“The elevator arrives-you can see the number light up above the door. You’re on the twentieth floor.” You hear a soft chime. The door opens, the elevator is empty. You step inside.”
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CYBERNATION
els wasn’t having any trouble following along, |?:it felt kind of silly.
s elevator is an old one, but in good condition. It’s and warm in here, quiet, the light is soft. Push the i marked with the number one.” lichaels mentally pushed the button. *Above the door are the numbers for the floors of the iing. Twenty is lit in red, and the elevator starts to nd. As you watch, a few seconds later, twenty blinks j and nineteen lights up, and there’s a soft chime as the ttor slowly passes the floor, ighteen lights up, again, the soft chime, “tow as the elevator slowly goes down, you begin to ; relaxed. The elevator settles very slowly, but you’re |ao hurry, you’ve got all day.
?As you pass seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, you become and more relaxed. The numbers light, the chime and you are becoming even more placid, more ifortable. There is nothing but the numbers descend- the soft tones at each floor.
fou pass fourteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine. Save for chime, all is quiet. The motion of the elevator is b, soothing.”
1 voice was a soft drone, lulling him. |f*Eight, seven, six, five, four, three … two … one. ff*The elevator stops. The door opens. You step out into > hall. To your right not far ahead is an open door. You : into the room, there is nobody around, but there is ch, long, cushy, very inviting. Lie down on the ch. You are so cpmfortable and relaxed you don’t feel ; moving a muscle, you are practically melting into the lions.”
l;We//, this wasn’t so bad, Michaels thought. “So there you are, warm, comfortable, relaxed, lying I on the couch. You aren’t sleepy, just slack. No wor- no noise, nodiing to bother you. Your breathing is and even. Life is good.” ifYeah.
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NET FORCE
“You don’t need to move, but if you did need to, you could do so quickly and easily, because you are so relaxed, no tension to slow you down. Concentrate on how relaxed you are, see how it feels, see how simple it is to just lie here and be this way.”
Pretty good, actually.
“Here’s a little trick. To get back to this place, this relaxed, comfortable, no tension feeling, all you have to do is say to yourself out loud, ‘Relax, Alex.’ That’s all. If you say that, you’ll feel just like you feel now, no matter what is going on around you. You’ll breathe slow and easy, your muscles will hold you up, you’ll be able to move as quickly as you need to, but there won’t be any tightness in you. Just say, ‘Relax, Alex,’ and that’s what will happen.”
She waited a few seconds.
“Now, you stand up, and walk back to the elevator.
“Good. You push the call button. The doors open right away and you step inside. Push the button for the twentieth floor. The numbers start to light up, starting with one, then two … three … four. As the elevator rises, you still feel calm and relaxed, but more refreshed now, as if you have just had ten hours of sleep.
“You pass five … six … seven . ..but there’s no hurry.
“The lights blink, the elevator chimes softly as you pass each floor.
“You watch the numbers flash by. When the elevator gets to the twentieth floor, it stops. You take a deep breath and let it out. As the door opens, you open your eyes-”
He blinked at her.
She smiled.
“That’s it? I ride an elevator down, you tell me to relax, I ride it up?”
“Yep. How do you feel?”
“Well, I feel fine. Great.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. “That’s what being hypnotized is? There’s nothing to it.”
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CYBERNATION
at, did you think you were going to turn into kenstein’s monster? Cluck like a chicken? Not be
remember anything?” /ell, yeah, okay, kinda.”
:’s not like that. It’s a state of heightened concentra- , If you do this little exercise a few more times, it will iforced. It’s not magic-it just allows you to focus thoughts better. You can get pretty much the same ; by meditation or prayer.” nd this will work?”
it, next time you get tense.” )kay. I will. But right now, I have something else in
”
laughed. “Why am I not surprised… ?”
r, when Guru had gotten home with the baby and they all getting ready to go out for dinner at the new ican place, Michaels thought about the workout and nosis thing. That short and long knife business could en as a metaphor for his life. Getting in close had quences, it was more dangerous in some ways. He a new .family, and compared to his first one, it ….. different.
was much more a part of his reason to get up day than Megan, his first wife, had been. Maybe it Toni; maybe it was only because he was older and a wiser and able to appreciate what he had now more i he had been able to appreciate it then. He didn’t love > daughter Susie any less than he did Alex, but he cerf hadn’t been there for her in the same way. Some- he’d always regret.
tiatever. But lately, work just hadn’t been calling to the way family did. If he won the lottery tomorrow, Bid he still get up and go to work every day? Ten years , five years ago, even a year ago, he would have said no question.
tow? Now, he wasn’t sure about that at all. Maybe he aid take a few months off.
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NET FORCE
Maybe he would take off permanently.
It could be that part of it was because he was at the top of the mountain at Net Force. Anything higher in government was going to be some kind of political appointment, and not likely to happen. He didn’t slot neatly into either party. Most of the time, he voted Independent, sometimes one way, sometimes another, and there were times when he couldn’t bring himself to vote for anybody running. He liked to think of himself as fiscally conservative but a personal liberal. Could support a right wing Democrat or left wing Republican, but wasn’t really either. Pretty much smack in the middle of the silent majority’s road. So unless he opted for the private sector, he’d peaked out in his biz.
Being commander of Net Force was as good as it was going to get.
Or maybe it was a midlife crisis. He had been face-to- face with death a few times in the last couple of years, and that made a man stop and think about the meaning of it all, something he had never done much before. Being introspective wasn’t part of what he’d learned at home. When your number was up, it was up, game over, and if the old saw was true that nobody on his death bed ever said, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office,” then what exactly did you look back and wish you’d done better when you knew you were about to shuffle off?
Michaels realized for him, it was gonna be family first, and then work. It didn’t used to be that way, but that’s how it was now. He hadn’t noticed when that had happened, that shift, but it had.
He could understand a whole lot better now why John Howard had taken a leave and had thought seriously about retiring.
Just when he thought he had a handle on life, it went and changed on him.
Damn.
19
em Pennsylvania < 1770 [crept through the thick woods along a deer trail with puch stealth as he could manage. This mixed evergreen 'hardwood forest was disputed territory, and danger, On the Indian side, technically at least, this area still nged to the Iroquois-speaking Six Nations-the Mo- Mk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tusca- -but there was a Chippewa camp not far away, es of Delaware passing through now and then, even Ottawa in the area, supposedly. A white man clad ckskins prowling in any of their territories uninvited ; be viewed with a certain amount of hostility; better tnobody saw him. deer trail wound serpentinely through the forest, i enough for a man to traverse, but a bit low in spots, ng Jay to duck overhanging tree branches. The smell was strong, and his own sweat added a sour note to carried a long rifle, a flintlock as tall as he was, a er horn, lead balls and patches, a single shot pistol 172 NET FORCE of a matching caliber, a sheath knife, and a tomahawk, much as any frontiersman of the era might. No coonskin cap, though-the idea of a dead raccoon on his head seemed ghoulish, even in VR. Instead, he wore a plain leather cap. Maybe there wasn't any real difference between cowhide and small furry animal skin, but everybody drew the line somewhere.