Alternate Gerrolds (25 page)

When almost all of the chairs were filled, someone in the back began applauding. Soon, everyone was clapping excitedly. Then, as the applause reached its peak, the seminar leader came up the center aisle from the back of the room and leapt happily onto the stage—he almost bounced, he was so light on his feet. Although his hair was a graceful mane of white, he seemed ageless. He wore a light tan suit that glittered like gold. Maggie thought he looked like a movie star; George thought he looked like a Hollywood phony.

“Hello!” he called broadly. “Good evening! How are you? This isn’t television—you can say hello back!” He looked out over the room, as if recognizing everyone there and acknowledging the applause of all of them. “Thank you, thank you,” he said, smiling and waving at all the guests and assistants.

“Thank you all for that very warm welcome,” he began when the applause finally died down. “My name is Steven Keyes, and I’m the seminar leader from Hell.” He paused to acknowledge the laughter. Some of it was very nervous. “I want to thank you all for being here tonight. I know there are a lot of other places you could be. Not many people want to go to Hell. And certainly not on a school night.” More laughter, this time a lot less nervous. It was all right to laugh here.

“In fact,” he added, “Most people don’t even want to
know
about Hell, so I have to acknowledge your courage just for coming into the room. That’s right.” He nodded, sharing his understanding with them.

Maggie settled herself in her seat comfortably. Whatever else he might be, Mr. Keyes was certainly charming. She had no intention of signing up for anything, but at least she could enjoy listening to what he had to say. She glanced over at George. His expression remained a resolute frown.

“Listen—” Steven Keyes held up a hand, grinning out at the crowd. “You’ve got to recognize the difficulty of my job here. Most people come in here, they’ve already got their minds made up. Hell isn’t a nice place. And those of us who speak for it aren’t to be trusted. Yes? Admit it—how many of you came in here tonight just a little bit afraid for your
immortal souls? Hold up your hands high. That’s right. Hold ‘em high so everybody can see. Look around....”

Despite themselves, George and Maggie slowly raised their hands. They glanced quickly around at the rest of the room and saw that most of the other people wearing guest-tags were also holding their hands up in the air.

“You see?’ said Steven Keyes. “You’re not alone. Okay, you can put your hands down now.” His smile disappeared and he became deadly serious for a moment. “I want you to notice something here. Despite being afraid, just like you, all of these people still showed up.
You
showed up.
Why?
Because ... despite what you’ve heard, despite what you think, despite what you might be afraid of, you are still
curious
enough that there might be something here—something that just might be worth your taking the time to find out
more
about it.” Steven Keyes glanced around the room, shifting his gaze from person to person, and for a moment, Maggie felt he was looking straight into her heart. She glanced quickly at George, but if he had felt anything, he didn’t show it.

“You want to acknowledge yourselves for that,” Keyes said with almost painful directness. “Yes, you do. Because you’re not letting someone else’s opinion keep you from finding out for yourselves what Nine Circles really has to offer. You didn’t let someone else tell you—”

Abruptly, he interrupted himself to make an additional point, gesturing with certainty and confidence. “Listen, I know how difficult it was to get here. A few years ago, I was sitting out there where you are now, wondering what kind of a con game or racket this was. And there were people in my life, too, who were telling me not to come, just like there are probably people in your life, too, who have told you that this is the wrong thing to do. They’ve probably said something like, ‘Be careful! Don’t put yourself at risk!’ Am I right?” He glanced around the room. Several of the guests were nodding in agreement. He laughed; the sound was infectious. “I
am
right, aren’t I?

“Well, do you want to know something?” Steven Keyes asked rhetorically. “Your friends were right. There
is
a risk here. But you’ve already mastered it. Just by being here, you’re taking the chance that you might discover a way to be more effective and successful in your life than you have ever dreamed of before.

“You see, success—
real success—
is all about taking risks. You know that. You don’t win anything by being comfortable. Comfort is a dead-end.
It’s a trap. Nine Circles is not about being comfortable. It’s about being effective, successful and powerful—and
enjoying
every moment of it. And that means taking the biggest risk of all,
letting go of the past so you can grab hold of the future.

“You had to take that risk to be here tonight. You had to risk being wrong in what you believed about us. You had to risk making the people around you wrong. You probably annoyed the hell out of your husbands, your wives, your family members, when you told them you were coming. Yes? I’ll bet many of you have put some of your best friendships at risk just by being here. Yes? Yes?”

Maggie nodded to herself. She glanced over at George. He still had his arms folded across his chest, but he was listening.

“And you know what
else
you had to risk?” Keyes continued. “You had to risk your arrogance. That’s right—
your arrogance
. Each of us, we’re kind of arrogant in our lives. Yes, we are. We think we’ve got it all pretty well figured out. We know how to survive—and we do. We survive very well—so well in fact, that for a lot of us, mere survival looks a lot like success. Sometimes we get so good at it that we think survival
is
success.

“But, listen to me—it’s all that attention on survival that keeps getting
in the way
of success. To succeed, you have to be willing to
not
know. You have to be willing to give up what you do know to find out what you don’t know. And that means you have to give up your arrogance—and that’s what you’ve done by being here. And I thank you for that. You’ve acknowledged that you can’t afford the arrogance of not knowing something, the knowing of which might very well transform the quality
of the rest of your life.”

Maggie’s forehead creased in puzzlement. She wasn’t sure she understood exactly what he was saying. Some of it sounded like pyschobabble, techno-jargon to her; but she was sure that Steven Keyes understood it, and if she just listened hard enough, perhaps she would get it too. Beside her, George was also frowning again.

“Look,” said Steven Keyes, as if he was responding directly to her thoughts. “This isn’t weird. It isn’t mysterious. It’s really very simple. What we’re offering is the possibility that there’s another whole way to
be
. It’s the chance to have everything you’ve ever wanted, right here, right now. You shouldn’t have to wait for your rewards. You’re entitled to them
now
. You’ve earned them. It’s just that simple.”

He held up a hand as if to stop himself. “I’m not stupid. You’re not stupid. We
all
know that you can’t get something for nothing. That’s the way the universe works. The Nine Circles Corporation is offering a service here—and you want to know what it’s going to cost you.

“I know what the
other side
has said about us. So do you. The other side says that we’re trying to trick you out of your immortal soul. ...” He looked around the room expectantly, smiling and nodding. “Yes?” he asked. “Isn’t that what they say?” He held up his hands again, spreading them wide and open. “But did you ever stop to ask yourself what is the other side
trying
to do?
What do they want?”

Keyes waited a moment, letting his audience consider the answer to that question. He looked around the room, studying their faces, watching to see if his words had had the desired effect. They had. Some of the faces looked angry, others looked amused, still others were worried at the implication of the thought.

Maggie had never considered this thought before. It troubled her. She slipped her hand sideways, into George’s. He let her put her hand in his, but she could tell he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to acknowledge the gesture.

“Listen,” Steven Keyes was saying. “You don’t need me to tell you. You’ve heard it all your life what
they want
from you—not what they’re going to do for you, but what you have to do for them. They want you to forego the pleasures and rewards of this world. In return, they promise you the
unspecified
pleasures and rewards of the next world. They want you to live a life of deprivation and sacrifice, they want you to live in guilt and shame for all of your days, confessing and repenting your sins, begging their forgiveness, so you can attain worthiness—
but in exchange for what?
Just what are the rewards of the next world? Have you ever noticed that they never tell you!”

Keyes sounded angry, as if raging at a colossal betrayal. His anger resonated throughout the room. Maggie glanced around nervously. Other people looked equally unhappy with this news. She didn’t know how she felt about it. She felt torn and confused.

“I’ll tell you what they want,” said Keyes. “They want the same thing we do. They
want
your immortal soul! That’s right—
they
want your souls too.” He stepped forward to the edge of the podium, leaning out toward his audience. “And they don’t even have the honesty to offer you something in exchange for it.
They
just keep saying, ‘Trust me!’ Well,
you’re big boys and girls. You know what ‘trust me’ means in the real world. You’ve been there. Would you trust anyone who isn’t willing to sign a contract? Would you buy a car that way? Or a house? Why would you trust your immortal soul to someone who says, ‘Trust me?’ We offer you signed contracts. Do they? No—but they’ll give you all the
faith
you want. Try spending
that
at the supermarket.”

Keyes was clearly warming to his subject now. He’d let his temper flash, just enough to be interesting. Now, he allowed his good-natured geniality to surface again. He unbuttoned his gold jacket; he hitched his thumbs into his waist band, stepped down off the podium and began pacing up and down the aisles like a high school math teacher drilling his students. He looked directly into people’s eyes and spoke to them like old friends. Maggie put her fist to her chin and chewed worriedly on a nail. She didn’t like this part.

“Let me tell you something,” Steven Keyes said. “This is a business. I get paid for doing these talks. But even if I didn’t get paid, I’d still do it, because I love the chance to work with people like you, people who care about themselves and their families and their futures. I have a family too. And a future. And I came to an event like this six years ago, just as worried as you about the direction my life was going. I’d lost my faith in the product offered by the
other side
. I’d tried it their way for nearly forty years and it didn’t work. That’s right. I’m forty-five years old. And no, I don’t look it, do I? I’ve been invigorated. And you can be invigorated too. Listen—I was desperate. My life was a mess.

“Oh, my life looked ideal to those who didn’t know. My wife and I had kids and dogs and two cars and a swimming pool and a house in the suburbs—but we weren’t
happy
. We weren’t having fun. The joy had leached out of our marriage and our lives. And one morning, I found myself standing in front of the mirror, thinking about work, thinking about family, thinking about bills and problems and all the little things that kept going wrong, thinking about gray hairs and gray days stretching out in front of me until I dropped dead either of a coronary or cirrhosis of the liver, thinking and thinking and holding my razor and wondering whether I should shave or slash my wrists—and that’s when I knew I needed to
do something
.

“What I did was this—” He pointed to the floor where he stood. “I accepted an invitation to come to one of these seminars. And I came here just as skeptical and worried and fearful as each and every one of you
probably is right now. I had just as many questions and concerns. And yes, I was just as apprehensive as you are now about being conned one more time—especially this time, when the stakes look to be so high. So I know what you want to hear, what you
need
to hear. Because I’ve been there myself.

“Let me start at the beginning. This used to be a protected market, this little rock we’re living on. Six thousand years ago, nobody believed that human beings represented much of a commodity, certainly not a worthwhile market. Most of the services offered here in the far past were mom-and-pop operations, strictly local, strictly small-time. It wasn’t until the Yahweh Corporation was granted a license for development that real growth became possible.

“Now, look. I’m not going to say bad things about them—that’s not good business, in any case. And the fact is, they did a great job in elevating this market to a whole new standard of productivity in a very short time—only six thousand years. Look around. We’re not shepherds anymore. We’re a major industrial world. And that’s the point. This market is now large enough and successful enough to support free competition. You deserve it. You’ve earned it. You have a right to a fair choice. That’s what this is.

“They’ve had their monopoly long enough. They’ve made their money back, a long time ago. Now it’s time to open up this arena. Over a thousand years ago, the Nine Circles Corporation began petitioning to have this market expanded. We’ve had to work very hard to prove ourselves—we’ve had to run a lot of pilot projects, but we’ve finally been granted full license to compete here. And that’s put a real scare into the Yahweh people. So they’re saying a lot of bad things about us, hoping to keep you so scared about who we are and what we represent that you won’t even consider our services.