Page 74 of The Session

“That’s where we drop you on an island and you have to figure out how to get yourself rescued,” Tru told Mark.

“Like write ‘SOS’ in the sand with coconuts or flag down a ship?”

“Basically. It’s also an endurance challenge to see how long you can go without having severe medical issues. We monitor the participants, of course, and make sure that, aside from a little dehydration and sunburn, they don’t die.”

“What if I get myself off the island?” Mark asked.

“Like build a boat or swim?” Connelly asked, speaking up.

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t a movie. Building boats is hard. And Cutthroat Cay is miles from anywhere,” Connelly explained.

“Let’s get back to fundamentals,” said Lightman. “We award authority for three reasons: Growth—financial or growing the company in some way. Valor—doing something that’s extremely physically, emotionally, or spiritually hard. And Endurance.”

“What about endurance?” Mark asked.

“That’s already on the list,” said Jameson. “You’re going to have to do a Level 10 Session.”

Mark had only read a little about the Sessions. According to secondhand gossip, these were extreme, borderline torture/hazing rituals that Summit put their inner circle through. Allegedly, they used the same personnel who worked at black sites to get information from terrorists. There was also some speculation that Summit didn’t just hire those people, but trained them.

“I keep thinking Valor is Mark’s thing. If we’d already had him in the program and then got the video of the rescue, it’d be much easier to sell,” Lightman said.

“You know, and you’re not going to like this, Max, but . . .” Rawling said, thumbing through the catalog, where she had pink Post-it notes attached to several pages. “There are some older records in here that are doable.”

“Don’t say it, Delilah,” Lightman cautioned.

“I have to. There are a few records in here that nobody’s touched because they’re yours, Max.”

“Go on,” Mark replied.

“No respect,” Lightman said, amused.

So we pretend we’re old friends, Mark thought. How awkward was this for all the other people in the room? Or was he the only one having difficulty with it because he found himself strangely able to slip into this persona a little too effortlessly?

“You sold nineteen thousand audiocassettes at the Pittsburgh Convention Center,” Rawling said.

“There were twenty cassettes per course. If I remember correctly, the actual number of courses sold was just under a thousand. Not the record for most courses sold,” Jameson corrected.

“Who invited him?” Lightman asked.

“You did,” Jameson replied.

“Keeping me honest is expensive,” Lightman said.

“Nowhere near as costly as the alternative,” Connelly shot back.

“Fair enough.”

“Nobody buys physical media anymore. I think we can ignore any of those records. And downloads, nobody believes,” Tru said.

“You know, not all of the monetary challenges are based on sales of our content. In the pure survival challenges, somebody shows up in town and has to make a certain amount of money or accomplish a certain goal,” Rawling said.

“What did Harold Butler do with his sales team?” Lightman asked.

“The Rainman challenge. You give them a bus ticket to some destination, $20, and they had to make $10,000 in seven days,” Jameson told him.

“Without getting arrested,” Rawling added.