"I remember running through the neighborhood in little more than a jockstrap. I remember being able to read Life magazine and making up my own mind on politics. I remember being in a car and thinking of a road map of North America and knowing that if I chose, I could drive anywhere. All of that time and all of that tranquillity, freedom and abundance. Amazing. The sweet and effortless nodule of freedom we all shared—it was a fine idea. It was, in its own unglamorous way, the goal of all of human history—the wars, the genius, the madness, the beauty and the grief—it was all to reach ever farther unclouded points on which to stand and view and think and evolve and understand ever farther and farther and, well, farther. Progress is real. Destiny is real. You are real." The pink passes on."And so that's why we're all here tonight—today—whatever day it is: Thursday—six weeks from now—1954—three days ago—one million B.C. It's all the same. I mean, I know you're wondering what was wrong with the way you were living your lives in the first place— what your Jimmy Stewart-esque crisis was—and I know you're wondering why you had to spend the past year the way you did. You say your lives weren't in crisis, but you know deep down they were. I was up there hearing you."
"You nark'ed on us?" Megan asks, ever alert.
Richard darts in, "Megan, drop it, okay?"
The water behind the dam is luminous Day-Glo green. It looks electric. Radioactive. "So, yes, here all of us were, living on the outermost edge of that farthest point. People elsewhere—people who didn't have our Boy-in-the-Bubble lifestyle—they looked at us and our freedoms fought for by others, and these people expected us with our advantages to take mankind to the next level … newer, smarter, innovative ways of thinking and living and being. They looked at us and hoped we could figure out what comes … next."
Wendy sneezes three pistol-crack snorts. "Bless you," I say. "And bless all of you, too." The light in the sky is so bright it's like daylight. "And weren't we blessed, too, with options in life—and didn't we ignore them completely?—like unwanted Christmas gifts hidden in the storeroom. What did life boil down to in the end? … Smokey and the Bandit videos. Instead of finding inspiration and intellectual momentum there was … Ativan. And overwork. And Johnny Walker. And silence. And—I mean, guys, just look at the situation. And it's not as if I was any better. I never looked beyond the tip of my dick."
"Get to a point," Richard says. He knows we're close to an answer.
"This past year—if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people."A thousand years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids stand. One hundred years ago—or even fifty years ago—the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. The only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because Earth is now totally ours."
"The pioneers—they conquered the world," Linus says quietly.
"They did, Linus. The New World isn't new anymore. The New World—the Americas—it's over. People don't have dominion over Nature. It's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing. The future and whatever happens to you after you die—it's all melted together. Death isn't an escape hatch the way it used to be."
"Well fuck me," Hamilton says.
"Your destiny's now big enough to meet your jaded capacity for awe. It's now powerful enough for you to rise to the task of being individuals."
The meteorites disappear and the pulsing white sky goes black as though unplugged. Richard asks me, "Jared, wait a second—wait wait wait. You're going too quickly. Way earlier you said we could return to the world. What did you mean—the world as it was before—all this?"
"Exactamundo, Richard. You can return to the world the way it was—back to the morning of November 1, 1997. There'll have been no Sleep, and your lives will continue, at least in the beginning, as they were."
"Bull." Wendy says.
"I shit you not."
"Jared—are we gonna forget all this past year? the Sleep?" Linus asks. "Will I lose the pictures of heaven you gave me?"
I say, "You'll remember every single thing, Linus: everything that was lost and everything that was gained.""Jane," Megan says, "What about Jane?"
"Jane will be whole."
"My—our—baby . .." puffs Wendy.
"Born," I say. "And Hamilton and Pam, you'll be clean."
Eyes are wide before me—all save for Karen's. Karen has pulled back from the group, biting her finger, sucking in breath, closing her eyes and standing with her arms and legs pulled in as tightly as possible—as though she wished to become a thin line, so thin as to be invisible. The gang doesn't notice this; they're riveted by my words.
"You said that in the beginning our lives will be the same," Wendy says. "I sense there's some kind of deal happening here. We have to change somehow. There's a catch. How will our lives be changed. What's your Plan B?"
35 3 2 1 ZERO
"Plan B is this:
"You're to be different now. Your behavior will be changing. Your thinking is to change. And people will watch these changes in you and they'll come to experience the world in your new manner."
"How?" Richard asks. "How do we change?"
"Richard, tell me this: back in the old world, didn't you often feel as if the only way you could fully truly change yourself in the powerful way you yearned for was to die and then start again from scratch? Didn't you feel as if all of the symbols and ideas fed to you since birth had become worn out like old shoes? Didn't you ache for change but you didn't know how achieve it? And even if you knew how to do it, would you have had the guts to go forth? Didn't you want your cards shuffled a different way?"
"Yeah Sure. But didn't everybody?"
"No. Not always. This feeling is specific to the times we lived in."
"Okay ____ "
"And Richard, haven't you always felt that you live forever on the brink of knowing a great truth? Well, that feeling is true. There is the truth. It does exist."
"Yes. Well, now it's going to be as if you've died and were reincarnated but you stay inside your own body. For all of you. And in your new lives you'll have to live entirely for that one sensation — that of imminent truth. And you're going to have to holler for it, steal for it, beg for it — and you're never to stop asking questions about it twenty-four hours a day, the rest of your life.
"This is Plan B.
"Every day for the rest of your lives, all of your living moments are to be spent making others aware of this need — the need to probe and drill and examine and locate the words that take us to beyond ourselves.
"Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe. Ask.
"Ask questions, no, screech questions out loud — while kneeling in front of the electric doors at Safeway, demanding other citizens ask questions along with you — while chewing up old textbooks and spitting the words onto downtown sidewalks — outside the Planet Hollywood, outside the stock exchange, and outside the Gap.
"Grind questions onto the glass on photocopiers. Scrape challenges onto old auto parts and throw them off of bridges so that future people digging in the mud will question the world, too. Carve eyeballs into tire treads and onto shoe leathers so that your every trail speaks of thinking and questioning and awareness. Design molecules that crystallize into question marks. Make bar codes print out fables, not prices. You can't even throw away a piece of litter unless it has a question stamped on it — a demand for people to reach a finer place." There's silence. The water's white noise is invisible now. The skyhas cleared and the stars are timidly reappearing, point by point.