Free The Tomorrow File by Lawrence Sanders

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?”
    “Fat chance,” he scoffed. “When they flame me, my nuts are going to be where they’ve always been—between my legs. Who knows, I may go to heaven and need them.”
    “Fat chance,” I repeated, and he laughed.
    We sat a few moments in silence, staring into the cold fireplace. “Something bothering you?” he said finally.
    “Not bothering me, exactly, but perplexing me.”
    “What is it?”
    “I have a Section conference when I get back. I have to make a recommendation to go ahead on a project or to stop it.”
    “What is it?”
    Ordinarily, I don’t like to discuss DIVRAD’s business with outsiders. The indepsec stuff I never do, of course. But it suddenly occurred to me that I might benefit from his practical judgment and shrewdness. I briefly explained Project Supersense to him, how film scenes could be synchronized to give Mind-Jerkers increased stimulation. He listened closely, fascinated. He was always fascinated by anything that affected sexual pleasure, however indirectly.
    “What do you think?” I asked him when I had finished.
    “How many Mind-Jerkers are there in the country?”
    “About two million. Maybe seventy-five percent adults.”
    “How would they pay for this?”
    “I don’t know. We’d license the process, I imagine. The people who make TV tape cassettes might be interested.”
    “I doubt it. Two million isn’t much of a potential market these days. Is there any other way of producing the same results? Say by a pill?”
    “Not at the moment there isn’t.”
    I didn’t tell him about Paul Bumford’s memo in the Tomorrow File on the UP—the Ultimate Pleasure pill.
    “Then forget about Project Supersense. Stop it.” He rose and began to pace about the library. “Try for a pill that increases pleasure. Why a pill? The two big C’s of modern merchandising: Convenience and Consumption. You’ve got to have a product that’s convenient to use, and that is consumed by use, and has to be repurchased periodically. The safety razor was the greatest product ever invented. The makers could give it away, because then you had to buy their blades. That’s where the love was. Ditto the camera. What goddamn good is it without film? No, forget about Project Supersense. Strictly a one-time sale. Put your people to work on a pleasure pill.”
    “It’s not as simple as you think,” I objected. “First of all, what is pleasure? No one can define it. Too subjective. To an obso ef suffering from arthritis, pleasure might simply be absence of pain. To a young em, pleasure might be parachuting from one hundred fifty meters. To me, pleasure is this glass of natural brandy. To you-—well, I know what pleasure is to you.”
    “Don’t say it!” He barked his loud laugh.
    “What I’m getting at is that there are no objective criteria. How can we possibly start synthesizing a pill? We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
    I finished my brandy and stood up. I pleaded tiredness and work to do. He didn’t object. He had work to do,