The Program

Chapter thirty

Along with the light-headedness, his exhaustion helped lower Tim's inhibitions. Last night he and Leah had been awakened every hour by a different Pro clanking around outside their window in a professed effort to repair a faulty water pipe. The early-morning battery of workshops made the colloquium seem like a week at Club Med. Weirdly, even though he knew his success depended on his participation in Program activities, an instinctive resistance – his Old Programming? – was hard to shake.

As Tim played possum among the cadaverous Pros, TD's speaker-enhanced voice began its narcotic susurration – Guy-Med, round one.

The Pros bent over their knees, foreheads pressed to the cool floorboards, yoga on Quaaludes. He peeked at Leah; she hadn't gone under yet.

Skate walked the aisles like a whip-wielding boss man. Tim waited for his footsteps to recede, then reached over and dug his thumb into Leah's Achilles tendon. She yelped and jerked. Skate pivoted, but Tim had withdrawn his hand. Skate walked back toward them, his footsteps vibrating the floor beneath Tim's forehead. Tim watched Skate's frozen shadow, the hump of Leah's body. He could see her eyes blink, confusion giving way to anger. He'd stopped breathing.

She rustled but stayed in position. Finally Skate moved on. Leah waited until it was safe, then shot Tim a glare. He winked at her, seeking to infuriate her further. Flustered, she turned her face back to the floor, but he could tell he'd successfully distracted her from the Guy-Med.

TD's voice stayed mellifluous and soothing even as the words began to take on menace. "You're afraid of the person next to you. To them, you don't exist. Think of the person on your other side. They terrify you. If you were bleeding to death, you'd be too afraid to call out. And even if you did, they wouldn't stop to spit on you." His breath whistled across the mike. "Everyone around you hates you. Everyone in this room scares you. You are completely alone. You are completely isolated." He intoned the words like a bedtime story.

From the back of the room rose a plaintive keening. Almost inaudible, but others picked it up. Some Pros writhed; others froze on their sides, hands clasped over their ears. Shrieks echoed around the bare auditorium, thrown back from the corners.

"There is no one here with you." TD was almost consoling. "There is no one in the entire world that you aren't afraid of. You are completely alone in the world."

Leah's downturned, sentient face had gone a sickly hue.

I've realized that you were always an awful brother to me." Shanna sat spotlit onstage, clutching to her ear the cordless phone Randall had presented in the Growth Hall like a parchment bearing a royal decree. Somewhere hidden away was the base unit. The Pros sat in perfect silence, attending Shanna's every word. "I no longer have any use for you."

Tim sat with the other initiates in the row of folding chairs. At his feet lay the shoe box filled with his confiscated belongings. At TD's behest he'd donned the Cartier. TD looked on encouragingly from the shadows.

"I never want to see you again." Shanna's voice warbled slightly. "Good-bye."

When she hung up, there was a moment of breath-held silence, during which her tortured swallow was audible to the first few rows. Then TD edged into the light beside her and raised his hands, striking them together once, the lights eased up over the audience, and thunderous applause burst forth.

A smile twitched on Shanna's face. She rose and gave a joking curtsy.

TD strode before the others. The clapping ceased immediately at his voice. "You're unfulfilled because you're mired in the past. Innovators look forward. They break free of convention. Drop your baggage – whatever's weighing you down."

The lights faded until only a new glowing circle remained, this time encasing Jason.

He peered down at the shoe box before him. The crowd seethed with mute anticipation. He reached in hesitantly and withdrew his wallet, the jangle of his shifting keys amplified in the silence. He pulled out a wad of twenties, ripped them up, and threw the pieces. They dispersed in a green cloud.

The audience, hidden in darkness, went nuts.

He pulled a family picture from the wallet and held it up. "This is my wife, Courtney, and my two kids, Sage and Dana. I love them very much." No reaction from the crowd. "But guess what? Sometimes I get claustrophobic. Soccer practice and nannies and the baby's got another sore throat – sometimes I lose sight of myself in all of it. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I wound up here, where, between work and home, I don't have a single minute in my day that's my own." He shook his head, lips rolled over his teeth, lank ponytail swaying. "Well, at this retreat I'm here for me." He ripped the photo in half, and the room erupted. School photos of Sage and Dana followed, scraps flung from the stage glittering in the beam of light.

Lights up. Cue applause. Thunderous affirmation. People were jumping and screaming euphorically. Jason continued to shout avowals, a widemouthed exorcism.

The rapture was cut short with a stern flash of TD's hand. "Good progress, Jason." He prowled the stage now, dispensing hard-won wisdom. "A partial commitment to The Program gets you nowhere. You're either with The Program or you're Off Program. There is no in-between. That's being halfway cured of cancer or climbing halfway up Mount Everest. The Program requires dedication. Dedication is absolute. The Program is paramount above everything in your life. Paramount above children, parents, spouses, work, money, fame, ego. And why shouldn't it be? It's your life. It's your future. What's anything else worth when you don't have control of that?"

The faces remained unlined and inscrutable, a sea of catatonia.

TD moved toward Tim, and the spotlight came up on them. Tim could feel the heat coming off TD, mingling with the burn of the stage lights. A hand dropped onto his shoulder, gave it a little squeeze. "Tom, are you committed to The Program?"

At once nothing existed but the beam of light, lowered over him like a cage. Even the pressure of TD's hand had vanished. Tim squinted and sweated. Dust drifted like white sand swirled underwater; a moth made jagged upward progress toward the lighting grid. "Yes."

"I'd think a businessman like you would be tied to material possessions. To stuff. You're not gonna try to drag a yacht through the eye of the needle, are you, Tom?"

Tom Altman emitted a sharp little laugh. "No."

"Are you sure? A guy like you has got some options. Why search for strength when you can go buy a Humvee? A Humvee could make you feel like a real man. Don't you think?" TD drifted back into view, his eyes blazing into Tim's. "In fact, why face your problems at all when you can pay someone else to deal with them for you?"

The silence was overpowering. Tim could see only darkness beyond the tight scope of his spotlight. "I have everything I could want," he said. "But it doesn't mean much to me. Numbers in an account, that's all. The Fed raises interest rates, your assets drop. The Fed lowers rates, your assets rise. I've gotten so far away from what I set out to do. From what I thought I wanted." Tim felt himself getting surprisingly worked up over the burdens of imaginary affluence. He took a rattling breath, which reverberated around the Growth Hall. For all he knew, the Pros had cleared out, leaving him sitting on a stage in an empty auditorium. "I've been arrogant. I've assumed power I shouldn't have had. I've made some mistakes I wasn't entitled to make. And, even worse, I've gotten away with them. Living my life tied to that…it's no way to be."

TD stepped into the shaft of light, joining Tim. "Why don't you do something to liberate yourself from it? Break away."

"I'm ready to."

TD continued staring, lips tensed, waiting to dispense approval.

"What?" Tim's voice cracked with genuine emotion. "What can I do?"

"Only you can answer that. It has to be what's right for you." TD's eyes flicked to the eighteen-karat watch on Tim's wrist, resplendent in the glare.

Tim removed the thirty-thousand-dollar timepiece and let it dangle from a finger. TD held his hand out, and Tim leaned forward, dropped the watch into TD's cupped hand.

The lights came up, and Tom Altman was back in the world, his spirit one Cartier wristwatch lighter.

Exhausted and drained, the Pros milled around the Growth Hall, group leaders directing them to various workstations. No mention was made of breakfast.

The calling out of assignments impressed upon Tim the daunting scope of the organization. Nathan – Literature, DevRoom C. Spectacular job on the glossy four-color trifold. Shelly, Andrea, Dahlia – Accounting, LabSpace 1. Let's finish those second-quarter estimates! Ted – Expansion, DevRoom B. The Maui proposal is lagging, and the Houston projections slipped 3 percent.

And on it went, a never-ending situating of spokes in wheels. The manpower-to-cost ratio was staggering – sixty-eight affluent, educated people working themselves to exhaustion for a dollar a year.

"Tom." TD had glided up behind him. He placed an arm across Tim's shoulders, drawing him away from the others. "After seeing how well you fit in here, I might be so confident as to say that an ambassadorship has your name on it. Pick a city, and we'll go in." His hand shot up from his pocket, the Cartier hanging from the wall of his four fingers. He extended his arm.

Tim feigned astonishment. "That was my Renunciate. It's not mine anymore."

TD ran his tongue along the inside of his lip, making his patch of beard undulate. "It's a gimmick, a set of psychological training wheels for the rest of them." He nodded at the Pros, still clamoring around the group leaders. "You and I know they require it and you don't. You and I, we know what's underneath."

TD reached to hand Tim the Cartier, and Tim stepped back, feeling a stab of agitation. "I don't want the fucking watch, all right?"

TD watched him, pleased. "That's commendable. But don't kid yourself. You killed a man not responsible for your daughter's death, and you think you're atoning by driving around in your Hummer and feeling bad? How do you think that person's family feels?" He examined Tim's face, his eyes. "Giving up a watch isn't renouncing your former self. It's renouncing an accessory of your former self. And you and I both know what you have to give up is a lot deeper than that."

He tilted his hand, letting the watch slide off into Tim's hands, and walked off.

As Tim and Leah passed along the rear of the cafeteria, she averted her eyes from the side of the walk-in freezer so as not to catch a prohibited glimpse of her reflection. She forged ahead of Tim, cresting the north rise of the ranch, her feet plopping through a stretch of weedy field steeped in rainwater. Indistinct clouds, the color of dirty ice, smudged the sky.

TD had lowered a digital camera on a lanyard around her neck -her task was to capture some inspiring shots of the ranch for the nascent Web site. She'd barely spoken to Tim since he'd harassed her during the Guy-Med, but Gro-Par convention meant they were stuck together. The Program required constant companionship, a weakness Tim hoped to spin to his advantage when it came time to extract her.

Leah traced the perimeter of the ranch, keeping dutifully south of the chalk line. She snapped a picture of the mist settling into the distant hills. "It's always better to upload digitals. The guy running the site before insisted on scanning prints, but that gives lower resolution."

Tim took up the proffered conversation. "You must be glad to be running it now."

"I am." A trace of girlish pride found its way into her smile. "I guarantee you I love programming more than anyone else up here."

"What about it do you love?"

"Its simplicity. There's an elegance to a good program. A finite number of keystrokes in a particular order yields a predictable result. When there's a malfunction, the code can be tested, diagnosed, repaired. It all works the same ways, abides by the same laws." She scowled. "Programs beat people that way."

"We have more glitches."

She looked at him sideways, wearing a half smile. "That's right."

Though Tim had only a vague idea what time it was, the gray sky suggested dusk was encroaching. They walked for a while in silence. "What you said last night. About my daughter. I think you're right. I spend too much time talking about her murder, her absence, and not enough time talking about her. I think when I get back to talking about her, I'll remember what it was like to be a parent, not just a victim-by-proxy." A thought of Dray stole through his defenses. "I need to do that."

A turkey vulture lazed in circles over the distant water tower, drawing Tim's attention. Leah inhaled sharply. One hand covered her mouth, the other pointed at his feet. Expecting a rattlesnake, he looked down. His foot had strayed over the chalked boundary.

"You crossed the boundary." Her tone wasn't scolding; it was shocked.

He stood still, one leg on either side of the divide. "What did you think would happen if someone stepped over?"

"I don't…I don't know." She drew near, studying his foot. "I never thought about it, I guess." Her voice hardened. "We don't leave the ranch. Not even a footstep."

"Do you think it'll damage you to step over?" He offered his hand to her.

She studied his face, then the chalked line, then his face again. The heel of her sneaker rose, but the toe stayed planted. She stared at his hand for a long time. Her cheeks were splotched from the wind.

She reached out, her fingers hesitant, and took his hand. She waited for him to pull her. When he didn't, she put one foot across. Her other hand came up to his chest, as if she were breaking a stumble, and they faced each other. Despite the cold, the tips of her hair had darkened with sweat.

Before her mood could turn, Tim stepped back across. She was shaking as they made their way back.

TD twisted the mike free from his headset and handed it to Shanna.

Assembled in the Growth Hall in an immense circle around them, the Pros stretched their limbs, blinking the grogginess from their eyes. Tim watched by Leah's side.

Shanna stared at the little black bulb of the mike, opened her mouth, then hesitated.

Stanley John began to stomp his foot on the floorboards, slowly, rhythmically. A few Pros joined in, then a handful more. Within seconds the auditorium thrummed with the beat. Tim watched the skin of Leah's face smooth until it was devoid of expression, cadaverous. Her cheeks vibrated as she slammed her foot down, paused, slammed again.

Shanna was breathing hard, hand resting on her chest. TD hovered with a placid grin. She whispered something to him. He spread his arms. The pounding ceased.

She leaned awkwardly over the mike rather than raising it to her mouth. "I've decided to break my ties with my old self."

The flare of noise startled her, her eyes widening as the Pros charged her. Ecstatic embraces. Sports-arena whistles. Julie and Lorraine held hands around her, leaping for joy. Confused at first, she joined in. Soon she wore a similar face-splitting smile.

Tim caught himself clapping like an idiot. He searched for the other initiates in the crowd – Jason was joining in, babbling about catharsis. Don wore a vicarious smile. Wendy alone looked troubled, standing at the fringe of the festivities. Chad found her immediately, pulling her into a spontaneous hug, the embrace of two fans brought together by the winning touchdown.

From the rear, Stanley John pressed forward, bearing a stack of legal-size documents.

Tim sat on the toilet and devoured a protein bar – his second to last. He licked the inside of the foil wrapper before ripping it up and flushing it. Shaving without a mirror proved a challenge, but he managed as he had on deployments. He used his free hand to help guide the razor around his goatee.

He knocked the blade against the lip of the sink and walked down the hall, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. The floor felt glacial through his socks. He pushed open the door to find Leah on her bed, facing the wall, her spine a pronounced stroke on the arc of her bare back. Bathed in the throw of light from the room's sole lamp, her shoulders heaved once, then stilled.

To Tim's surprise she didn't whip the sheet across herself or reach for her shirt, which lay puddled by her pillow. Instead she rolled over, revealing the profile of a modest breast and an angry red inflammation on her chest. Her face was slick with tears.

She sat up, collected her shirt, and stared at the rash. "It's your fault it hasn't gone away." Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. "Please don't tell them."

Before he could respond, she reached over and clicked off the light.