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.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp woke up, looked at the ring, and the evaluation was \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
And then, as if sleep were only one department in the great program, the display switched.<\/p>\n
\u201cActivity,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoal: 10,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp went \u2013 after breakfast, which by then was no longer breakfast, but a setting \u2013 to Dr. Porsche.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s life. For whoever signs, commits himself. And whoever commits himself becomes tangible.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, Mr. Castorp,\u201d he said. \u201cHow was the night?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp hesitated. In the past he would have said: good or bad. Today he said:<\/p>\n
\u201cREM: better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Porsche nodded contentedly, as if Hans had paid him a compliment.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery good,\u201d he said. \u201cThen we can now set the next pillars.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Porsche pulled out a sheet. It was not a simple sheet. It was a plan. It had tables, fields, perhaps even \u2013 one could not see it clearly \u2013 a QR code.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll do this,\u201d said Porsche, \u201cin a cycle. Four days. Three days deload, one day refeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp heard \u201ccycle\u201d and thought: time as a loop. He heard \u201cdeload\u201d and thought: fasting. He heard \u201crefeed\u201d and thought: feast. Walpurgis Night in four days.<\/p>\n
\u201cDay one: PUSH,\u201d said Porsche, and he wrote it down as if he were writing a curve. \u201cMinus six hundred kilocalories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minus: the word was so small, and yet it had power.<\/p>\n
\u201cDay two: LEGS,\u201d Porsche continued. \u201cMinus six hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDay three: PULL,\u201d he said. \u201cMinus six hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDay four: no workout,\u201d he said, and now he smiled a little, as if this were the real seduction. \u201cPlus one thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus one thousand.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp felt his body react to this number, although he had not yet eaten it. The body loves the plus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll do this,\u201d said Porsche, \u201cuntil we get the body fat percentage close to ten percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten percent.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cthey say\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is considered, they say, in men as\u2026 optimal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp did not think about whether it was true. He only thought: optimal. He thought: If I am optimal, then perhaps I am\u2026 safe.<\/p>\n
And then \u2013 as if this too were only a variant of the old Magic Mountain logic \u2013 he thought: safety is the bourgeois version of immortality.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cresponsive.\u201d A modern word that sounds as if flexibility were a virtue, whereas in truth it is often only the adaptability to the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll pass this on to the kitchen,\u201d said Porsche. \u201cYou will receive your meals so that you don\u2019t have to think.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not having to think: that was the real promise. For thinking is exhausting. And modernity sells relief.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp nodded.<\/p>\n
He nodded, and in this nod \u2013 and this is the irony he could not name \u2013 there lay an obedience that feels like freedom.<\/p>\n