The Code of Happiness by David J. Margolis

wants
all the answers he'll have to ask Ray.
    “How do I know he's coming back?”
     
    The hours pass over midnight, Jamie's slumping, still
clueless as to Ray's designs on him.
    “I calmed down,” he says to Po, “when I feared the
most in the ionizer I calmed down and could see. Now I'm calm, and
all I see is a mess.”
    “Then let go. Walk out of here. Walk away from
Blaze.”
    “And hide again?”
    It was possible Po was in the dark about his
identity. He allows her to kneel beside him. To touch him. A
slither of humanity.
    “I'll drive you home,” she says.
    Project Happiness, he'll tell her he thinks, when the
time is right.
     
    Exhaustion is a blessing. Nothing the body and mind
can do except slip into rest. One flickering eye allows him to see
Po enjoying the buttons of luxury in his car. She's not immune to
the material.
    “Never said I was,” she says.
    His car. For how much longer? If it ever was. He
sinks deep into sleep. He'd be home soon.
     
    “Nice ride.”
     
    Jamie awakens to the orange sky of first light and
tumbleweeds passing through a desert highway. He offers Po a glare
and steps out into a cracked and parched landscape, nothing for
miles except a rickety old barn and a cold eerie wind grazing his
face. He watches Po's hair twist into knots.
    “Glenhorn Forest,” she says.
    “Where the trees?”
    “Disappeared twenty-five years ago.”
    All he can do is kick the dirt and watch the barn
door open. Ray holding onto a black Stetson beckons them in.
    “The morning wind,” he shouts, “Dies down in the
afternoon.”
     
    Truths part two. A wood stove crackles, warming the
three participants sitting on cushions. A kettle rattles away. Any
cup of tea will do. The explanation is simple. The double crash
destroying The Source Foundations funds, people too busy surviving
or accruing to listen to their message, the Blaze Malone's of the
world had won—or were winning, and John Charles Cavour, their
benevolent billionaire, always understood all things come to an
end. Jamie offers a little on Project Happiness in return, a code
to be switched on.
    “We needed someone to help us,” says Ray.
    “Generating the affectus transfigurantes? ”
    “Playing Robin Hood.”
    Ray opens a draw beneath his seat. Inside is a small
flip chart with various schematics, the immediacy of its meaning
strikes Jamie like a one-two sucker punch. A global plan to skim
the banks of millions, and he would be at its centre, orchestrating
with his ability to access the backdoor and beyond.
    “Yes,” says Ray, “I played on your ego. For the
greater good.”
    “So I can get a twenty year jail sentence?”
    “Your little black box,” says Po.
    “They would fry that in a second.”
    “We all have our flaws,” says Ray.
    “And what's yours? Lying?”
    “Would you have believed me if I said you were just
an ordinary Joe? No. You needed to be told you were special.”
    “So the stuff with the torus and the affectus
transfigurantes is fiction?”
    “Everyone has the gift. Not just you. But not
everyone can realize it because they don't invest the time.”
    Jamie could see how he was the perfect candidate. The
disaffected boy living between the cracks of what society left. A
nowhere man needing a role or a place to belong despite the denial
he didn't, to find some kind of meaning in his existence, for
without it he was merely a shell, a shadow, a pointless form of
carbon. He was ripe to be plucked and placed in any cult.
    “Is there any difference between you and Blaze?”
    “We're non-profit,” says Po.
    “The ride to town leaves in thirty seconds,” he tells
her.
    “Slow down. Think Jamie. If you can turn happiness
on, then you could turn happiness off. What then?”
    He's too tired to consider the consequences, his
brain mashed. For once being alone would have benefits, and Po
reading that turns away and folds up a blanket.
    “The forest Jamie, that used to be outside,” says
Ray, “its disappearance is