The Gernsback Continuum (Robert Drummond)

[Grognardsw]

Rob peered into the room. The robots in front of the television screens occasionally dictated notes into what may be a recorder. Rob couldn't make out what they were saying. The viewers dialed from scene to scene; no two screens ever showed the same picture.

The pictures seemed to have little in common. One was a store, where a woman who looked strikingly like Ms. April Horn was demonstrating home freezers. One was a series of shots of kitchens. Another was children in a playground eating what may be chocolate bars. Rob caught a glimpse of what looked like the cigar stand in his office building.

It was baffling. Sanderson pulled on Rob's sleave. There was the chance that a robot would look their way or walk out and find them.

"I've only gone a littler farther ahead," replied Sanderson. "I saw another door."

The two moved ahead. About 40' down the corridor, which was now lit with naked bulbs in the ceiling, was another door. It too had a glass window and inside the 20'x20' empty office was a desk with a futurisitic computer and electronic clipboard.

"It's empty!" Sanderson whispered. He opened the door and approached the desk. "Look!"

On the desk were papers with reports:

"Test Area Progress Report. Subject: Westborough Cigarettes Campaign." It was mostly tabulated figures that made little sense to Rob and Anderson, but at the end was a summary that said:

Although Test 47-K3 pulled nearly double the number of new users of any of the other tests conducted, it probably cannot be used in the field because of local sound-truck control ordinances.

The tests in the 47-K12 group were second best and our recommendation is that retests be conducted in this appeal, testing each of the three best campaigns with and without the addition of sampling techniques.

An alternative suggestion might be to proceed directly with the top appeal in the K12 series, if the client is unwilling to go to the expense of additional tests.

All of these forecast expectations have an 80% probability of being within one-half of one per cent of results forecast, and more than 99% probability of coming within 5%."

Rob realized the people responsible for this weren't Russians or Martians. They were advertising men!

[Starbeard]

"Ad men! Rats!" Rob swore as he looked over the reports. "No wonder I never heard of those cigarettes before, they never existed before! Don't you see, Sanderson? They repeat the same day over and over, with ageless robots doing the field research… with all the time in the world… this is all some insane marketing test for new consumer products! This is crazy! It's… well, it makes the Russians look a lot less off their rocker, that's for sure."

He looked around the room and glanced at the computer and electronic clipboard. He decided to give them a look over to see if he could make sense of their operation and purpose. "But how are they turning back time? Are we even in Middletown, or have we been plucked up into some vast marketing simulation?"

[Grognardsw]

Realization dawned on Sanderson's face.

"My god! How?" said Sanderson. "Hypnosis, drugs, maybe some kind of a ray or something? However they do it, we live through a single day. They pour all kinds of suggestions and propaganda into us. At the end of the day, they evaluate the results -- see how we've reacted. Then they wash the day out of our minds and the next morning we start the same day over again with different stimuli? Suppose one man learned how to influence people one hundred percent. Why, in a year, he could sell us anything from freezers to political candidates!"

"What do we do? Call the police? The FBI?"

Just then there was the noise of people (or robots?) talking down the hall. They were coming down the tunnel toward Rob and Sanderson. The two realized they'd be caught if out in the open.

[Starbeard]

"No, if they've put this much effort into cigarettes then they've sure as hell got the gov—Quiet! Someone's coming."

Rob frantically searched the room for another exit to escape through, or if nothing else—at least some large wall-backed furniture or machinery they could squeeze behind. He grabbed Sanderson's sleeve and dragged him into hiding with him. "If they catch us, this is it, pal."

[Grognardsw]

Rob and Sanderson whispered urgently. (Please make a 3d6 Int. check to reflect your observations of the room.)

"You know how a doctor tests something like penicillin?" said Sanderson, who Rob knew was a pharmacist by profession. "He sets up a series of little colonies of germs on gelatine disks and he tries the stuff on one after another, changing it a little each time. Well, that's us—we're the germs, Rob! Only it's even more efficient than that. They don't have to test more than one colony, because they can use it over and over again."

They heard the noise of two people approaching. Rob hid behind a large filing cabinet, and Sanderson under a large desk in the chair area. Sanderson grabbed a clunky three-ring hole puncher as he scrambled under.

The two people entered the office. Rob heard a man and woman's voice. The man was saying, "—reason why you couldn't report on the phone? You're disrupting your whole day's test! What the devil's the matter with you, April?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Silverberg," she said in a sweet, clear tone. "I thought it was important."

The man grumbled, "Important! One lousy unit out of twenty-one thousand."

"But it's the Drummond one, Mr. Silverberg. Again. And the way he got out of sight, he must have had some help."

"All right, all right. It doesn't matter, April. The Choco-Bite program is ahead of schedule anyhow. As long as you're this far, come on in the office and make out your worksheet. And don't worry about the Drummond business. He's probably just wandering around. We'll pick him up tonight."

April proceeded to read reports. "Tests in the 47-K12 group with Westborough Cigarettes pulled eighty percent using the Soft, Feminine Approach. Indications are that an extension of this approach would influence at least seventy percent nationwide. The Direct Elevator Pitch pulled only ten percent. This should be abandoned and a new series of High-Persuasion Personal Elements introduced..."

Mr. Silverberg

[Starbeard]

Rolls:

Rob's jaw dropped to the floor at the mention of Mr. Silverberg's name. Our Silverberg? he thought, listened to the voices to hear if he recognized them from the firm. Then he heard them talking about him, and his heart sank. He suddenly took notice of the flashlight he had taken from Sanderson—turned off—and gripped it hard.

Rob held his breath and waited for Mr. Silverberg and April to walk away.

[Grognardsw]

As Rob and Sanderson waited, a phone rang.

Mr. Silverberg answered it. "Yes... I see... here? Very well." He hung up.

The he spoke aloud: "All right, Drummond. Come out. We know you're in this room. I have been informed that you remember. I must warn you that it's useless to buck us. Come out peacefully. Let our maintenance crew adjust you properly -- so you don't remember from one experiment to the next. It will be quite painless. If you don't come out peacefully, we'll have to get you."

From their hidden positions behind file cabinet and under desk, Rob looked at Sanderson.

[Starbeard]

Rob gulped, and thought hard. He gave Sanderson a silent "Shhh!" and mouthed the words "HIDE. NEXT TIME." with a knowing tap of his finger to the temple.

With a deep breath, Rob emerged from his hiding place and tried to play it cool. "Well, Mr. Silverberg, you got me. I guess there is no use fighting it. Quite the operation you've got here. Impressive! if not a little faulty. How often do you get rememberers like me? Seems like a heck of a chore, just to sell some cigarettes and chocolate bars."

Rob kept talking, hoping to draw Mr. Silverberg's attention away from considering whether someone else may still be in the room, and to find out more about the true nature of this operation before he went under. Hopefully Sanderson would make it out, and do something to bring Rob back into the loop again tomorrow (or would it be a hundred tomorrows?, he thought). Maybe then they could build a better plan.

[Grognardsw]

Rob's gambit seemed to work as he stepped out from hiding and confronted Mr. Silverberg.

"Hardly a chore, considering the revenue increase and gains in psychological and psychosocial understanding that can be applied beyond advertising," said Mr. Silverberg. "We are building toward a perfect understanding of the human mind."

Silverberg and Apirl Horn did not see the still-hidden Sanderson.

"I appreciate your reasonableness," commented Mr. Silverberg, pointing a pistol at Rob. "Come now." He waved Rob out of the room and the three walked further down the corridor. Sanderson was left behind, hopefully safe to later reestablish contact with Rob.

"As you may have suspected, you have been reliving the day of July 19. That is the day you died. You, and everyone else in Middleton, were killed by a premature atomic blast at the Contro Chemical plant. The blast occurred at twelve A. M. on July 19. That is the last thing imprinted on your minds. That's why you wake up screaming each morning."

"What I and my associates did was take the brain circuits from your dead bodies. We stored them in electro-chemical batteries till we had a chance to rebuild the city and begin our tests. I imagine you find it incredible. Of course, we didn't rebuild everything exactly. After all, it only has to last for a single day. At midnight, we turn off the power and wash out the memory of the day. You unfortunately have defective circuits. You remember. I tell you this because it doesn't matter. But there is more..."

Mr. Silverberg paused at the end of corridor, which just stopped before a yawning edge to... nothingness?

They were standing on a ledge of smooth, finished metal. At their feet, the ledge dropped away into a chasm so deep they could not see the bottom. Beyond was only a glare so bright that their eyes could not stand to look into it. And yet, just at the limit of their vision, something towered; something so huge it was almost inconceivable.

The great looming figure moved closer. It seemed to take shape now. And yet it was so gigantic as to be unbelievable. It came closer. The glare was partially blocked. And then -- Robert Drummond knew that the towering shape was none other than Mr. Silverberg himself!

"You see how we did it, Drummond? We took your brain circuits and had them reduced so they could be transferred to tiny humanoid mannequins. That's what you are, Drummond-- a tiny miniature of yourself. And this city -- this whole experiment I'm conducting -- is built on a table top!"

Rob was switched off.



Epilog

On the morning of July 19, 1955, Robert Drummond woke up SCREAMING out of a dream.



Robert Phillips switched off the Shift program. An entertaining pulp tale of paranoia, put into memory form for the consciousness of consumers. The Shift Engineer gave the sign-off for quality control approval. It would be on the Shift market by the end of the month.

Or is it?

If time contraints make this a good place to bow out, thanks for playing. It was enjoyable and something quite different from dungeons or star crawls.

Other options if you'd like to continue:

1) Continue Robert Phillips story in his current time, the far-far future. That Phillips name unconsiously popped up in the Shift narrative (perhaps a mind glitch?) As you may have inferred, a Shift is an experience or fiction put into "memory" form that people in the future can "play" in their mind via technology plug. The setting for this is the world in The God Conscious story line at viewtopic.php?f=1076&t=10906

2) Join another ongoing story thread with a new character, if you'd like company.

3) Take over for DexterWard, a skilled player/DM, who left the boards and his astro-geologist character made only two posts in The Psychogeology Dilemma ( viewtopic.php?f=1076&t=10860 ). His story started off with a doosy: "Saros Holmes stood in shock and bewilderment before the dead body, as his own lifeless eyes stared back up at him."

4) Come up with a new character and preferred setting and we could start fresh.

Now, as to the inspiration for this adventure, it's Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl, first published in Galaxy Magazine, January, 1955.

It was adapted by the X Minus One radio show. You can listen to it here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/RE-Warehouse/x ... _world.mp3

You can compare your actions to that of the show, and see what I used (word-for-word and paraphrased), expanded, changed, etc. Hear the characters come to life! A fun adaptation.

[Starbeard]

Wow, what a twist! Three twists in a row, even! I had a terrific time with this one, I'm going to listen to the broadcast right away.

It's a good place to stop for now, time commitments limiting. I would like to continue in the long term, so would it be all right for me to peruse the options for a few weeks and let you know what would fit best?

[Grognardsw]

Sure, you can let me know what you’d like.