The Condo: Or ... Life, a Sequel
By Dalma Takács
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About this ebook
Paradise Point Condominiums is my version of a parallel universe. Jaspers neighbors are from all walks of life and carry with them the joys, wounds, and corruptions of the human experience: Yasmeen is an abused wife forced into prostitution by her husband; Daren is a serial killer, and Anna is one of his victims; Jasper meets people who have touched his life over the years, people like Makalo, his former student in an inner city high school, and Pete, a war-damaged veteran. Helping him in his desperate search to escape is Pronto, a Holocaust survivor, and Selena, a caseworker who makes him face his own demons and shows him a way out that Jasper is not sure he wants to take.
The only way people can leave the Condo is to submit to the "Treatment," a highly individualized procedure with no guarantees that it will be successful. And even if it is successful, Jasper doubts that he will like the place where he will go. Some of his neighbors call the place heaven and are looking forward to the experience, but Jasper is uncertain. How can human beings ever be freed from their evil tendencies, he asks. And if by some miracle they are transformed, he thinks they will lose their individuality and become no better than "Gods singing marionettes."
In his search for answers, Jasper finds his way to a community named Harmony, a nightmarish version of the American Dream, where every citizen aims to do only what is useful for his own comfort. His guide Eugene takes him to see their school, where students are controlled by computer sensors and taught to use subtleand not so subtlemethods of defeating their enemies. Jasper is horrified to find that the citizens of Harmony are planning to take over the Condo. With a supreme effort of his will, Jasper escapes from Harmony, but he knows that he must return to save those children.
Finally Jasper has no choice but to try the Treatment. The first part of the procedure requires that he open his mind to consider every experience of his life. He sits alone in a room with a computer that shows him all the painful and sweet scenes of his married life, including the death of his infant son. As he watches, Jasper learns to accept his whole relationship with Marguerite as an experience to be treasured. But he balks at accepting Andy, his friend turned foe, who caused his expulsion from Dartmouth College. In the group session Jasper witnesses the torments of his fellow participants as they struggle to "find the seeds of heaven" in their lives, each in his or her own way.
The novel is a science fiction fable that throws light on our existing world by taking the reader to an imaginary world. In addition to gadgets of the parallel world such as computers with undeletable data and "soulphones" that let you listen in to what people are thinking, the Condo has other assets: it is a place where you can meet interesting thinkers of the past such as Emmanuel Swedenbo
Dalma Takács
Dalma Takács was born in Hungary and has lived through World War II as a child. She left Hungary at the age of 14 and spent her young adulthood in England watching the ravages of the communist system on her country and her family from a distance. Throughout her career in England and the US as teacher of English, librarian, college teacher, and writer, her Hungarian background has been her firm foundation. She has edited Clear the Line: Hungary's Struggle to Leave the Axis in the Second World War, a historical memoir by her mother, Laura-Louise Veress. She is the author of Meet Me at the Globe, a novel of Shakespeare's England; Our Story: Saga of a Hungarian-American Family; and The Condo, Or...Life, a Sequel, a visit to a parallel universe.
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