The Future We Wish We Had

THE STINK OF REALITY by Irene Radford

Dr. Wallace Beebee, PhD, associate professor of biophysics at Vasco da Gama U, swept the paraphernalia atop his wife Evelyn’s dresser into a shoebox. Deodorant, perfume, hairspray, cosmetics, anything with a fragrance. When the box was full he moved into the adjacent bathroom and collected shampoos, soaps, his own shaving cream and aftershave, the candle on the toilet tank. When a second box was full he slapped the lid on it, secured it with a rubber band, and took them both to the laundry room at the opposite end of their ranch-style rental home on the campus fringes.

“The Explorers of VDGU? A bunch of bullshit. Haven’t had an original idea in fifty years,” Wallace grumbled. He’d been on faculty three years, always being promised tenure the next semester, then the next, and the next, always denied because his ideas were just a little too revolutionary. Grants controlled by the university went to projects that kept corporate America happy and conservative, not to strange new inventions worthy of science fiction novels.

Every research grant Wallace applied for ended up in the hands of a more senior faculty member.

How could he and Evelyn ever hope to afford children living on the pittance the university paid untenured-and therefore disposable-professors?

Into another box, he loaded all of the cleaning supplies beneath the bathroom sink. “I’ll show them something that will keep corporate America happy!”

Max, the family corgi, followed his every step, sniffing each item with extreme interest. But then the dog lived through his nose.

That’s what had given Wallace the idea. The dog’s nose ruled his impulses. If it didn’t have a smell, the dog wasn’t interested.

Wallace now knew how to give the world every smell they ever dreamed of. That meant it had to come out of the television. TV ruled America ’s desires. Corporate America ruled Americans through their TV advertising, creating “needful” things where no need existed.

Wallace needed tenure. Only creating the next needful thing would get him that.

People forgot that memory was more closely tied to scent than any other of the five senses. Long before he was through with corporate America, they’d know his name and remember it.

Finally, he ejected the dog from the bedroom too. He closed the door firmly against intrusion. Then he showered with an unscented soap and donned a fresh jogging suit that had air-dried on a line in the back-yard. He couldn’t allow any stray odors to confuse his experiment.

Later, when he knew it worked, he’d verify everything in a sterilized lab. Until then, the invention was his and his alone, carefully pieced together from a discarded and outdated mass spectrometer and a sniffer he’d purchased with his own money from the state crime lab, again outdated. He had to come up with a better name for that device.

His next generation of Beebevision would be smaller and more sensitive. When he had grant money and grad students to collect data.

Finally, all was ready. Cautiously, he made the last connection between his invention, a black cube about ten inches on each side, and the television that dominated one corner of the bedroom. The wires slid into place easily. He tightened the screws.

Holding his breath, he fed the special DVD into the player, turned everything on, and sat in his favorite recliner-carefully vacuumed earlier.

A deep organ note played and a lily of the valley logo blossomed on the screen. He’d borrowed the lily from a design on Evelyn’s favorite perfume, changing it just enough to keep from violating copyright. He’d also added radiating lines indicating the flower’s fragrance.

“Welcome to Fully Sensory Theatery. A Wallace Beebee Production,” intoned a husky alto voice, Evelyn, of course.

Her PhD was in medieval history. Physics didn’t interest her. Nothing interested her except her own discipline. He’d make history come alive for her as it never had before: through her nose.

The scene on the TV shifted to a meadow filled with spring wildflowers. A delicate floral scent wafted to Wallace from the mesh face of the black cube.

He smiled. “It’s working,” he whispered.

Then the scene changed again; a hot desert wind that smelled of dust, sage, and mint accompanied the pictures of Smith Rock in central Oregon. Next, another scene, a beautiful woman (Evelyn) dancing lightly in the moonlight. Her phenomenal perfume made his heart beat faster and his hormones soar.

Then the dog scratched at the door, whined plaintively, and farted.

“OK, OK, I’ll walk you now before you crap on the floor.”

Wallace went about his evening chores and put the bedroom back to rights, whistling a happy tune and smiling hugely.

“My, aren’t you in a good mood!” Evelyn exclaimed when he kissed her soundly upon going to bed that night.

His smile continued well into the next morning. As Wallace walked to his first class he sniffed the scent of freshly mown grass and bright spring flowers with new appreciation. He detected hints of gasoline from the mower and oil in the fertilizer spread among the flowers. That nearly destroyed his happy mood. He might have to find a way to filter his gadget. He wasn’t sure how. Yet.

Two weeks later, Wallace attached his little black cube, reduced to four inches on each side, to a different television. This one sat in the university conference room habituated by the tenure committee. Or “God” as most untenured professors referred to it. Life or death in the academic community rested in the TC’s hands.

Wallace made his careful presentation, then switched off the DVD at the end of the third scene, careful not to let the fourth begin. He wanted to hold that one in reserve for emergencies.

“As you can see, and smell, ladies and gentlemen, this new invention has tremendous commercial as well as academic potential.” He then read Evelyn’s notes about how she would use it to bring history alive.

“Frivolous,” Dr. Pretentious declared.

“Impractical,” chimed in Dr. Beta.

“Demeaning,” finished Dr. Shallow.

“Is biophysics even a recognized discipline at other universities?” Dr. Pretentious asked rhetorically.

And that was the crux of the matter for the TC. Never making a decision until they knew it would be applauded by other universities, never hiring anyone who didn’t have at least two other offers, denying tenure to any but the most staid and conservative candidates.

“Tenure denied.” If Dr. Pretentious had a gavel, the old fart would have pounded it. Instead he gathered up his thick file on Wallace Beebee and retreated.

Wallace hit the play button on the remote. Pictures of Max, fresh from the bath and still stinking of wet dog fur, filled the television screen. He wiggled and yipped and farted, then dropped a big dump right in front of the camera programmed to pickup every hydrocarbon in the air.

“Well, I never!” Dr. Shallow declared. She held a lace-edged hanky to her nose and literally ran out of the room.

“Hmm, Max got into the garbage again. He smells a little like coffee grounds and egg shells.”

Wallace stayed on at VDGU for another year. His applications to other universities were rejected or stalled in committee. He didn’t have enough publication credits. He didn’t have enough experience in academia. His work was too controversial.

He didn’t apply for tenure again at VDGU. He and Evelyn made do with their meager salaries and postponed having children once again. She was denied tenure in medieval history because of her association with Wallace.

They postponed having children once again.

Secretly Wallace worked on his invention in the garage at home. Honing, refining, miniaturizing. Paying for every part out of his own pocket. Then, at last, he had what he needed: a commercially viable version ready to roll off the assembly line.

If he could just sell it. He had to sell it. Evelyn was pregnant despite their precautions. They desperately needed the money.

Strange, he’d detected a change in her body chemistry before she even suspected her pregnancy. Working with his invention every day, testing, honing, had sensitized his own nose almost as much as it had the gadget.

Sixty query letters to various electronics companies resulted in exactly one invitation.

He took most of his savings and bought a roundtrip ticket to Kansas City, Missouri, the corporate headquarters of a major televangelist, Dr. John Baptiste Feelwell. (Wallace suspected the man’s PhD in applied religions was as fake as his toupee.) A dozen suited executives and ad men filled the smallest of their conference rooms. Wallace’s entire house could have fit inside it and still had room left over.

Wallace caught a whiff of musky cologne that attempted to mask a man’s body smell. Wallace almost gagged on the intensity. He’d given up all fragrances himself and grown a beard so he wouldn’t have to use aftershave. He’d gotten to the point where he could identify each individual component of artificial fragrances.

He also knew the man had had eggs Benedict for breakfast and sex within the last hour, probably with the buxom secretary who sat in the corner. Heat suffused his face. These morons were no better than the tenure committee. Angry words coiled on the tip of his tongue.

“Out! I demanded no external fragrances. All of you out until you’ve rid yourself of that… that… stink.”

“What’s he talking about?” One of the ad men smoothed his freshly barbered hair with a manicured hand. His charcoal suit molded his lanky frame as if custom tailored. He made Wallace look frumpy and slovenly in his off-the-rack navy blue pinstripe suit.

“How can we appreciate a new dimension to life when all our noses are clogged with your artificial cologne?” Wallace loomed over the man and pierced him with the same gaze he used on stupid freshman who questioned his authority in the classroom.

The ad man squirmed in his chair.

“You might as well leave, Leland,” Dr. Feelwell intoned from his place at the head of the table. “I haven’t got all day and clearly Dr. Beebee will not continue until you do leave.”

“But… but the account is supposed to be mine! How can I apply a new invention to your telecasts if I don’t see it tested?” Leland protested.

“Seeing is not enough. My invention goes beyond the limited sense of sight. You must use your nose, and yours is tainted by your overpowering aftershave. You will have no part in my invention,” Wallace decided on the spot.

He looked around the room at the carefully neutral yet attractive faces. No ugly people polluted Dr. Feelwell’s staff-almost as if he conveyed the impression that giving money to his crusade made one beautiful.

“She will manage my invention.” Wallace pointed to a small woman who’d scrubbed her face and hair free of cosmetics. Her soft dress looked freshly laundered as well. Wallace had seen her before, a lame child miraculously healed before ten million television viewers. “She respects my conditions for presenting this important innovation to the public.”

Immediately, Wallace’s emotions swung to guilt. He’d ruined his chances here. He’d never sell Beebevision now.

Leland eventually slunk out, but not until he’d protested and argued seniority and several other points. Wallace had to begin disconnecting his device before Dr. Feelwell put his foot down and threatened to fire Leland if he did not leave.

Once more the television screen brightened gradually. The logo of a lily of the valley with lines radiating outward opened before them. The voice, Evelyn’s beautiful, sexy voice, which could enthrall an auditorium filled with bored freshman. Then the three scenes Wallace had carefully chosen to evoke pleasant emotions.

A grandmother in a kitchen wearing an apron and removing a freshly baked apple pie from the oven. Smiles broke out around the room as noses filled with cinnamon.

A scantily clad woman dancing in the moonlight with sexy pheromones wafting through the room. Two men, including Dr. Feelwell, shifted uneasily in their seats, as if their trousers no longer fit properly.

A cityscape with lightly falling snow and bright holiday lights accompanied the scent of cut fir trees and bayberry candles. The scrubbed woman sighed blissfully with childhood memories.

Pleasant smells, pleasant memories, pleasant endorphins coursing through the bloodstream.

“How does it work?”

“What will it cost?”

“How fast can we get this up and running?”

Wallace smiled and answered each of the questions with pleasure.

“A pherometric ionizer analyzes the components of each scent and embeds that analysis into the digital code of the video. It is integrated into the digital camera. A mass spectrometer modified to my specifications interprets the extra code in the DVD and recreates those molecules based upon their magnetic charge and hydrocarbon content.”

“I want to see how it works before we commit.”

“It’s patented. No one sees the circuitry without a contract.”

“What will it cost us to produce?”

“Less than one hundred dollars per unit if built into a television. Considerably more for a less sensitive unit attached separately.” He grinned. “So of course every homeowner with a television more than two years old will dash out for a new unit.”

Looking around the room, smelling the greed and the cunning among these people, he wondered yet again if he needed to find a way to filter the scents. All or nothing went through the pherometric ionizer and the mass spectrometer reproduced it all faithfully.

The frontmen kept at him with more and more detailed questions. But Wallace retreated behind a barrier of “patented secrets revealed only when the contract is signed and royalties agreed upon.”

“How soon?” Feelwell cut through the garbled voices. “And who else have you shown this to?”

“I offer you a six month exclusive for the right price.”

They met his price and doubled the modest royalty he requested for a one year exclusive. Not only could he and Evelyn afford to have the baby now, they could afford to send the child to the best universities in the world-not Vasco da Gama University.

“But we can’t call it Beebevision; that sounds like something out of the Jetsons,” the scrubbed woman chimed in.

“The invention is mine. It carries my name,” Wallace insisted. He’d have his revenge on the tenure committee only when his name became a household word. Soon they’d be begging him to accept tenure.

But he’d show them. He’d teach somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Or maybe not teach at all, if the money became as good and regular as he hoped.

They batted around various word combinations. Wally-vision sounded wonderful to Wallace.

“It’s sort of like the feng shui of television,” the scrubbed woman finally added. “It completes the experience and attunes it to the human spirit. It opens the soul to revelation.” Her face shone with an angelic glow.

Or maybe just the sunshine creeping in through the tinted windows.

More ideas spilled forth.

They finally settled on Sensaroma.

Wallace grumbled. He really wanted his name to become a household word. He’d have to settle for going down in history as the inventor.

And the money. Dr. Feelwell had his own television channel. The highest-rated of all cable channels. So he had the clout to get personal television units on the market within weeks. He also did many personal appearances that made use of big-screen televisions so that all fifty to one hundred thousand members of the audience could feel as if they were in the front seat of the massive stadiums and auditoriums.

Now all of Feelwell’s followers would also experience Sensaroma.

Wallace had a niggle of guilt that Feelwell might be manipulating his audiences. The guilt only lasted until he cashed the first check.

Wallace and his wife watched the first broadcast of Dr. Feelwell produced in Sensaroma on the first augmented television unit off the production line-gratis as part of his contract.

“The odor of sanctity,” Evelyn whispered. “I think we need to start going to church again. Our baby deserves to grow up knowing the truth.”

Wallace was unmoved. His sensitized nose had separated out the various chemically produced pheromones and incense coming from Dr. Feelwell’s television studio, and he knew how the preacher used his audience.

“I think I need to demand a higher royalty,” he muttered.

Wallace turned his classes over to his grad students and hit the talk show circuit. By the end of the month, his name was on the tip of many more tongues. Sensaroma became a household word, even if his name did not.

Within the month the Secret Service, the FBI, and Homeland Security showed up on Wallace’s doorstep.

“You owe it to your government to sign over the patent,” their oily lawyer said, shoving a sheaf of papers at Wallace.

“Pay the royalty and you can use it any way you want. But the patent is mine,” he insisted. “And so is the chemical formula for persuasion. I would think the reelection committee of our much-maligned president would be more interested in that than the military. But then again the Pentagon would more likely be interested in the patent for nose plugs and filters for our troops as they bombard the enemy with scents guaranteed to lull them into complacency.”

Shortly thereafter, Wallace marketed separately a filtering unit to a television manufacturing company outside of Dr. Feelwell’s control. The FBI shut them down within an hour of going into production.

He and Evelyn bought a bigger house with no mortgage, complete with a nursery and a live-in nanny, a housekeeper, and a chef who used only natural ingredients.

The tenure committee clamped their mouths shut and refused to acknowledge Wallace when they encountered him on campus or at faculty gatherings.

The much-maligned president won a second term of office by a landslide. Few people remembered to criticize him for anything.

Wallace bought Evelyn the largest diamond ring he could find. It barely made a dent in his bank account as the royalties poured in. He also gave her the funds to produce her own documentary on life in a medieval village. She adored the project and thanked him properly.

She conceived a second child that night.

He had to have the housekeeper buy baby powder and baby soap at the health food stores to get away from artificial fragrances. All of their groceries came from there as well, so he wouldn’t have to smell and taste chemical fertilizers and preservatives. He spent more and more time in the sterilized lab as body odors, deodorants, and cosmetics overwhelmed him to the point of nausea.

The day before the Evelyn premiered her movie, the tenure committee summoned Wallace before their august presences.

At last!

He dressed in his best suit, a new custom-tailored one in charcoal grey, with a subdued tie and blindingly white shirt with French cuffs and eighteen carat gold cufflinks with a tiny diamond set in the center.

He paused outside the door to the conference room to gather himself and settle his shoulders. Out of habit he sniffed, assessing his surroundings.

The acrid scent of a predator on the hunt stung his nostrils.

Where?

A surge of defensive adrenaline coursed through his system, sharpening all of his senses. His muscles bunched, ready to flee or fight. He sniffed again.

The scent was strongest at the closed doorway.

He took three long deep breaths, calming himself, forcing his mind to take over his instincts.

Yes, inside. The TC had become predatory. Life or death committee. And glad about it. They wanted to take something very precious from him. That’s what predators did.

If not his life, then what? They’d already denied him tenure.

Suspicion crowded out his fear.

He flipped out his cellphone and speed-dialed his stockbroker. “They can’t take the money if they can’t find it.”

With a few terse orders he sold all of his stock in Sensaroma and other diversified industries and laundered the money through the Cayman Islands.

The dumping of a large amount of the stock might create a slump in the stock market. But soon the numbers would rally as investors rushed to buy a piece of the most amazing innovation to come on the market in decades.

Then he dialed his contact at Homeland Security. Time for some interesting facts to go into the background checks of key members of the university administration and the TC.

Time to cash in some favors for their confiscation of the filtering unit.

With renewed confidence and armored against his enemies, Wallace entered the conference room as if he owned the university.

“Our lawyers inform us that since you developed Sensaroma while in our employ as a biophysicist, the patents belong to the university,” Dr. Pretentious informed Wallace without preamble.

“We will expect the signed patent transfer documents within twenty-four hours,” Dr. Beta continued. “Along with royalty statements and a check for the entire amount paid to you.”

“You will of course be rewarded with a small bonus for bringing such a valuable commodity to Vasco da Gama University,” Dr. Shallow concluded.

“Does tenure come with that bonus?” Wallace snarled at them. His temper boiled, but he kept it under control. He had the upper hand at the moment.

“Of course you’ll get tenure. Once all of the legalities are completed and there is an opening for a tenured position in your department,” Dr. Pretentious said graciously.

“If I’d known I could have bought tenure, I’d have taken out a loan years ago. My lawyers will contact your lawyers.” Wallace stalked out of the conference room. “And I bet my lawyers are smarter and more powerful than yours.”

At the close of business that day, instead of patent transfer documents, the TC received a counter lawsuit. The TC had rejected the invention when offered to them; therefore, Wallace was free to market it elsewhere. He tendered his resignation in a separate envelope. Something he should have done when he received the first royalty check for six times his annual salary. But his need for revenge had outweighed his good judgment.

No more. He had other plans. Like founding his own university in the Cayman Islands.

The next day, Wallace left the baby with the nanny to attend the premier of Evelyn’s movie. He slipped unnoticed into the back of an auditorium filled with two hundred history majors. He wore small filter plugs in his nose, the only way he could tolerate crowds of people anymore.

He took them out the moment the projection screen came to life. The camera panned across an ocean that pounded a rocky shore. Wallace smelled salt and fish and seaweed on the cold wind. The ragged coastline became the ragged ramparts of a castle. New scents assailed the audience. Mud in an enclosed courtyard. Mold on damp stone.

People clad in ancient peasant garb strolled across the scene. Their unwashed bodies, the sweat of hard labor and anxiety over daily trials and tribulations replaced the sharp, clean aroma of the open sea.

To Wallace’s sensitized nose, the combination smelled like fear. He realized that for the average peasant, even in Third-World countries today, life represented fear.

No wonder so many less modern societies revolved around their faith. People needed to pray daily for survival and thank the heavens for each day they came through unscathed.

A different way of life. A different way of thinking.

He sat forward fascinated, more interested in history than ever before. This was how his invention needed to be used. His love for Evelyn increased as he began to understand her passion.

Unfortunately, her students took a different view. The sound of gagging accompanied the movie as the camera followed a woman with a child at her breast into a tiny, dark hut. The students vacated the auditorium in droves. Mud, pigs, disease, rotting food, and open sewers made them ill.

The smell of vomit, closer and more real than provided by the movie, added its own distinct aroma.

But they were natural scents, not chemical. Wallace reveled in them.

Humanity had become so detached from reality, scrubbed it clean and sterilized it, that they could no longer use their noses as they were designed to work. People didn’t trust their noses like they did their eyes and ears.

And so they could be manipulated by their noses. Or they felt abused when presented by reality.

They were embarrassed by the stink of life.

“I hope total reality does not become a trend in the movies,” he mused when he tried to talk to Evelyn that night about the disaster with her students.

His mind began working on how to get the filter back from the government.

“I don’t care about movies. I care about helping my students relive history, to get an honest feel for life in times past so they can better understand the people and therefore the politics of the day and great historical events.” She dashed into the master bathroom and locked the door. The sound of her sobs continued long into the night. Max scratched and whined solicitously at the door at frequent intervals and at last crept into his basket around dawn.

For once Wallace was almost glad that he had not become a household name.

Homeland Security did their work. The TC exploded in a scandal of bribes, sex for favors, and classroom ethics. The university chancellor himself granted Wallace tenure. A week later, Wallace accepted the position of Dean of Research and Graduate Studies along with a seat on the newly revised tenure committee.

The next night on the national news, a reporter in the field employed Sensaroma to their coverage of the latest war involving US troops. Amongst the scenes of horror showing the wounded and dying, listening to their screams of pain and the mourning wails of the survivors, came the full array of vile odors. Blood, excrement, vomit, the sweat of fear.

Two hours later the most popular television series, a forensics drama, brought the reality of violent death and detection into everyone’s living rooms. The actors investigated the death of a homeless man dead three days, his corpse ravaged by desert scavengers and insects.

Six minutes into the script, the network went black for nearly two minutes. When they came back on they played a repeat of an innocuous sitcom filmed long before Sensaroma became a part of everyday life.

Wallace called the government. “Want a major lawsuit on your hands from every television and movie studio in the country?” he asked, using a flippant tone to mask his own panic.

Much grumbling and mumbling on the other end.

“Then release the lock on my patent for a filter. Now.” He didn’t tell the Pentagon he’d already bought a factory and manufactured the thing and warehoused a million units with another million in production.

“No one wants to live through their noses,” Wallace explained patiently to the Joint Chief of Staff. “All they want is sanitized niceness. Niceness doesn’t inform. It masks, it deceives, it betrays our sensibilities. But it still leaves it open to manipulation.”

“Like you are manipulating me,” groaned the JCS.

“No more than you do to the public every day. Niceness makes life comfortable.”

“Comfortable. Reality isn’t comfortable. It never has been.”

“That’s why we need to pretend it is.”

“OK. OK. I’ll have the papers in your hands by noon.”

“Make that ten. I have a world to save from the stink of reality.”