Zen: Life and Death In the Biggest Little City In the World

By Ed SJC Park

4th in the Bill Keane series, we find Bill a career bureaucrat pondering retirement when once again the psychotic ruling class comes knocking on his door to unburden him from the banality and middling mediocrity of a cushy government job and send him at light speed through the intrigues of ruling class mind games. This time around, he’s promised some of the deepest, darkest secrets of the most secretive of all societies which may or may not include archaic directives charting the fate of all humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365458361

Book preview

Zen: Life and Death In the Biggest Little City In the World

Zen: Life and Death In the Biggest Little City In the World

by Ed SJC Park

Copyright © 2016 by Ed Park

All rights reserved.

No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN 978-1-365-45836-1

Cover image: Copyright © Jason Doiy | iStockphoto

Introduction

This is the fourth book in a series about Bill Keane, once a poor, idealistic Stanford grad who somehow wound up in Reno, Nevada.  His adventures started when he joined eGo, a dot-com IPO where he made his initial contacts with a pathological group of multi-millionaires.  One of them later hired Bill to sell CDO’s which eventually blew up in everyone’s faces and contributed to the Great Recession.  He was then invited again into the circles of the multi-millionaire club this time around to sleuth around an artificial intelligence startup in Las Vegas.  We now find Bill a career bureaucrat pondering retirement when once again the psychotic ruling class comes knocking on his door to unburden him from the banality and middling mediocrity of a cushy government job and send him at light speed through the intrigues of ruling class mind games.  This time around, he’s promised some of the deepest, darkest secrets of the most secretive of all societies which may or may not include archaic directives charting the fate of all humanity.

"Don’t tell anyone this, but the greatest scam ever pulled off was convincing the entire human race that taking was better than giving, that they could give away their pleasure of giving, that they could wind up better off by focusing all their time and energy on taking.  Nature created the most socialized creature ever by giving them the pleasure of giving.  Giving gave them pleasure, meaning, self-esteem, confidence, completeness, and a soul.  The greatest tragedy of history is that they were conned into believing life was all about taking.  It left them empty, selfish, entitled, frustrated, and soulless.  It turned them into our slaves.

You ever wonder why there are so many physically weak, disabled, deformed, vulnerable, odd, strange, weird people?  I mean, aren’t we the apex of evolution?  Shouldn’t we all be beautiful, physically perfect, healthy alphas?  Well, why would we cooperate and work together if we didn’t need each other?  We were the physically weakest primates, and being such, we were forced to rely on each other just to get by, but in relying on each other, we became the most dangerous, potent primates on Earth.  Our individual physical weaknesses were the basis of our strength as a species.  So instead of teaching everyone to work together and help the weakest amongst us, we fool everyone into believing we should all be the beautiful, physically perfect alphas, and in doing so, we become a weak, foolish, useless species, doomed for extinction, ironically, just like all the other primates we beat out before.  So instead of mocking the oddballs, the misfits, the outcasts, instead of throwing government crumbs at the weakest, most disabled, and oldest, we should have instead personally embraced them.  We fucked up."

- Robert Zwicker 

Chapter 1

A long time ago when I was hobnobbing with the rich, I added a bunch of them to my LinkedIn account.  One in particular was Robert Zwicker, son of Bill Zwicker the friend of Richard Hall.  I worked briefly for Richard Hall looking into an artificial intelligence company in Las Vegas which claimed to have created the singularity, the first true artificially intelligent machine that could educate itself and take over all other artificially intelligent machines on the planet.  One of their objectives was to implant a communication device inside a human brain to allow the machine to understand the workings of the human mind.  Needless to say, it appears that it was all just an investment scam, and to this day, I’m still not sure whether it was Richard Hall scamming the company or the company scamming him. 

I had met Robert Zwicker in New York and London.  In London, he had a rather twisted game of reciting bible passages while engaging in coke-fueled orgies.  He may or may not have drugged me at one of those parties, and I have no idea what he may or may not have done to me while I was passed out.  Throughout my exposure to these multi-millionaire, possibly billionaire elite, I began to realize that they did not really care all that much about consequences or peasant tripe like morals and ethics.  To them, it was all a game.  They kept pushing the boundaries, until someone pushed back, but at the top of the game, nobody pushes back.  Just like spoiled kids, they exploit everyone and push the envelope expecting some responsible adult to set boundaries, perhaps a responsible politician, peer, religious leader, spiritual leader, someone, anyone. 

I never really checked my LinkedIn as I had settled at a government job and never considered networking or advancing anywhere else so it lingered around with occasional reminders in my email.  When I received a promotion, I updated my LinkedIn account and low and behold, there was a message waiting for me from Robert Zwicker a year old. 

Robert, I’m sorry I don’t really do LinkedIn.  I just got your message.  How’s life?  Still remember that party in London, or I should say, I remember not remembering it.  Still living the life?

Robert didn’t respond.  I didn’t expect him to.  I noticed on his LinkedIn account that he was chair of a number of corporations, a non-profit, the general shit that rich people with connections do.  I decided to Facebook stalk him.  Apparently, he was busy traveling the world with his nonprofit, doing feel good charity work.  But oddly enough, all his activities on LinkedIn and Facebook ended abruptly five months ago.  It was as if he disappeared off the face of the planet.  I Googled him.  Perhaps he died.  There was nothing from five months forward.  Perhaps he had been kidnapped in the jungles of some Third World country.  I left it at that. 

I was lying in bed on Sunday as I usually do recovering from a hangover and reading some book.  In this case, it was a book called Anti-Fragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  It was actually one of the best books I had ever read along with Dylan Ratigan’s Greedy Bastards, David Boaz’s Libertarianism: A Primer, Stanely E. Porter’s Hermeneutics, Jamie Holmes’ Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman’s Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, and David Stockman’s The Great Deformation (I’d only recommend reading the first 100 pages of that book, because it gets excessively detailed).  It was actually my old boss at eGo, Sean Lefort who got me into reading.  I had already read required reading in school, but nothing much on my own.  After Sean schooled me on being the pseudo-intellect I was as well as beating the crap out of me at the gym, I faced the horrific reality that I was not as smart or strong as I had imagined.  I have since attempted to rectify that with copious work outs and books.

There was a knock on my door.  Initially, I thought it might be a UPS delivery person, but they don’t deliver on Sundays.  I then assumed it might be a religious recruiter or maybe some nutrition program salesperson.  It turned out to be Robert Zwicker, considerably older than I had remembered him, albeit somewhat deformed by a face lift.

Bill, you boring son-of-a-bitch.  What the hell are you still doing in Reno?

Well, I got a nice cushy government job.

That sounds absolutely pathetic Bill.  I expected so much more from you.  You were so fucking hungry and ambitious.  Didn’t you work for Richard Hall?  Didn’t he make you a multi-millionaire?

No, he ripped me off.  I think he’s just a con-artist.  I got nothing out of him.

Well, sorry to hear that.

He looked inside my modest apartment.

This place looks like shit Bill.

Thanks.

I’m sorry Bill.  It just reminds me of the huts in Africa and Asia.

Really?  You’re comparing my home to a Third World hut?

Sorry.  I don’t mean to embarrass you.  I just imagined something different.  You know it’s polite to ask a dear old friend to enter your humble shithole. 

Do you ever hear yourself talk?

I didn’t really know Robert that well, but as I get older I feel I can say whatever I feel to whomever.  You get to a point where you’re older than most people you meet, so you just don’t give a shit anymore about sounding polite to anyone just like Robert.  You get to be frank and informal with most everyone finally.  One of the perks of getting old.

I’m not particularly self-aware Bill, but I do make an effort.  Holy shit Bill, is that a futon?  How old are you?

Can I offer you a drink?  I have some cheap beer.

You know they say when you suffer trauma, you’re stuck at that age forever.  You seem to be stuck in college Bill.

Holy shit, do you ever consider other people’s feelings?

Sorry Bill.  Sometimes it’s just fun to say whatever the hell I’m thinking however degrading that is to whomever is on the other end.  Some people are trapped in their own delusions, and you, Bill are no exception.  And no, I don’t want your shitty beer.  In fact, I don’t even drink anymore.

Really?

Bill, I’ve gone straight sober and all goody-two-shoe and shit.  I’ve been done with the devil’s party for quite some time.  I may or may not have really hurt some people, and they may or may not be dead as a result of things that may or may not have been precipitated by my actions, but that’s all in the past.  I’ve spent the last decade making amends, fixing up shitholes in the Third World and expanding micro-banking and alternative financing.  I’ve simply come to the conclusion that you’re just plugging up a leaking dam with gum.  I’m done with everything.  Let some other guilt-ridden shithead save a village that is doomed anyway by an autocratic government led by some pathological fuck-bag who feeds his political enemies to wild animals as a dinner show.  Fuck it all.  But I’ve been laying low.  My father died.  All his cohorts are now trying to find me and turn me into his heir and then crawl up and set camp in my rectum.  I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for that.  They want me to rule the planet, to perpetuate this miserable shit and the cozy relations with said autocratic fuck-bags.  I’m just not ready for all that shit.

So what?  You want to crash on my couch for a while?

Bill, that’s not a couch; it’s a futon, and by the looks of the stains on it, I wouldn’t so much as rest my shoe on it.  I can just rent a big house here or condo for a while.  I’d like to hang out with you for a while.  I’m not too fond of this turgid crap hole you call a city, but I’ve been in much worse places in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Jesus Robert, you like have no mental filter.

Bill, I’m actually restraining myself.  You’re a Stanford grad for fuck’s sake who worked with billionaires selling billion-dollar securities, and here you are in a turd-hole apartment in a slime pit of a cesspool of a city doing civil servant bullshit stuff probably working for an ignoramus of a bureaucratic boss who graduated from a public university. 

I can’t imagine you saving Third World people.

Bill, they had nothing to begin with.  You had everything.  You squandered it all.  These poor fucks squandered nothing.  When you start from zero and build up to two or three, that’s amazing.  When you start at 100 and wind up at ten here, well, Bill, sorry, that doesn’t impress me.

Robert, I’m not sure I want to hang out with you now.

Okay, I’m sorry Bill.  I’m just a little tired and weary hiding all over the fucking planet from my father’s goons.  They have tentacles everywhere including the US government, and you know the US government is spying on everyone and everything.  I’ve gone completely off the grid.  I have dudes carrying my phones all over the world as decoys, taking out money from my bank accounts pretending to be me.  In fact, maybe after I leave, you can do that for me too here in Reno.  Be my decoy Bill.

You better treat me a lot better than that.

Okay fine.  I said I’m sorry.  I was just kidding a little too.  Not a lot, but a little.

You can’t even apologize properly.

Bill, I’ve traveled all over India and Tibet.  You can say, I went on some demented pilgrimage trying to figure out what the fuck I’m doing on this planet and whether to take one of two paths.  I can accept the inheritance of my dead father, and with it, the responsibility of continuing his legacy of exploitation, this manipulation of the world, the perpetuation of war, famine, terrorism, conflict, you name it, the worse bullshit of history.  Doesn’t exactly sound enticing.  Or I can just turn into Siddhartha Gautama and shave my head, my armpits, my ass, and live in a cave and chant shit until I go bat shit crazy and become one with the psychedelic cosmic blob and preach to the peasants about how important it is not to crave the material crap you will never be able to afford anyway.  I mean, doesn’t that seem all too convenient?  You slave away and crave the shit the rich people have, and this dude comes along telling you to slave away and not crave the shit the rich people have.  Tone down your desires, tone down your fears, you miserable lot of peasants.

Why don’t you just live a normal life, a relatively normal life, like a middle-class life?

Because, Bill, I’d have to be on the grid, and by being on the grid, those fuck-bags will find me, and they won’t allow me to ignore my duties to them.  That’s not an option.  I can’t be you Bill.  I know you probably don’t think your life is all that enchanting, but trust me, it’s out of reach for me.

I actually find some pretty enchanting moments.

So bear with me.  A friend of mine caught your LinkedIn message to me and contacted me.  I thought I’d come over and visit you, see how life is.  I was chatting with Sean Lefort a while back, and he was telling me about you in Reno, the stuff you guys went through with eGo and Precision Securities and shit, and he actually had a few good things to say about you, you know, how philosophical you were and how you guys used to battle ideologies.

I’m pretty sure he won most of those battles.

Yeah, but he respected you, and you’re an independent thinker.  And you’ve spent time in our world and worked with Richard Hall, although, you wound up with perhaps the sleaziest member of our club.  But anyhow, you survived, although, you crawled back to Reno and became a mushroom in a cave here.

Your flattery makes me wonder what you want from me, and I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty expensive.

See, that’s what I love about you.  Just cut through the shit.  You want the truth don’t you?  You live for it.  You want to know everything, the meaning of life, the secrets to all the secret societies, the true nature of reality behind the curtain.  You crave it don’t you?

"Okay, yeah.