"The Book"

THE BOOK by Chris Morris The book arrived the very next day from when he had ordered it; overnight shipping-what a miracle of modern convenience. He took it out of the box and gave it a once over-it was a bit smaller than he thought it would be. “Night Visions: How to Get What You Want While Sleeping!” was a best-seller of the genre of self-help/“posiIve thinking” by Devin Gardner, world-famous author of such other classics as “Mind Manifest” and “PosiIvity, ManifestaIon, and You.” He’d tried everything to get himself out of the cyclical misery loop he’d found himself in when he’d hit his early 40s-therapy, psychedelics, going to “meet-ups”, daIng apps. He’d been unemployed for over 2 months now; he’d applied for several jobs but managed to only score a single interview that did not go well. He wondered if maybe ordering a beSer LED light would make him look younger on Zoom. He clicked the “Buy Now” buSon again, as if by insInct. As he was geYng ready for bed that evening, he decided rather than read the text of “Night Visions”, he would instead listen to the audio version that came with his purchase as he driZed off to sleep. AZer washing up, he took a sip of water from the glass on the nightstand next to his bed, popped in his noise-canceling earbuds, and pressed play on the Audi-Lit app buSon on his smartphone- INTRODUCTION: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE ‘GARDNER METHOD’

THE BOOK by Chris Morris The book arrived the very next day from when he had ordered it; overnight shipping-what a miracle of modern convenience. He took it out of the box and gave it a once over-it was a bit smaller than he thought it would be. “Night Visions: How to Get What You Want While Sleeping!” was a best-seller of the genre of self-help/“posiIve thinking” by Devin Gardner, world-famous author of such other classics as “Mind Manifest” and “PosiIvity, ManifestaIon, and You.” He’d tried everything to get himself out of the cyclical misery loop he’d found himself in when he’d hit his early 40s-therapy, psychedelics, going to “meet-ups”, daIng apps. He’d been unemployed for over 2 months now; he’d applied for several jobs but managed to only score a single interview that did not go well. He wondered if maybe ordering a beSer LED light would make him look younger on Zoom. He clicked the “Buy Now” buSon again, as if by insInct. As he was geYng ready for bed that evening, he decided rather than read the text of “Night Visions”, he would instead listen to the audio version that came with his purchase as he driZed off to sleep. AZer washing up, he took a sip of water from the glass on the nightstand next to his bed, popped in his noise-canceling earbuds, and pressed play on the Audi-Lit app buSon on his smartphone- INTRODUCTION: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE ‘GARDNER METHOD’

THE BOOK by Chris Morris The book arrived the very next day from when he had ordered it; overnight shipping-what a miracle of modern convenience. He took it out of the box and gave it a once over-it was a bit smaller than he thought it would be. “Night Visions: How to Get What You Want While Sleeping!” was a best-seller of the genre of self-help/“posiIve thinking” by Devin Gardner, world-famous author of such other classics as “Mind Manifest” and “PosiIvity, ManifestaIon, and You.” He’d tried everything to get himself out of the cyclical misery loop he’d found himself in when he’d hit his early 40s-therapy, psychedelics, going to “meet-ups”, daIng apps. He’d been unemployed for over 2 months now; he’d applied for several jobs but managed to only score a single interview that did not go well. He wondered if maybe ordering a beSer LED light would make him look younger on Zoom. He clicked the “Buy Now” buSon again, as if by insInct. As he was geYng ready for bed that evening, he decided rather than read the text of “Night Visions”, he would instead listen to the audio version that came with his purchase as he driZed off to sleep. AZer washing up, he took a sip of water from the glass on the nightstand next to his bed, popped in his noise-canceling earbuds, and pressed play on the Audi-Lit app buSon on his smartphone- INTRODUCTION: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE ‘GARDNER METHOD’

“Has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, why nothing in your life seems to work out quite the way you’d like it to? Why every door seems an obstacle, rather than an opening toward your ulImate desIny? Would you like to know how to really, truly, get what you want out of life? Well, dear reader, I can tell you how!” “It’s quite simple, really,“ chimed the lithe, confident, aristocraIc BriIsh voice. ”Here’s a liSle exercise to help you get started. Think of your greatest desire, in a way that a child fantasizes about a toy he might receive from Father Christmas on Christmas morning. Feel within yourself a true, joyful yearning!“ “Imagine this scene vividly within your mind; are you receiving an award? Visualize yourself on a stage in front of your peers, receiving said award. Feel the grip of the individual presenIng you with the award as they shake your hand. Feel the smile on your face as everyone cheers!” “Do this as you are falling into slumber, right in the ‘in-between’ state of consciousness and waking. Do this every night for several nights and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised!“ And almost right away, he found himself in just such a liminal state; he could feel the weight behind his eyes pulling him into slumber, but as he gave in to its pull, he formed a vision in his head. He saw Candy.

Candy was a bartender at his favorite watering hole, The Bear’s Claw, a sort of hipster beer garden he found himself in (usually alone) at least once a week; someImes twice. Her perky smile, pert breasts, casually unkempt look, and odd sense of humor always drew him to her side of the bar. In his vision, he saw Candy smiling, laughing, touching her hair somewhat nervously as he regaled her with stories and jokes, something he was not normally wont to do (to call him an “introvert” would be like calling Joseph Stalin “a bit on the paranoid side”). AZer receiving all of the tell-tale signs, he visualized his lips making the moIons that would indicate the sentence “Can I have your number so I can take you out someIme?” Candy, of course, (as this was a fantasy and not real life), enthusiasIcally obliged. Cut to . . . Well, let’s just say he has a very dirty mind. Very dirty indeed. . . . AZer another day of fruitless job-hunIng, he threw on the crumpled clothes on the floor of his bedroom and made a bee-line straight for The Bear’s Claw, to find only a few other patrons and, to both his delight and dread, Candy, in her cutoff “The Bear’s Claw” t-shirt, wiping down the bar. Could he really talk to her this Ime? Could he close the deal, or would he, as usual, just

make some small talk and then just look at his phone while he slowly got drunk off of high- octane Belgian ale? He took a seat at his usual spot. “Hey there. I haven’t seen you in almost a week” she said with a sense of wry curiosity. “I’ve been . . . around” he retorted with a shy smirk; “How’ve you been? You look . . . great.” This last bit actually startled him somewhat; he was not usually this forward with women. “Um, thanks . . . I’ve been, you know, busy. Any luck with the job hunt?” Candy asked. “No, nothing yet. Can’t seem to catch a break. Look, uh . . . I don’t mean to so uh . . . well, hey, what Ime do you get off tonight?” “In about an hour; why?” she replied with a semi-scrunched look on her face somewhere between embarrassment and leariness. . . “Do you wanna . . . I dunno, hang out? I mean go somewhere, get a bite to eat? There’s a great diner about two blocks east of here.” Again, he was surprised by his boldness; where was this bravado coming from? “Sure, I mean . . . yeah why not? You seem like a nice enough guy” she said, smiling subtly. A ‘nice enough guy’; he’d heard that one plenty, but her answer filled him with a sense of thrilling and actually not-so-dreadful anxiety; he’d not been out with a woman in . .

. a long Ime. He and Candy made their way to Vic’s 24-Hour Diner. They sat and decided to split a slice of apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream. SiYng across from her and studying her soZ, pallid face; her warm, emerald eyes, he found himself in an unusual (for him, anyway) conversaIonal rhythm; not the nervous sort of circular, staccato small talk punctuated with bouts of silence that he usually found himself performing in with these situaIons, but rather, he found himself riding a flowing wave of charming, flirtaIous energy. She was laughing steadily; caressing her hair. He felt a sense of deja vu, as if this had happened already. It was working- He was going to fuck Candy. Tonight. . . . With Candy breathing soZly next to him, filled with the warm aZerglow of post-coital saIsfacIon, he began to driZ off again; he remembered Gardner’s instrucIons, and he began to listen to his desires once again. This Ime, he saw himself dressed ‘business casual’ in an office somewhere. He was having an actual in-person job interview for the job he wanted-a simple, yet well-paying job in “A.I. machine learning language prompIng“, something he could do from the comfort of his own home, which was exactly what he was looking for. The interviewer smiled at him warmly and as they both stood up offered a firm handshake to indicate that the job was indeed his.

The next morning he awoke to a noIficaIon on his phone; it was an invitaIon to a Zoom interview at the gig he’d applied for two weeks ago; he eagerly accepted, got ready, and awaited the call. “Well, this is just a formality; I hate doing these things over Zoom. We’re really impressed with your resume here; why don’t you come down to the office and we’ll just do this in person; How’s that sound? Let’s say, aZer lunch? 2 pm?” asked the rather unusually friendly project manager. “Sounds great” he replied cheerfully. “I’ll be there.” “Looking forward to it!” As soon as the call was over, he realized that there was another noIficaIon on his phone that he’d missed. It was a text from Candy. “Had fun the other night. Can’t stop thinking about U (heart emoji)” He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this-heart emoji? He was, more or less, looking for a good Ime at this point; and while he liked Candy, he thought it a bit soon to be sending heart emojis. Nevertheless, he brushed it off and began to prepare for his in-person interview. The interview went rather well-almost too well. He arrived early without incident, was greeted warmly by the staff and project supervisor, and nailed every single quesIon he was asked with an almost preternatural ease. When the interview was over, to his astonishment, he saw the

exact same scene he had played out in his mind in Candy’s apartment before dozing off to sleep; every detail was exactly as he’d seen it, including the Iming of the both of them standing as well as the grip of the handshake. The uncanniness of it all made him, well, A bit queasy. On his way out of the building, he felt his phone vibrate- ‘Why haven’t u called? Did I do something wrong (sad emoji x 3)’ said the text from Candy. He couldn’t understand what was so urgent-they’d only just hooked up the night before. What was the hurry? The phone began to vibrate constantly. Text aZer text aZer text. He suddenly got the uneasy feeling that he’d made a big mistake. His phone rang again, and this Ime the constant vibraIng of his device was starIng to give him serious pangs of anxiety. It was the project manager at his new gig- “Hey, listen, I know we just got done talking, and that I said you could start on Monday, but . . . I’m in a real pickle here, is there any way you could hightail it back here and start right away? I know this was supposed to be a sort of work-from-home situaIon, but for the Ime being, I’m gonna need you in the office.” “Sure . . . I uh . . . yeah, I’ll be there in, say, uh, 5 minutes?”

“Great-you’re a lifesaver man, I knew I made the right decision.” It was as if he could actually feel his corIsol levels spike. This was too sudden-he actually couldn’t believe he’d got the job in the first place, as he was woefully underqualified, and now, he was going to have to jump in head first, right away? ‘Is this what I really want?’ he asked himself. Maybe, he thought to himself, that the quesIon of “What do you really want?” was a far more difficult one to answer than he’d previously believed. . . . Exhausted and hungry, he returned to his apartment some 9 hours later and threw a frozen burrito in the microwave. He looked at his phone-25 UNANSWERED TEXTS FROM CANDY. “Why aren’t u texIng me back? Did I do something wrong? RU FUCKING SOMEONE ELSE???“ It was at this point that he started to panic; he ran to his bedroom, picked up his copy of “Night Visions”, and flipped to the back-there it was, what he was looking for-a hotline number to the Gardner InsItute. He dialed the number quickly and nervously, his sweaty hands leaving a streaky residue on the screen of his phone. “Hello, Gardner InsItute, this is Debra, how may I help you?” said a cheerful female voice. “Yes, I um . . . well, I, uh, tried Mr. Gardner’s method, and umm . . . it worked . . .” “Well that’s what we like to hear!” she retorted excitedly.

“Yeah, but . . . it’s working a liSle too well. As in . . . it seems like everything I visualize is happening too accurately and too quickly and it’s . . . well, it’s very overwhelming!” he stammered. “Ah, I see” Marge replied with a tone of recogniIon. “You’re one of the ‘giZeds’.” “The giZeds?” he asked. “Yes, well . . . some of our readers and program parIcipants seem to have an almost ‘super- natural’ giZ of visualizaIon. They pracIce the Gardner method as instructed, and the things that they visualize are almost always extremely accurate and happen right away.” “YES! That’s what’s happening to me, but . . .” “It’s not exactly what you were hoping for, was it? A liSle ‘too good to be true’? And then a liSle more than you bargained for, eh?” He could almost see the knowing smirk on her face from the way she asked the quesIon. “Yeah; like, it’s these things that I think I want, but then it turns out- “Not to be exactly what you thought it would be?” she finished his sentence for him. This was clearly not Debra’s first rodeo. “Yes! This girl won’t stop texIng me, I got this job that I thought I wanted, but it’s burning me out, I can feel my heartbeat in my throat. . this, this sucks! It’s too much!” “Sweetheart, take a deep breath. Can you do that for me?” asked Debra gently.

“Ok, ok” he let out an audible deep breath. “Good. Now this is a common problem for giZeds. You see, you’re among about .5% of the people who undertake Mr. Gardner’s manifestaIon program. SomeImes the method works, as you stated earlier, a liSle too well, and they end up geYng into trouble.” “Ok, well, then, what’s the soluIon? How do I get out of this?” he asked desperately. “Well, my dear, the same way that you got in! Wish it all away! And then, well, you need to have a good long think about what’s actually important to you. What do you truly value? What do you, in fact, really want?” “I . . . I don’t know!” he answered. “Well, my dear, think on it. But don’t think on it too hard! And be careful-someImes the giZed’s manifest desires have a tendency to come with . . . let’s just say, unintended consequences. As you yourself might already know,” she said ruefully. . . . He’d turned his phone off; he couldn’t deal with the constant pings, pongs, dings, and other noIficaIon sounds. He sat on the couch in his sparsely decorated apartment with his head in his hands. How could this have gone so off the rails? He thought this would be his dream job, and yet, he hated every second he’d spent in that wretched glass ‘Work2gether’ tech-office building. He thought Candy was the girl of his dreams, but instead, she turned out to be an

obsessive, possessive weirdo. It would be easy enough to undo this, to just go back to his previous boring existence, but, then he thought, as he’d thought so many lonely nights over the past few months- What if this is it? Am I just gonna die here, like this, all alone? What was the meaning of it all? Was there one? Surely, if he was one of the ‘giZeds’, as Debra said he was, then he should be able to make some kind of difference in the world. He should be able to make a mark, to move things in a more posiIve direcIon. But what could he dream of, what could he possibly conjure into existence that would be so effecIve? “This is insane! I’m not GOD!”, he heard himself exclaim out loud. And that was another thing-what were the limits of his power? How ‘giZed’ was he, exactly? That night, as he fell asleep, he conjured up more visions-a text from Candy saying ‘i don’t think this is gonna work, LOSE MY #’, a phone call from his boss the friendly project manager about ‘something something some investment money fell through layoffs blah blah blah so sorry we were really looking forward to having you here etc.’ But he really saw all of it, heard it all, watched it all play out as if he was genuinely living it; he could model the future within the realm of his imaginaIon in exquisite detail.

And then it hit him-he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to do something good. Something important. So right as he was about to driZ off for the night, he remembered the news report he saw that night before he went to bed about the war in Ukraine, about how many children and innocent civilians were being massacred by Russia’s relentless bombing campaigns. He focused his vision, and saw the headline on the New York Times website-“War in Ukraine Declared Over; PuIn Retreats in Defeat.” The thought of it filled him with a sort of saIsfied warmth, and he allowed himself to enter fully into the realm of dreams. . . . He awoke the next day and looked at his phone. It was a text from Candy-‘u know what, u asshole? i don’t think this is gonna work, LOSE MY #’-almost exactly as he’d seen the night before. He also had a missed call and a voicemail was waiIng for him- “Hey, uh . . . this Tim; I . . . I hate to do this to you, and I know you just got started here, but we had another meeIng last night and it looks like one of our major angel investors is pulling up stakes, and uh . . . we’ve had to cut a lot of people, so, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to let you go. It’s nothing personal, we really liked you here, but . . .

look, feel free to use me as a reference. Good luck.” Free! He was free of the bondage that his “giZ” had placed him in. He then excitedly punched up newyorkImes.com on his phone’s browser, and there it was- “War in Ukraine Declared Over; PuIn Retreats in Defeat.” He couldn’t believe his eyes . . . surely this wasn’t his doing? Surely his giZ wasn’t that impressive . . . was it? He felt a surge of power rush throught him; he felt like a living God! He’d done it! “I can do anything! I can make the world the way I want it, I can cure diseases, I . . .” Suddenly there was a knock at the door-it was his neighbor across the hall, Charlie. Charlie usually kept to himself so he wondered if there might be something wrong. “Dude, have you turned on the TV yet?” “No” he replied flatly. “Well, you’d beSer,” said Charlie with a grim look on his face. He let Charlie in and grabbed the remote to turn on his wall-mounted widescreen. “Reports are confirmed that aZer the US made the tacIcal nuclear aSack that effecIvely ended the Ukraine conflict,” said the visibly nervous anchor, “that the Russian military has launched several ICBMs at major US ciIes and other civilian-populated areas. My God . . . oh God, what have we done, what have we . . . ” He dropped the remote. It was bright. Then it was hot. And then Nothing.