Alternate Gerrolds (26 page)

“Listen—they’ve had sole custody of the market for nearly six thousand years. Do you know what’s happened to them? They’ve forgotten how to play on a level field. They’ve gotten complacent, lazy and arrogant ... and worst of all, they aren’t delivering the services they’re promising. And that’s not fair to you, because you have no other supplier—
until now
.”

Keyes still paced around the room. He stopped and looked directly at George and Maggie, startling them both in their chairs. “I know what you’re thinking. No—not because I read minds. I don’t. I know
it because I’ve been there myself. You’re asking yourself, the same way I did, six years ago, ‘What is this wonderful product anyway?’” George shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Maggie felt flattered at the personal attention.

“Well, I’m going to tell you.” Keyes said. “The product is something so intangible that when I tell you, you won’t really hear me. You won’t hear what I’m saying—you’ll hear what you want to hear, or what you’re afraid to hear, or what you think you hear. It won’t get through your filter. You’ll shrug it off. You’ll dismiss it. You’ll disregard it as trivial. Maybe, you’ll even be annoyed that I’ve spent so much time talking about something so simple. Or maybe you’ll say, ‘Oh, hell, Steven, I already knew that.’ Yes, you will. This isn’t the first time I’ve delivered this talk—and the truth is, you aren’t unique. That’s the bad news. The good news is that our product works. It works better than you imagine. It works better than you
can
imagine. And best of all, it works
a hell of a lot better than theirs
. Pun intended!” Keyes grinned broadly, nodding and looking around the room, once again meeting the eyes of all of the guests. “So, here’s what you’ve got to do,” he said. “You’ve got to listen to me as if the quality your life depended on it—because it does!” He continued looking and nodding, waiting until the room was absolutely silent and every eye was fixed directly on him.

“What is our product?” he asked again, rhetorically. “Very simple. What we’re selling here is
a whole other way to be.
Let me say that again. We are offering you an opportunity to change your way of
being.
You will stop being the way you have been, the way that doesn’t produce the results you want, and take on instead a
new
way to be, a way that
does
produce the results you want. It’s that simple.

“You know—” Keyes interrupted himself again, dropping back into his friendly conversational tone. “I read in a book once a very interesting definition of what it is to be crazy. Do you know what being crazy is? It’s doing the same thing over and over and over, but each time expecting a different result. Well, that’s what the other side is telling you to do. That’s the product that the other side offering you. Have faith. Trust. Pray. Sacrifice. Be patient. And you’ll get what you want. Someday. Not now, though. No matter what you ask for, that’s their answer. And they expect that same answer to produce different results each time! That’s crazy!

“Let’s face it! Their way of being doesn’t work!” Keyes accused, suddenly
and angrily stabbing the air with his finger. “If it did, you wouldn’t be here—not even out of curiosity!” He began moving about the room again, weaving his way up one aisle and down the next, pausing only to touch people on the shoulder or pat them reassuringly. “Look, I know it’s tough out there. You know what everybody says, you’ve heard it, you’ve probably said it yourself:
‘Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.’
” He laughed along with the rest of the room. “Yeah, we laugh. It’s funny. If we didn’t laugh, we’d have to cry. Like that’s something to be grateful for—right?

“If their way is so wonderful, how come so many of us are out of work? How come so many of us are going to bed hungry? How come so many of us have no place to live? If their way is so wonderful, how come there’s so much evil in the world? Have you ever asked yourself that? Sure you have. Have you ever come up with a satisfactory answer?

“I know what
their
answer is—they blame us. They say it’s
our
fault. That’s their answer for everything—to blame the opposition. Notice that they
never
take responsibility for their own way of being!”

Steven Keyes stepped back up to the dais at the front of the room and allowed his raw anger to show again. “The truth is, we’ve all been conned, dominated, manipulated, cheated, beaten up, beaten down and used until we’re all used up. And after a while, we think that’s normal. Well, it isn’t. It isn’t normal. It isn’t natural.
It isn’t right!”

Keyes was nearly shouting now. “And all it takes to change it is you being willing to make the commitment to change it. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.’ You’ve got to say, ‘I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it any more.’ You’ve got to say, ‘I won’t have it!’ You’ve got to say, ‘I deserve a fair share! I deserve the best!’

“That’s right. You do. And I’m going to tell you how to have it.” He stepped over to the podium and lifted up a single sheet of paper with a crisp black writing on it, easily readable. “See this? This is our contract. We’re willing to put it all in writing. It’s a legally binding document. When you read it, you’ll see that it compels us to produce specific measurable results, a tangible change in your situation for the better, resulting in your personal satisfaction. If you’re not satisfied—and you’re the
only
arbiter of whether or not you are satisfied—but if you’re not satisfied, then the contract is null and void.

“If we do satisfy you, then all we ask you to do is share this work
with your friends. Ten friends. Twenty. As many as you want. Don’t worry—once you’re successful, you’re going to have a lot of friends, and they’re all going to want to know how you got so successful and effective and happy. Bring them to one of our seminars. We have seminars every week. We’ll give them the same opportunity as you.

“Listen, you can have your lawyer look at this contract. You can have a hundred lawyers look at it. I promise you, it’ll stand up in court. It’s legal and binding and it compels the Nine Circles Corporation to produce results. When was the last time you signed a contract with this kind of a guarantee? Think about it. Not in this lifetime, right?
Right
?”

Around the room, people were nodding. Even George grunted a reluctant assent. Maggie glanced at him in surprise.

“And what do we get in return? What’s the catch?” Steven Keyes asked the question with a sudden quiet solemnity that startled the room back into intense silence.
“They
tell you that we want your immortal soul. That’s what
they
tell you. But
they
want your soul too. So the real catch is that we’re offering you a choice and they’re telling you that you have
no choice
. How does that make you feel? Angry? Yes? That’s how it made me feel too. Well, I’m telling you that you
do
have a choice.

“You see, the
real
question is not who wants your soul—but
what
are they going to do with it once they get it?”

“They don’t tell you that, do they? Just what are they going to do with your immortal soul that’s so wonderful? I mean, there’s this whole wonderful mythology about heaven and how great it’s supposed to be, but just ask one of its representatives what heaven is really like and listen to what he or she says. Do you believe those stories? I don’t. Is that the kind of place
you
want to spend eternity? I don’t.

“Now, let’s be honest with each other. Let’s get past the mythology and the fairy tales and the glittering generalities and duck-billed platitudes. Let’s talk specifics.

“There’s no such place as Hell. Not like they tell you. There’re no fires. No devils. No damnation. No eternal torment. I promise you that. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. It’s actually a very nice place. By the way, there’s no such place as Heaven either. That’s just as big a lie.

“Now, you’ve probably been told by your friends not to believe me; that I’ll probably lie about Hell just to trick you. But I want you to stop a moment and think. Really
think
about the concept of Hell that they keep insisting is the truth. It’s a pretty sick idea, isn’t it? Can you imagine a
just and compassionate deity plunging his children forever into the fires of eternal damnation just for making a mistake? Would you treat
your
children that way? Of course not. No
sane
person would. So why would a god, who’s supposed to be omniscient and omnipresent, all-knowing and all-wise and all-loving, behave like a psychotic thug? That doesn’t make sense, does it?

“You want to know what’s really going on—both Heaven
and
Hell? I’ll tell you.”

Steven Keyes stepped down from the dais and began walking through the room again. Once more he touched the people he spoke to. He held their hands, he patted their shoulders, he held one woman’s cheek. He dropped to his knees beside George and Maggie. “Listen to me. The whole point of this is to experience the adventure of yourself to the
fullest—
to live passionately! Your job is to look and listen and smell and touch and feel! Your job is to be alive and do all the things that people do when they are fully and completely alive! Roar with anger, weep with fear, laugh with joy, cry with sorrow—build, fight, love, plan, enjoy! The whole point of being alive is to experience yourself as a piece of the universe, to learn something about what it means to be a human being...
so you can bring that lesson back to the godhead
.

“The Yahweh company—they want you to believe what they tell you to believe, because they want to redesign the godhead in their own image. We don’t agree with that. The Nine Circles Corporation wants you to have the most successful and powerful life you can. We want you to love the life you’re living. We want you to be effective and masterful and satisfied. We want you to learn as much about the way the universe works as possible. And then ... when it’s time to fulfill the contract, we want you to bring that knowledge and joy into the godhead that we represent. We want to make you powerful, so you can bring your power back to us when you’ve mastered it. We want to make you wise, so you can bring that wisdom back to us when you’ve gained it. We want to have you satisfied, so you can add the wealth of your satisfaction to the larger satisfactions of our company. We want to make you strong, so you can incorporate your strengths into our body of thought. We want to make you stronger and wiser and happier, so that you can help make the Nine Circles Corporation stronger and wiser and happier. That’s the deal. It’s that simple.”

Steven Keyes went back to the front of the room. “Now, here’s what
it’s going to take,” he said. He held up the contract again. “In a minute, we’re going to have an opportunity for you to sign one of our contracts. There are tables at the back of the room. There are tables at the sides of the room. Our assistants—the good-looking young men and women in the gold nametags—are there to answer your questions and help you fill in your contract. All you have to do is list what you want out of life and then sign your name at the bottom. Be specific. Demand miracles. You’ll get them. I promise you.

“But, remember, you’re going to have to put yourself at risk,” Keyes said directly. “And risk is scary. Especially
this
risk. Let me tell you something about risk. No matter what you do, it’s all the
same
risk. You’re stepping off into the unknown. It
always
feels like you’re stepping off the top of a building. But
not
taking the risk is to stay stuck where you are. Is that where you want to be? So let me tell you what happens after you step off the top of the building. Most people just scream—all the way down. But, here’s what happens when you step off the top of
our
building—
you get to look in all the windows!

“That’s right. You’re still going to end up at the bottom—a big red splotch on the sidewalk—but the difference is that you’re going to have much more fun on the way down.” Keyes stopped himself. He held up his hand. He became serious again. “Listen, you took one big step just being here tonight. You took the risk that maybe—just
maybe
—there might be something to this. This is the opportunity to take the other half of that risk ... to make the commitment to be the person you’ve always wanted to be. But what you have to give up is the person you think you are now.

“Let me say that again. It’s important. You have to give up who you think you are so that you can discover who you’re going to become. You’re going to have to give up the past to grab hold of the future.

“Now, I know where you are with this. You’re probably in one of three places. Some of you in this room are ready to jump. And when we take the break, you’ll go right back to the table and sign up. Some of you may never be ready, and you’re not going to sign up. And that’s okay too. Thank you for being here. Thanks for coming to find out what we’re up to. And last, some of you are poised on the edge, not quite ready to go, not quite ready to say no, because you think you want to think about it a little bit longer. If you’re in that place, I just want to say one thing to you. I want to ask you one question. How much jogging do you get
done thinking about jogging? You have to seize the moment—or the moment passes without you.

“So, here’s how to know if you should sign up. Ask yourself what you most want out of life. Ask yourself if you’re getting it. Ask yourself if you can expect to get it if you keep on doing what you’re doing now. If the answer is no, then you had better start thinking about doing something else, hadn’t you? That’s right.

“So here’s something else to do. Go to one of the tables. Pick up a copy of our contract. Read it. Read it carefully. Even if you’re not planning to sign up tonight, read one of our contracts so you can satisfy yourself as to our integrity. If there’s anything you don’t understand—
anything
at all—then have one of our assistants explain it to you. Don’t worry. Our assistants won’t let you sign anything until you fully understand
exactly
what it is you’re signing. And then ... when you’re ready,
sign it
. Yes, an ordinary ball-point pen is sufficient.” Steven Keyes flashed one last genial grin. “All right, thank you again for being here. Let’s do it now—all those who want to go to Hell with me, come to the tables and sign your contracts.” He waited until the last of the applause died down and then he stepped down off the dais and headed up the aisle to the tables at the back of the room.