Gregg Hurwitz - The Program

"Not happiness!"

Tim mentally filed these additions to The Program Code.

"You don't want to be happy. Happiness is for idiots. You want to be decisive. You want to be fulfilled. Sometimes that involves suffering. Sometimes that involves working hard. Are you ready to work hard?"

"Yes!"

"I want each group to select their biggest victim to come up here and take a seat on Victim Row." TD rested his hands on the backs of two chairs in the line being assembled by diligent Pros on the dais. "Think of it as intense therapy." His voice dropped, taking on an edge of menace. "One Pro will be joining us onstage. You already know who you are." Leah emerged, head bent, and trudged to the dais. TD helped her up, eyes smoldering charitably above his tight smile.

Hearspace filled with the sounds of Neos fighting. A few Pros with trays strapped to them like vendors at a baseball game threaded through the bickering groups, tossing Cliff Bars and handing out Mountain Dews. People tore at the wrappers with their mouths, gulping and slurping, gulag prisoners in Levi's Dockers. Tim could almost hear the rising sugar hum. It took his last ounce of willpower to refrain. A woman screamed out that her bladder was going to explode; she was told to visualize it empty.

Back in Tim's group, Joanne, the leading contender for Victim Row, suffered a battery of buzz-phrase accusations. Her inability to stand up for herself only proved the charges against her. When Victim Row convened, she was seated beside Leah.

TD paced in front of the chosen ones. He laid into a nursing student first, working on her skillfully until she admitted she'd created her own diabetes when she was a little girl to get her daddy's attention. The prematurely bald teenager next to her divulged that he'd smoked pot twice and wrestled in high school; within minutes TD had him convinced he was a violent drug offender who'd never taken responsibility for himself.

Moving down the row, TD grew increasingly personal. The crowd contributed to the abuse during riotous interludes. After Joanne floundered on a few of his questions, TD produced a mirror and handed it to her. "Look at yourself." He spoke with an icy calm. "You're obese. You're disgusting. Why would anyone want to be with you? What? What, Joanne? Why are you blubbering? How am I making you feel?"

"You're making me feel inferior."

"Wrong. You feel inferior. Don't try to say it's my fault. Tell me I'm stupid. Go ahead, tell me."

She exhaled shakily. "I…I can't."

"Can't. My favorite word." TD's mouth became a dark slit. "Look in that mirror. Tell me what you see."

"I guess a woman who's trying to -"

"Trying to. Trying to? Let me tell you what I see." His eyes bored through her. "I see three-point-five billion years of evolution, drawing you out of the primordial stew, straightening your stoop, granting you opposable thumbs. I see the trillions of other faulty models with slightly different physical traits, perceptive systems, cognitive skills, who died along the way so you can sit here today. I see a two-and-a-half-pound cerebrum. I see thousands of years of cultural advancement leading to the crops and farms that produced the sustenance that's gone into your cells. I see the sunshine that fed those plants, the universe that created that sun. I see life, time, and space distilled into human form, into this pinnacle of existence. And you can't…what? Tell me I'm stupid?"

She was wheezing so hard she barely got out the words. "You're stupid."

"Guess what? I don't feel stupid. You can't make me feel anything. Do you know why, Joanne? Because I'm not a victim. And if you weren't a victim, you'd be able to take an insult or two. If you weren't a victim, you'd be able to endure a little criticism."

She fumbled for her inhaler.

"Oh, there it is. Your sympathy crutch. Did someone develop asthma so people would feel sorry for her? Where's your self-respect? Well, since you're so concerned with what other people think…" He faced the horseshoe. "Let's give it to her, folks."

The crowd exploded. Neos rose to their feet, shouting abuse at her. "Ugly pig!"

A shovel-spade of a woman, a good fifty pounds up on Joanne, stood on her sagging chair, hands clutching her buttocks as she leaned forward like a fan baiting an umpire. "Fat fucking cow!"

Joanne doubled over, head lurching. Janie stepped forward and produced an airsickness bag into which Joanne promptly barfed, eliciting another outburst of vilification from the audience. Her hairdo had collapsed like an angel cake.

"That's good," TD said. "Purge your self-loathing."

The torrent of deprecations continued unabated as Joanne purged. At last TD raised his arms, and the crowd silenced instantly.

TD massaged Joanne's shoulders. "I'm proud of you, Joanne. By being able to sit through that, you've shown incredible growth. By the time you're done with The Program, you'll never have to feel that way again. Now, get up and take a bow."

Joanne's knees buckled when she stood. The crowd picked up TD's encouraging applause, drowning out her mumbled objections as she was guided off the dais.

Leah sat alone in the row of chairs, her hair over her eyes. Her fingers wound convulsively in the fringe of her shirt. The crowd was breathing together, a slow, forceful rhythm.

"Leah, do you still have your rash?"

"Yes. I've chosen a rash because it's a way to make myself a victim privately."

"You're still learning to escape your cycle of victimization, aren't you?"

"Yes. I am."

TD swirled in a magician's pivot. "Why don't you show everyone here your victim rash?"

She looked back at him with glassy eyes.

"You've learned to hide your urge to be a victim, not eradicate it. Hiding your victimhood gives you comfort. So. Why don't you show everyone here what a victim you are? In fact, why don't you take off all your clothes? You're not going to give these people the power over you to make you ashamed of your own body, are you?"

The audience began to simmer.

Leah mechanically began shedding her clothes. When she finished, her skin glistened with a fine perspiration.

The crowd went rigid with a kind of dark ecstasy. Despite the cooling drafts from the overhead vents, Tim's undershirt clung to him like a second skin. His stomach churned as he watched TD prompt Leah.

She bit back an energized smile and shouted, "This is my body! And you can't make me ashamed of it! I negate victimhood! I reject comfort! I exalt strength!"

Uproarious applause. As Leah took up her clothes and stepped off the dais, TD said, "I wouldn't be surprised if that somatic manifestation of victimhood cleared up soon."

The activities and Oraes and Guy-Meds continued, an endless, torturous cycle, grinding down Tim's sanity until he longed to submit. But he fought every moment of the afternoon, evening, and night, upholding Tom Altman's plausibility while focusing, meditating, doing anything to avoid being swept away in the rush of lunacy. Using pain to guard against the ceaseless kettledrum and soft-fluttering lights, he twisted one hand into the other as if boring a screw through an obstinate plank. His palm was developing a blister from his thumbnail's grinding, a stigma he might have considered melodramatic had the discomfort allowed him room for amusement.

A flurry of scenes marked the final hours, glimpsed as if in the sporadic flash of a strobe light. Joanne standing on a chair, screaming, "I take on anger! I permit myself to feel anger because I stand up for myself!"

Shelly curled in the fetal position, sobbing, Stanley John leering over her like a barking drill sergeant. "Did Daddy molest you? Is that why you're a slut?"

Her nodding answer before slipping a thumb into her mouth. "I th-think so. In some ways."

Group claps. The loud throb of a recorded heartbeat. The numbing thump of a kettledrum.