The Tomorrow File Page 2

  . . . almost atavistic memories of the taste of farm-fresh eggs, vine-ripened melons, cucumbers, fresh beef, gravel-scratching chickens, wine made from grapes. . . .

  I popped my RSC pill. Paul watched me sympathetically.

  “Bad?”

  “Not too,” I said. “There are some memories I can do without. ”

  “Tememblo?”

  “Too gross,” I said. “It erases everything.”

  Tememblo (Temporary Memory Block) was a restricted drug we had developed. Given by injection, it produced complete forgetfulness, either immediately before or after the events, for periods of one to forty-eight hours, depending on its strength. But the duration of the effect was limited.

  Paul was instantly alert and interested.

  “You’re suggesting a specialized memory inhibitor?” he said. “To block, say, a color memory without inhibiting a scent memory?”

  “Something like that.” I nodded. “But we can’t take it on now. Better put it in the Tomorrow File.”

  We no longer smiled at that, though it had started as a joke.

  Soon after Paul Bumford joined DIVRAD, he sent me a memo tape suggesting that every individual in the US have his BIN (Birth Identification Number) tattooed on his forearm. The idea was preposterous, but I admired the organization of his argument.

  I called him in and explained why his suggestion was impractical for social and political reasons.

  “If it’s the cosmetic effect of the tattooing that might offend, ’ ’ he offered, “we could use a skin dye visible only under ultraviolet light.”

  “Paul, you’re not computing. We still have some objects in this country who have harsh memories of Germany’s Third Reich, the concentration camps, the arm tattoos. If I suggested such a program, all hell would break loose.”

  “Obsoletes,” he said. “They can be manipulated.”

  “Obsos,” I agreed. “And they probably could be manipulated if I felt the project was important enough. But I don’t. Do you know how long it took us to get the National Data Bank accepted? Five years! By a massive-all-media effort to convince objects it was not a computer but just a highly sophisticated filing system. Files, not dossiers. And it was only after the Fertility Control Act was passed that we were able to assign Birth Identification Numbers. You must learn that what is practical and useful scientifically is not necessarily practical and useful socially, ethically, or economically. And especially politically.”

  “I still think it’s a good idea,” he said stubbornly.

  “As a means of personal identification? Well. . . maybe. About as good, and bad, as fingerprints, I’d guess. But we’re working on something much better.

  He came alive. “Genetic codes?”

  “No good. Not in the case of identical twins or clone groups. Ever hear of forensic microbiology?”

  “No.”

  “Suggested about 1970. But nobody did anything about it at the time because most of the biomedical research then was therapy-oriented. But this could be big. Right now I have only one object serving on it. Mary Bergstrom, a neurophysiologist. She’s good, but she needs help on the microbiology. I want you to serve with her.”

  “Will she rule me?”

  “No. You’ll be equals, reporting only to me. I’m very interested in this. I’ll code you and Mary the IMP Team, for Individual Microbiological Profile.”

  He reached for his memo tape.

  “Then I guess I can erase this.”

  “Don’t do that.” I smiled, putting my hand on his. “Have it transcribed and filmed. “It’s not a bad idea. But for the future. Put it in the Tomorrow File.”

  “The Tomorrow File?” He liked that. He smiled.

  We became users that night.

  Since then, whenever we—together or separately—came up with an idea that could not be developed because of the current social, economic, or political climate, we put it in the Tomorrow File. Paul kept the film spindles in his office safe.

  We finished our dinner.

  “How do you feel?” Paul asked. “The spansule work?”

  “Fine, ” I said. "So far. Knock on wood." I rapped the table top.

  “That’s plastic,” Paul said.

  “Old habits stop hard,” I said.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “That’s the problem.”

  We went back to my apartment. Paul wanted to watch the AGC Network—Avant-Garde Cable. They were presenting Walter Bronkowsky on the Leopold Synthesizer, playing his own symphony, Variations on the Rock of Ages Mambo. We watched and listened to about five minutes of Bronkowsky twiddling his dials and flipping his switches. Then Paul and I exchanged grimaces. He tried other channels.

  It was a new laser-holograph three-dimensional set, with a one-meter box. But all we could get were sit-coms, talk shows, and the tenth rerun of Deep Throat. So we went to bed.

  Paul’s mucus membranes were gainfully tender. Our investment had endured long enough for each to be attuned to the physical and mental rhythms of the other. We were, for instance, able to go into alpha together.

  Recently, almost as a hobby, Paul had been researching ESP. He had evolved a theory that during sexual arousal, as during moments of other emotional stress—fear, anger, etc.—the ESP faculty was intensified.

  We had been conducting a series of experiments to test this out. Before sexual relations, Paul or I would write a single word or simple phrase on a piece of paper, keeping it hidden from the other. During using, the sender attempted to transmit mentally the word or phrase he had written, and the other to receive mentally the identical word or phrase.

  Results had been inconclusive but encouraging enough to continue. That night Paul was sending.

  After we summited, and our respiration and cardiac rates had returned to normal, Paul asked, “What was it?”

  I hesitated a moment, then said, “Ultimate pleasure.”

  Paul switched on the lamp, reached to the bedside table. He picked up his note and unfolded it so I could read what he had written: “Ultimate pleasure.”

  I shook my head. “Not conclusive. Too subjective. It may have been an emotional or purely physical reaction on my part.”

  “Not so,” Paul said. “You’ve never used that phrase before. And besides, it is objective. It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a long time. I put a memo on it in the Tomorrow File. It proposes the development of an Ultimate Pleasure compound. In pill form. Cheap. Addictive. No toxic effects. No serious side effects. Working directly on the hypothalamus or affecting the norepinephrine-mediated tracts.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said.

  I turned off the bedlamp and we went to sleep.

  I was in the middle of an REM dream when I was awakened by the chiming of the bedroom flasher extension.

  “Flasher” was not the correct name for this device, of course. Technically, it was a Video Phone. Why flasher? Because the new devices had spawned a new breed of obscene phone callers. The conventional table or desk set consisted of a 3 dm viewing screen with a 5 cm camera lens mounted above and centered between the video and sound control dials and the push-button station selector.

  The obscene caller, ef or em, stood before the flasher so the face could not be viewed by the camera lens, and exhibited naked genitalia after calling a selected or random number. Such callers, and there were many, were termed “flashers.” The device took its popular name from them.

  I pulled on a patterned plastilin robe and sat before the flasher on my bedroom desk. Paul climbed out of bed and stood behind the set where he could not be photographed. I flicked the On switch. The color image bloomed blurry and shaky, then steadied and focused. It was a pleasant-faced black ef, wearing the blue zipsuit of a PS-7. We stared at each other.

  “Mr. Nicholas Bennington Flair?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Mr. Flair, are you AssDepDirRad?”

  “I am. ”

  “Would you insert your BIN card, please.”

  I motion
ed to Paul. He rushed to get my card from my discarded bronze zipsuit.

  Meanwhile the ef was looking at my image and then down at her desk, obviously comparing my features to a photo. Paul handed me the BIN card over the set. I inserted it in a slot under the screen. The ef read her output, sent by the magnetic-inked numbers on my card. She seemed satisfied.

  “Mr. Flair, this is DIVDAT in San Francisco. We have a message to you from Angela Teresa Berri, DEPDIRSAT. May I show it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The printed message came on.

  It was a memo, dated that day.

  From: DEPDIRSAT.

  To: AssDepDirRad.

  Subject: IMP progress report.

  You personally rush urgent latest. Emergency, /s/ Berri.

  The operator came on again.

  “Did you get that, sir?”

  “I did,” I told her. “No reply, and thank you.”

  The screen went dead, a little white moon fading, fading. . I flicked the Off switch. Paul and I looked at each other.

  “She’s on a threeday,” he said finally. “Someplace south of San Francisco.”

  “I know.”

  “That report she wants—I wrote it. Strictly NSP—No Significant Progress. ’ ’

  “I know.”

  “Listen,” he said, “are you sure that was from her?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You are?” He looked at me narrowly. “Oh-ho! Section code. I get it. ‘Rush urgent latest. Emergency.’ R-U-L-E. Verification code—right?”

  No idiot he.

  “Right.” I nodded.

  I looked at the bedside digital clock.

  “If we hurry I can make the 2330 courier flight from Ellis. Let me shower, shave, and dress. First, you lay on a cart and copter, and book me on the flight. Then put on some clothes and get me an

  Instox copy of that report from your office. Meet me outside in twenty minutes.”

  He nodded and we started rushing.

  Twenty minutes later he handed over the sealed report and drove the electric cart to the copter pad at the other end of the compound. “Nick,” he said. “Be careful.”

  “Careful?”

  “Something’s up. If she really needed that report, which l doubt, it could have been scanned to her. But she started with ‘You—You personally. . . .’ ”

  “That’s right.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea.” .

  “You have no idea—or I have no need to know?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Will you flash me after you see her?”

  “No. If possible I’ll take the return flight. I’ll be back before dawn.”

  “Nick, I grabbed a couple of things in my office—amitriptyline and the new iproniazid. Want one?”

  “I’d like the fast upper but I’m not going to take it. I better play this straight.”

  He parked in the shadow of the hangar, cast by the floodlights on the pad. The copter was waiting there, rotor slowly turning. Paul and I kissed.

  “Take care,” he said lightly.

  I made the 2330 hypersonic from the airfield that had formerly been Ellis Island. We landed in San Francisco two hours later, and most of the time was spent circling over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, going and coming through the sonic wall.

  Arrival was approximately 0130, New York time. I was coptered and then driven to Angela Berri’s seaside home in less than 30 minutes. According to my digiwatch, I walked down to the beach just before 0200, New York time. But just before 2300, local time. Ergo, I had arrived before I had been summoned. Amusing.

  X-3

  We came up from the beach into the main house. Angela Berri led the way into a living room-office-den, then closed and locked the door behind me. She motioned me to a white plasticade armchair, then switched on a cassette of a gamelan quartet. I remembered she fancied Eastern music. She turned up the volume of her hemispherical sound system. Too loud. The windows fluttered. She went to a small office refrigerator and, without asking my preference, poured us each a glass of chilled Smack.

  She sat down behind the red plastisteel desk.

  “You brought the report I wanted, Nick?”

  “Yes. Here.”

  I leaned forward to scale the sealed envelope onto the desktop. She tore it open, scanned the report swiftly, tossed it aside.

  “What is the status now?”

  Curious. She received weekly progress reports, and I knew she listened to them. She had a double doctorate—in molecular biology and biochemical genetics. She would understand exactly what we were doing on the Individual Microbiology Profile Project.

  But dutifully I replied, ‘ ‘Everyone in the Department of Bliss has been tested and coded.”

  “New employees?” she asked sharply.

  “Not those coming aboard in the last six weeks. But we have everyone else. The computer has been programmed. We’re tuning up now. We should be able to start blind tests in a day or two.”

  She nodded. “I’m beginning to work on my budget recommendations,” she said tonelessly. “I must adjust the allocation for IMP.”

  Curiouser. She knew as well as I that no specific allocation had ever been made for the IMP Project. The new dollars came from my discretionary fund, as did the love for all pure research projects. Congress and the public were interested only in hardware. We hid the rest.

  She came over to me and stood directly behind my chair.

  “I’m glad you could bring the new report personally, Nick.”

  But it was not a new report. She had scanned it two weeks ago. What was—

  Then, standing behind me, she began lightly stroking my temples, jawline, beneath the chin, with her fingertips. My initial reaction was ego-oriented. I knew she took profit from me, and thought she might want to use me. But then, as those cool fingers continued to search the outlines of my face, I knew what was happening.

  That interrogation on the beach had been to assure her that I was who I claimed to be, Nicholas Bennington Flair. That I remembered events that only she and I had shared. But it was inconclusive. An object’s memories could be drained, to be learned by another object. I had helped develop the drugs to do it.

  This probing of my face with her fingertips was to confirm that I was the em I appeared to be, Nick Flair, and not the product of clever surgeons using the new Juskin. It was a synthetic product, bonded to natural skin by a technique not unlike welding. It left no scars or seams, but it did leave an invisible welt at the line of juncture that could be felt.

  She feared me an impostor-—a not unreasonable fear. Two months previously the Statistics Projection Chief of the Department of Agribusiness, formerly the Department of Agriculture, had proved to be an impostor, in the employ of a cartel of grain dealers. The original Chief had been assassinated.

  She went back behind the red desk and sat there, staring at me. We both sipped our plastiglasses of Smack while she tried to make up her mind. I thought idly that the reason for her senseless questions about the IMP Project had been inspired by her suspicion that this room was being shared. That was also the reason for the high volume of the gamelan tape. The sound was sufficient to set up random vibrations of walls and windows, in case anyone was sharing with a long-distance laser beam.

  I turned the glass of Smack in my palms. The Jellicubes of “ice” didn’t melt. Unfortunately. They looked like little blocks of squid.

  Smack was interesting. It was the best-selling soft drink in the world, by far. It had a sweetish citric flavor. Other soft drinks tasted better, but Smack had an advantage they didn’t have: it was addictive.

  The original formula was a serendipitous discovery. In 1978, Pace Pharmaceuticals, in St. Louis, was doing research on a drug that might be effective against the so-called ‘ ‘fatty liver” caused by alcohol addiction. Eventually, they found themselves working on the physiological effects of alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine.

  Two years later, P
ace had produced a powder that was, in solution, admittedly physically addictive. But it did not require increased dosage to provide mild euphoria over a long period of time. More important, Pace claimed, it produced absolutely no harmful physical or psychological effects.

  It was a nice legal point. Pace decided to meet the issue head-on. They fought it through the courts for seven years. By the time the Supreme Court decided, in 1987, that addictive substances were not, per se, illegal, providing they had no toxic effects, Pace was ready with “Smack! The Flavor You Can’t Forget!” It was widely rumored that two Associate Justices and five law clerks became millionaires overnight by prior knowledge of the decision and purchase of Pace stock. This may or may not be operative.

  What was operative was that Pace’s addictive formula was now licensed for chewing gum, toothpaste, ice cream, mouthwash, and candy bars. As the obsos were fond of saying, “Better living through chemistry.”

  So there I was, sipping my Smack like millions of others throughout the world, and watching Angela Berri struggle to make up her mind. It really didn’t take her long. She rose, pulled heavy drapes across all the Thermapanes. She returned to her swivel chair, unlocked a desk drawer, drew out a tape cassette, placed it squarely in the middle of the desk blotter. She stared at it. I stared at it. Then she raised her eyes to give me that hard, tight half-smile of hers. I looked at her, computing.

  When, at the age of twelve, I announced to my father that I had been accepted at the government’s new National Science Academy, under the Accelerated Conditioning Program, and that I intended to make a career of Public Service, he gave me a sardonic look and said merely, “Save yourself.”

  It was five years before I understood what he had meant. As I moved up in PS, I became increasingly aware of the plots of Byzantine complexity and Oriental ferocity that swirled through government, and especially Public Service. Unless you were utterly devoid of ambition, it was impossible to remain aloof. You had to ally yourself with the strong, shun the weak. More important, you had to join the winners, reject the losers. It called for inching along a political tightrope. You hoped that you would master the skill before falling.