The Code of Happiness (10 page)

*****

“I love Vic's, used to go there in my teens.”

Grace's enthusiasm. Jamie has to think on his feet.
If she really wants to have a good time this could be trouble. The
concept solidifies. She wants to have a good time. He's shrinking,
not up to the task. God—he's used to being repelled, not liked—and
she likes him or she wouldn't do this, this sort of happy thing.
Bring back the colder, edgier Grace, he thinks. He knew how to
handle that, her warming to him could be catastrophe.

“I love Vic's too, obviously, wouldn't have suggested
it, but I'm thinking it's loud for a real conversation.”

“I'm not ready for a real conversation.”

She flashes a smile.

“Oh,” he says.

They're on different wavelengths. A wind of
realization passes through.

“I don't know how to have fun,” he admits.

She laughs. It may be the funniest thing anyone has
said to her.

“I'm not kidding. I don't think I know what it is.
Like it skipped my genes.” Or what he doesn't say. His life has
been too serious, too self-centered, too focused on surviving.
Avoiding. Being let down, or more to the point; the anguish of
letting another down.

“You're the saddest person I know.”

“You don't understand, how could you, you don't know
anything about me.”

Grace blanks him. Jamie's worried, maybe she
does.

“Do you?” he asks.

Grace chooses an appropriate smile. Jamie has to
trust her. She's bringing her HR skills to bear. Being with her is
like taking a truth serum.

“And... I can't tell you... because you want to have
fun.”

His mind won't stop. She's like two people. Different
uniforms, changes in behavior. This could go anywhere and it scares
him, he was no longer in control. Grace grabs his hand.

“You're different,” he says.

She shakes her head,
no,
she insists, “You're
freaking out.”

The car is sanctuary. Grace tells him she could see
the panic and confusion in him. To her he was the one who was
different. She hadn't seen the neurotic side. Agreement here was
easy. They both had a lot to learn about each other and neither was
proficient with relationships. It turned out they both hung out at
the stable
in their early twenties, a physical hook up site
that lost its lustre past the age of twenty-five. It was cool
having a place geared for horny youth with zero expectation of any
relationship but embellished the soulless life amongst the black
and gray. Amused they never ran into each other, they were
connecting now.

Jamie was getting his serious conversation, although
not the one he envisaged, the one about life at XXLI. He could wait
though; the more time he shared with Grace, the stronger the bond.
With the awkward start over Grace could introduce Jamie to fun. He
tells her not to get her hopes up. The burnt orange wet dream gives
her the chance to take him to a part of the city she had always
wanted to go. Faust Square was undergoing its second reclamation.
The first renewal was an ethereal open mall, clean and safe for
families. Success drove up the rents forcing stores to close, or
the already large chains to find a bigger and leaner fish to save
them. Identities were lost under
unpronounceable
leadership
and consumers left in droves—not helped by the double whammy
recession. The city picked up the land from bankrupt property
owners and went experimental after bulldozing half the place. They
kept rents low to allow for an artisan class, unlicensed magicians,
poets, and musicians to restore street life. It drew youth and
attracted the chatter of the
influencer class
Grace paid
attention to. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it
became plastic again. For now she and Jamie wandered past open pit
fires and sellers of marshmallows. Temptation would win, and they
toasted s'mores under moonlight wearing oxygen masks.

The following day Jamie faces the conundrum. Creating
happiness from drab faces. If he wanted to understand the
experience of people beyond code then he should undergo the test
himself. He waits until the end of the day when the lines are
clear. Michelle approves, thinks it a good idea. She shows him the
route into Test Room X where there's a faint and unpleasant smell
of the unwashed. The end of week crowd she tells him, inferring the
last hours were reserved for those on the streets.

“Don't worry,” she says, “it's clean. Place your
right hand inside the cup until it squeezes, and don't be alarmed
if it's tight, it adjusts accordingly.”

She sounds like Grace did on his first interview.
They must've taken XXLI courses on how to speak corporation
English. He slips his hand into the cup as directed and feels a
sharp pierce through his middle finger. Jamie withdraws his hand.
Ruby red blood spills down his palm.

Michelle's unimpressed at his wimpy reaction. “You're
not getting ten k,” she quips.

“I think the machine's broken.”

“You're a little sensitive.”

Michelle's an ace at getting his finger to stop
bleeding and dresses the wound. A minor cut is her summation. Jamie
enjoys the attention. It brings a smile.

“What?” Michelle asks.

“Nothing. It's between me and me.”

It's good for him to have a crack of insight.
Happiness could be a smile. Pity the machines weren't recording
this. They were limited, not encompassing every moment, just the
select. He had to remind himself that was the point. It was
specific moments not the whole, the totality of experience they
were trying to decipher.

“It's normal for this to happen,” says Michelle.

“So it happens to everyone?”

“More or less.”

“You're taking blood?”

“Not always. We're DNA sampling essentially.”

This is news to Jamie.

“Without their consent?”

“People lie all the time. Even when they don't know.
We're hoping this will prove a more efficient method.”

“I'm missing something.”

“Beta testing. We're searching for gene patterns
related to happiness.”

“That no one knows about?”

“We're the only one's who need to know. It's the next
step Jamie, the fine-tuning to provide an individualized code for
each person. You can't argue with that.”

He can't, but his head can spin. He walks over to the
latte machine hoping for clarity. Buttons are pressed, the
automated sounds louder and clearer. The cup glides out, smooth as
ever, the smell potent. He sips. Michelle and the office of palm
trees are a carnival. Her lips move and her words vanish before
they reach his ears, and re-emerge somewhere behind him.

“Michelle? Do you have my DNA?”

“Of course.”

Blaze grants Jamie an appointment. Temporary access
to his floor via the bullet, the latest in elevator design. He's
funnelled through white round plastered walls and kaleidoscopic
images, their purpose to dazzle, hypnotize, and disorientate.
Blaze's office itself is modest by comparison but made larger by
the low couch Jamie sits on. He's forced to look up at the ceiling
rippling with energy. Blaze the showman. No surprise. Blaze
contents himself, pouring two single malts as his protégé
acclimatizes.

“Do you know what we do here?” he asks.

Jamie's not sure if it's cheek or rhetorical. He
waits to see and the lack of words forthcoming allows him to
answer.

“Provide the best of the best to feel the best. The
best of the best.”

It's a terrible response. Nerves have the better of
him.

“Five out of ten,” says Blaze, a little surprised at
the fumble.

“Happiness,” says Jamie correcting himself.

“A continuum of happiness. You have a little dark
moment, a little blip and there we are.” He hands a scotch over to
Jamie. “I suspect you are having a dark moment.”

“You've taken my DNA, and others without
consent.”

“Not really. People don't read the fine print. And
there's so much more. Giving people what they want. Have you not
experienced it?” He points to the scotch. “Lagavulin Distillers. Go
on, drink it.”

Jamie sips the golden liquid. It sears his tongue
with a hint of burnt orange and Congolese chocolate nestled in with
the peat.

“Would you deny this to others?”

Blaze is in the rhetorical old man lecture phase.
Discussion is barred. All Jamie can do is sit and wait for the
appropriate moment to leave, perhaps leave XXLI
the
unpronounceable corporation
for good now he had a real
connection with Grace. Blaze smothers him with jargon, how gain is
a life experience and providing such encounters is worthy of any
human being. They're becoming a happiness machine where profit is a
by-product, not a dirty word. Blaze wants to be spared a morality
tale but Jamie ultimately has one question. Why him?

“Patience Jamie. Didn't Ray teach you?”

The circle is about to be completed. Truth, if he
could trust it.

“Ray?”

“He's usually more thorough in his training.”

“Ray's involved?”

The hardest part for Jamie was not letting his mind
run away to conclusions and the what if's, but it was too late, the
horse had bolted.

“What did he tell you Jamie? Ninety percent neurons
in your heart? Won't live long? Baloney! Look at me. Fifty-five
years old and strong as an ox!”

And to demonstrate his athletic prowess, Blaze
catapults himself into the air where he spins and lands on his
feet.

“And you? Why you? Oh, come on. Everyone wants to
know what happened to the fourteen-year-old super computer hacker,
who he is, where he is. A feat never done before and never done
since. A feat that got his family killed. Pity that boy—now a
man—doesn't pay attention to the real news. He'd know that freedom
of information has changed—freedom for those who know how to ask.
It was just a question of who would get to you first. The feds
couldn't keep you hidden forever. Oh, not their protégé who went on
to kill the Darknet. Bet the underground loves you.”

A partial truth Blaze shouldn't know. Jamie wasn't
the only one involved. There were other bright lights. They had
dismantled the systems that had protected whistleblowers and
criminals alike for decades. And with a bitter irony he had spent
the last ten years seeking the privacy he destroyed.

“Ask what Ray really wants you for—the old
pyromaniac.”

Jamie's concepts implode. It was if he had walked in
a world of blue, and now it was revealed as red. Safety was
uncertain; his next step could swallow him whole. Ground was
nonexistent. He is shattered. He is weak bewildered flesh. A pawn.
Two men, real men, greater than him, were doing battle on some
otherworldly plane. Both laid claims on him and he was powerless to
choose to whom he belonged. He was no more than a ball to be tossed
around their court. He throws up on the cold marble floor, dizzy to
the smell of liquor still on his breath. If only he had a button he
could press to reboot himself, or better, to erase the past few
months.

Blaze grips his arm sending pulses of life through
his body.

“Go see Ray,” says Blaze. “Your future is assured
here. You will see.”

*****

Jamie was found, and would be forever chased. The
feds had warned him in his final days with them of mafia and
foreign governments wanting him to do their dirty work. Being
watched was one thing, being hounded and having his life threatened
for nefarious deeds was another. In front of him the late winter
sky seemed to bend into darkness. He was on his way to Ray.
Anonymity had been Jamie's only game, now it was over.

Wire coils and cables hang disconnected. The Source
Foundation is stripped of machines, the floors bare, the ceilings
pulled apart. There's only Po to explain and her words are spartan
and inadequate. She dodges questions but not with the force of
Jamie’s hand grasping her. Jamie's unaware of the pressure he's
applying in the squeeze for truth, and her begging for release goes
unnoticed. She demands he look into her eyes, to reach in and see
her. His mind arcs back to the straps in the dentist's chair,
here’s the chance to equalize the past. But he's not like her, he
thinks, he gains no pleasure from torment. He's not the demon, and
he relaxes his grip.

The Foundation is finished, she tells him, and
defends the parts that are true without ever revealing the
specifics. It's all garbage to Jamie. Her deflection is obvious; to
buy Ray more time for his disappearance. The defunct ionizer
becomes her prison, Jamie her mad guard, computing events, trying
to make sense of them. Everyone's trying to trick him, fulfill
their agendas. All he wants is truth.

“Tell me one thing, Po. Ninety percent of my heart
isn't made of neurons, is it?”

There's plainness in her refusal to answer. No
teasing, gimmicks, or revelation. Her eyes won't speak. If he wants
all the answers he'll have to ask Ray.

“How do I know he's coming back?”

The hours pass over midnight, Jamie's slumping, still
clueless as to Ray's designs on him.

“I calmed down,” he says to Po, “when I feared the
most in the ionizer I calmed down and could see. Now I'm calm, and
all I see is a mess.”

“Then let go. Walk out of here. Walk away from
Blaze.”

“And hide again?”

It was possible Po was in the dark about his
identity. He allows her to kneel beside him. To touch him. A
slither of humanity.

“I'll drive you home,” she says.

Project Happiness, he'll tell her he thinks, when the
time is right.

Exhaustion is a blessing. Nothing the body and mind
can do except slip into rest. One flickering eye allows him to see
Po enjoying the buttons of luxury in his car. She's not immune to
the material.