Mad Science Cafe

by Ross, Deborah J.

  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, which 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.

  And he’d explored new areas of the brain. He’d already discovered some amazing things. If this succeeded he’d have the freedom and the corporate money to do more research and help the world fully understand the importance of smell.

  People forgot that memory was more closely tied to scent than any other of the five senses. What if Alzheimer’s patients could recover cognitive function through scent therapy—more than New Age aroma therapy. He already plotted ways to combine scent and image to awaken damaged brain synapses.

  Lastly 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 above the human threshold to affect the results of his experiment.

  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 connectors.

  With his own money, he’d carefully pieced together his invention with a discarded and outdated mass spectrometer and a ‘sniffer’ from the state crime lab.

  Holding his breath, he fed data from his laptop into the back of the monitor. He hadn’t dared use the University file storage network. This had to be on his own until he knew it worked. When the electronics hummed properly in tune with each other, he sat in his favorite recliner—carefully vacuumed earlier.

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

  “Welcome to Full Sensory Theater. A Wallace Beebee Production,” intoned a melodious husky alto voice, Evelyn’s, of course.

  Her Ph.D. 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. And another scene, a beautiful woman (Evelyn) dancing lightly in the moonlight. Her pheromonal perfume made his heart beat faster and his hormones soar.

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

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

  Wallace turned off his invention and carefully stowed it and the laptop in a locked drawer of his home office. The key to that drawer went inside another locked drawer and that key into his wallet. Then he 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.

  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 little black box that interpreted data from a computer. He wasn’t sure how. Yet.

  o0o

  After another month of experimentation and improvement, Wallace attached his little black cube, reduced to four inches to the 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 them. 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 discussed the possibility of brain therapy, then went on to read Evelyn’s notes on how she would use it to bring history alive.

  “I’ve used a pherometric ionizer, which 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 data and recreates those molecules based upon their magnetic charge and hydrocarbon content.”

  “I don’t believe this toy will enhance the prestige of VGU,” Dr. Pretentious sniffed. His colleagues followed suit with similar comments, not willing to deviate from their leader’s opinion.

  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, which was programmed to pick up 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.”

  o0o

  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. She was denied tenure in Medieval History because her latest academic paper had not been accepted by a prestigious professional journal. But the real reason was 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 and 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 round trip ticket to Kansas City, Missouri, the corporate headquarters of a major televangelist, Dr. John Baptiste Feelwell. (Wallace suspected the man’s Ph.D. 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 have room left over.

  Wallace caught a whiff of musky cologne that attempted to mask a man’s body odor and almost gagged on the intensity. He’d given up all fragrances himself and grown a be
ard so he wouldn’t have to use aftershave. He’d gotten to the point 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.

  “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 to his lanky frame as if custom tailored. He made Wallace look frumpy and slovenly in his best navy blue (off the rack) pin-stripe 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 freshmen who questioned his authority in the classroom.

  The ad man squirmed in his chair.

  “Please continue, Dr. Beebee,” Dr. Feelwell, said in his patented soothing tones. “We will deal with external fragrances afterward.”

  Once more the television screen brightened gradually. The logo of a stylized lily-of-the-valley with lines radiating outward, opened before them. The voice welcomed the viewers, Evelyn’s beautiful, sexy voice that could enthrall an auditorium filled with bored freshman facing the dreaded and required Western Civ class. Then came the three scenes Wallace had carefully chosen to evoke pleasant emotions.

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

  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.

  Wallace picked up a rise in testosterone in the room.

  A cityscape with lightly falling snow and bright holiday lights accompanied the scent of icy fresh air redolent of cut fir trees and bayberry candles. A woman wearing no make-up or perfume sighed blissfully with childhood memories.

  Pleasant smells, pleasant memories, pleasant endorphins coursing through the blood stream.

  “How does it work?”

  “What will it cost?”

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

  “You might as well leave, Leland,” Dr. Feelwell intoned from his place at the head of the table.

  “But…but the account is supposed to be mine!” Leland protested.

  “My invention goes beyond the limited sense of sight. You must use your nose, and yours is tainted by your overpowering aftershave. You cannot appreciate 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 represent my invention.” Wallace pointed to a small woman who’d scrubbed her face and hair and not used 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.”

  Leland protested and argued seniority and several other points. Wallace began disconnecting his device. Dr. Feelwell stamped his foot hard on the carpeted floor. “If you do not leave this room immediately, it will be your last moment in my employ.” Leland slunk out.

  “I want to see how it works before we commit,” the man sitting on Dr. Feelwell’s left commented.

  “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 specially designed 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 to buy a new unit.”

  Looking around the room, smelling the actinic greed and the fermenting 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 front men kept at him with more and more detailed questions. 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 two 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 Beebeevision, that sounds like something out of the Jetsons,” the scrubbed woman chimed in.

  “The invention is mine. It carries my name,” Wallace insisted.

  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 agreed.

  Dr. Feelwell had his own television channel—the highest rated of all cable/satellite channels. He had the clout to get personal television units on the market within a few months. He also did many personal appearances that made use of big screen televisions so that all fifty to one hundred thousand audience members 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 and Sensorama would enable him to do it more effectively. The guilt lasted only until he cashed the first check.

  o0o

  Wallace and Evelyn 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 in a community of faith.”

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

  He chewed his lip. Dr. Feelwell had manipulated Evelyn, a smart, well-educated woman who had never shown signs of spirituality before. And she hadn’t questioned her new conviction.

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

  He didn’t go to church with her. The local parishes couldn’t afford Sensaroma. Evelyn became a confirmed member of the congregation anyway.

  The lack of logic in her decision puzzled Wallace. He knew that his invention was closely tied to emotion. But emotions were ephemeral. How deep did Sensaroma penetrate the brain?

  Wallace needed to do more studies, but time for those studies evaporated. He turned his classes over to his grad students and hit the talk show circuit. By the end of the month, Sensaroma became a household word.

  Three days into the second 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 in any way you want. But t
he patent is mine,” he insisted. “And so is the chemical formula for persuasion.” He shoved the papers back into the lawyer’s lap.

  “It is your patriotic duty…” The arguments continued with appeals to Wallace’s sense of honor, his loyalty to his nation, and the need to protect the freedom of all of his fellow citizens.

  “I would think the re-election 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.”

  Was this what he truly wanted for his invention—manipulation of the masses? He’d thought only to enhance life experience. Pure science no longer entered into the equation.

  He funneled a great deal of money into Alzheimer’s research with a focus on scent and image therapy.

  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 of the United States 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 historical documentary of life in a medieval village. She adored the project and thanked him properly.

  She conceived a second child that night.

  He instructed the housekeeper to buy baby powder and baby soap on line to avoid artificial fragrances. All of their groceries came from the finest organic stores and fresh farm markets 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. He needed his nose filter to get through the day.