The Feelies

"PLEASE TELL ME YOUR NAME."

"Frank Zola."

"Please sit down, Frank."

It was one of those intimate HAL 9000 voices, soft, dependable, and reassuring, but, at the same time, strangely dead. Frank sat down. There was just one chair in the viewing pod.

"Relax, Frank."

Frank slid down in the chair a little, but he could not relax. The viewing pods in the basement of the CM building were like tiny individual spaceships, or maybe coffins. Once the airtight door had sighed closed behind him he was alone with just the high-backed contour chair with the speakers built into the headrest and the sixty-inch, high-resolution screen. Although they were used by executives to look at the roughcuts of commercials, view normal tapes, and watch electronic presentations, their unique design was primarily for experiencing audio-visual-chemical mock-ups of feelie software that were complete apart from the Direct Neural Interface itself. They were also used for indoctrination of the newly hired.

"You have joined the family of Combined Media, Frank, and we all hope that you'll be very happy here. Before you commence your duties as a trainee project manager in the public relations department, you and I are going to have a little chat while I show you a short film. You should look on this as a part of the process of your getting acquainted with the corporation."

The screen was a friendly neutral blue. Frank Zola's nose twitched as though a sneeze were starting to build. Frank might have been the new kid in the corporation, the lowliest of the lowly and at the absolute bottom of the ladder, but he wasn't completely innocent. He knew that the corporate ethical philosophy allowed any trick that might be applicable. If CM believed that raining him with a fine mist of chemical softeners pumped in through the air-conditioning vents would aid the induction process, then it would be done. If he was going to get on in the corporation, he knew that he was expected to give them not only his time and service but also his mind. Frank Zola intended to do just that. He wasn't going to complain. He would take whatever they handed out, and he would go on taking it until he was finally in a sufficiently elevated position to be the one who dished it out, and then the poor bastards underneath him would have to watch out.

On the screen, an orchid slowly unfurled against a black background, and the voice was soft and insinuating.

"To grow in the field of public relations is to realize that persuasion is a matter of gentle motion."

The orchid was replaced by a green hillside covered by contentedly grazing white sheep.

"The public doesn't like to be disturbed. Force can only be applied in the most extreme of situations. The keyword is ease. We don't bully-the public will only panic and back away. We don't harangue-they will simply tune us out. We ease. At this moment, and in the immediate foreseeable future, the primary task of the public relations department of this corporation is to ease the public into a full and total acceptance of IE as a part of their lives. In many cases, it will actually become their lives."

The images were speeding up. Well-dressed people thronged a city street during the rush hour; a golden couple made love on silver satin sheets; a perfect blue sphere dropped in slow motion into mirrorlike blue liquid, there was an eruption of the initial splash, and the ripples slowly spread in even, concentric circles. The CM logo shone like the sun.

"We are dealing with a new medium, a medium that has to be handled with tact and diplomacy. If simply thrust at the public it could produce fear and confusion, even guilt."

A blood-red sun set over the skyscrapers of a city. Members of the underclass rioted against a background of burning buildings. Angry music swelled; Nazis marched down a wide boulevard.

"There will be no confusion."

The CM logo no longer glowed like the sun. It was cold, polished steel and white light.

"It has been said more than once that the history of mankind and the cornerstone of our civilization is communication. In the civilization that we are building, communication is everything. We communicate, and the public responds."

The CM logo expanded and spread across an infinite universe in waves of psychedelic color.

"To understand public relations is to understand that it is an infinitely plural art."

Frank Zola was no longer really listening. Something was definitely being pumped into the pod. He stared openmouthed at the images on the screen. He hardly listened to the words. They washed over him, barely touching the conscious leading edge of his mind, sinking instead into the porous depths of his subconscious.

"There are as many answers to a question as there are shades of opinion among the public who are asking it. Our kinship is to the truth, but the relationship is a complex one. In this house, there are many truths, equal but separate. All is never what it appears, and the stages of strategy may not yield the obvious end result. Would you like an example?"

"Y-yes."

Frank Zola found that he was actually nodding, responding to a piece of software.

It was so sudden that it took him completely by surprise. The big close-up was of a construction worker, tanned and smiling in yellow hard hat, blue jeans, and a red plaid workshirt-a total blue-collar stereotype. He grinned into the camera.

"I tell you one thing, buddy, when I get my bonus, I'm going to have me a feelie. Ain't no son of a bitch gonna stop me."

The hard hat image froze. The Hal 9000 voice came back.

"Are you surprised, Frank? We used the word feelie. You probably thought we never said that word. Standing Directive 1341 stipulates that the word 'cheapens and degrades the image of the IE service and will, under no circumstances, be used in a public context.' You'll probably be even more surprised to learn that the word was made up right here in PR. The word feelie is our gift to the people. It is the common colloquial term. It's not our word-it's their word. IE belongs to the corporation, but feelie is the property of the people."

The screen showed hundreds of stereotyped workers marching across a vast flat expanse, rank behind rank, all the way to the horizon. It had to be a computer simulation. Heroic music began to swell under the voice.

"It's the people's word, Frank. It's something that belongs to them. It's their ultimate hope. It's the machine that can solve all their problems."

The CM logo was back, but this time it was hewn from black stone, dark and forbidding, a brooding monolith that cast a long dark shadow over the marching workers. The Hal 9000 voice was mournful.

"The people don't like the corporation, Frank. They don't like us at all. We are the only thing that stands between them and the fulfillment of their fantasies. The corporation is the bogeyman. It set up the price system that limits the service to the wealthy. It is the corporation that excludes the poor and the underclass. They hate us, but we don't mind. We understand, and we forgive. We know what is best, and we will do what is best even if cruelty is the only route to the ultimate kindness. It is better they resent the corporation than feel that the service was something being inflicted on them. This way they want the service, Frank. And they believe that it's their own idea that they want it. And it doesn't stop at wanting. They covet it; they yearn for it. They'd go into debt or steal for it if they thought that would bring it within their reach."

The voice suddenly hardened. "Anything that will one day be the ultimate means of confining the excess population of this planet has to be something that the excess population desires with all its collective being. That's public relations, Frank."

The CM logo was back, proud as an eagle. The flag was behind it. The background music wasn't quite the national anthem, but it came very close. Tears streamed down Frank Zola's face. A small part of his mind kept telling him that it was all chemical softeners and bullshit, that what the computer had been saying to him was knee-jerk nonsense, but he couldn't help himself. Waves of powerful if patently phony emotion were coursing through him like deep gasping shudders-and the voice still wasn't through with him.

"Listen to me carefully, Frank. Listen to me. The IE is the machine that will solve the world's problem. Solve is an anagram of loves, Frank. Did you hear that? Solve is an anagram of loves, Frank. In public relations, Frank, we have to love the public. Our power is based only in love, Frank. We love every last one of them."

Frank was nodding helplessly. He wanted to love the public. He wanted the power to love the public. He wanted the power of love. He wanted the power. He wanted the power to love the bastards right to death.

"In the next few months, Frank, we will have more of these little chats. They are a crucial part of the indoctrination process. In thirty seconds, the pod door will open. Please leave quickly and quietly."

WANDA-JEAN WAS STARTING TO GET TO know some of the other regular contestants. There was the hostile girl with dark hair called Sylvia; Danny, the long-haired kid from some small town who seemed to train all the time; Paul, the blond boy who kept himself to himself; and Nancy, who came on real friendly, but who was probably more of a ruthless gouger than any of them.

The five of them were kind of thrown together. The competition was too intense on any game show for the players ever to form proper friendships. The only reason these five knew one another's names was because they were all at the same level on the show. They had all survived their initial appearances, and had one more show to go before they could get on the Dreamroad.

Of course, by the time they reached the Dreamroad, there would no longer be five of them. At the most, two might have come through, more probably it would be one, or maybe they would all go down during the next screening.

Wanda-Jean knew a few more of the contestants by sight. They were the ones who had come onto the show after her. The mere fact of getting through two programs unscathed made her a veteran already.

And, of course, there was Ramone, the dark, faggy field leader who was almost at the end of the Dreamroad. Not that she spoke or even got close to Ramone. The network had him stashed away in a top downtown hotel. He was constantly guarded so no one could interfere with him. There was a buzz, however, that Ramone wouldn't make it through to a feelie contract. Behind the scenes rumor had him going down to Suzie, the vacant-looking farm girl, in the very next show. Wanda-Jean had learned that behind the scenes rumor was uncannily accurate.

Wanda-Jean had learned a great deal during her short time on "Wildest Dreams." Most of it didn't do much to make her any happier about the life she was living. One of the first things she had discovered was that fucking Murray wasn't going to do a damn thing for her. As she had suspected at the very beginning, Murray was far from being Bobby Priest's right hand. He was a gofer, and a pretty low-level gofer, at that. She had compared notes with some of the other girls. It turned out that he pulled the same stunt on just about every personable female who passed the audition. The most galling part was that his bullshit usually worked.

Murray Dorfman's proposition wasn't the last of that kind, either. As Wanda-Jean moved closer toward the Dreamroad, the offers simply came from higher up the studio hierarchy. All Wanda-Jean could do was to become more selective as she progressed through the show. She still couldn't afford to upset anyone who mattered. There was too much at stake.

Wanda-Jean knew she ought to have been happy. With two shows under her belt she was turning into a minor celebrity. Her name had appeared in one of the game show gossip sheets. Her phone rang all the time. Old boyfriends, whom she hadn't seen in months, suddenly remembered how desirable she was and wanted to date her. Again, she had to learn to be selective.

The most surprising part was the way that total strangers yelled at her in the street. Some wished her luck, others made smutty comments. They treated her as though they knew her intimately. It was as if she had become part of their lives.

Wanda-Jean ought to have been reveling in it all. It was a way of life that she had always dreamed about. For the first time in her life, she was somebody. Admittedly she was only a minor somebody, not a star like Bobby Priest or Fay Fox from "The Torture Garden," but a somebody all the same.

There was a problem, however. It just wasn't the way she had imagined it. Something was wrong. She wasn't sleeping at nights. She was drinking more and feeding herself a whole lot more pills. At first she thought it might have been the procession of Murrays who came knocking on her door, with their eager, smooth faces and busy, clammy hands. She dismissed that theory. She could handle the Murrays. Christ, she'd been handling them, to one degree or another, all her life.

She also found she could handle the way the show was specifically set up to degrade the players. So she got knocked down and pushed around, so the animals in the crowd yelled abuse at her, so she generally ended each game bare-ass naked. She found that as long as she was winning she could almost take a perverse pleasure in what they put her through.

"As long as she was winning" seemed to be the key phrase. The thing that stopped her enjoying her newfound fame was exactly that. She only had to foul up once and it would be all over. A single mistake and she'd be nobody again, just like that. There was a current of tension that ran through every aspect of her new life. It made it impossible for her to relax. Even if she got through to the Dreamroad, it would only get worse.

Wanda-Jean knew she ought to be looking forward to the Dreamroad. The idea of the downtown hotel, the crowds that would gather outside the hotel or the studios just to stare at her, and the bodyguards in constant attendance should have been the experience of a lifetime, something to wait for with bated breath. As it came closer, however, it just didn't feel right. She was starting to view the whole thing with extreme trepidation.

She even felt guilty about her doubts and fears. She knew that she wasn't reacting in the right way. There were millions of people who'd give their right arms to be in her place. It didn't seem fair. How could you possibly enjoy anything that came neatly packaged with a constant reminder that it was likely to be taken away in an instant?

Wanda-Jean's train of thought was cut off and jerked back to earth by the ringing of the phone. At first she ignored it. There were a lot of phone calls since she'd appeared on TV. Most of them wanted something, frequently her body.

It went on ringing. Despite her state of mind Wanda-Jean had never had what it takes to sit by a ringing phone. By the time it had rung seven times, Wanda-Jean's willpower crumbled. She picked it up.

"Hello."

"This is building security," a female robot voice said.

Wanda-Jean sighed. "I don't want to see anyone."

"A letter has arrived for you. It came Fedex."

Wanda-Jean's heart stopped. The letter had to be about the next game. The specifics were sent to each contestant on the day before the taping of each show. The letter would tell her exactly which obstacle course she had drawn.

"I'll come down and get it."

"Your letter is with the duty doorman. Please hold the line. He will be with you momentarily."

There was a brief burst of easy-listening hold music.

"Hello, Wanda-Jean, this is Reuben."

Reuben was one of the token human doormen. He was a tiny birdlike Hispanic with a scarcely concealed drinking problem.

"Yeah… uh… listen, Reuben, I'll be right down to pick it up."

"I'll bring it up if you like."

"You would?"

"Sure. No trouble."

"Hey, thanks."

"I'll be up right away."

Wanda-Jean hung up. From where she sat, she could see out of the apartment window. There was really nothing to look at. Only the smog and the identical apartment building across the street. It suddenly seemed to her that Reuben was about the only person she could trust. A doorman was the only person she could count on. She knew she ought to take some pills and snap out of this mood. It was probably only a comedown.

The door buzzed. Wanda-Jean got up to answer it. As she had expected, it was Reuben. Reuben wasn't the most impressive figure of a man Wanda-Jean had ever seen. He was a good two inches shorter than her. The pale gray uniform provided by the owners of the building was about two sizes too large.

He had the familiar white envelope with him. He held it out to Wanda-Jean, but she didn't take it. Suddenly she didn't want to be alone when she opened the message from the show.

"Why don't you come inside for a moment, Reuben?"

Reuben hesitated. "I didn't ought to be away from the door for too long. There ain't no one to cover for me."

"A few minutes won't make all that much difference."

Reuben reluctantly came inside. Wanda-Jean went over to the liquor cabinet.

"You want a drink?"