Prescription for a Superior Existence

by Josh Emmons

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “I mean, it’s good that you stopped them but terrible that they tried to leave.”

  “Even more terrible is that during questioning they said you had planned to go with them up until the very end, but then, complaining of stomach cramps, you backed out and said you’d go another night.”

  “They said that?”

  “Warren claimed that you originated the idea, and that your actions since then have been a ploy to get out early, as though for good behavior. He said you’ve been pretending to go along with PASE teachings while secretly compiling information to use against us on the outside.”

  “That’s—I’m not doing that.” Although this was true, I felt as nervous as if it weren’t.

  No one was smiling anymore and a pall hung over the room. Warren and Chaim were treacherous individuals and I was to suffer for trying to help them. An inversion of justice. I should have gone to a facilitator right away.

  Ms. Anderson, perched on the edge of her desk, said, “Of course your teachers and counselors and I recognized that Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Singer were incriminating you for some personal reason, and that we shouldn’t credit a word of theirs. They had no evidence other than that you ate dinner and attended the group activity talk with them last night, which is not evidence at all. They probably spoke from jealousy of your conversion to PASE, because it has been so inspirational to the other guests and to us. Their actions were taken right from our enemies’ playbook. They envy your conviction and strength. I wouldn’t be surprised if you spent last night talking them out of running away.”

  “That’s exactly right,” I said, with a flood of relief that drained away quickly and was replaced by the alarm of before.

  “I thought so.” Ms. Anderson leaned back and Ms. Bentham reached over the desk to squeeze her shoulder. “It’s what I told Montgomery Shoale this morning.”

  “You spoke to Mr. Shoale about me?”

  “The attempted breakout of two guests warranted Montgomery Shoale’s notice. He quickly decided on a course of action to take—even in the middle of the night his mind is a steel trap—and I thought that that was the end of the matter, but an hour later he called to say that his advisers were concerned about the charges made against you.”

  “Why?”

  “Some of them think that your turnaround from opponent to proponent of PASE has been too fast and complete. They suspect it’s a subterfuge, and early this morning they advised Mr. Shoale to sentence you to the same treatment as Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Singer received, believing, unlike everyone in this room, that the two guilty parties were right about you in spirit, if not in detail. I assured Montgomery Shoale that that was not so, that you were as devoted and sincere a Paser as exists in the world, and I told him how many defenders you have among the staff of the Wellness Center, as well as among the other guests. He is, as you know, in a weakened state, being almost an ur-savant, but that didn’t stop him from requesting that I and your teachers and counselors go to the PASE Station to make our argument in person. So at four-thirty A.M. we went and testified on your behalf while several PASE administrators spoke against you. In the end Mr. Shoale applied his immeasurable wisdom and stated the issue clearly. ‘If,’ he said, ‘Jack Smith is playacting in order to harm PASE, he will have to be stopped. But if his belief and actions are genuine, we must welcome him to UR God.’ This I thought was perfectly fair, perfectly typical of his reasoning powers.”

  “Yes,” I said faintly. The men and women behind Ms. Anderson appeared excited again, and my mind was an exquisite blank.

  “Obviously,” said Ms. Anderson, her feather earrings dangling from her hair as though caught in a spiderweb, “no one knows what’s in your heart but you, and this morning’s proceedings were based on suppositions and speculation. How could they not have been? Someone suggested giving you a polygraph test, but Mr. Ramsted, one of your great champions at the trial, pointed out that those are unreliable, and that with someone’s life hanging in the balance we shouldn’t take any chances. Then Mr. Shoale announced the perfect solution. We were all amazed at its ingenuity. He said that you are to go on a Synergy device and receive a dose of Synergy approximately ten thousand times stronger than what is normally administered.”

  I swallowed and looked at all the expectant faces. “What will that do?”

  “If you are a Paser it will elevate you instantly to the status of ursavant. If you aren’t a Paser its electrical charge will kill you.”

  I was unable to respond, though this news seemed to release whatever had held the teachers and counselors in check, and they rushed forward to crowd around me, smiling and pumping my hand in congratulations.

  “I know you’d like to say good-bye in person to your friends and family on the outside, but under the circumstances that is impossible. Non-Pasers would object to Mr. Shoale’s solution, and we’re in no mood to fight that battle or deal with legal interference from people who don’t comprehend the first thing about PASE. You may write letters, though, which we will mail for you, explaining why you can’t see your loved ones again and that your mental faculties are sound. If you’d prefer, we may be able to arrange a video recording session. Your relatives might appreciate the opportunity to see and hear you one final time.”

  “When is this set to take place?”

  “Today,” Ms. Anderson said, “at one o’clock.”

  With that the meeting ended. I got up and thanked everyone for their efforts on my behalf. The following hour was dreamlike. I went back to the dorm room and bundled my things so they could be disposed of easily, then went to Elysian Field. Paul, who had jogged a lap and was clutching his chest, said he would miss my contributions to the research group. Rema asked me to save her a good spot in UR God. Shang-lee gave me a complicated East Bay handshake and said he had known some trailblazers in his time, but none who could touch me; I was so far ahead of the pack that he wasn’t even jealous. Mr. Israel and I did twenty jumping jacks together, two Vitruvian Men in sync, and although neither of us spoke we had an understanding. Mihir said good-bye last and gave me a big hug. He was sorry I wouldn’t get to meet his family on Earth, but I was right about the infectious power of PASE and so would meet them when we were all wands together, ecstatic vibrations side by side forever.

  “What you are doing is the ultimate form of bravery,” he said. “Leaving the known for the unknown is at the heart of every great story and the story of every great man. I am honored to have met you. Bear in mind that your journey will provide strength to countless others.”

  We clasped arms and then I followed my escorts to a room in Celestial Commons outfitted with a chair and desk, on which were a pen, paper, and video camera. At first I couldn’t write much because facilitators kept stopping by to wish me well and share their excitement that I would be the first—before Montgomery Shoale, even—to return to UR God, a goal toward which they would work for the rest of their lives. Mr. Ramsted, who stayed a long time talking about Synergy and how we would be treated by the wands who’d stayed behind, finally asked me in a lowered voice to intercede for him with UR God because, without admitting anything, he might have fallen short of his best self once or twice—or maybe more, he wasn’t sure—since he’d joined PASE. He would never do it again, and those exceptional occasions on which he had done it in the past were revolting to him, and I had to understand that he was stronger now, an immovable pillar of commitment, and by asking UR God to forgive him I would embody PASE values. I told him that it sounded as if he’d chastised himself enough, but that I would do what I could. This cheered him up until he grew more despondent and wondered if he should join me for ur-Synergy, for that was, realistically, given his terrible weakness and the possibility of his falling short of his best self again, his only hope for achieving ursavant status. I told him that wouldn’t be a good idea, and he got up and went away.

  From the room’s single window I saw a female guest I didn’t recognize down below in the garden, bending o
ver the only rose in bloom among a bush’s thorns. It was a lovely vision, like something remembered. There would be no distinct bodies, no individual flowers where I was going, for UR God was a great multicolored spiral in which everything bled together to form a more perfect union. There would be no me/you and I/thou. No separation. No remove. I looked at the letter-writing paper in front of me and pushed it away; I didn’t reach out to switch on the video equipment. What could I say to my parents or friends to make them understand what I did? Some would be saved and some would not. The woman in the garden might take a misstep and never enter ultimate reality. What would death be like without any future possibility of fusing into UR God? Was it a version of purgatory? Could one change there and someday be culled from it by UR God?

  Waiting for my escorts to take me to the Synergy Station, where a small assembly of guests and teachers and facilitators and Ms. Anderson would bear witness to my departure, I quit thinking about PASE eschatology and the transitory connections I’d made on planet Earth, the great rocky falsehood beneath my feet. There comes a point where answers, always provisional when the questions are meaningful enough, must no longer be sought, where you must walk headlong into a light too bright to see by, and accept it as illumination.

  A small bird hopped into the garden like a toy, poking its head here and there into the ground, grubbing with stop-motion quickness. Very soon they would come for me. When the bird flew away I randomly opened a copy of The Prescription to the middle of chapter six, called “Reflections and Refractions of Ultimate Reality,” and read: “The impulse that drives man to desire—that is, the impulse to stay alive and pass on his genetic material—makes up the fabric of his cosmic blindfold and blocks from his sight the myriad signs of truth in the universe. He must rip it off and undergo the rigors of returning to what he knew in the beginning—first chill, then stupor, then the letting go—of UR God. At that moment happiness will cease being an idea and a pursuit and become the foundation of being. Man as wand will wave about within a commotion that is in fact serenity.” I closed the book.

  At twenty minutes before one P.M., two new escorts arrived, men in their early twenties, one a foot taller and a shade darker than the other, and led me from the room down to the courtyard—the woman was gone and the bird had returned to pull a worm from the dirt. For a second I had the sensation that I was the bird and my entire body was tensed and engaged in a pursuit that would prolong my life—not forever or even indefinitely, but for a matter of hours—not questioning whether this was what I should be doing, but knowing that it was so. It was a strange hallucination that I forgot as soon as the bird got its prey and flew off to be alone, thinking that to have what others want is to be vulnerable.

  When we passed the now-empty Elysian Field and Synergy Station and reached the front gate, I asked my escorts where we were going. “There’s been a slight change of plans,” the darker one said, signaling to the gate attendant to let us through. “Montgomery Shoale’s orders.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The gates swung open and a white van with the PASE logo on its side started its engine. I climbed into the back with the lighter escort; the darker one sat in the passenger seat beside a driver wearing sunglasses and a gray fedora and a mossy green pinstriped suit. “Buckle up, sir,” the driver said, raising two fingers to wave good-bye to the gate attendant, who closed his hands together as the electronically controlled doors swung shut, as though magically commanding them to do so. A minute later the lighter escort handed me a red bandanna and told me to tie it around my eyes. This made no sense and when he said that this too was Mr. Shoale’s orders I almost asked why. Instead I tied it on and he checked it in the back and front to make sure it covered enough and was securely tied.

  No one said anything for the duration of a thirty-minute drive that included many turns and two freeways, a route that couldn’t have ended at the PASE Station or any other PASE-affiliated building I knew of in the Bay Area. When we parked I was taken still blindfolded out of the van and into a warm humid building, where we passed through a few doors before I was allowed to remove the bandanna. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of what appeared to be an office reception room, with fluorescent lights and a deodorized smell and a knee-high coffee table in one corner, atop which issues of Psychology Today and The Journal of Cognitive Science were fanned out like blackjack hands. A statuesque blonde rested her arms Sphinxlike on a crescent desk directly in front of us, a computer screen at her left. She said hello, accepted the keys from the darker escort, and pushed a bowl of chocolate mints toward us. A tortoiseshell fountain burbled on the floor to her right.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “The Cult Opposition Network,” said the lighter escort, who with the driver then made a little bow and left the way we’d come in. The receptionist began typing on the keyboard with an open file next to her that had a picture of me paper-clipped to it. The darker escort led me down a long corridor with lush burgundy carpet, past a dozen unpainted doors, some without handles. We turned a corner and came to an emergency exit at the end. There he knocked on a door with a “Director” plate nailed to its center. The escort pushed it ajar and said, “Tomas? We got him.”

  A wiry man in his midforties with curly red hair foaming out of his head got up from his desk and ushered me in.

  “Excellent,” he said to the escort. “Would you mind closing the door on your way out?”

  Turning his attention to me, he sat and indicated the chair facing his desk. I lowered myself into it.

  “After everything that’s happened to you,” he said, twisting his wedding ring nervously, “I imagine you’re upset, discombobulated. We know all about the scheduled electrocution and couldn’t feel sicker or angrier. What barbarism! Would you like some tea? We have herbals, chamomile, green. I think Katie out front has that Mongolian red everyone’s drinking now. Unless you only drink coffee?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  He returned to his desk drawer a handful of small tasseled bags and unplugged a teakettle hissing behind him. “You probably think you’re stuck in a nightmare, the first person ever to suffer like this. I would think that in your place, too, but if it’s any comfort to you, yours is an old story. Americans have been caught up in quack religions since before they thought to call themselves Americans. These days it can be hard to keep that in mind; most people think that just because they and their relatives don’t personally belong to a cult, and because they don’t see many media stories about them, cults must have gone away or stopped destroying innocent lives. You may have thought that yourself until recently. We at the Cult Opposition Network, however, are better informed. We appreciate the continuing seriousness of the situation because we’ve all been there ourselves or lost friends and relatives to it. This is a war. Lives are lost and casualties sustained. An unmistakable line separates good from evil.”

  “I’m not sure what’s going on here.”

  Tomas folded his hands. “You’ve never heard of us because we don’t advertise our services. In fact we don’t officially exist and in a way are unknown even to ourselves. If the FBI were to storm the building or infiltrate our computer system, they wouldn’t find any biographical information on our personnel or business affiliates. Likewise if someone from a target cult broke in or talked to a former CON employee who’s decided to inform against us, they’d learn nothing because we don’t keep centralized records and we work in autonomous cells that have little contact with one another.” He lit a cigarette and spoke while exhaling smoke through his nose. “Do you know what deprogramming is?”

  “No.”

  “Also known as exit counseling, it’s the act of rescuing cult victims from captivity and talking to them until they recognize the false nature of their inculcated belief system. It’s like an exorcism, except that we cast out both gods and devils. It’s one of our primary activities at the CON, and even though it’s benign—not to mention necessary, if you ask the fami
lies ripped apart by cults and the ex-members we’ve treated—for political reasons it’s been outlawed in this country. There used to be several professional deprogramming organizations, but then a coalition formed between the American Civil Liberties Union and the cults themselves that closed down all the greats: Operation Free Thought, Religious Truth Now, the Liberation Project. It was a terrible clampdown, a kind of pogrom. People fighting the tyranny of cults were jailed on charges of abduction and attempted brainwashing. As if abduction and brainwashing weren’t the very crimes deprogrammers are against! We at the CON were lucky in that we had just started out and no one knew about us yet; since then we’ve worked hard to stay underground, hidden from the First Amendment fanatics and cult mercenaries.”

  “I think a mistake has been made. Why am I here?”

  “I’ll get to that, but first I want to say that we aim to do more than just save individuals; we want to strike at the root of the problem by wholly eliminating the most insidious cults. While administering a pound of cure we’d like to produce an ounce of prevention. So far we’ve had some difficulties—no cults have shut down as a result of our efforts—but that’s because we’ve focused on organizations that are too well established, like Reverend Moon’s Unification Church and the Transcendental Meditation movement and Scientology. You see, the longer a cult survives, the better able it is to portray itself as a legitimate religion and gain mainstream acceptance. There’s an old saying that the only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate it owns.” Tomas put out his cigarette and I saw a series of scarred tattoo erasures on his right fingers. “In spite of that, and in part because of you, we’ve decided to go after a cult that has grown very large in the seventeen years it’s existed but is vulnerable nonetheless: Prescription for a Superior Existence.”

  We stared at each other for an uncomfortably long time, and I said, “You think PASE is a cult?”