Is That What People Do? (49 page)

Computer-assisted sexuality suggests not only new software but new hardware. A sex robot would be the action arm of the computer. Not necessarily human in appearance (despite the forecasts of science fiction), such a robot might well be boxy, with catlike curves. Its skin would be a lustrous fur, except for those portions encased in black leather, lace, and chrome. It would probably not speak English, but instead employ a special language made up of instinctively understood purrs and growls. The sex machine could be of any size from petite to grandiose, and would come equipped with variously sized and shaped probes and orifices. An ideal orgy participant, the machine could accommodate up to a dozen humans by acting as a central plug-in device.

A sex robot must demonstrate apparent independence; otherwise, the randomness and tease-factor mentioned earlier would result in unpredictability. The importance of this must not be minimized. Easily obtained sex is never satisfactory, at least not for long. The “best” sex entails the dramatic component of uncertainty. Your sex machine would definitely not always be “available.” It would be no “pushover”; you might have to seduce the thing, perhaps with wines and soft music, perhaps with a special fetish it might be said to “care for.” Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the machine might still refuse you. You could, of course, override the refusal, thereby providing yourself with the mechanistic equivalent of rape.

However it manifests, the future of sex seems assured. The only remaining uncertainty is the human mind. It is conceivable that some people will be so perverse as to refuse the new pleasures that science brings. For these people, reconditioning may be necessary. The means will be available to make people
like
what is available, whether they like it or not. Some may deplore this as brainwashing, and, considered narrowly, it is just that. But so what? Aren’t any means appropriate in the pursuit of mankind’s highest goal—pleasure?

THE LIFE OF ANYBODY

Last night, as I lay on the couch watching
The Late Show
; a camera and sound crew came to my apartment to film a segment of a TV series called
The Life of Anybody.
I can’t say I was completely surprised, although I had not anticipated this. I knew the rules; I went on with my life exactly as if they were not there. After a few minutes, the camera and recording crew seemed to fade into the wallpaper. They are specially trained for that.

My TV was on, of course; I usually have it on. I could almost hear the groans of the critics: “Another goddamned segment of a guy watching the tube. Doesn’t anybody in this country do anything but watch the tube?” That upset me, but there was nothing I could do about it. That’s the way it goes.

So the cameras whizzed along, and I lay on the couch like a dummy and watched two cowboys play the macho game. After a while my wife came out of the bathroom, looked at the crew, and groaned, “Oh, Christ, not
tonight.”
She was wearing my CCNY sweatshirt on top, nothing on the bottom. She’d just washed her hair and she had a towel tied around her head. She had no makeup on. She looked like hell. Of all nights, they had to pick this one. She was probably imagining the reviews: “The wife in last night’s turgid farce…”

I could see that she wanted badly to do something—to inject a little humor into our segment, to make it into a domestic farce. But she didn’t. She knew as well as I did that anyone caught acting, fabricating, exaggerating, diminishing, or otherwise distorting his life, would be instantly cut off the air. She didn’t want that. A bad appearance was better than no appearance at all. She sat down on a chair and picked up her crocheting hook. I picked up my magazine. Our movie went on.

You can’t believe it when it happens to you. Even though you watch the show every evening and see it happen, you can’t believe it’s happening to you. I mean, it’s suddenly
you
there, lying on the couch doing your nothing number, and there they are, filming it and implying that the segment represents
you.

I prayed for something to happen. Air raid—sneak Commie attack—us a typical American family caught in the onrush of great events. Or a burglar breaks in, only he’s not just a burglar, he’s something else, and a whole fascinating sequence begins. Or a beautiful woman knocks at the door, claiming that only I can help her. Hell, I would have settled for a phone call.

But nothing happened. I actually started to get interested in that movie on TV, and I put down my magazine and actually watched it. I thought they might be interested in that.

The next day my wife and I waited hopefully, even though we knew we had bombed out. Still, you can never tell. Sometimes the public wants to see more of a person’s life. Sometimes a face strikes their fancy and you get signed for a series. I didn’t really expect that anyone would want to see a series about my wife and me, but you can never tell. Stranger things have happened.

Nowadays my wife and I spend our evenings in very interesting ways. Our sexual escapades are the talk of the neighborhood, my crazy cousin Zoe has come to stay with us, and regularly an undead thing crawls upstairs from the cellar.

Practically speaking, you never get another chance. But you can never tell. If they do decide to do a follow-up segment, we’re ready.

GOODBYE FOREVER TO MR. PAIN

Joseph Elroy was nicely settled back in his armchair on this Sunday morning in the near future, trying to remember the name of his favorite football team, which he was going to watch later on the TV while reading the bankruptcy notices in the Sunday
Times
and thinking uncomfortable thoughts.

It was a normal sort of day: the sky outside was colored its usual blah beige, which went well with the blah browns with which Mrs. Elroy, now grinding her teeth in the kitchen, had decorated the place during one of her many short-lived bursts of enthusiasm. Their child, Elixir, was upstairs pursuing her latest discovery—she was three years old and had just gotten into vomiting.

And Elroy had a tune going in his head. “Amapola” was spinning just now, and it would continue until another song segued into it, one song after another, all day, all night, forever. This music came from Elroy’s internal Muzak system, which came on whenever inattentiveness became necessary for survival.

So Elroy was in a certain state. Maybe you’ve been there yourself: the kid cries and the wife nags and you drift through your days and nights, well laid back, listening to the secret Muzak in your head. And you know that you’ll never crack through the hazy plastic shield that separates you from the world, and the gray mists of depression and boredom settle in for a nice long visit. And the only thing that prevents you from opting for a snuffout is your Life-Force, which says to you, “Wake up, dummy, it’s
you
this is happening to—yes, you, strangling there in your swimming pool of lime-flavored Jell-O with a silly grin on your love-starved face as you smoke another Marlboro and watch the iniquities of the world float by in three-quarter time.”

Given that situation, you’d take any chance that came along to pull out of it, wouldn’t you? Joseph Elroy’s chance came that very afternoon.

The telephone rang. Elroy picked it up. A voice at the other end asked, “Who is this, please?”

“This is Joseph Elroy,” Elroy replied.

“Mr. Elroy, do you happen to have a
tune
or
song
going through your head at this moment?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“What is the name of the song?”

“I’ve been humming ‘Amapola’ to myself for the last couple of hours.”

“What was that name again, Mr. Elroy?”

“‘Amapola.’ But what—”

“That’s it! That’s the one!”

“Huh?”

“Mr. Elroy, now I can reveal to you what this is all about. I am Marv Duffle, and I’m calling you from
‘The Shot of a Lifetime Show’
and you have named
the very tune
going through the head of our genial guest for tonight, Mr. Phil Suggers! That means that you and your family, Mr. Elroy, have won this month’s big synchronicity prize, The Shot of a Lifetime! Mr. Elroy, do you know what that means?”

“I know!” Elroy shouted joyously. “I watch the show so I know, I know! Elva, stop freaking out in there, we’ve won the big one, we’ve won, we’ve won, we’ve won!”

What this meant in practical terms was that the following day a group of technicians in one-piece orange jumpsuits came and installed what looked like a modified computer console in the Elroys’ living room, and Marv Duffle himself handed them the all-important Directory and explained how all of the best avenues for personal growth and change and self-realization had been collated and tied directly into this computer. Many of these services had formerly been available only to the rich, talented, and successful, who really didn’t need them. But now the Elroys could avail themselves of them, and do it all via patented superfast high-absorption learning modalities developed at Stanford and incorporated into the equipment. In brief, their lives were theirs to shape and mold as they desired, free, and in the privacy of their home.

Elroy was a serious-minded man, as we all are at heart, and so the first thing he did was to search through the Directory, which listed all available services from all the participating companies, until he found Vocationeers, the famous talent-testing firm of Mill Valley, California. They were able to process Elroy by telephone and get the results back to him in fifteen minutes. It seemed that Elroy had the perfect combination of intelligence, manual dexterity, and psychological set to become a topflight micropaleontologist. That position happened to be open at the nearby Museum of Natural History, and Elroy learned all he needed to know about the work with the help of the Bluchner-Wagner School for High-Speed Specialized Learning. So Elroy was able to begin a promising career only two weeks after he had heard of it for the first time.

Elva Elroy, or Elf, as she called herself in wistful moments, wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She looked through the Directory until she found Mandragore, Inc., makers of Norml-Hi twenty-four-hour timed-release mood-enhancement spansules. She had them sent over at once with the Ames Rapid Dope Delivery Service—”Your High Is Our Cry.” Feeling better than she had in ages, Elva was able to face the problem of dinner. After careful consideration, she called Fancy Freakout Food Merchandisers—”Let Us Administer to the Hungry Child in Your Head.”

For their little daughter, Elixir, there was BabyTeasers, a crack service that cajoled the spoiled scions of oil sheiks, now available to the Elroys on ‘round-the-clock standby basis to get the kid out of her temper. Elixir was delighted. New big soft toys to order around! What could be so bad?

That left the Elroys with world enough and time in which to discover each other. They went first with Omni-Pleasure Family Consultants, who, on television in Houston the previous month, had revitalized a marriage that had been pronounced terminal. One counseling session brought the Elroys a deep and abiding love for each other whenever they looked deep into each other’s eyes and concentrated. This gave them the necessary maturity to take the Five-Day Breakthrough with the Total Sex Response people of Lansing, Michigan—which, too, was a success in terms of new highs reached and plateaus maintained. Yet a certain anxiety crept into Elroy’s performance and he felt the need to avail himself of Broadway Joe’s Romantic Sex Service—”Illicit meetings with beautiful sexy broads of a refinement guaranteed not to gross you out.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Elva when she heard about that, and instantly fulfilled a longstanding desire by calling Rough Traders Sex Service. She had been attracted by their ad in the Directory: “Dig, you want it rough, raw, real, and sweaty, but you also want that it shouldn’t be a turnoff. Right? Right. Call our number, baby, ‘cause we
got
your number.”

They both got a little freaked out from it all, and cooled out with Dreamboat Launchers of Fire Island and their famous motto: “Meditate the Easy Way, with Dope.”

The Elroys were really getting it all together now, but things kept intruding. Elixir was freaking out again, and at the worst possible time, for Elroy was soon to be profiled by
New York
magazine, and Elva was about to begin a two-week prima ballerina course with a job already assured her at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. They held a family conference and came across an ad in the Directory for a service called Childmenders.

“What does it say?” Elva asked.

Elroy read: ‘“Is your child losing out on the best of life because he/she possesses an unruly personality? Do you feel frustrated by the problem of giving him/her love without getting swallowed up? Is it all getting a bit much? Then why not take advantage of Childmenders! We will cart away your child and return him/her loving, obedient, docile, and easily satisfied—and we will do this without screwing up one bit of his/her individuality, initiative, and aggressiveness, so help us God.’“

“They sound like they give a damn,” Elva said.

“Funny you should say that,” Elroy said. “Right down here at the bottom of their ad, it says, ‘Believe us—we give a damn!’“

“That clinches it,” Elva said. “Call them!”

Elixir was carted away, and the Elroys celebrated their newfound freedom by calling up Instant Real Friends and throwing a party with the help of Perry and Penny, the Party People.

Onward the Elroys plunged, along the rocky trail of self-transcendence. Unfortunately this involved a clash of interests. Mr. Elroy was pursuing Higher Matters through Mindpower. Elva still sought consummation in the veritable flesh. They fought about which item in the Directory they should opt for next. Since they had both taken the Supreme Communication Foundation’s Quickie Course in Inexorable Persuasiveness, they were both terrific arguers. But they got on each other’s nerves because they were both terrible listeners.

Their relationship fell apart. Stubbornly, neither of them would go to Relationship Repairers. In fact, Elva defiantly joined Negatherapeutics, whose intriguing slogan was “Hate Your Way to Happiness.” Elroy pulled himself together and explored his feelings with the revolutionary new Cellular Self-Image Technique and understood at last where he was at: he detested his wife and wanted her dead. It was as simple as that!