The Code of Happiness by David J. Margolis Page B

real.”
    “It always amazes me the crazy people never know when
to stop. You and Ray were made for each other.”
    “We were, but he's stuck in the past. And you, you're
stuck in nowhere. All our research, all our coding, has resulted in
this.”
    “Using unauthorized DNA?”
    “To help people. Tap into it, Jamie, and your power
to transform others will be greater. I've seen you do it... and I
know you haven't a clue. Remarkable.” He shakes Jamie. “Grace. I've
seen you with Grace.” He lets go of him. “Maybe you are truly
special after all. Maybe you can resist what I have to offer.”
    “I don't see how I can help.”
    “Twofold. I can only get the effects to last five
hours. With your coding ability, who knows?”
    He guides Jamie around the orb to another machine and
a jungle of hanging wires.
    “We need your consciousness to be coded.”
    Jamie's at the end of Blaze's unsavoury grip.
    “And how do you propose to do that?”
    “The Source Foundation was onto something. But
they're old school. This is the new way. One day we'll be able to
offer everyone this source.”
    “At what price?”
    “A moderate subscription.”
    “And for those who can't afford?”
    “We'll offer a lite version, like old parking meters
on the street. Pop in a buck and receive five seconds of bliss.
Imagine the happiness. All we're doing is enhancing a code that
occurs in us naturally. It's just that we're unevolved. Why wait
for millennia when we can have this now?”
    The words of Ray come back to Jamie. Blaze wasn't bad
or evil. He was impatient, misguided. Jamie couldn't ignore what he
had just witnessed. And his own life? It had amounted to little.
Doubts? Yes. A little crazy? Indeed. But what Blaze was saying had
an element of truth.
    “I want to teach you about the affectus
transfigurantes. I do, truly,” implores Blaze.
    Jamie's unable to make connection to the pathological
liar, those who use a grain of truth to spread their
malfeasance.
    “Jamie, we can do this without you, but it will take
years. Come. Come try it. Don't you want to?”
    Jamie's nerves kick in but not enough to walk away.
He still has the power of youth and it comes with the naiveté of
trying anything once. He wasn't thirty yet.
    “Five seconds,” says Blaze.
    “Two,” responds Jamie.
    “Deal.”
    Blaze chaperones Jamie to the silver gloves.
    “You'll feel a slight tingling at first.”
    “How can I trust you?”
    Blaze searches for the apt answer; it's not far.
    “Because I need you.”
    And with that Jamie places his hands into the gloves
and is zapped.
     
    Jamie's mind expands. It's wide. Pacific Ocean wide.
A setting sun melting into a buzzing golden rod of light as Blaze's
lab disappears behind it.
    He hears Blaze. “Do you feel it?”
    Jamie nods, his smile feels as if it extends out of
his face and into the space around him, the ocean, the golden rod.
He's too numb to realize he's been connected beyond the agreed two
seconds. He touches his heart. Love, the forgotten code has entered
his dark space.
    “I give you a source from the outside to help on the
inside,” Blaze says triumphantly. And with a touch of wickedness,
“And now for your consciousness.”
    Jamie drops to his knees.
    “Are you ready for truth? It'll be over in a
minute.”
     
    Men and women march through Jamie's mind in black
suits and facemasks. Images flow over them; XXLI unpronounceable
but helping you breathe, working to bring you happiness , the
old man smiling beneath his burnt brown house, thousands of faces
sucked into their Nano devices, and over it all, is Blaze's echoing
voice, ‘I give you a source from the outside to help with the
inside.’ The beach and the Pacific Ocean return, now being filled
with computer parts, his black box of magic tricks, and a venti
latte. Warm and creamy, the complex smell of coffee blows his mind.
The art, a beating heart, begs him to dive in. It is time to
acquiesce, and he plunges into the milky white.
     
    He'll