"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 elsewherepeople who didn't have our Boy-in-the-Bubble lifestylethey 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 lifeand 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. AndI 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 yearif 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 agoor even fifty years agothe 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 pioneersthey conquered the world," Linus says quietly.
"They did, Linus. The New World isn't new anymore. The New Worldthe Americasit'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 dieit'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 secondwait wait wait. You're going too quickly. Way earlier you said we could return to the world. What did you meanthe world as it was beforeall this?"
"Exactamundo, Richard. You can return to the world the way it wasback 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."
"Jaredare 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."
"Myourbaby . .." puffs Wendy.
"Born," I say. "And Hamilton and Pam, you'll be clean."
Eyes are wide before meall 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 possibleas 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.
"What do we ask?" Wendy says.
"Ask whatever challenges dead and thoughtless beliefs. Ask: When did we become human beings and stop being whatever it was we were before this? Ask: What was the specific change that made us human? Ask: Why do people not particularly care about their ancestors more than three generations back? Ask: Why are we unable to think of any real future beyond, say, a hundred years from now? Ask: How can we begin to think of the future as something enormous before us that also includes us? Ask: Having become human, what is it that we are now doing or creating that will transform us into whatever it is that we are slated to next become?