Read The Code of Happiness Online

Authors: David J. Margolis

Tags: #coming of age, #mystery, #supernatural, #psychological, #urban, #belief system, #alienation, #spiritual and material, #dystopian sci fi

The Code of Happiness (4 page)

BOOK: The Code of Happiness
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He walks away with his two bags of chips and local
lager and hurries past the indie mart looking for a place to
inhale. There was another reason to escape, a more selfish one,
Jamie was seeing his future. Time passes in a blank before he
focuses on a poster; the band
The Future of Happiness
is
playing in a couple of weeks. He shakes his head at a society
obsessed with happiness yet spirals in the opposite direction.
Maybe he'll go see them.

 

*****

 

No one answers. He's been banging on the black door
for a while because there's no bell. The irony of his former
kidnappers who had so much to say and now shutting him out doesn't
go unmissed. Jamie sits on the cold concrete, letting his
frustration slide. It occurs to him they may have moved on. He toys
with the idea the abduction was a dream—or worse, the product of
his bored imagination and his scars from the straps self-inflicted.
Sleep had eluded him the night before, Demon Keeper no longer held
interest in the vacant hours, and not getting the old man's name
niggled. He didn't want return to the brown house. Get involved in
their lives. It gave him knots in his stomach. Not something he
did. It was matched now by the futility returning to Ray and Po.
They spoke a language—nay—believed in theories and philosophies of
a different time. He had researched John Charles Cavour and found
him largely discredited. Initially easy to ignore Cavour, Jamie
knew the searches he had taken were public. There were other
searches he could do, private one's, the underground wiki's
avoiding the arms of governments and corporations but he deemed the
risk too great for its reward. If Ray and Po had found him, others
could find him too. If he was going to leave a trail of crumbs they
better be small. His rule of thumb was to go underground as a last
resort—another community he didn't identify with. Despite the
resistance Jamie was here waiting for Ray and Po. If they were so
interested in him a few days earlier, they would still be now, and
to experience their side of the fence would allow exploration of a
fuller truth.

 

And there on the cold steps, he had flipped his
doubts one-eighty. He knew who he was; he didn't have to buy
anyone's propaganda to be a whole human being. He had nothing to
fear. The waiting was probably another test, something as innocent
as determining his patience. He reassured himself he had a
plausible excuse to return. He didn't want them to think he was
actually interested. Jamie had left his watch behind on the first
visit. In fact, he was surprised they never contacted him to return
it.

 

Billy Gonzalez opens the black door. Half an hour of
waiting and mulling over, Jamie estimates. Billy strikes Jamie as a
string bean of a fellow, an odd man. He doesn't apologize for
keeping Jamie cold and skips sentences when conversing, expecting
Jamie to fill in the gaps, and it becomes ludicrous when Billy
comments about a need for goulash completely out of context. It was
a good thing waiting on the concrete had calmed him. He was
strangely focused, eyes and ears tuned. This time he wasn't going
to miss a beat.

 

Po's not too happy to have Jamie back and pulls him
away from the equipment, she reminds him of Grace.


Do you know you have a
twin?”

Ray interjects. “We all have one somewhere,” he says.
He had been monitoring Jamie's movements from afar.

“Maybe you irritate women?” retorts Po.

“You qualify?”

Her snarl gives way to a sarcastic smile.

“So, you're curious,” says Ray, an obvious and vain
attempt to defuse the situation.

“I've got time on my hands.”

“What a privilege.”

It’s enough to put Jamie on the back foot.

“What do you want to know?” Ray asks.

“I'd like my watch back to start.”

“Yes, of course, accept our apologies, we didn't
mean—”

“I'm sure.”

“And beyond your watch?”

“I want to know everything.”

“Beware of the man who seeks all.”

Ray suspects Jamie's insincere about his return to
them, but allays deep suspicions because the most important thing
is that he's back. Po hands Jamie a release form. They're going to
need him for a few days.

“This is where it gets dangerous,” she says. She's
not lying or misleading. “You may want to think twice about going
ahead, people with your condition are vulnerable.”

“What condition?”

“Denial,” says Po.

“I'm here, aren't I?” And he signs the forms in
defiance.

It's time for Ray to get serious. Po steps back,
allowing him to explain how the next tests are transformative and
involve a highly concentrated form of energy to the degree they
have to siphon off power from surrounding neighborhoods. Like
Jamie, they're wary of drawing attention to themselves. Billy has
his uses beyond goulash. He shows Jamie into the ionizer, a chamber
with padded white walls used in the first stage of training and
capable of generating everything he needs—and everything he
doesn't. Jamie runs his hands over the walls and stops at washed
out bloodstains. “What's going to happen?”

“Awareness, a new perception of happiness.”

“And that's dangerous?”

“Can be frightening to most people, don't you
think?”

Jamie's thoughts run back to his meeting with the old
guy, the nameless guy, and his moment of insight. He can't argue.
New perceptions of anything can be dangerous. How much he really
wants to change is another thing. If he stays committed to his
belief of not 'buying' their malarkey he'll be okay. No cults for
him.

 

Cold feet aren't far away. Just above him, as it so
happens. He plays mind games with himself. The doubts come fast.
What's he going to do with all the information he gathers? He
doesn't have a real purpose, never mind a plan B. He was treading a
path of exploration for its own sake and somehow it felt unwise.
Ray breaks his thoughts, insists Jamie rests overnight in the pod.
Jamie never thought he'd say it, but the pod sounds appealing. At
the least, it's the one place he's slept well. There'll be training
clothes waiting for him and good food.

 

When he gets there he finds the leather bound tome on
the bed. Beats sleeping pills, he thinks. He inspects his training
uniform, a distinctly underwhelming piece, several sizes too big
and made of elasticated paper towel. Weird, but Jamie knows he has
to pick his battles. He'll deal with it in the morning. For now,
there's goulash in the warmer.

 

Later Ray pays him a visit and reassures him about
the gear. He gives Jamie back his watch. He thought, like Jamie,
XXLI might have buried surveillance software into it. Ray says it's
clean and for once Jamie believes him. It's a stretch but they seem
to have at least one common concern, it's a modicum of reassurance.
As midnight approaches Jamie lies under white duvet comforter
putting pieces of this puzzle together. There's a gaping hole about
Ray and Po. They've essentially remained mysterious, revealing
nothing except their faith in The Source Foundation. It would keep
him up for hours normally, but now he finds in the magic of the
pod, sleep washing over him. His last yawning thought fades. He'll
tackle it in the coming days, how little they've said of
themselves. His mind lets go, the tome redundant in the quest for
sleep.

The dream is cavernous. Po floats past him, her face
large and concerned. Jamie finds himself in the padded room with
its faint blood-stained walls blinded by an acute light refracting
through a glass of water. Its very presence induces thirst. He
quenches it, the gulps echoing in his eardrums. The glass vanishes
from his hands. Eeriness pervades, yet he's compelled to stay by
curiosity. Every moment seems to bring the new, a shift in light, a
rise in temperature, the smell of baked bread. He approaches a
chocolate milkshake twice his own size, its thick dark liquid
dripping over the edge. It's what Jamie really wanted, not the
water. Unable to reach the top, he catches drops of sweet velvet
chocolate with his tongue, the taste out of this world. All he
wants is more. He grips the cup for stability and to his surprise
finds it soft and sticky, and prickling his skin. Overcome with
inexplicable desire he plunges his hands deep into its side and
when he removes them, finds they're covered in viscous beige snot.
He's powerless as his hands rotate on their own, gravity taking
care of the gloop, peeling away, off his fingers, and dropping to
his feet. Thankfully the room changes. Surreal as it may have been,
the physical experience felt too exact. Now he's in a library
overflowing with books. One volume glows in rainforest green;
The Caves of Liita.
Inside the pages are blank. He wonders
if this is a story he must write, or obligated to find. The latter
makes sense. He needs to find, to discover. The dream moves quicker
now, less chance to dwell on thoughts. His eye catches a toy sports
car. As he reaches for it, his left arm grows, turning yellow and
sprouting hairs. He touches the new arm with his other hand. It's
kind of cool, like he's turning into Gustav, the yellow demon
monster. His attention is stolen back by the toy car. It vibrates
and in a fraction of a second expands into a bristling burnt orange
wet dream. He's inside it now, plucking at the strings of a fender
guitar, surprised he can play—and play well—with his arm returned
to normal. Vaguely conscious of a crowd outside the car, someone
tells him they're ready and he's bundled into blinding flashes of
paparazzi light bulbs. His smile is a give away. Jamie's liking
this. His escort pulls him through puddles and past people, and
through a door where screams of the adoring burst his eardrums.
He's numb and high, an arena rock god on stage blitzed by the
energy. He's unaware of his legs changing into yellow monster
calves before he launches into the mosh pit. The ecstasy ends when
he's pulled under by his fans and smacks a floor of sticky beer and
piss. Safety is a flashlight between the silhouettes of bodies. He
touches the dark ugly floor and crawls through legs both wiry and
thick while every now and then taking a kick from the oblivious
above. When he surfaces the crowd's roar lifts him like riding a
tsunami, and in seconds he’s back to the stage where he's set upon
and has the life snogged out of him by a woman. He loves her
aggressiveness, her wet fleshy tongue against his, the warmth of
her breath and sweaty face. He's groping her, pulling down her
pants, she pushes him back against a wall. They're in a ratty
bathroom stall. He hears Ray's voice, “Fantasy Po, you should be
pleased it's not you.” But who is it Jamie thinks, and stops for a
moment to see. The woman pulls back. He's struck with confusion.
“Grace?” She's looking up and down at his body and leaves with a
wicked smile. All his limbs have turned yellow monster, but the
pace of the dream is unrelenting, he has no time to reflect, a
Grammy is shoved into his hand, then an eighty million dollar
check. With each award a body part changes. There's an
Oscar—no—wait, there's three. Jamie's a complete ogre with a Super
Bowl ring looking at his new form dressed in elastic paper. The
uniform, the training gear, whatever it was, makes sense now. His
vision closes, the scope of his view reduced to the size of a
chickpea, awareness of time and space lost in the murky gray matter
of the ogre. Rage consumes, anger takes control. A yellow body of
fresh gooey hair trapped, crashing against walls, the only glimmer
of sight, white padding. Pain arcs through his spine as he beats
himself to the edge of unconscious—the only plausible, instinctive
way out. Then it all goes black. Not a whisper or a breath. He
remains in the still dark of space. Airy nothingness. Death, he
wonders. No bright lights or the touch of soft fleshy tissue, not
even floorboards to be sucked through. Then voices crackle, like
over an old mid-twentieth century wireless. Po's voice. He never
thought he'd feel relief at the sound of her presence. He feels
lighter, as if being lifted by angels, and the sensation of slime
slipping off his body rejuvenates. The blindness allows him to
appreciate the warmth and power of the shower as a gift. Hands
cleanse his torso and face. He's not sure if they're his, but he
doesn't care. He's pampered with a towel. It's okay, he thinks, the
dream has taken him to the gym.

 

 

“Hey Jamie.”

“Hey.” He's awake now, the stiffness in his body
real.

“How are you feeling?”

Jamie, caught in the lingering images of the dream,
can't answer.

“You've been asleep for two days.”

 

 

When he's ready they show him evidence beyond the
time and date of days moving on. He was asleep for most of it but
they kept visual records of his encounter in the ionizer. The
sketchy images corroborate Jamie's dream. He's floored, unable to
speak. It's an invasion of his mind. They've taken his dream and
made a movie without his permission. He turns away from them and
eats Billy's goulash. He slinks away a mere shadow of himself back
to the pod. He curls up on the bed and runs through the course of
events in a fractured timeline. It's all too fluid to be real.

 

 

“There's no need for embarrassment,” says Ray,
“consider them a mirage, planted there by your surroundings, what
we're fed all our lives to believe will make us happy. You're not
impervious to what afflicts us all.” He's lost the violated Jamie
who would stuff his ears with cotton wool if he could, but Ray
knows how precious time is and can't afford to let Jamie think too
much. “See the positive,” he says, “you have far more in common
with your fellow kind than you imagined. Empathy Jamie, it's
significant if you're going to help them.”

Jamie prefers to play with his feet. They tap the
cold floor. He's on his way to finding ground as Ray continues,
“It's designed to be provocative, to upset the apple cart. Facing
the futile image of ourselves.” It draws a wry smile from Jamie, he
wonders what image Ray has of himself. If he asks he intuits the
answer will be a lie. Whatever trust he once had in those
mysterious eyes has dissipated. The talk always had an element of
bull, but his soul, that spoke a truth, the one that had drawn him
back if Jamie was honest. It's Po who's more intriguing. He assumes
she underwent the same ordeal and yet here she is, hanging
around.

BOOK: The Code of Happiness
11.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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