In the morning, esteemed reader, dear reader, morality is always there, even when you have not ordered it. It comes with the light, with the coffee, with the numbers.
Hans Castorp woke up, looked at the ring, and the evaluation was – one might say: friendly. The sleep onset latency was shorter. The stress indicator was lower. The REM share had improved, like a pupil who has finally understood that he is being graded.
And then, as if sleep were only one department in the great program, the display switched.
“Activity,” it said.
“Goal: 10,000.”
It was not even breakfast yet, and the demand was already there. This is how, in the modern world, the day begins: with a target.
Hans Castorp went – after breakfast, which by then was no longer breakfast, but a setting – to Dr. Porsche.
He had to register. He had to state his name. He had to sign a slip. The narrative does not wish here, esteemed reader, dear reader, to fall under suspicion of giving instructions; but it cannot conceal that signatures have a particular weight in Hans Castorp’s life. For whoever signs, commits himself. And whoever commits himself becomes tangible.
Dr. Porsche received him warmly. He spoke as he always spoke: friendly, precise, with that small enthusiasm that runs through him like a crack in his professionalism.
“Ah, Mr. Castorp,” he said. “How was the night?”
Hans Castorp hesitated. In the past he would have said: good or bad. Today he said:
“REM: better.”
Porsche nodded contentedly, as if Hans had paid him a compliment.
“Very good,” he said. “Then we can now set the next pillars.”
Pillars: the word suited the red pillars in the music room, and Hans Castorp noticed how much the world here consists of metaphors that are at the same time architecture.
Porsche pulled out a sheet. It was not a simple sheet. It was a plan. It had tables, fields, perhaps even – one could not see it clearly – a QR code.
“We’ll do this,” said Porsche, “in a cycle. Four days. Three days deload, one day refeed.”
Hans Castorp heard “cycle” and thought: time as a loop. He heard “deload” and thought: fasting. He heard “refeed” and thought: feast. Walpurgis Night in four days.
“Day one: PUSH,” said Porsche, and he wrote it down as if he were writing a curve. “Minus six hundred kilocalories.”
Minus: the word was so small, and yet it had power.
“Day two: LEGS,” Porsche continued. “Minus six hundred.”
“Day three: PULL,” he said. “Minus six hundred.”
“Day four: no workout,” he said, and now he smiled a little, as if this were the real seduction. “Plus one thousand.”
Plus one thousand.
Hans Castorp felt his body react to this number, although he had not yet eaten it. The body loves the plus.
“We’ll do this,” said Porsche, “until we get the body fat percentage close to ten percent.”
Ten percent.
It was a number, esteemed reader, dear reader, that was so smooth, so round in its severity, that one immediately ascribed something ideal to it. Porsche added, very much in the manner of modern priests who cloak their dogmas with a “they say”:
“This is considered, they say, in men as… optimal.”
Hans Castorp did not think about whether it was true. He only thought: optimal. He thought: If I am optimal, then perhaps I am… safe.
And then – as if this too were only a variant of the old Magic Mountain logic – he thought: safety is the bourgeois version of immortality.
Porsche continued speaking. He spoke of adjustments later, of calorie balances, of hypertrophy goals, of individualization. He spoke of how one must not be dogmatic, but “responsive.” A modern word that sounds as if flexibility were a virtue, whereas in truth it is often only the adaptability to the program.
“We’ll pass this on to the kitchen,” said Porsche. “You will receive your meals so that you don’t have to think.”
Not having to think: that was the real promise. For thinking is exhausting. And modernity sells relief.
Hans Castorp nodded.
He nodded, and in this nod – and this is the irony he could not name – there lay an obedience that feels like freedom.
