The deeper meaning of everything is right there in your face.
And it's all so significant.
It's all so deep.
So real.
Everything the agent's been telling me makes perfect sense. For instance, if Jesus Christ had died in prison, with no one watching and with no one there to mourn or torture him, would we be saved?
With all due respect.
According to the agent, the biggest factor that makes you a saint is the amount of press coverage you get.
Around the one hundredth floor, it all comes clear. The whole universe, and this isn't just the endorphins talking. Any higher than the hundredth floor and you enter a mystical state.
The same as if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, you realize, if no one had been there to witness the agony of Christ, would we be saved?
The key to salvation is how much attention you get. How high a profile you get. Your audience share. Your exposure. Your name recognition. Your press following.
The buzz.
Around the one hundredth floor, the sweat is parting your hair all over. The boring mechanics of how your body works are all too clear, your lungs are sucking air to put in your blood, your heart pumps blood to your muscles, your hamstrings pull themselves short, cramping to pull your legs up behind you, your quadriceps cramp to put your knees out in front of you. The blood delivers air and food to burn inside the mito-whatever in the middle of your every muscle cell.
The skeleton is just a way to keep your tissue off the floor. Your sweat is just a way to keep you cool.
The revelations come at you from every direction.
Around the one hundred and fifth floor, you can't believe you're the slave to this body, this big baby. You have to keep it fed and put it to bed and take it to the bathroom. You can't believe we haven't invented something better. Something not so needy. Not so time-consuming.
You realize that people take drugs because it's the only real personal adventure left to them in their time- constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world.
It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.
You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching.
You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?
You realize the agent was right. You've never seen a crucifix with a Jesus who wasn't almost naked. You've never seen a fat Jesus. Or a Jesus with body hair. Every crucifix you've ever seen, the Jesus could be shirtless and modeling designer jeans or men's cologne.
Life is every way the agent said. You realize that if no one's watching, you might as well stay home. Play with yourself. Watch broadcast television.
It's around the one hundred and tenth floor you realize that if you're not on videotape, or better yet, live on satellite hookup in front of the whole world watching, you don't exist.
You're that tree falling in the forest that nobody gives a rat's ass about.
It doesn't matter if you do anything. If nobody notices, your life will add up to a big zero. Nada. Cipher.
Fake or not, it's these kinds of big truths that swarm inside you.
You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past. We can't give up our concept of who we were. All those adults playing archaeologist at yard sales, looking for childhood artifacts, board games, CandyLand, Twister, they're terrified. Trash becomes holy relics. Mystery Date. Hula Hoops. Our way of getting nostalgic for what we just threw in the trash, it's all because we're afraid to evolve. Grow, change, lose weight, reinvent ourselves. Adapt.
That's what the agent says to me on the StairMaster. He's yelling at me, 'Adapt!'
Everything's accelerated except me and my sweaty body with its bowel movements and body hair. My moles and yellow toenails. And I realize I'm stuck with my body, and already it's falling apart. My backbone feels hammered out of hot iron. My arms swing thin and wet on each side of me.
Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.
The agent's yelling that no matter how great you look, your body is just something you wear to accept your Academy Award.
Your hand is just so you can hold your Nobel Prize.
Your lips are only there for you to air-kiss a talk show host.
And you might as well look great.
It's around the one hundred and twentieth floor you have to laugh. You're going to lose it anyway. Your body. You're already losing it. It's time you bet everything.
This is why when the agent comes to you with anabolic steroids, you say yes. You say yes to the back-to- back tanning sessions. Electrolysis? Yes. Teeth capping? Yes. Dermabrasion? Yes. Chemical peels? According to the agent, the secret to getting famous is you just keep saying yes.
It's in the car coming from the airport the agent shows me his cure for cancer. It's called ChemoSolv. It's supposed to dissolve a tumor, he says and opens his briefcase to take out a brown prescription bottle with dark capsules inside.
This is jumping back a little ways to before I met the stair climbing machine, to my first face-to-face with the agent the night he picks me up at the airport in New York. Before he tells me I'm too fat to be famous yet. Before I'm a product being launched. It's dark outside when my plane first lands in New York. Nothing's too spectacular. It's night, with the same moon as we have back home, and the agent's just a regular man standing where I get off the plane, wearing glasses with his brown hair parted on one side.
We shake hands. A car drives up to the curb outside, and we get in the back. He pinches the crease in each trouser leg to lift it as he steps into the car. How he looks is custom-tailored.
How he looks is eternal and durable. Just meeting him, there's that guilt I feel whenever I buy something impossible to recycle.
'This other cancer cure we have is called Oncologic,' he says and hands another brown bottle across to me sitting next to him in the backseat. This is a nice car, the way it's black leather and padded all over inside. The ride is smoother than on the airplane.
It's more dark capsules inside the second bottle, and pasted around the bottle is a pharmacy label the way you always see. The agent takes out another bottle.
'This is one of our cures for AIDS,' he says. 'This is our most popular one.' He takes out bottle after bottle. 'Here we have our leading cure for antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. Here's liver cirrhosis. Here's Alzheimer's. Multiple Neuritis. Multiple Myeloma. Multiple Sclerosis. The rhinovirus,' he says, shaking each one so the pills inside rattle, and handing them over to me.
ViralSept, it says on one bottle.
MaligNon, another bottle says.
CerebralSave.
Kohlercaine.
Nonsense words.
These are all same-sized brown plastic bottles with white child-guard caps and prescription labels from the same pharmacy.
The agent comes packaged in a medium-weight gray wool suit and is equipped with only his briefcase. He features two brown eyes behind glasses. A mouth. Clean fingernails. Nothing is remarkable about him except what he's telling me.
'Just name a disease,' he says, 'and we have a cure ready for it.'
He lifts two more handfuls of brown bottles from his briefcase and shakes them. 'I brought all these to prove a point.'
Every second, the car we're in slides deeper and deeper through the dark into New York City. Around us, other cars keep pace. The moon keeps pace. I say how I'm surprised all these diseases still exist in the world.
