The Tomorrow File (7 page)

After lengthy experimentation on animals, a technique was evolved by which needle-thin electrodes could be implanted in the human brain. Energizing the titanium-alloy electrodes with a mild electric current gave the object a feeling of well-being. One neuroscientist termed it “reward” rather than “pleasure.” Exact placement of the electrodes was crucial, but not as difficult as you might expect. During neurosurgery, the object might be administered an anesthetic sufficient only to allow cutting through the scalp and drilling a hole in the skull.

Once the surgeon was through the meninges, the patient could be conscious and responsive during surgery. Fortunately, the stuff of the brain itself cannot register pain. So a surgeon implanting electrodes could probe and test, probe and test, asking the wide-eyed object, “There? There? What do you feel? What’s happening? Are you happy?”

Originally, after correct emplacement, these electrodes were fixed with glue to the object’s skull, with a bit protruding beyond the scalp. Wires were attached to carry the required electric current. Later, using hardware developed in the space program, a microminiaturized radio receiver, battery-powered, was taped to the object’s skull. Upon receipt of a radio signal, it stimulated the object’s “pleasure centers.” Thus he was ambulatory, free from entangling wires.

Still later, a microminiaturized radio transmitter, battery-powered, was attached to his belt. The receiver was implanted beneath his scalp for cosmetic reasons. An object could now stimulate his own brain, giving himself a jolt of pleasure, or reward, by pressing a button on his belt kit.

The purpose of all this research and development was therapeutic, to relieve the symptoms of epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia, etc.

But as frequently happens, what began as a biomedical blessing became a medical craze. It was estimated that more than two million Americans had had electrodes implanted in their brains for the sole purpose of self-stimulation. The operation was not inexpensive, and even with the development of plastitanium, the presence of electrodes (or any foreign matter) in the brain presented certain risks, especially during violent acceleration or deceleration of the object. In a car crash, for instance. But the risks did not lessen the human hunger for new pleasures. They never do.

Now enters Project Supersense. It was my idea. I realized that the brains of these two million electrode-implanted Americans were being stimulated by a radio signal, self-produced. I saw no reason, considering the state of our technology, why a film—either in a movie theatre or on a TV set at home—could not be coded along its edge, just as sound is synchronized to the visual image, to send a signal to all receivers under the scalps or within the skulls of the “Mind-Jerkers,” as the people who had opted for the electrode implant operation were popularly called.

Then these two million, watching a film on any subject, would be automatically stimulated to pleasure, thirst, pain, hunger, or eventually any other appetite or emotion, if neurobiological research continued at its present rate. Their titillations would be synchronized with the scene being shown on the film. Mind-Jerkers would feel greatly increased sexual arousal during a love scene, increased pain during a torture scene, increased fear during a horror scene, increased glee during a comedy scene.

I discussed this concept with Paul Bumford. He enthusiastically concurred that it was feasible. It was assigned to my Psychobiology Team. After investigation and research, they reported the plan practical, valuable, and eagerly awaited a go signal to develop the necessary hardware and film synchronization techniques in conjunction with the Electronics Team.

It was the file on Project Supersense that I was reviewing and attempting to evaluate on my train trip to Detroit. I was trying to decide whether to recommend going ahead with it or stopping it.

The railroad station in Detroit occupied a concourse on the two lowest floors of a new high-rise crematorium. Carrying my case, I took the express elevator to the copter pad on the roof. My father’s copter was waiting. In his inimitable style, the four-seater was painted a startling Chinese red. On the cabin, in block lettering of vibrating purple, it read: FLAIR TOYS: THE TOYS WITH A FLAIR! Subtle.

The pilot was a young ef with flaming blue hair. She wore a Chinese-red zipsuit. Across one breast the expected legend was embroidered in that jarring purple. But she was so pneumatic it read: “flAIRToys.” She told me she would drop me at the house, have something to eat, then go out to the airport to pick up my father, who was coming in on a commercial flight from Denver. He had a factory out there.

We tilted out over the Detroit River and almost immediately began our descent over Belle Isle to Grosse Pointe. She hovered a moment over my father’s beautifully tended estate, then let down on the front lawn. My mother wasn’t too far away, near the water. She was seated in a garden chair of white-painted iron. She was wearing one of her gowns of flowing silk, all pleats and ruffles. Her thin arm poked out, resting on the table alongside. Her fleshless fingers grasped the glass.

I looked around for Mrs. McPherson. She was nearby, a wooden statue with folded arms, standing under a small copse of young elms. She never let my mother out of her sight. Never.

I walked slowly down to the garden chair.

“Mother,” I said softly.

“Who?” she said vaguely. She looked up at me, dazed and faraway.

“Nick.”

“Who?”

“Nicholas, your loving and devoted son.”

Her face cracked into a million pleased wrinkles.

“Nicholas, my loving and devoted son,” she repeated, reaching out her arms. “Come kiss me, chappie.”

And so I did.

“How are you, Mother?”

“ ‘I never saw a purple cow,’ ” she said.

“What?”

“ ‘I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I’d rather see than be one.’ ”

“What on earth is
that
?”

“Long before your time.”

“Mother, it’s nonsense.”

“Isn’t it?” she said delightedly. “Isn’t it just! You’re so handsome.” “Mother’s beauty, father’s brains.”

“You’re lucky,” she said, and
we let
it go at that.

“This world . . .’’she said.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Let’s go up to the house. It’s getting chill, and we have so much to talk about.”

I got her onto her feet and gave her my arm. We walked slowly, slowly up the slope.

“Nicholas, my loving and devoted son,” she mused.

“I am that.”

Behind us, trailing but catching up, Mrs. McPherson trundled along, somber in the dusk.

“Are you in love, chappie?” She used the word in the obso sense.

“Not at the moment, Mother.”

She laughed again. She had been a great beauty. But she had resigned from the world; she no longer belonged.

When I got mother inside, Mrs. McPherson took over and helped her upstairs to her bedroom. Charles smiled a welcome and took my case. I didn’t know what Charles was. Obviously an obso em, he had to be an NM—but I knew nothing about his genesis. I suspected he might be from GPA-2, from the Tidewater section of what was formerly Virginia.

I went into the library. I mixed a vodka-and-Smack, mostly vodka. Coming home always did that to me. I could analyze my reactions, but it didn’t help. I wandered about the library. Almost two thousand books my father had never read.

I was finishing my second drink when I heard the copter overhead. I went outside and stood on the floodlighted porch. I admired the youthful way he leaped from the copter and came bounding across the lawn toward me.

“Nick-ol’-as!” he shouted as he came. “Nick-ol'-as!”

It was his joke. He never tired of it.

He caught me up in a great bear hug. What a ruffian he was! He pulled me close. He smelled of a lot of things: petroscot, a testosterone-based cologne, a scent of something softer—probably from a quick embrace with that blue-haired ef copter pilot.

In the library, under overhead light, his face, beneath his makeup, seemed old and tired. But his manner hadn’t changed: loud voice; jaunty walk; hard, decisive gestures; barked laugh; the need for physical contact—fingers on arm, arm around shoulders, shoves, pats, strokes, thumps. It was his way.

He poured us drinks, a petroscot for himself, one of my mother’s potato vodkas for me. We hoisted glasses to each other and sipped.

“You seem perky,” I said. “Who’s the new tootie?”

He barked his laugh.

“You wouldn’t believe.”

“I’d believe.”

“Ever catch
Circus au Natural
? It’s on Thursday nights at 2300.”

“The contortionist?” I said.

“You bastard!” He barked again. “You know everything. Hungry?”

“Starved.”

We went into the cavernous dining room. We sat next to each other at an oak table large enough to seat twenty. It was genuine oak, all right. When they destroyed an obso building and found reusable oak planks they fashioned them into tables for the wealthy. But first they dipped the planks in caustic, beat them with chains, drilled in fake wormholes, and then used a stencil to make false rings where wet glasses might have rested.
Then
they coated the whole thing with Plastiseal.

My father didn’t give a damn about food. Put anything in front of him—he’d eat it. But he had a special fondness for new foods, synthetics, laboratory spices, and refinery flavorings.

After dinner, dominated by his long, loud discourse on the success of his new sex dolls, we moved back to the library for a natural brandy. He continued his monologue there.

The sex dolls were not obscene. They were the result of a government contract he had won to produce small Juskin dolls, efs and ems, to teach sex education to four-year-olds. The dolls were naked and complete with genitalia. They had proved so popular that my father had started commercial production. They were now available in three sizes: 28, 60, and 90 cm tall. Many adults bought them.

Chester K. Flair had long experience in the industry. Originally, he had been employed as a research chemist by a toy and doll manufacturer. He came up with a suggestion for a doll that vomited when you bent it forward sharply. The vomit was a viscous compound containing bits of sharp plastic. You fed it into the doll through a stoppered opening at the nape of its neck. Refills of vomit were to be available in half-liter bottles.

Also, my father cleverly suggested adding a stain to the fake vomit so that after regurgitation, the doll’s dress was stained ineradicably. The doll’s owner (her parents, actually) would then be forced to purchase a new costume. This doll, my father was convinced, would be an immediate commercial success. He called it Whoopsy-Daisy.

His employer rejected the idea. My father then married the woman who became my mother. Her name was Beatrice Susan Bennington. With her money—she had an inheritance of 50,000 old dollars—my father resigned his service, formed his own company and, with additional financing, started production of Whoopsy Daisy. His confidence was vindicated. It was an almost instant success. He expanded his corporation to include the production of conventional toys, dolls, and novelties. He was a very knowledgeable and shrewd businessman.

. When I was nine years old, one of my father’s designers came up with the extraordinary idea of a baby doll that defecated. The ‘ ‘feces” were plastic turds, fed into an opening in the doll above the coccyx.

The production of the Poo-Poo Doll, as it was called, meant an enormous investment in new dies, formulae, patents, machinery, etc. I remember an incident that occurred during this period. I was then ten years old, and my father still had fantasies of my “following in his footsteps” and becoming a doll manufacturer and director of his enterprises after he retired. He insisted I accompany him to a bank meeting for the purpose of securing a large loan to finance tooling-up for production of the Poo-Poo Doll.

I listened to my father make his presentation to a tableful of hard-faced bankers. He demonstrated a handmade prototype. He explained, with charts, color slides, and samples, that he was basing his estimate of potential income not only on the initial retail purchase price of Poo-Poo but on continued consumption of packages of fresh plastic turds and miniature paper diapers.

They listened to his sales pitch expressionlessly. When he finished, they turned to look at each other. He was asking for a great deal of love. Finally, one banker with a skin of parchment made a tent of his hands, stared thoughtfully at the ceiling, and said, “I know we have dolls that piss. But dolls that shit? Isn’t that in rather poor taste?”

I rarely forget anything. But
that
I particularly remember

My father got his loan. The Poo-Poo Doll proved to be the sensation of the industry. It made millions of new dollars.

My father ended his Panegyric to Sex Dolls abruptly. He poured us each another brandy, then flopped onto the leather couch facing me. “So what’s new?” he asked.

I recognized that apparently casual “What’s new?” My father was fearful of aging, especially of the loss of physical strength that aging imposes, particularly of the diminution of his sexual vigor. I knew he would never lose the hunger. His terror was of being deprived of the ability to satisfy it.

“Nothing much,” I said. “We’re fooling around with several things at the moment: a manipulated form of vitamin E that’s had some interesting results on rats; a new steroid we’re constructing; and the pituitary transplant program is continuing. I really think we’ll find the answer there, in the anterior lobe.”

“How about injection of testosterone? I think that’s the most obvious answer. After all, I have a BS in chemistry.”

I refrained from sighing. This was the Bachelor of Science who had flashed me from Hong Kong to ask if there was really any aphrodisiacal benefit in swallowing a ground-up tiger’s tooth, as he had been assured by a Chinese apothecary.

“Androgen would be the most obvious answer,” I agreed. “If it worked. It’s been tried for years, for half a century, and it doesn’t. But there are so many psychological factors involved, it’s difficult to make an objective evaluation of the results. We can clone ovaries easily, but we’re having trouble with testes. So that leaves direct transplant. Would you like to leave your nuts to science?”