Detour from Normal (18 page)

In that twenty-four-hour period, Beth had done all the work necessary to remove me from a psychiatric institution AMA, put together a small army of people—including firemen—to coerce me to have more tests,
and drove 160 miles—nearly four hours of city driving. She literally spent every waking minute of her day trying to help me. I, on the other hand, had just wanted to play with my dogs and sleep in my big, comfy bed. Our worlds couldn't have been further apart. We got into the van and headed home without another word. When we arrived home at just after 3:30 a.m., Beth went straight to bed. I fixed a sandwich, poured a glass of milk, and went out to the love seat on our patio to eat. After eating, I was too wound up from my experiences to want go to bed anymore. Instead I tried to piece together what had happened. I couldn't understand why everyone had treated me with such hostility at the hospital or why they thought I wanted to hurt my wife. The entire experience made me want to resist any further testing all the more—no one was going to help me. While I sat there mulling things over, I unknowingly did something I'd managed to avoid since my first seizure: I chalked up a completely sleepless night. Strike one.

Chapter 16

UTOPIA: EXPERIMENTING

As the sun crept above the horizon, I was still on the love seat on my back patio. My pack was lying on the ground next to me, each of the dogs staring intently at me, their stares broken only if a mourning dove swooped by, a dog barked in the neighborhood, or a hummingbird visited the feeder suction-cupped to the kitchen window. Even then their attention was only drawn away momentarily. I couldn't stand it. I knew it wasn't the case, but they all appeared to be begging for food. So I went in the house and got some saltine crackers from the cupboard. I sat down on the love seat, ate a few, and then threw one to each dog. Washington tried to jump and catch his, Annabelle ducked, and Kobee cowered. I continued to eat and share crackers, and before long we had finished the whole package. Parched from the dry snack, the dogs filed through the dog door into the house to drink from their water bowl.

Gradually the rest of the world stretched its arms and wiped the sleep from its eyes, and the sound of traffic filled the air. Though it was Sunday, in my timeless mindset, I imagined it was the sound of everyone going to work as I normally would. For some reason I no longer cared about work. I wasn't worried about money and was certain that the world would be changing soon and money would either be easy for
me to acquire or unnecessary. I also wasn't much interested in material goods. I was eager to unload as much as possible at Goodwill and simplify my life. I was even considering donating my old Corvette to help disabled veterans. I also had an antique Plymouth that was running but still needed much TLC.
That could help someone in need as well,
I thought. After my experience with Carlos, helping others had become a more urgent priority for me. Convinced that I had healed him, I thought about him often. Even more important to me was my lack of negative emotions. I was certain that losing them was my own doing, that through effort and concentration, I had freed myself of those emotions and their associated baggage. It didn't escape me that I had done it just before the supposed day of the Rapture: May 21, according to the media. I felt that perhaps the Rapture had indeed happened and that it involved everyone losing his or her negative emotions, starting with me.

I truly believed that losing negative emotions was going to be contagious. Never mind that I had seen no evidence to support the theory aside from Carlos; it was just something that I felt to my core. So despite the lack of evidence, I was totally engrossed in preparing for a new world. Since I rarely got more than a few hours of sleep—sometimes none at all—I had plenty of time to let my mind run wild with possibilities. Since 4:30 a.m., that's what I'd been doing as I lay on the love seat.

I already knew the end goal—Utopia—but how to get there? Where should I begin? Obviously, it had to begin with me because I was the one who was going to infect everyone—scratch that—
was
infecting everyone. What was the reason for Utopia? Well, if everyone was going to change, then society was going to have to change, too. It would be necessary to come up with a new model for society. Knowledge gleaned from Utopia could be used to create that model. As others struggled
through uncertainty, we could begin paving the way to a better future. Eventually, we could spread our knowledge to the entire world.

In the end, everyone would change anyway. Perhaps the new society would evolve just fine in its own time without intervention, but why not be proactive and potentially alter the course of history in the process? Why not drive the first stake now toward a healthier society and planet? Why would anyone in my position of advanced knowledge not want to accelerate the solving of man's age-old problems, preventing needless suffering and death from continuing?

Where would I begin? How could I guarantee success? It would be prudent to first experiment. I could do that right here in my own community, the sleepy little suburb of Ahwatukee, which just happened to be ground zero for everyone changing. If I wanted someone on my team, I'd just have to shake his or her hand, and wait. In no time there'd be enough changed people to get things rolling—all of them just as passionate about the venture as me. For tasks that couldn't be completed locally, we could employ satellites. Since everyone involved would be contagious, any one of us could travel to a potential satellite facility and evaluate them. If everything was acceptable, then—you guessed it—a handshake would be in order.

When it came to funding the venture, we could infect key employees at businesses who were already passionate about what they were doing, then purchase stock in their companies, and wait for their even more passionate efforts to pay off. As citizens in the community became infected and were willing to live in tighter quarters (because they'd all get along so well), they could sell their homes, move into smaller, more efficient ones, and donate their equity. Or, as they lost interest in accumulated material goods, they could sell their unwanted possessions on eBay, Craigslist, or other media. There were a myriad of ways to make money.

The most important and unknown variable of Utopia was the society. A society comprised of people without negative emotions has never been assembled in the history of man. There was no way to know how it would work or what would work best without taking a leap of faith to find out. So Ahwatukee would be the proving ground. A mini Utopia (Utopia 1) would be created in Ahwatukee. Existing tract homes would be modified to study new ways of living together, and new types of furnishings would be developed that were more space efficient, environmentally friendly, and reproducible. Changed people with optimum character, expertise, and passion would be brought together and observed as they lived and worked. New means of communication would be considered to aid satellite development and distributed manufacturing. Local vendors would be contracted to address unique transportation and infrastructure needs. Finally, a team would be assembled to find the location of Utopia 2, the real Utopia. After sufficient knowledge was gained from Utopia 1, all the personnel and knowledge would be transferred to Utopia 2. Utopia 1 would be shut down and converted to conventional standards, and the property would be sold to help fund Utopia 2.

Later that morning I enthusiastically explained all my plans to Beth. Though she feigned listening intently, in actuality, her fear mounted with each word. She was more terrified than ever of my mental changes. More and more it looked as if Dr. Alverez had been right: bringing me home was a mistake.

Chapter 17

THE LITTLE RED CAR

That's as far as I progressed on Utopia that day; I had other things I needed to address. For starters, the yard had gotten out of hand while I was away. First I picked up after the dogs, which could have been worse. They don't like to get their feet wet in the grass, which was automatically watered twice a day, so they all relieved themselves in the same area of pea gravel behind a playhouse I'd build for the kids. Afterward I got out my old electric mower to mow the tough "Easy Turf that was so long it was twisting itself into strands of rope.

I coaxed the underpowered mower through the dense grass, stopping frequently to clear it of jams. Washington heard the mower and began prancing around the yard as he always did whenever I mowed.
Lawn mower means swimming,
he thought. For whatever reason it was impossible to keep him away from the pool when I mowed. I stopped the mower repeatedly and threw the wood into the pool for him. When he finally tired, he jumped onto the love seat, kicked all the cushions off, and shook water everywhere. I continued mowing, and three bags of grass clippings later, I was finished with my tiny plot of green. I skipped the leaf blower and the edger —it was enough work just mowing the lawn.

Next I decided to treat myself to lunch. There was a Subway just down the road, and I had a real hankering for a tuna sandwich. Those always reminded me of swimming; I used to order them for lunch on days I swam in an adult stroke class a few years back. Ever since then I'd swum regularly, and at least once a week, I'd get a tuna sandwich afterward.

I ordered my tuna on nine-grain whole wheat (my surgeon said I needed to eat more fiber) with pepper jack cheese, jalapenos, spicy mustard (the hotter the better), lettuce, tomatoes, and—since I was feeling extra chipper—I got the better-tasting fried potato chips instead of the healthier baked ones. It wasn't a fancy lunch, but compared to the heavily processed food at Pinecrest, it was gourmet.

As I ate I thought. One thought led to another, and before long I was contemplating several Hyundai Elantras I had test-driven before my surgery. Beth had even driven one. It occurred to me that a new Elantra would be a worthy reward for surviving my operation and other related catastrophes. I was fifty-five, had a great credit rating, and no debt. What the heck? I finished my sandwich, chips, and drink and drove east to Phoenix Hyundai.

One thing I'd always wanted in my life was a perfect sale—one where I'd walk in, I'd tell the salesman what I wanted, everything would go perfectly, and I'd drive home with my dream car. OK, a Hyundai Elantra wouldn't exactly be my dream car—that'd be more like a Nissan 370Z or even better a Porsche 911 Turbo—but it would be perfect for me to get around in. I was sick of my stick-shift Kia, not because it was a bad car but because I was weary of the stick shift—and the out-of-balance tire for that matter. So the salesman and I went to work.

"Do you want to go for a test drive?"

"No, been on two of those, well, three including the one with my wife."

"What color do you want?"

"Red because I've never purchased a red car."

"What options do you want?"

"Everything but NAV—and no leather. It's too hot in Phoenix."

"What about financing?"

"You can finance it."

"Trade in?"

"No. Tell you what, you can keep that blue car out there and do whatever you want with it."

I was serious. I'll admit that was a little drastic, but that's what I did. I abandoned that car on the lot and let the dealer figure out what to do with it. The sale was perfect. There were no problems with financing, paperwork, nothing. The salesman brought me two small bottles of water, and I thought how appropriate it would be if, when the last paper was signed, I'd finished both of them. As I signed the last paper, I glanced over at the bottles and noticed with satisfaction that they were both empty. I was on cloud nine as I drove off that lot.

In my entire life, I had never done anything so completely spontaneous. Usually Beth and I test drove vehicles for six months and discussed all the pluses and minuses in minute detail. We'd evaluate our financial situation, factoring in the kids, the dogs, and even the rats. After we'd scrutinized everything and decided on the vehicle, we'd haggle with the salesman for hours. By the time it was over, we often wondered if it'd been worth all the hassle.

Unbeknownst to me, the dealer called my brother Cole during the transaction. I'd put him down on the paperwork as a personal reference.
I don't know how the conversation went between Cole and the dealer, but shortly after that Cole was on the phone with my wife. Needless to say, Beth wasn't overjoyed with my spontaneous transaction. What upset her most (besides the fact that I'd done it without her consent) was the fact that I had just left the Kia with the dealer.