Zone 23

by Hopkins, C. J.

  Which, OK, probably sounds confusing, but over time had gotten to be as routine as any other type of software update. You’d get this little message on your screen advising you that something that had always happened on 16 November, 2120, the Neu-Hohenschönhausen Unrest, in this case, had, it turned out, really happened on 23 June, 2119, pending official verification, of course. And sometimes something that had always happened on 24 August, 2183, in this case, the North Mississauga Massacre, had actually never happened at all, and Haley Dean Morrison, the alleged perpetrator, had never been born in Halton Hills, or anywhere else, and had never existed, and the whole thing had just been invented out of whole cloth by anonymous “persons of malicious intent,” pending verification, of course. Pretty much every official date (and alleged event taking place on that date) was pending some kind of verification, or pending the results of the correlation of other dates of possible influence.

  Now as Cramer was fond of reminding people (in a needless to say professional manner), this monstrous historico-calendrical clusterfuck was in no way the fault of Future/Past-Continuous, or the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin. It was entirely the fault of the Cyberterrorists, the so-called “persons of malicious intent,” who had generated veritable shitloads of nonsense and hacked it into the historical records. These “persons of malicious intent” had made up people who’d never existed, falsified records of their births and deaths, and involved them, not just in major events, like the non-occurent North Mississauga Massacre, but also in mundane and meaningless events, which no one knew about, and which had never taken place. They had dreamed up fake international conflicts, insurgent struggles, earthquakes, floods, utterly useless consumer products, financial crises, sexual practices, medical conditions, mathematical theorems, et cetera, the list went on and on. Then, when whatever had actually happened during the Age of Anarchy happened, which regardless of the details (which were being verified) was definitely some kind of global catastrophe, and with so much information destroyed, or written over, or rendered unreadable, whatever frame of reference there had been to help one distinguish the real from the fake had been twisted so hopelessly out of shape that no one could really say anymore, or not with any reliability, what had or hadn’t really happened.

  However (and this was the crucial point, it being more or less the core assumption upon which the whole Reconstruction was based), the fact of The Age of Anarchy in itself (i.e., the fact that it had actually occurred, and comprised a sequence of actual events, however subject to verification by Future/Past-Continuous, Inc.), while of course one was free to say what one wanted, was not a fact that was up for debate or inquisitive discussion by serious people. Not that any such discussion, or debate, was in any way officially discouraged, or censored, or anything despotic like that. No, the subject just never seemed to come up. Future/Past-Continuous, Inc. was not, after all, some malevolent autocracy intentionally falsifying historical records to perpetually confuse and exhaust the public. On the contrary, it was a global consortium of well-respected corporate partners working on a strictly not-for-profit basis while maintaining the highest transparency standards. The entire Reconstruction Project was meticulously documented and available online. One could, if one was so inclined, access the records of every adjustment considered, debated and ultimately made, and the online discussions regarding those adjustments, and every advisory relating thereto, going back almost three hundred years, at the Reconstruction Project’s website: www.recon.proj.

  Hardly anyone was so inclined. The Normals had better things to do with their time than wade through zetabytes of digital records verifying the verification of obscure and irrelevant historical data, and anyway there were people who did that, oversight committees or whatever they were ... and the simple fact of the matter was, nobody really cared when it was. Well ... OK, sure, some people cared, professional historians, heortologists and such, and Future/Past-Continuous, Inc., and other corporations whose products and services depended on the Reconstruction Project, and investors in these corporations. But that was different, because all these parties cared in a strictly professional capacity. They understood that it might take centuries to figure out when it really was. And thus, in the meantime, what was the point of querying Cramer over and over? There was no point. That was the point. And was why these professionals didn’t do that. Because they understood how pointless it was. As long as the folks at Future/Past-Continuous were in the process of working it all out (i.e., deciding what had actually happened and assigning specific dates to that stuff), and then posting it all on the World Wide Web in a way that made some narrative sense, what did it possibly matter to anyone whether the Neu-Hohenschönhausen Unrest had happened in 2119, or in 2120, or 2130, or when the Visigoths had entered Rome, or in which American Civil War the Battle of Port Royal Sound had been fought?

  The answer was, it didn’t matter, except to cognitively-challenged persons, like Jim Matsumura and Aksel Torres, and the thousands of other inveterate losers whose queries it was Cramer’s job to answer ... rather than it being his job, for example, to assist in Regional Security Services, or even up in Regional A.S.P. Management, where Cramer’s talents and exemplary soft-skills would surely be noticed by Big Bob Schirkenbeck. Info-Management, Maintenance & Storage was nowhere anywhere near the vicinity of Big Bob Schirkenbeck’s radar screen, which Cramer needed to appear upon if he ever wanted to get anywhere at Hadley, at least within its Security divisions .

  Security, Cramer sensed, was his Path, or was one of his Path(s), and he wasn’t on it, or in it, or anywhere near its vicinity. He was forty-four floors below its vicinity. He’d been there forever ... nearly a year. During this year he’d surreptitiously downloaded, digitally copied and carefully analyzed every available Hadley organogram, and he had yet to find one viable route from Info-Management, Maintenance & Storage to any Schirkenbeck-run division. He’d transferred down there from Consumer Collections, mostly for the Senior VP title, but also because he had heard a rumor that Charmane T.R. Haverson-Cho, the fairly-abundant Department Head of Info-Management, Maintenance & Storage, had some kind of suction with Big Bob Schirkenbeck, which it turned out later she did not have. Cramer found out who had started this rumor, and he had prayed to the One for forgiveness, of course, because holding on to resentments was toxic, and borderline Anti-Social behavior, but he had not forgotten the name of this person, who according to the ironclad law of Karma would someday reap what he had sown. In the meantime, however, he needed out of Info-Management, Maintenance & Storage. And he needed out on a vaguely upward Big Bob Schirkenbeck-oriented vector. Which it seemed one could not locate from here, or from anywhere else one could locate from here. Wherever this vector originated was somewhere Cramer could not locate.

  Another query came in on his screen, this one from someone named Meredith Moone, who claimed to be some sort of entertainer and needed to know when it really was. Cramer watched from outside his body as his finger reached toward the screen, and very nearly deleted the query ... but he caught himself at the very last second. He pushed himself back from his desk in horror. He couldn’t believe he’d almost done that. Deleting a query, or any other form of written or verbal communication, was tantamount to professional suicide, and doing so with knowledge and forethought was technically an act of corporate sabotage.

  Now, as terrifying as this moment was, this near total loss of control on his part, it was also a blessing, as Cramer knew, as it meant that he had now hit bottom. Which meant that any second now ... yes, here it came, his Moment of Clarity. He got out physical pen and paper (which he could carry out with him and dispose of later) and set about taking fearless inventory.

  At some point in the recent past, weeks, or possibly months before (it didn’t really matter when it had started), he had stopped surrendering to the Will of One and had started surrendering to his own Self Will, which had led him down a destructive Path, and now to this nearly self-destructive act. He hadn’t consciously chosen
to do this, but nonetheless he’d chosen to do this. He’d done this out of fear, of course (he wrote the word FEAR in upper case letters), RESENTMENT (ditto), SELF-CENTERED THINKING, FEAR OF INSUFFICIENT ABUNDANCE, ENVY OF THOSE WITH GREATER ABUNDANCE, and a number of other standard phrases he’d memorized from The Path(s) to Prosperity . He drew little circles around these phrases, and lines from these circles to other circles, in which he scribbled selected keywords referring back to events in his childhood that had triggered these negative fears and resentments, which every Variant-Positive experienced, but each in their own individualized way. Between, and around, and intersecting these circles, he drew another series of lines, which he labeled with the names of the destructive Path(s) that corresponded to his fears and resentments and to each of their respective triggering events. The upshot of all this scribbling was, through a series of resentment- and fear-based choices, he had wandered off his spiritual Path, and away from the light of unlimited abundance ... and that was why he stuck down there in Info-Management, Maintenance & Storage.

  Now, at this point he had about forty-five seconds to take advantage of this Moment of Clarity and resurrender to the Will of the One before his own Self Will took over and set him back on some negative Path. Cramer knew this. He had been here before, and had weathered other such spiritual crises. The first thing he needed to do was surrender. He could not think his way out of this mess. His thinking is what had gotten him into it. Thinking was what he needed to surrender. What he needed now was not a plan, but was, rather, a miracle, an act of Grace, a transdivisional karmic intervention from one of the infinite Many of the One. He took out his personal All-in-One (i.e., not his Hadley-issued Viewer), pulled up his dog-eared digital copy of The Path(s) to Prosperity and clicked at random .

  The following passage came up on his screen:

  The Unseeking Seeker, seeking the One, seeks but the Unseeking Self of the Seeker, mistaking the Unseeking Self of the Seeker for Seeking Self of the Unseeking Seeker. In so doing, the Unseeking Seeker, taking the Unseeking Self of the Seeker for one of the Aspects of the Oneness of the One, walks the Path(s) of Separation, Deprivation, and Spiritual Delusion, perceiving only the Multiplicity, and never the Abundant Oneness of the One. In contrast to the Unseeking Seeker, the Seeking Seeker, seeking the One, seeks but the Seeking Self of the Seeker, knowing the Seeking Self of the Seeker to be but one Aspect of the Oneness of the One. In so doing, the Seeking Seeker, perceiving the Oneness of the Multiplicity, and knowing this Oneness to be but one Aspect of the Multiplicitous Oneness of the One, walks the Path(s) of Surrender and Detachment, opening the Self to Infinite Abundance.

  Believe it or not, this particular passage, which Cramer had chosen completely at random, and that to anyone unfamiliar with the Path(s) probably sounded like gobbledegook, was exactly what he needed to be reading at that moment. Not that he understood a word of it, but understanding was not the point. The point was, he needed to reopen his Self, abandon the Path of Separation, Deprivation, and Spiritual Delusion, and reseek the Path(s) of Surrender and Detachment, ideally in some sort of unseeking way. He needed to actively (i.e., physically) do this, immediately, right there in his office. He checked to make sure the door was locked, then he got down on his knees and prayed.

  All of this was more or less standard procedure for Normals in states of spiritual crisis, i.e., reaching one’s bottom, the Moment of Clarity, opening The Path(s) to some random passage, and interpreting whatever the passage said as instructions for how to get out the crisis. For the Normals (or at least the Variant-Positives) The Path(s) to Prosperity was not just another essentially useless sacred text, like the Christian Bible, the Torah, the Qur’an, the Sutras, the Vedas, or the Bhagavad Gita. It was more like a spiritual owner’s manual (which came with a metaphysical roadmap), the vehicle in this case being your soul, or spirit, or purusha, or whatever you called it.

  It didn’t matter what you believed (you could stay a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, or whatever it was you were) as long as you could also accept the fundamental revolutionary concept upon which The Path(s) to Prosperity was based, namely, that Abundance was infinitely available to anyone and everyone, without conditions, and that all you had to do was apprehend that, and reach out and take as much as you wanted. Abundance meant not just material Abundance (i.e., money, which it certainly meant), but also emotional and spiritual Abundance, which according to Chapters 1 through 9, 12, 15, and Endnote 40, were the sources from which material Abundance, despite all appearances, ultimately emanated. Opening one’s Self to unlimited Abundance (or “partaking in the Infinite Oneness of the One”) was the goal of the program, which one attained by following a series of simple Steps, meditating and praying regularly, and visualizing infinite Abundance. The Steps themselves were simple enough to be understood by a six year-old child, and were basically an extremely simplified version of the philosophy underlying the Path(s), and the multiplicitous Oneness of the One, which, for most people, was somewhat challenging to grasp, or was impossible to grasp, or was utter nonsense. ***

  In essence, what it all boiled down to was that every lack, or temporary shortfall, of spiritual and/or material Abundance could be ascribed to the same fundamental error ... misapprehension of the Oneness of of the One. For example, attempting to define the One led straight to the Path of Knowing the Unknowable, whereas questioning the infinite nature of the One, one walked the Path of Proving the Unprovable. Failure to meet the terms of one’s debts, including, but not limited to, timely payment of interest thereon, was Walking the Path of Attaining the Unattainable. Making unauthorized copies at work was Walking the Path of Possessing the Unpossessable. And these were just a few of the negative Path(s). Walking any one of these Path(s) invariably led to diminished Abundance, and conversely, diminished Abundance proved that one was walking such a negative Path. And so on. The point was, diminished Abundance was never the result of external factors. It was always the result of some unconscious choice, which was based on some spiritual misapprehension. And thus the question, for the Seeker in crisis, was never how to change the world (i.e., something in the actual physical world), but how to change the way one perceived the world, and above all else the choices one made, not one’s conscious choices, of course, but one’s unconscious, or Karmic choices.

  Cramer, down on his knees on the carpet, strategically positioned so as not to be seen by the person in the office across from his office (who sometimes glanced in Cramer’s direction, and who looked to be about his age, but whose hairline was only slightly receding), knew all this, this stuff about choices, and the Path(s), and so on, to be the truth. This knowledge was not a matter of faith. This knowledge was fact. It was cause and effect. Choosing Abundance produced Abundance, as anyone abundant was living proof. Big Bob Schirkenbeck was a prime example. Here was a man who was clearly walking one or more of the The Path(s) to Prosperity. Here was a man who had chosen Abundance. Serious Abundance. Unlimited Abundance. Here was a man who understood the Game, who understood that winning the Game was never just a matter of defeating your opponent in a crushingly decisive and humiliating fashion, but was always, ultimately, an expression of your Self ... your Will to Win. Your Will to Abundance .

  Which was what it all came down to, essentially, the Path(s), and the whole Abundance thing ... winners won, and losers lost, not because of random factors like physical strength, intellectual prowess, or access to readily available capital. No, winners won because they chose to win. They chose success. They chose Abundance. And in so doing they affirmed Abundance, and they affirmed the infinite Oneness of the One. The obverse, sadly, was also true. Losers lost because they chose to lose. They chose to fail. They chose to suffer. And in so doing they denied Abundance, and they denied the infinite Oneness of the One.

  Cramer, whose ankles were starting to cramp, fervently believed in the Oneness of the One, and in the loving, compassionate Will of the One, and that everything that happened was a matter of choice
. So somehow he had chosen this challenge. Somewhere in this trap he was in was some kind of karmic lesson to be learned. He prayed to the One to be taught this lesson, and for the One to guide him back onto his Path(s), and to make him more like Big Bob Schirkenbeck, and ...

  His intercom rang.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Terribly sorry to bother you, Greg.”

  “What is it, Gloria?” he barked, from the floor.

  “There’s a Kyle Bentley-Briggs on line three for you, Greg.”

  Cramer’s virtual assistant, Gloria, reminded Cramer of this dental hygienist he’d dated once, for like forty-five minutes. He’d been asking to have her voice reprogrammed, but the IT guys had been slow to respond.

  “I’ll call him back.”

  “All right, Greg.”

  “Thank you, Gloria.”

  “Oh, and Greg?”

  “Yes?”

  “He mentioned a Security matter. I thought you’d want to …”

  Cramer’s heart stopped.

  “Security?!”

  He leapt up and reached for his phone.

  “I’ll go ahead and take that message for you, Greg. ”

  “No! Wait! Gloria! Wait!”

  “Yes, Greg?”

  “Put him through.”

  “All right, Greg. Transferring now.”