The Code of Happiness (11 page)

“Never said I was,” she says.

His car. For how much longer? If it ever was. He
sinks deep into sleep. He'd be home soon.

“Nice ride.”

Jamie awakens to the orange sky of first light and
tumbleweeds passing through a desert highway. He offers Po a glare
and steps out into a cracked and parched landscape, nothing for
miles except a rickety old barn and a cold eerie wind grazing his
face. He watches Po's hair twist into knots.

“Glenhorn Forest,” she says.

“Where the trees?”

“Disappeared twenty-five years ago.”

All he can do is kick the dirt and watch the barn
door open. Ray holding onto a black Stetson beckons them in.

“The morning wind,” he shouts, “Dies down in the
afternoon.”

Truths part two. A wood stove crackles, warming the
three participants sitting on cushions. A kettle rattles away. Any
cup of tea will do. The explanation is simple. The double crash
destroying The Source Foundations funds, people too busy surviving
or accruing to listen to their message, the Blaze Malone's of the
world had won—or were winning, and John Charles Cavour, their
benevolent billionaire, always understood all things come to an
end. Jamie offers a little on Project Happiness in return, a code
to be switched on.

“We needed someone to help us,” says Ray.

“Generating the
affectus transfigurantes?
”

“Playing Robin Hood.”

Ray opens a draw beneath his seat. Inside is a small
flip chart with various schematics, the immediacy of its meaning
strikes Jamie like a one-two sucker punch. A global plan to skim
the banks of millions, and he would be at its centre, orchestrating
with his ability to access the backdoor and beyond.

“Yes,” says Ray, “I played on your ego. For the
greater good.”

“So I can get a twenty year jail sentence?”

“Your little black box,” says Po.

“They would fry that in a second.”

“We all have our flaws,” says Ray.

“And what's yours? Lying?”

“Would you have believed me if I said you were just
an ordinary Joe? No. You needed to be told you were special.”

“So the stuff with the torus and the
affectus
transfigurantes
is fiction?”

“Everyone has the gift. Not just you. But not
everyone can realize it because they don't invest the time.”

Jamie could see how he was the perfect candidate. The
disaffected boy living between the cracks of what society left. A
nowhere man needing a role or a place to belong despite the denial
he didn't, to find some kind of meaning in his existence, for
without it he was merely a shell, a shadow, a pointless form of
carbon. He was ripe to be plucked and placed in any cult.

“Is there any difference between you and Blaze?”

“We're non-profit,” says Po.

“The ride to town leaves in thirty seconds,” he tells
her.

“Slow down. Think Jamie. If you can turn happiness
on, then you could turn happiness off. What then?”

He's too tired to consider the consequences, his
brain mashed. For once being alone would have benefits, and Po
reading that turns away and folds up a blanket.

“The forest Jamie, that used to be outside,” says
Ray, “its disappearance is replicated all over the world.”

“Thank you for the tea.”

He is cold fish.

“Don't disappear.”

“Goodbye.”

“You have a choice.”

Indeed he does. He was going from one sham
organization to another. If he was out in the open, easy to find,
what did it matter if he exposed the callous and secretive
practices of XXLI. So what if he'd signed confidentiality
agreements. The public had the right to know, to wake up from their
slumber. He may be sued, but conceded it was more likely no one
would be interested. Ray's truth struck him as pathetic now, almost
benign. All he had wanted him to be was a petty thief—albeit on a
grand scale. He ran through the moments when he could have said no
to Ray. He was growing up; he wouldn't be so manipulated again or
so asleep. His mind returned to the energy he felt from Blaze's
grip, how it etched itself into his very being. He needed to hatch
a plan.

*****

“There's weird shit going down here, Grace.”

She's in the middle of an interview.

“Oh, sorry,” he says. He turns to the female
candidate, “Don't take the job.”

Grace maintains her cool, her professionalism.

“I haven't offered her one.”

“What? I'm qualified,” says the prospective employee,
a tad confused.

“Did she pass?”

“It's private, Jamie.”

“Who are you?” asks the woman.

“Doing you a favor. This place is toxic.” He turns to
Grace. “Can we have talk when you're done?”

“Why, of course. Please wait outside—where you should
have been in the first place.”

Jamie fires one more salvo to the stranger, “It's a
mistake.”

Jamie has enough time to think of all the ways Grace
will bury him. He's cold at the thought she might be a spy, a
stooge for XXLI. Trust is a new currency. It was about him as much
as her. The female candidate walks past with an icy stare. He waits
for Grace to follow. It's hard to be patient, but he needs access
to Blaze. He runs through his plea to her. She must know something
smells about project happiness. He's seen her human side, the
approachable and friendly. They had spent the night together
wandering a square of hope, of people coming together—and she
didn't have embedded devices. They had a real connection. All she
had to do was shed the behavior that came with the uniform of
work.

*****

The master awaits ashen-faced for his best and
brightest pupil to grasp the fundamentals. He guides him toward the
real truth he had been searching for. Ray and John Charles Cavour
only had part of the answer. What lay behind the walls of his
office was destiny for all. Jamie's slow to Blaze's truth because
the omnipresent one appears sick and weak. It's hard to vilify a
man so ill. Blaze had wanted Jamie to see him like this. It would
help him understand the power available to him. He slides his hand
up the wall to press a button that opens a door. The gap in the
doorway is filled with an impressive glow. Crimson and gold, a mix
of the divine and the surreal illuminating a section of his office.
Jamie follows Blaze to the edge of the new room but chooses not to
enter.

“It's not complete, but it works,” says Blaze,
“watch.”

A giant orange and gold plasma orb hovers above a
dish. Blaze slips his hands into a pair of silver embroidered
gloves and places them inside the dish. The orb stills in
recognition of this connection. Then light bolts from it to the
gloves lighting up Blaze. Blaze, the sun god, whose brightness
blinds Jamie to the point of dropping to the floor. Puzzle pieces
of light float across his damaged retina and the protégé blinks in
an attempt to refocus. He sees a hazy silhouette. Even with the
abnormality he knows it's a rejuvenated Blaze.

“The new
affectus
transfigurantes
. My
pet project you can help complete.”

Jamie struggles to his feet, “I've read about people
like you in comic books.”

“Step back from the comic book—and your games. This
is a chance to change the world for real.”

“It always amazes me the crazy people never know when
to stop. You and Ray were made for each other.”

“We were, but he's stuck in the past. And you, you're
stuck in nowhere. All our research, all our coding, has resulted in
this.”

“Using unauthorized DNA?”

“To help people. Tap into it, Jamie, and your power
to transform others will be greater. I've seen you do it... and I
know you haven't a clue. Remarkable.” He shakes Jamie. “Grace. I've
seen you with Grace.” He lets go of him. “Maybe you are truly
special after all. Maybe you can resist what I have to offer.”

“I don't see how I can help.”

“Twofold. I can only get the effects to last five
hours. With your coding ability, who knows?”

He guides Jamie around the orb to another machine and
a jungle of hanging wires.

“We need your consciousness to be coded.”

Jamie's at the end of Blaze's unsavoury grip.

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“The Source Foundation was onto something. But
they're old school. This is the new way. One day we'll be able to
offer everyone this source.”

“At what price?”

“A moderate subscription.”

“And for those who can't afford?”

“We'll offer a lite version, like old parking meters
on the street. Pop in a buck and receive five seconds of bliss.
Imagine the happiness. All we're doing is enhancing a code that
occurs in us naturally. It's just that we're unevolved. Why wait
for millennia when we can have this now?”

The words of Ray come back to Jamie. Blaze wasn't bad
or evil. He was impatient, misguided. Jamie couldn't ignore what he
had just witnessed. And his own life? It had amounted to little.
Doubts? Yes. A little crazy? Indeed. But what Blaze was saying had
an element of truth.

“I want to teach you about the
affectus
transfigurantes.
I do, truly,” implores Blaze.

Jamie's unable to make connection to the pathological
liar, those who use a grain of truth to spread their
malfeasance.

“Jamie, we can do this without you, but it will take
years. Come. Come try it. Don't you want to?”

Jamie's nerves kick in but not enough to walk away.
He still has the power of youth and it comes with the naiveté of
trying anything once. He wasn't thirty yet.

“Five seconds,” says Blaze.

“Two,” responds Jamie.

“Deal.”

Blaze chaperones Jamie to the silver gloves.

“You'll feel a slight tingling at first.”

“How can I trust you?”

Blaze searches for the apt answer; it's not far.

“Because I need you.”

And with that Jamie places his hands into the gloves
and is zapped.

Jamie's mind expands. It's wide. Pacific Ocean wide.
A setting sun melting into a buzzing golden rod of light as Blaze's
lab disappears behind it.

He hears Blaze. “Do you feel it?”

Jamie nods, his smile feels as if it extends out of
his face and into the space around him, the ocean, the golden rod.
He's too numb to realize he's been connected beyond the agreed two
seconds. He touches his heart. Love, the forgotten code has entered
his dark space.

“I give you a source from the outside to help on the
inside,” Blaze says triumphantly. And with a touch of wickedness,
“And now for your consciousness.”

Jamie drops to his knees.

“Are you ready for truth? It'll be over in a
minute.”

Men and women march through Jamie's mind in black
suits and facemasks. Images flow over them; XXLI
unpronounceable
but helping you breathe, working to bring you happiness
, the
old man smiling beneath his burnt brown house, thousands of faces
sucked into their Nano devices, and over it all, is Blaze's echoing
voice, ‘I give you a source from the outside to help with the
inside.’ The beach and the Pacific Ocean return, now being filled
with computer parts, his black box of magic tricks, and a venti
latte. Warm and creamy, the complex smell of coffee blows his mind.
The art, a beating heart, begs him to dive in. It is time to
acquiesce, and he plunges into the milky white.

He'll never leave. He doesn't want to. The whole
ocean has turned into a latte, the waste of the modern age
eviscerated. Floating in the froth, there's a sense of magic from
above, the orange sun, the torus emanating from unknown planets,
and flashes of yellow light. He looks down to see the same colors
streaming from him, from his heart into the milkiness. Bliss,
comfort, the womb. He doesn't need Blaze's voice, yet there it
is.

“For my life I give you bliss.”

Life? The voice confuses the soft milkiness of
Jamie's surrounds and the opposite of life creeps in. Darkness at
the edges. Above him the hot desert takes over, bare tree branches
searching for life, the rickety barn uninhabited, tumbleweeds
waiting for a wind to drive them somewhere new, and Ray's voice.
‘Don't disappear. You have a choice.’ Typical, thinks Jamie, Ray
interrupting what little bliss there is in life. And Ray repeats
again, ‘Don't disappear, you have a choice.’ Ray, the irritant,
aggravates. Now the warm milkiness feels all too real. There's
wetness at the back of his neck, trying to enter his ear. It's all
square pegs and round holes. Not fitting, not making sense. Fear
surges, and its sheer force brings Jamie to consciousness.

Panic cracks through his spine.

His breath fogs a mask, hiding his new reality but
soon he discovers the truth, his body soaked in murky turquoise
liquid, wires pulling at his arms and legs, and worse, bodies float
alongside him, their skin pale and prune. He thrashes his way to
the surface. He passes the content, the blissful, and the
unconscious. He grabs the side of this human aquarium and hauls
himself over the edge, twisting his knee as he lands. Blaze opens
the door and Jamie flies at him half-cocked only to be swatted
back. And then he realizes how sucked of life he is. He lifts
himself up, leaning against the aquarium wall. The temptation to
climb back in and unhook the disappeared five grows, and he looks
up to the wires to see if he can use them to swing over again.

“No Jamie. You will kill them.”

It's a struggle to speak, but he must do all he can
to stay awake. “They're already dead,” he pants.

“They're in bliss,” proclaims Blaze. “People like
you. Alone. Nothing to care for. Never cared about anything, or
anyone. Looking for the ‘extraordinary’ experience. Now they have a
purpose.”