The Consolidator

This story was originally published on Substack.

At the grocery store, I ran into an old co-worker. We hadn’t seen each other since we both got laid off from the same bank after it went up in smoke during the recession.

“How’s it going, Victor?”

“Absolutely wonderful, Marty.”

“You still in finance?”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve made the shift into a new line of business.”

“Oh,” I muttered, “what is it?”

“Ever heard of happiness consolidation?”

“I can’t say that I have”

“That’s alright, it’s only sprung up over the last few years. Really incredible stuff. I myself had the service done to myself and am proud to tell you that I’ve dedicated my life to helping others achieve it. If you’d like to learn more, give me a call, come on down to my office and we’ll discuss.” Then he handed me his business card and left with his shopping cart down the aisle where all the breads and the pastries are.

I couldn’t help but notice how cheerful he seemed all of a sudden. I remember back when our cubicles were just a short distance away from each other, he always had a very grim and sullen appearance to him, as if the world owed him a huge debt that he knew it could never repay. Now here he was, the very image of chipper positivity, smiling from ear to ear as they say, and just overall exuding an optimistic and friendly energy that was a breath of fresh air in a world of bitter cynics. His business card was simple, elegant and certainly enticing, but before I could make the decision to meet him I had to do some research of my own.

Online I looked up ‘happiness consolidation’ and frankly it was just a bunch of random results, ranging from generic motivational speakers who liked to speak in big words that conveyed very little information, down to some obscure and oblique research papers of which I could only read the snippets, and even these provided little information to enlighten my confusion. I finally called up Victor and we made a plan to meet at his office the very next day.

“You know I have to tell you, I looked this Happiness Consolidation stuff up myself and couldn’t find anything to help me, it really doesn’t seem as big as you mentioned it to be.”

“Oh, yes online you won’t happen to learn about it, and soon you’ll understand why. If I can sum it up in simple terms to you, my good friend, it would be this: imagine the happiest day of your life…”

I nodded.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical. I want you to actually close your eyes and imagine the happiest day in your life that you can recall.”

I sat there in his comfortable office couch, surrounded by calming things and a tall set of bookshelves about the human body and other intellectual pursuits. In the privacy of my headspace, I instantly travelled back to a simpler time in my life before bills and responsibilities entered the equation of my everyday.

“Ok, I’m there.”

“Tell me what you see.”

I told him that I saw myself at eight years old, climbing a tree with my brother up at the top, reaching out his hand and extending it to me. When I finally grasped it, he pulled me up and together we sat as kids on a sturdy branch, looking out as the sun set behind the distant cityscape. When it got dark we sat in the stillness of the night, listening to crickets chirp and frogs croak as we told ghost stories and funny jokes.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Marty. Would you believe me if I told you I can take that memory and make it sweeter and more satisfactory than you even remember it.”

“You could?”

“Well, perhaps I should rephrase it. It would not be me specifically who could help you with that as I lack the neurological knowledge to make it come true. Consider me a travel agent to your next destination: eternal bliss at a low, low cost. And all you have to do is sign this form.”

He pulled out a pen and paper and marked an x down at the bottom line of a binding contract.

“What’s the procedure?”

He explained it to me in plain detail. Happiness Consolidation involved the process of taking a single memory (the more you remembered it, the easier it would be for the surgeons to pinpoint its place within your brain) and then using highly-sophisticated medical instruments, would infuse it with an enriching elixir which made that pleasant dream even richer and more evocative to your mind’s eye, so much so that it would override any other emotions you felt, and you would feel like you were forever feeling the warm pleasant memories you felt that day.

“Sounds too good to be true, what are the down sides?”

“I will be reasonable with you. The downsides are that from here on out you will no longer have a normal reaction to anything else that happens in your life, be it good news at bad news. At funerals, you will be the man smiling like a fool, during tense disagreements with your spouse you will not be able to wipe that grin off your face. So tell me Marty, are you willing to undergo that procedure.”

I couldn’t sign the agreement fast enough.

By next week, I was in a medical facility ready to receive my treatment. The doctor was a man not too much older than I was. He himself did not seem particularly happy, though there were no indications to suggest he was a sad man either. He was very plain faced and difficult to read. He stared at me while wearing his stethoscope and scrubs, inside a little yellow-tinted waiting room, telling me what I could expect.

“I must tell you, this procedure is gonna change your life. It will be a smoother ride. Your sweetest memory will suddenly become an integral, constant part of your existence. The one time you truly enjoyed life the most will be an ever-present thought and provider of warmth and relaxation and bliss. Provided there is one thing.”

“And what’s that?” I asked.

“You need to be a hundred-percent sure the memory you picked as your happiest is truly a happy one.”

“Me and my brother on the tree, yes, of course it’s the happiest one. It is without a doubt.”

“And why is that?”

“It was the last time I can recall my brother and I had some really genuine, quality brotherly time together, before the years passed and he–” I suddenly paused, and uttered the rest with a bit of hesitation, “went off to war.”

I stood there in silence. The doctor examined me with a certain hint of ‘gotcha’ in his breath. “It’s important to understand, sometimes the memories we consider our happiest and most nostalgic are underscored by a very present layer of tragedy and heartache. It’s often what endows those memories their sweet, lingering flavor in our brains. If we were to isolate this memory and make it a vivid and fully-lived in thought for you, it could potentially also bring some unpleasant memories into the fore. You may only be looking back at this with rose-tinted glasses, purposefully only remembering the positives, without any of the harrowing negatives. Are you sure you want to choose this as your happiest memory?”

When he dropped all of this on me, I suddenly felt a great hesitance to go through with it. He was absolutely correct. When I actually sat and thought about what intensifying this memory would entail, I suddenly remembered the argument me and my brother had had that morning, how he stole my favorite action figure and broke it. How we wrestled on the dirt and then I started to cry. Then I remembered how the reason we had ended up in that forest anyway is because I ran away from home crying as fast as I could, until I slipped on a rock and suddenly began to bleed. It was only after my brother had caught up with me and tried to calm me down that we could get along as family again. And though our time up on that branch was a lovely human moment in my childhood indeed, there was no doubt that it only stood firmly in my brain because of all the pain and anguish I suffered when the news of his death arrived at our family’s doorstep, nearly a decade later. It was at that moment when I questioned whether that was truly the happiest memory, and if it was, would I really want to revisit it in such a detailed and sensory way.

“On second thought, I think I have to think this out a little more. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.”

“It’s a very serious decision, I wouldn’t want you to make a decision you’d regret. Unfortunately, many others have not made the same intelligent choice as you have.”

When I walked out into the hallway, I ran into a man walking out only just then from his successful operation. I spoke with him, and he seemed very happy indeed. He told me that his happiest memory which he could now remember with absolute clarity was the time that he went to Disneyland with his wife for the first time, except now he could fully relive the aggravation and the intolerable heat and claustrophobia of waiting in long lines for hours amidst the humid sweat of tourists and costumed-characters, eating overpriced food, and arguing with his newly-wed, now deceased wife about how they should’ve just vacationed in Yellowstone instead. The only really happy aspect of that memory was the tender kiss they shared at the top of the Matterhown Bobsleds, right before the animatronic yeti had arrived and jolted them into a frightful but amused gasp. For one brief but lovely memory he had forced himself to live the rest of his life in discomfort and frustration and despair. Now when I spoke with the man, I noticed how his face would suddenly shift from a smile to a frown from one second to the next, as if he had lost almost all his muscle function, as if he had become an amalgamation of facial tics and nervous reflexes. This was, to me, a clear example of a man who did not think the consequences of this operation all the way through.

A few weeks later I ran into my old co-worker again, and he was still as chipper as chipper could be.

“Victor, hey again.”

“I hear you didn’t go through with the operation.”

“Yes, I just decided that it wasn’t for me.”

His eye twitched, but the smile never went away. “I see.”

“Did that cost you a commission?”

“Oh, that isn’t the point. That isn’t the point at all. I just wanted you to be happy. Especially with how expensive everything has gotten today. I feel like you would’ve deserved it.”

Then he rolled away with his cart, laughing at a tone that inspired distress to my instinctual drive to survive.