Page 81 of The Session

“How many others here have stories like yours?” Mark asked.

“Some of us just signed up for the job. I don’t know if you saw our little library, but half of it’s Lightman books, and we use a lot of his methods here. And once you start working for Constellation, it makes sense to understand what the hell everybody else is talking about.”

“Where’s the library?” Mark asked.

“It’s just a bunch of cinder blocks with some plywood. Not really a library. We just call it that. Most people here use their iPads. Let me show you.”

Norm led Mark to another room adjacent to the common area. Mark had passed by it quickly during his tour with Kade and had barely registered it. There were two couches with a large wooden table between them, covered in board games, decks of playing cards, and poker chips. The bookcase was on the opposite wall. Mark couldn’t tell if there was any method behind its organization. The top three rows held a collection of torn paperback thriller novels. The bottom three had a variety of textbooks and paperbacks, some of which Mark recognized. A few were even in his backpack.

“Here are some of my favorites,” Norm said, pulling books from the shelf and handing them to Mark.

“The Electric Guru. This was a shorter one, but I liked it a lot,” Norm noted. “He explained how to get into a trance or meditative state almost instantaneously. The relaxation techniques in there are very useful. At least I found them so.”

Mark looked down at the yellowed paperback. The cover showed a 1980s illustration of a futuristic man seated in a lotus position against a Tron-like landscape.

“The Reality Equation. I enjoyed this one because it was the first time I really understood trying to learn other people’s patterns and how they see the world. I know it’s a lot of repackaging of theory of mind, but Lightman’s storytelling is what made it stick for me.”

The cover for this book was a rainbow breaking into pixels that formed stars and then mathematical equations.

Norm picked up another book and handed it to Mark. “There are probably better books on this topic, but here, his concept of a memory palace and the PEG method really stuck with me.”

The title of this book was The Trillion-Dollar Brain, and the cover showed a man in silhouette leaning back at his desk. Beyond him was a cloudscape with the tops of buildings peeking out below him.

For Mark, the cover illustrations were as interesting as the descriptions and the contents. He felt that each one offered a glimpse into his father’s mind.

He knew the publication dates without having to look inside. The Reality Equation felt like something from the 1970s, as New Age spiritualism gave way to the newfound optimism of the computer and space industry. Meanwhile, The Electric Guru seemed emblematic of the 1980s, trying to make sense of it all. The Trillion-Dollar Brain reflected the methods taught at Summit’s Miami headquarters. Mark could imagine Lightman looking out a window at his empire, trying to figure out what it all meant.

He noticed a hand-bound manuscript. “What’s that?”

Norm pulled it off the shelf and handed it to Mark. “It’s kind of interesting. I guess a while back there was a program to bring the tech into schools, and a teacher had a proposal for doing that. How it ended up here, I have no idea.”

Mark flipped through the photocopied manuscript. It outlined ways to integrate certain works by Lightman into a curriculum, focusing on creative problem-solving and communication skills.

It was signed by Jean-Pierre Allard, superintendent of the Port-au-Prince New Teachers College.

Mark set it down with the other books and took a seat on the couch. Norm sat opposite him and thumbed through a large textbook on communications strategies.

“How much of this is real?” Mark asked, gesturing at the books on the table.

Norm replied, “What I like about Lightman is he says all that matters is whether something works. He mentioned the Christian faith during the Roman Empire, when they were being fed to the lions and tortured. If the goal was to get into heaven, nobody knew whether it worked. But if the goal was to persuade other people that it was the one true faith, then that worked. And I like his pragmatic way of thinking. Do I think he’s a bullshit artist at times? Absolutely, but we love bullshit. Movies, TikTok, streaming TV shows—we’re always seeking to be entertained. And just because he’s highly entertaining, I don’t throw it out. I put some of these methods into practice. They’ve worked for me. Some people might say they’re not original. I don’t fucking care. I hadn’t heard about them before. I had a lot of different people trying to get me out of my hospital bed. None of it worked until I heard Lightman talk about riding a Harley across America and flirting with waitresses. That worked for me. So, how much of it’s real? They’re just words. None of it’s real. How much impact it has on the world? That’s what matters. At least to me.”

“Well, not everybody has a positive view of Summit Strategies,” Mark said.

“I’m not sure I do either. There are parts I like, parts I don’t. Some of you guys can be pretty creepy. I’ve tried to reconcile that the longer I’ve worked for Constellation,” Norm admitted.

“I know you don’t know me well enough, but if you don’t mind my asking, what’s the worst part about it?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Norm assured him. “Like any big organization, there are good people, there are bad people, and I think sometimes here the bad people get rewarded—and, well, the weird stuff.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“I know a woman who was working on sales and training out of the New York office. She’s a really good, hard worker, a real believer. One night her boss takes her out for drinks, and she ends up in a very uncomfortable situation. She confronts him about it. He says it won’t happen again.

“A few months later, they go on a retreat, and he puts her in that situation again. So she goes to internal affairs to report him. Next thing you know, she’s moved to Seattle and he’s still in the same role he was in before.

“The typical corporate stuff, I know, but it got a little weird. She started looking for a lawyer and was also trying to find someplace else to work, and then she got a call from a friend at a company she was considering. She was told they’d been contacted by somebody doing background research, asking about things that had happened to her in college.

“Apparently she got into a minor fender bender while under the influence. It got thrown out, and as far as she knew, nobody knew about it—but somebody did.