"I'm a jerk," I said. "I'm a jerk machine."
"And I'm a nasty bitch machine," she said. "So what?"
"I don't want to be a machine," I said.
"I got it. That's what kind of a machine you are. The kind who doesn't want to be."
"Uh . . ." And then I started to giggle. "I got it. I'm the kind of machine who goes around telling myself I'm not a machine. Like a little tape recorder playing my little tape, 'I'm not a machine, I'm not a machine."'
She laughed too. And leaned over and kissed me. "You're ready to take the next step, sweetheart. You've already taken it."
"I have?"
"Yes, you have. You're willing to deal with bad news."
I sighed. I looked into her eyes. "All I want is to find the way-not just the way to survive, but the way to win as well. I want to know. Is this it?"
She understood what I was saying. "You'll let us know, afterward," she said.
70
Mode: The Last Day
"Reality is what bumps into you when you stand still with your eyes open."
- SOLOMON SHORT
When we entered the room, it was empty. I mean, empty.
There was no stage, no dais, no platform. There was no podium, no music stand with a manual on it, no director's chair. There were no overhead screens. Everything had been dismantled and removed.
There were no assistants at the doors. There were no assistants in the back of the room. There was no table for them; there were no chairs.
There were no chairs for the trainees either; they were stacked neatly in a large closet in the back wall. The door to the closet was half-ajar when we entered. Periodically, someone would walk over, open the door, look in, look back at the rest of us in the room, look puzzled, and then do nothing; he or she would return to the growing throng standing and milling near the door.
The room was abandoned. It was as if The Mode Training and all the people responsible for it had simply vanished during the night.
We stood around, waiting in puzzled groups, looking at each other and wondering. We talked in low voices. Was someone going to come in and take charge soon? Had they all overslept, or had they forgotten that there was one more day to the training?
Or maybe something serious had happened? Had the training been cancelled abruptly? Was there an emergency? If so, why hadn't they told us? We didn't know.
What the hell was going on here?
There was something else bothering me. For a moment, I couldn't figure out what it was. I looked to Marisov, but she shook her head; she couldn't figure it out either. I turned around slowly, trying to see what I had already seen, but hadn't consciously registered.
There was something wrong about the room. That was part of it.
Everything looked the same, but it wasn't. I had a feeling: if I could figure out what was wrong, it would explain everything else as well.
It wasn't just that the room hadn't been set up or that Foreman and all the assistants weren't here. Something else was missing; something that I was used to wasn't the same
And then I got it. The floor hadn't been swept. It wasn't dirty, but neither was it clean-and that bothered me. It made a difference. There wasn't much dirt, and only a few scraps of paper, but it seemed dirty by comparison to the way we usually found the room.
Always before, the room had been spotless. Ready. Even the bullet holes in the walls were always repaired after the first break. Today, the room was not ready. That's why it looked abandoned. We had grown accustomed to that feeling of readiness. But this wasn't a big clean space waiting to be filled anymore; instead, it was just a big empty space. The difference was profound.
Foreman had talked about integrity almost every day. "You're either a guest on the planet or a host.
"Guests expect to be taken care of. Guests make messes without wondering who's going to clean them up. Guests don't pay their own way. We invite guests into our homes because we enjoy their company, not because we enjoy cleaning up after them. If the cost of cleaning up after a guest becomes prohibitive, the guest becomes an enemy. Remember that.
"Hosts are the people who take care of other people. Hosts are owners. Hosts clean up messes wherever they find them. Hosts keep their homes clean so that guests will feel welcome and taken care of.
"The question is," Foreman had said, over and over, "Are you a guest or a host on the planet Earth? Are you leaving a trail of trash in your wake? Dropped cigarettes, candy wrappings, crumpled paper, orange peels, soft-drink containers, and all the other garbage of your life? Do your relationships look like Dachau? Are you leaving a trail of dead bodies behind you? It's all the same.
"You're expecting someone else to clean it up. Or maybe you don't care if it ever gets cleaned up.
"A host cleans up trash wherever he finds it-it doesn't matter who left it there. He's a host, it's his responsibility. He enters a room and cleans it up because he can't stand seeing the dirt on the floor. He takes care of his relationships because he can't stand seeing people damaged, incomplete, and in pain. A host cares about the place he lives in.
"I live on Earth. Where do you live?" Right.
Foreman wasn't subtle. But then he'd never promised to be. He'd only promised results. I was laughing as I went to the closet where the chairs were stored.
As I expected, there were brooms and dustpans stashed in a corner.
I didn't ask-there wasn't anyone to ask anyway-I just took the broom and began sweeping the floor.
Several people turned to stare at me; a couple applauded; but after a moment, there were four of us sweeping the floor.
"Why are you doing that?" someone asked.
I just looked at him. How could he not understand? And kept on sweeping.
"That's not your job," the man insisted. He was a big, burly looking fellow.
"Yes it is," I said. "I'm not a guest any more. I'm the host."
"Oh?" he asked. "You're taking over the training? Foreman died and appointed you God?"
The right answer was yes, but he wouldn't have understood it. "I'm taking responsibility for my part of the training," I said. "Would you move please? I want to sweep where you're standing."
He moved. He frowned; he was unhappy-he knew there was something he wasn't understanding-but he moved.
I wasn't worried. He'd get it. He'd figure it out soon enough. We all would.
Somebody else came up to me then. A woman with a worried expression. "You know what's going on, don't you?"
"Actually, I don't."
"But, you're sweeping."
"That's right. I'm sweeping."
"Because it has to be done," I said.
She made a face. She shook her head and walked away. I suppose she thought I was being rude for not explaining, but if she had to have it explained to her, then she wouldn't understand it. After a while, people left me alone.
It took a while to sweep the whole room, even with four of us doing it. We became an unspoken partnership. We understood without discussing it, what we were doing.
While I swept, while I had something to do, I didn't have to think. I could be the job. I could concentrate on having this floor be the cleanest floor possible.
I really didn't know what was going on, but I did know that this dirty floor was in the way. I had to clean the floor first before I could know what the next part was. That much I was sure of. It seemed to me though . . .