The Answer to Everything by Elyse Friedman Read Free Book Online Page A

But it’s not the guy, it’s the caffeine. I misattribute the sensations.”
    “That’s a real thing?”
    “Yeah, it’s real. So anyway, they did this study involving bridges. One was a safe sturdy thing, the other was a rickety suspension bridge strung high over a river. I think it was the Capilano Suspension Bridge, actually. Anyway, they put an attractive woman at one end of each bridge and she would ask the males who crossed over some questions, ostensibly some kind of survey, then she’d give them her phone number and tell them they could get in touch if they had any questions. So the hypothesis was that the males on the suspension bridge would misattribute their arousal from crossing the dangerous bridge to an attraction to the interviewer, and that more of them would call her than would those who took the safer route.”
    “And did they?”
    “Yeah. Way more males from the suspension bridge called. But this is what I’m talking about. The study was flawed. It had to be completely redesigned, because males who chose to cross the scary bridge instead of the safe bridge may just have been predisposed to take risks, so more likely to go out on a limb and contact the attractive interviewer anyway.”
    “Hmm.”
    “It’s not as simple as you think.”
    “OK.”
    “And what is it that you want to learn, anyway? I mean, is it really so intriguing that a dozen misfits like to listen to Eldrich’s New Age ramblings?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
    He made a joke then, something about slipping caffeine pills into my dinner when he wanted to have his way with me, but I knew he was still thinking about Eldrich, about Opportunity. And I knew exactly what it was that had turbo-charged his interest. It wasn’t curiosity about the human mind, or the psychology of religion, or the prevalence of New Age practitioners in an increasingly secular society. No. It was the dude with the cylindrical watch and the snazzy car and the fat roll of cash.
John
    Observation: Eldrich has attracted a number of followers who view him as a spiritual guru and go out of their way to provide him with tithes.
    Hypothesis: If a dozen or so individuals are prepared to follow Eldrich in this manner, then others will be too.
    Prediction: Increasing awareness of Eldrich and his teachings will lead to an increase in the number of Eldrich supporters (and their offerings).
    Easy-peasy. Let the experiment begin.
    On the Darkest
    Night
    Of the Coldest
    Day
    A Radiant Sun
    Awaits
    You may not see or
    Feel it
    But it’s there
    Waiting to Rise and
    Light Your Way
    Waiting to Rise and
    Warm You
    theanswertoeverything.org
Amy
    I guess the first thing he did was create the website. THEANSWERTOEVERYTHING.ORG. Very understated. Not promising much there. Then he started putting up flyers to lead people to the site. He used fluorescent-orange paper, so the things really popped. I’d see them all over—subway, grocery stores, cafés, bars. He’d be out for hours at a time, taping and stapling to whatever didn’t move. Each poster had some kind of warm, fuzzy, Eldrich-type message on it, and then the website address across the bottom: www.theanswertoeverything.org. That was it.
    The site, at that point, was simple. Just a splash page with another one of those inspirational messages superimposed over a photo of a sun-dappled body of water. There were three buttons at the bottom, for each of the following interactive responses:
Comment
;
Confess
;
Share
. If you clicked on any of those, you were taken to a blank page on which to type and send. He thought about displaying these posts on a kind of message board so everyone could see and react to them, but I talked him out of it. I figured he’d be spending half his time policing the site and deleting posts, since Iexpected the majority of responses to come from Douglas Adams fans
—The answer is 42
—or snarky teens who wanted to prank us.
    Boy was I wrong.
Heather
    I don’t know why I’m doing this. I