs—and everything he doesn't. Jamie runs his hands over the walls and stops at washed out bloodstains. “What's going to happen?”
“Awareness, a new perception of happiness.”
“And that's dangerous?”
“Can be frightening to most people, don't you think?”
Jamie's thoughts run back to his meeting with the old guy, the nameless guy, and his moment of insight. He can't argue. New perceptions of anything can be dangerous. How much he really wants to change is another thing. If he stays committed to his belief of not 'buying' their malarkey he'll be okay. No cults for him.
Cold feet aren't far away. Just above him, as it so happens. He plays mind games with himself. The doubts come fast. What's he going to do with all the information he gathers? He doesn't have a real purpose, never mind a plan B. He was treading a path of exploration for its own sake and somehow it felt unwise. Ray breaks his thoughts, insists Jamie rests overnight in the pod. Jamie never thought he'd say it, but the pod sounds appealing. At the least, it's the one place he's slept well. There'll be training clothes waiting for him and good food.
When he gets there he finds the leather bound tome on the bed. Beats sleeping pills, he thinks. He inspects his training uniform, a distinctly underwhelming piece, several sizes too big and made of elasticated paper towel. Weird, but Jamie knows he has to pick his battles. He'll deal with it in the morning. For now, there's goulash in the warmer.
Later Ray pays him a visit and reassures him about the gear. He gives Jamie back his watch. He thought, like Jamie, XXLI might have buried surveillance software into it. Ray says it's clean and for once Jamie believes him. It's a stretch but they seem to have at least one common concern, it's a modicum of reassurance. As midnight approaches Jamie lies under white duvet comforter putting pieces of this puzzle together. There's a gaping hole about Ray and Po. They've essentially remained mysterious, revealing nothing except their faith in The Source Foundation. It would keep him up for hours normally, but now he finds in the magic of the pod, sleep washing over him. His last yawning thought fades. He'll tackle it in the coming days, how little they've said of themselves. His mind lets go, the tome redundant in the quest for sleep.
The dream is cavernous. Po floats past him, her face large and concerned. Jamie finds himself in the padded room with its faint blood-stained walls blinded by an acute light refracting through a glass of water. Its very presence induces thirst. He quenches it, the gulps echoing in his eardrums. The glass vanishes from his hands. Eeriness pervades, yet he's compelled to stay by curiosity. Every moment seems to bring the new, a shift in light, a rise in temperature, the smell of baked bread. He approaches a chocolate milkshake twice his own size, its thick dark liquid dripping over the edge. It's what Jamie really wanted, not the water. Unable to reach the top, he catches drops of sweet velvet chocolate with his tongue, the taste out of this world. All he wants is more. He grips the cup for stability and to his surprise finds it soft and sticky, and prickling his skin. Overcome with inexplicable desire he plunges his hands deep into its side and when he removes them, finds they're covered in viscous beige snot. He's powerless as his hands rotate on their own, gravity taking care of the gloop, peeling away, off his fingers, and dropping to his feet. Thankfully the room changes. Surreal as it may have been, the physical experience felt too exact. Now he's in a library overflowing with books. One volume glows in rainforest green; The Caves of Liita. Inside the pages are blank. He wonders if this is a story he must write, or obligated to find. The latter makes sense. He needs to find, to discover. The dream moves quicker now, less chance to dwell on thoughts. His eye catches a toy sports car. As he reaches for it, his left arm grows, turning yellow and sprouting hairs. He touches the new arm with his other hand. It's kind of cool, like he's turning into Gustav, the yellow demon monster. His attention is stolen back by the toy car. It vibrates and in a fraction of a second expands into a bristling burnt orange wet dream. He's inside it now, plucking at the strings of a fender guitar, surprised he can play—and play well—with his arm returned to normal. Vaguely conscious of a crowd outside the car, someone tells him they're ready and he's bundled into blinding flashes of paparazzi light bulbs. His smile is a give away. Jamie's liking this. His escort pulls him through puddles and past people, and through a door where screams of the adoring burst his eardrums. He's numb and high, an arena rock god on stage blitzed by the energy. He's unaware of his legs changing into yellow monster calves before he launches into the mosh pit. The ecstasy ends when he's pulled under by his fans and smacks a floor of sticky beer and piss. Safety is a flashlight between the silhouettes of bodies. He touches the dark ugly floor and crawls through legs both wiry and thick while every now and then taking a kick from the oblivious above. When he surfaces the crowd's roar lifts him like riding a tsunami, and in seconds he’s back to the stage where he's set upon and has the life snogged out of him by a woman. He loves her aggressiveness, her wet fleshy tongue against his, the warmth of her breath and sweaty face. He's groping her, pulling down her pants, she pushes him back against a wall. They're in a ratty bathroom stall. He hears Ray's voice, “Fantasy Po, you should be pleased it's not you.” But who is it Jamie thinks, and stops for a moment to see. The woman pulls back. He's struck with confusion. “Grace?” She's looking up and down at his body and leaves with a wicked smile. All his limbs have turned yellow monster, but the pace of the dream is unrelenting, he has no time to reflect, a Grammy is shoved into his hand, then an eighty million dollar check. With each award a body part changes. There's an Oscar—no—wait, there's three. Jamie's a complete ogre with a Super Bowl ring looking at his new form dressed in elastic paper. The uniform, the training gear, whatever it was, makes sense now. His vision closes, the scope of his view reduced to the size of a chickpea, awareness of time and space lost in the murky gray matter of the ogre. Rage consumes, anger takes control. A yellow body of fresh gooey hair trapped, crashing against walls, the only glimmer of sight, white padding. Pain arcs through his spine as he beats himself to the edge of unconscious—the only plausible, instinctive way out. Then it all goes black. Not a whisper or a breath. He remains in the still dark of space. Airy nothingness. Death, he wonders. No bright lights or the touch of soft fleshy tissue, not even floorboards to be sucked through. Then voices crackle, like over an old mid-twentieth century wireless. Po's voice. He never thought he'd feel relief at the sound of her presence. He feels lighter, as if being lifted by angels, and the sensation of slime slipping off his body rejuvenates. The blindness allows him to appreciate the warmth and power of the shower as a gift. Hands cleanse his torso and face. He's not sure if they're his, but he doesn't care. He's pampered with a towel. It's okay, he thinks, the dream has taken him to the gym.
“Hey Jamie.”
“Hey.” He's awake now, the stiffness in his body real.
“How are you feeling?”
Jamie, caught in the lingering images of the dream, can't answer.
“You've been asleep for two days.”
When he's ready they show him evidence beyond the time and date of days moving on. He was asleep for most of it but they kept visual records of his encounter in the ionizer. The sketchy images corroborate Jamie's dream. He's floored, unable to speak. It's an invasion of his mind. They've taken his dream and made a movie without his permission. He turns away from them and eats Billy's goulash. He slinks away a mere shadow of himself back to the pod. He curls up on the bed and runs through the course of events in a fractured timeline. It's all too fluid to be real.
“There's no need
for embarrassment,” says Ray, “consider them a mirage, planted there by your surroundings, what we're fed all our lives to believe will make us happy. You're not impervious to what afflicts us all.” He's lost the violated Jamie who would stuff his ears with cotton wool if he could, but Ray knows how precious time is and can't afford to let Jamie think too much. “See the positive,” he says, “you have far more in common with your fellow kind than you imagined. Empathy Jamie, it's significant if you're going to help them.”
Jamie prefers to play with his feet. They tap the cold floor. He's on his way to finding ground as Ray continues, “It's designed to be provocative, to upset the apple cart. Facing the futile image of ourselves.” It draws a wry smile from Jamie, he wonders what image Ray has of himself. If he asks he intuits the answer will be a lie. Whatever trust he once had in those mysterious eyes has dissipated. The talk always had an element of bull, but his soul, that spoke a truth, the one that had drawn him back if Jamie was honest. It's Po who's more intriguing. He assumes she underwent the same ordeal and yet here she is, hanging around.
The Code of Happiness Page 3