Gregg Hurwitz - The Program

Tim turned and peeked at his illicit watch. As he'd suspected, only five minutes had passed.

The corners of Leah's mouth turned up ever so slightly. In a robotic voice, she said, "I had better go interact with others. You are monopolizing all my time at this festive occasion."

"Over and out, earthling. Go in peace."

A smile broke onto her face, which quickly turned into an uncomfortable scowl. She walked stiffly off toward the horseshoe, pausing once to look back at Tim.

The others grew giddy from their attempts to restrain themselves. When someone lapsed, the Pros only scolded in monotone, which added to the carefree mood. Soon laughter filled the entire ballroom. Ray, arms at his sides, looked dead ahead at a circle of other frozen Neos. They were all howling with laughter.

When TD called out that time was up, Tim confirmed that ten minutes had passed with a quick glance at the watch. The sweat trickling down his sides alerted him to another radical temperature shift. The lights dimmed a few watts, the change barely discernible.

"Now we're Going to a Silent Party, and I think we can all guess those rules. You can only communicate through eyes and touch. If you have to, you can make noises, but no words."

Enthusiastic silent shuffling. Two Pros mimed each other's movements perfectly. Shelly let her hand glide limply through the air, as if tracing something. Five Neos crowded around her, their entire bodies undulating with the movement. Joanne sat cross-legged on the floor, sobbing violently. A shoulder-massage train of twenty people -Neos interspersed with Pros – snaked around Hearspace before forming a ring. Other Neos looked agitated, darting frenetically like rats in a maze.

Through all his years of training, combat, and street operating, Tim had never seen so many people knocked completely off their bases. Shanna approached and spread her arms wide as if to hug him but hovered an inch from his body. He searched for Leah – she was tucked into a ball, arms wrapped around her knees, face buried, shaking despite the heat. Only TD, Skate, and Randall remained tranquil in their poses, calmly waiting for the activity to end.

But it didn't. It stretched on and on, the shrieks and laughter growing oppressive. His undershirt pasted to his body, Tim staggered through the swampy warmth, squinting in the dimness. People howled. Bodies fluttered on the floor. The last time he'd checked the watch, the session had been at twenty minutes. He saw flicks of static between blinks. He was about to sit down on the floor when the room flooded with Enya.

Neos jostled and crawled back to their chairs. The lights came up to reveal TD on the dais, grinning coldly. "That was excellent. You're my most advanced group yet! You folks aren't afraid to Get with The Program. Now, everyone stand up and take your neighbor's hand. That's it." He stepped down off the dais, extending inviting hands to either side as the two ends of the horseshoe closed around him. "Now, squeeze and release. Deep breath. Squeeze and release. We are all one. Can you feel it?" Propagating from TD, currents of hand clasping ran around the circle. "Can you feel the energy running through us? Running through each one of us? We are all going to be successful. We are all going to be strong. We are all going to be happy."

He laughed. "If you believe that crap, catch a magic bus back to the seventies. Affirmations like that are old-hat cult bullshit. Telling yourself something doesn't make it happen. Making it happen makes it happen. If you think you can talk yourself into who you want to be, you deserve est, and Ronnie Hubbard, and selling Amway toilet paper out of the trunk of a Corolla. We're not a religion. We're not tax-exempt. We're a practice.

"Some people might identify us as a cult. Are we? Here's my answer: I don't care. What is a cult? A belief system that the person using the word 'cult' does not like. Is AA a cult? I don't care. They've helped people – I hope I help as many people in my lifetime. Is the Marine Corps a cult? I don't care. I care about effective. And since I know The Program is effective, you can call it a satanic coven of witches if you want. The Program Source Code applies effectively to living your life. Judge us by what we do for you, not by some useless term you found in your Old Programming user's manual." He threw his hands up, and everyone else followed, the circle flailing. "Now reconvene with your groups in Actspace. You can bring one Pro friend you met at the party."

On his way back, Tim passed Leah, who was being admonished by Janie. "- should be back in Prospace. I think you might have to do some work on Victim Row."

Leah seemed to crumble at the mention of this duty.

Tim touched Janie lightly on the arm. "Excuse me. I met Leah during the party and invited her back to my group. I'm Tom Altman."

Janie's features loosened – clearly, Tom Altman had been designated a VIP. A glance at Leah. "That true?"

Leah paused, agitated, then gave a brief nod, her tufts of hair bobbing.

Janie's pert smile bunched her pretty cheeks into sinewy circles. "Okay. You kids have fun."

Leah trailed Tim back to the group, visibly upset by her conformity with Tim's lie. The others were crowded around Stanley John, an eager horde of informants providing "feedback."

"Ray was totally Off Program during Going to a Zombie Party. He gestured a bunch."

"I experienced Shelly as being her Old Programming. She was using her physicality to draw people in so she'd experience self-worth."

"Joanne complained she was starving."

After administering a round-robin of reprimands, Stanley John walked them through several invasive "sharing" exercises, culminating in the Blame Game. Everyone had to share the most horrific event in his or her life, then reexperience it from the perpetrator's perspective.

Shelly, face stained with tears, was reliving a high-school rape. "I'm black. I'm poor. I don't have any money. I'm depressed. I live in a cardboard box, and a pretty young white girl walks by." Her chest started to heave, her words garbling. Tim noticed with a blend of pity and annoyance that she'd matched her hair clip to her socks. "I don't want to hurt her, I just want to feel good. She's wearing a low-cut dress and no underwear, and that makes it so easy."

"It's okay," Stanley John said. "You're doing great. We're all in this experience together."

They held hands in a ring, squeezing empathetically, and finally Shelly resumed her tale. "She's walking alone, she left a party on the Venice boardwalk alone, and is walking alone at three in the morning. I bet she wants it. Maybe she deserves it." She deteriorated into sobs, smearing her hair off her sticky face as the others clustered around to comfort her. Then Stanley John led her through confronting and telling off her rapist.

Joanne's teary performance as a breast lump that turned out to be benign was less rousing.

A woman nearby fainted, but a roving blue-shirt was waiting to break her fall. A group leader dragged an unconscious kid through the gap into Hearspace, probably to get him into cooler air – another procedure for processing the overwhelmed. Tim filed away this tidbit as a potential stratagem he could use later to move Leah's unconscious body from the building. Hot air kept gusting down; he added dehydration to his list of concerns.

Stanley John gestured to Leah. "Your turn to blame."

"Okay." Leah closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering courage. "The last time I saw my stepdad was after I'd had a pretty tough run with him. My mom, too. I was going to see if maybe we could patch things up. You know when you do that? Try to talk to your parents as if they're actually going to listen this time?"

Tom joined the murmur of accord, which Stanley John cut short. "Quit whining, Leah, and tell it as your stepdad."