03/01/2024
While standing in line for Victoria to sign his copy of her book, Mike leafed through it, scanning among other things, the Table of Contents. It listed all seven of the book's academic papers, one of them written by a professor of physics at MIT and Stanford, Dr. Charles Olufson, whom Mike would later come to know by his nickname, Lucky.
Another paper, Mike was surprised to find, was co-authored by Terence Connally, Jr., for whom Mike's company had done wiring, and whom the Notes on Contributors described as an associate professor at Cal Tech and the author of numerous scholarly articles. Victoria herself was identified as the Norton and Erica Bromquist Professor of Theoretical and Applied Physics at the University of California, the author or editor of a long list of books, and a contributor to several eminent journals.
While waiting Mike also had time to look more closely at her. Victoria had long black hair, with a part, and somewhat pale skin. Piercing grayish blue eyes peered through a pair of glasses. Her nose was straight and thin, with slightly flared nostrils, her voice soft and confident, her demeanor graceful. She wore a modest, chalky blue dress trimmed with gray. Mike enjoyed observing Victoria, though he tried not to stare. His thoughts drifted to work. His melancholy returning.
Arriving at the front of the line, Mike introduced himself, and as Victoria smiled and handed back his signed copy of her book, he added, “I know one of your contributors -- Terry Connally. My company did the wiring at his consulting firm and we played golf a few times.” Mike was a terrible golfer, but found the game useful for networking.
“Oh, that's great!” Victoria exclaimed. “We need some wiring done at a company I'm associated with. I don't know if you've heard of it: Adventure Hotels. Give me your card. Here's mine.”
After leaving the bookstore, driving back across the Bay, happier than he'd been for days, Mike glimpsed through the windshield of his Camry a large dark object thrashing on the surface of the Bay. It appeared to churn up the water for several seconds before it plunged below, out of sight.
“A sea monster?” Mike wondered. “No, must be watching too much TV. Maybe a whale, although they say it's been centuries since any ventured this far up the channel.”
As if through a fine mist, Mike retrieved a memory from his college days at UC Riverside, of a Biblical metaphor the Seventeenth Century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes had used -- “Leviathan,” which literally meant a sea monster, but could be used to describe any object of great size, such as a whale, a commonwealth, a powerful ruler, or what Mike has lately been pondering and struggling to comprehend, what he thought of as “the system.”
“Whatever it was,” Mike mused, “could it be a portent, an augury, an omen? And if this Leviathan is an omen, is it meant to fill me with fear, or to reassure me? Does it portend that in my life, or in the wider world, something big could happen, something that might even alter the tide of history?”
First thing the next day, Mike followed up his meeting Victoria at the bookstore by sending her an e-mail.
She quickly responded: “We've got work to be done, alright, and we need it pronto!”
Mike relayed the news to his boss, who made some phone calls and that afternoon handed Mike a plane ticket to Atlanta, along with a printout of where to pick up the rental car he'd drive to Rosendin, Georgia, to wire a network for the Adventure Hotels Hydroponic Greenhouse Facility. It was no big deal to Mike, who frequently traveled in his job, even kept a suitcase packed for such contingencies.
“This could be a valuable account,” Mike's boss, Herb Halperin, told Mike, his top cabler. “They keep a low profile, but seems like they have operations almost everywhere.”
Rosendin turned out to be a sleepy small town in Southwest Georgia, just north of the Florida border, split down the middle by an old two lane state highway. The first thing Mike saw when he found the address and parked his rented Town and Country minivan, was a vast hydroponic greenhouse built onto the side of what Victoria, in a “Good luck!” e-mail told him had been an abandoned “HoJo” motel before Adventure Hotels bought it for $150,000.
To greet Mike, a cute receptionist at the front desk summoned the Innkeeper, which is what the boss at an Adventure Hotels facility is called. He was a retired Marine pilot and astronaut dubbed “Magic Path,” a lean, balding, middle-aged Texan with piercing blue eyes and a ready grin. Victoria's e-mail to Mike had included a rumor that while decelerating back into Earth's atmosphere, Magic Path had been the first human being to ever encounter, and converse with, God. (Unfortunately, Mike would find Magic Path, whenever asked, reluctant to either confirm or deny the story. “Well,” he'd drawl with a smile, “maybe I'll tell you about it someday.”)
Instead he greeted Mike by saying,“We hear you're a hotshot wire puller who'll get us hooked up to the rest of the world real quick. Before getting to the matter of the network you'll wire, though, I'll tell you a little about our hydroponic greenhouse.
“There are three growing seasons, and therefore three crops, in Georgia,” Magic Path explained. “That's why we chose this place to start one of our businesses: growing organic food. Tomatoes, which do well indoors because they don't like the wet feet they get when there's puddles in the fields. Also fancy mushrooms: morel, shiitake, and trumpet royale, which we sell to gourmet restaurants and high-end retailers. Lettuce, about every kind of pepper you can name, and lots more.
“This is cutting edge stuff,” Magic Path added. “Who ever heard of mushrooms growing in water instead of soil? In our system the plant's roots are suspended directly into the water, which we infuse with the nutrients plants usually get from soil. We experiment with natural ways to fertilize, keep bugs and blight away, and even breed new varieties. We have botanists, organic farmers, environmentalists, and chefs who come here to advise us and who often hold their meetings here. The central computer you'll wire, Mike, will monitor temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, light, et cetera, and display settings for irrigation pumps, greenhouse vents, exhaust fans, and shade curtains, so that even when me or my assistant Fern are away, we'll be able to view and run everything from anywhere on Earth.”
After his orientation with the Innkeeper, Mike brought in his luggage, including a toolbox and a big satchel of equipment testers, spools of wire, and other accouterments of his trade. Then he was directed to the dining room, where he enjoyed a lunch including fresh produce from the greenhouse, and the company of other employees. He also met guests staying at the motel because they'd bought time shares there in order to escape winter in places like Buffalo and Minneapolis.
As she sat across from Mike and dug into her grilled tofu and mushrooms with gouda and honeyed sesame, Fern, the Assistant Innkeeper, recalled how after graduating from Emory University and working as a paralegal in Clearwater, where her oceanographer boyfriend worked at an aquarium, she learned about Adventure Hotels from her sister, a devoted vegan.
“I visited here and fell in love with the healthy yet yummy food, classes where they teach you to cook vegetarian and actually let you help prepare these restaurant meals, and the wonder of making plants with no soil and no pesticides or herbicides - only natural predators like lacewings and lady bugs,” Fern smiled.
“Then there's the people, some in 'back to nature' mode, like hippies who showed me how to play the sitar and tabla, and make the tie dyes they sell at rock concerts. The instructors who teach our yoga and meditation classes. Organic farmers interested in bigger yields and using less water than typical farming, and the scientists, agronomists, and environmentalists who come here to consult with the staff and hold symposiums, while also having a good time.
“Not to mention,” Fern noted, “the easy pace of life in a small town.”
“You might say what we have here in Rosendin,” Fern concluded, “is a kind of almost New Agey health project located in the heart of the Dixie Bible Belt. It's quieter than some of the Adventure Hotels facilities, which range from urban to wilderness, but they're all known as affordable places to stimulate the mind and soul, and as fun, safe places to blow off steam with some serious partying.”
Fern pointed to a couple at the next table who looked to be in their mid-thirties. “ Those guys, Ty and Rachel,” Fern explained, “get free vacation weeks good at any Adventure Hotels facility by selling timeshares to family, friends, and co-workers back in Tampa. When they stay here, they also do a little work, which earns them another discount. Our guests never do real hard work, but most want to do something. For instance, some like to cook, some are fascinated by the plants and mechanized wonders of our hydroponic greenhouse, some like to try their hand at tending bar or gardening the flowerbeds.
“Some facilities cost more than others,” Fern continued, “and you can buy timeshares for one-time vacations, but there's a terrific deal with our sister company, Timeshares Unlimited. It's 10 years of staying at any timeshare you wish, as many of them as you wish, as often as you wish, for $5,000 down and very modest per-stay fees after that, which can be reduced still more by selling timeshares to folks you know and by doing a little light work around the facility. Members of Adventure Hotels and The Society, either of which you can join for a very small fee, get further discounts.”
As the waitress cleared Mike's dishes after his delicious lunch of eggplant parmigian on linguine and bread pudding drizzled with syrup for dessert, he posed to the Assistant Innkeeper some questions he'd been waiting to ask: “Fern, what's The Society, and what is its relationship to Adventure Hotels?”
Fern relinquished her smoothie glass to the waitress, thought for a moment, then said, “Mike, there's a board member of the Society here this week to meet with a couple other board members who live in this region. His name is Lucas. He's a very successful real estate broker, and a very nice man, very articulate, who can answer your questions better than I can. I don't see him in the dining room now, but I'll make sure you two get a chance to talk.”
The next afternoon, Fern interrupted Mike as he was drawing up his wiring plans, and ushered him into the conference room where the board members would hold their meeting. Lucas Milano, who'd made millions by investing early in the Triangle Research Park area of North Carolina, was a short, wiry gentleman who wore a yellow paisley bow tie over a purple shirt, black and white checked trousers, wire-rimmed glasses, and a ball cap with UNC embroidered on the front.
“The charming lady who just left us told me you wish to know about The Society,” Lucas said, “and I like telling the story, Mike, so have a seat. Help yourself to coffee and cookies.
“The Society,” Lucas began, “is a group of about 5,000 members, each owning one share of stock in a privately held corporation, a holding company called The Enterprise, which is the financial arm. The community and its businesses, along with the goals it pursues – The Society – is the theoretical and development arm. A group of people who work together and pool their money to do good for themselves, their families, and the world at large. A quasi-spiritual community, in the non-religious sense, that's looking for a noble purpose and how to achieve it.
“Among our members,” Lucas continued, “are physicists, other scientists and academics, I.T. people, environmentalists, chefs, organic farmers, backpackers, mountaineers, the list goes on and on. Folks learn about us by word of mouth, from their friends or co-workers who are members, from people they work out with at the gym, et cetera. To become a member of The Society or the largest of its businesses – Adventure Hotels – costs less than fifty dollars, although many eventually invest – profitably, I might add – in our socially responsible companies. Members who can afford to have invested, or gifted, sums in the hundreds of millions. Obviously those are people with more money than they'd waste the time to count, but they figure it's all useless unless it does some good in the world.”
Lucas paused. “Any questions so far?”
“Just one,” Mike replied. “In what sense, if not religious, is the group spiritual?”
“You're sharp,” Lucas smiled. “It's spiritual in the sense we figure there are truths out there we don't know, that may not be logically based, and a feeling of hope about the destiny of the universe. But very much humanistic in the sense that we believe we have a responsibility to do good here on Earth, to further the human experiment as much as we can, in the most positive way we can.
“As for the history of The Society, it formed around 2010 as a small business run by a half dozen enlightened Midwesterners from the prairie. All had Stanford educations, majoring in literature or philosophy. Most came from prosperous families - one was the son of a local banker, one the son of a car dealer, and a couple each owned more than $2 million in farm land for collateral. Three were very close friends who had prior business experience in construction, particularly of apartment buildings. So the founding half dozen wrote a business plan, and with a few capitalists providing start-up money, formed the Enterprise Corporation, which among themselves they called The Society.
“The first outsider the founders recruited was a Stanford business grad with nerves of titanium and an IQ probably off the charts, though he never had it measured, believing it a waste of time. His name was Dennis, but his friends called him 'The Genius.' Dennis not only made the numbers add up, someone could talk to him for five minutes and then go out in the world and prosper more than ever before. Eventually he became something of a legend, with girlfriends all over the Bay Area. He preferred to hang out with musicians, whose minds he considered fully opened up, but associated with people from many other walks of life, too, including blue collar workers and computer geeks.
“The company started out in construction, building two apartment buildings and a senior development in Bloomington, Indiana. Now they had people who worked for them, such as carpenters and laborers. So they moved into a bigger city, Indianapolis, with a positive cash flow, and built two more apartment buildings. Then they went down to the Ohio River and built a couple office buildings in Louisville, along with more apartments, replacing old housing stock with fully modern structures.
“The firm added office staff, including a brilliant lawyer named Kimberly. Managers were promoted from within or recruited to the cause, though some weren't necessarily zealous about our idealistic aims, they were just good managers.
“Meanwhile, the founding friends had begun to ask themselves why they were spending their lives doing this. Deciding they wanted more from life than $100 million and a dysfunctional family, they resolved to look for a moral purpose, a goal higher than the bottom line, a lasting contribution to the well-being of mankind.
“By now, others besides recruits had joined up with the core group, bringing an influx of capital, energy, and ideas. The Society moved into West Coast operations by establishing FGH Construction, whose initials mean “For the Good of Humanity,” with some friends in California. They built an office building on the Peninsula not only to provide work for their construction crew, but to provide more spacious quarters for themselves on the eighth floor, with high tech software firms on the other floors.
“Then they branched out by buying some agricultural properties, while their real estate division acquired apartments and office buildings in Indianapolis and St. Louis, the whole series of companies now the owned by the holding company The Enterprise Corporation. They even bought a bank.
“In their California meeting room, old and new friends of The Society held catered meetings every Friday night, where they and invitees too – for instance, someone who'd just sold his start-up company for millions, shared ideas over wine, shrimp, salmon, and salads. Some of the smartest people in the world began to coalesce on the eighth floor. 'They smell the money,' the Genius joked.
“Now the Society could open any door. They avoided publicity, though, with one of their executives granting only one interview each to the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
“Then at one of the eighth floor meetings, The Genius, Dennis, after speaking for half an hour, casually mentioned the idea of a chain of resort hotels that sells time shares. In the audience, forks and glasses stopped, frozen in mid-air, followed by murmurs of ' Wow.' Someone shouted 'You've done it again!' and everybody laughed, then cheered. His idea was, of course, the genesis of the most successful and well known of The Society's businesses, Adventure Hotels.
“To prepare for the hotel business, the Society built a few golf courses, bars, restaurants, and swimming pools. Then with their construction company they built a luxury hotel on the Mexican coast, with a gorgeous golf course, and sold time shares in it. The hotel paid for itself in five years.
“Today, Mike,” Lucas said, between bites of a cookie, “there are about two dozen Adventure Hotels sites – we call them 'facilities' – around the world. “They range from a horse ranch next to a national forest in Colorado, to a recycled cruise ship docked below the skyline of Manhattan, from the Desert Facility near an oil field we manage in Kuwait, to a French Provincial palace on a hill above the harbor of Bordeaux. There's the Prairie Facility, with a working farm and wind towers, Big Sur in the mountains overlooking the Pacific, a group of bungalows on a pristine beach in the South Seas, a boutique hotel in Hollywood called The Enterprise, and in the foothills of the Himalayas, The International, in the shadow of range after range of snow-clad peaks.
“Each facility is different,” Lucas emphasized, “with its own unique charms. Most include an indoor swimming pool, meeting rooms, and an auditorium. As you know, Adventure Hotels are very popular with scientists, professors, and other occupational groups, as sites for meetings, symposiums, retreats, and even some fairly low-key revelry.
“TimeSharesUnlimited.org is the Adventure Hotels division that sells the timeshares. Lately they've added timeshare cruises, on oceans and famous rivers - the Rhine, the Amazon, the Nile, the Mississippi.
“Timeshares help recruit distinguished members, which in turn helps attract wealthy investors. In general, some people join because of our determination to do good, some for our track record of financial success, some to buy discount timeshares for fun vacations, and some to mingle with fellow members, including a few Nobel laureates. Eventually it can become for people a kind of family, with everybody pulling together to help each other.
“Although wealthy members are asked to contribute, gifts in any amount are welcome,” Lucas added, “and most members help by pitching in with work at their timeshare site, so by no means do they have to be rich.
“We also take donations from foundations and non-member philanthropists for our outreach sites in Third World countries, where we build hospitals, schools, roads, and clean water systems,” Lucas revealed. “Interested members also recruit people they know to write a tax-deductible check for, or spend their vacation working at, one of those outreach camps, or at one of a variety of eco projects or non-profit organizations in this country, such as food banks, free clinics, and legal aid offices.
“Of course,” Lucas added, “one of the most important of our good works is that we raise the living standards of our members and employees, in itself a kind of philanthropy.
“And that,” Lucas said, sipping his coffee, brings us to what we in The Society call 'The Search.'
“What we seek, first, is a cause. A philanthropic purpose that will make a major impact on the well-being of mankind. Second, a specific way to achieve that purpose.
“Victoria, whom I understand you've met, has been appointed Project Manager of The Search. She and the Search Committee gather and generate ideas, so the members can decide what challenge we'll all tackle together.
“By the way, Mike, there are some members, and prospective members, who believe that completely immersing themselves in the work of The Society, perhaps by working for the organization full-time, can lead to the fulfillment of visions beyond imagining, and I think it certainly can and likely will.
“Most of us, though, contribute to the attainment of these goals ounce by ounce. A little of your work today, and I'm told you do excellent work, Mike – some little part of it contributed to this vision of doing good for the world.
“Meaningful social change rarely happens overnight. It takes years of patient, committed effort by people who want to make their lives count by working for something greater than themselves. That's what makes The Society different from an ordinary company, and what makes working for it more rewarding than just a paycheck.”
Mike saw that Lucas was gazing off into the distance, as if trying to pe*****te the future.
Then Lucas cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, and concluded, “That's our story, Mike. Any questions?”
“Well,” Mike replied, “thank you very much for making the time for me, and for pulling back the curtain on such a fascinating history.
“There is one thing I'd like to ask you,” Mike continued. “It's kind of philosophical, something I've mused about, but not examined deeply ... Lately, where I live in the Bay Area, I've felt, well, disgruntled. Trapped, you might say, in a job, and a life, which seem to me essentially meaningless. While sitting on the couch, or commuting to work, I spend a lot of time brooding about my situation, and about what I call 'the system,' by which I mean not only government, but the entire set of political, social, cultural, and economic arrangements we all participate in and conform to.
“You've told me how The Society can help give meaning to the lives of its members,” Mike summarized. “What I want to know is, does The Society have a view on how to relate to the system, yet not be trapped by it?”
Lucas thought for a moment, then replied, “That's an even more interesting question than you asked before.”
He thought for a moment more, then slowly spoke: “Some of our group have vigorously debated questions like this. Instead of calling it 'the system,' as you do, they referred to it as 'The Beast.'”
The word “Beast” reminded Mike of the Leviathan he'd seen while driving home on the bridge over the East Bay.
“On the one hand,” Lucas reasoned, “obviously we need The Beast as a mechanism to maintain order, rather than to regress into an existence that is, what's the phrase – 'Nasty, brutish, and short?' There have to be laws to regulate personal and commercial behavior. Also, there must be a state to do things like build roads, operate schools, maintain an army, and so on, and to collect taxes to pay for them. So The Beast, which I've thought is a bit harsh-sounding a word for it, is in many ways quite a good thing, and on balance, essential.”
“I agree,” Mike said. “that's true.”
“On the other hand,” Lucas continued, “the system can be frightening. It can, for instance, become corrupt, or impinge on civil liberties in order to stifle dissent. It can send soldiers to die in wars entered into on dubious pretexts. It can keep people so dependent on largely meaningless employment that they have little time, energy, or funds to search for an alternative, of which few may exist anyway.
“Yes,” Mike agreed. “You understand.”
“It can make empty promises to the people, year after year, decade after decade,” Lucas went on. “It can serve the rich while fooling the masses into believing in an illusion of fairness.”
Lucas paused and took a sip of coffee. “To answer your question, though,” he explained, “the view of The Society is we do not propose to revolutionize the system. We do not presume to challenge the system politically or in any other way. While our work could perhaps improve the system a little, that's not our goal. We're not of the system, we're outside of the system. The system is a creature best understood and observed from a distance. Too reliant and close a relationship with it may be risky.
“So although The Society is separate from the system,” Lucas concluded, “there is a relationship that exists between us and the system, which we wish to keep amicable.”
this is not all exactly completely accurate. You could say it gives you the gist.
