Chapter Three

Natalie stood in the darkened room together with her colleague Bob and took meticulous notes of the behavior of the focus group.

The darkened room was small, six by ten feet, with a compact glass top table with a carton of orange juice, a bottle of Coke, and one open n-pad on it, and two folded plastic chairs propped up on its edge.

Neither of the two professionals was sitting. Bob was placidly observing the images that were being recorded on the TV screen, while Natalie was gazing directly through the one-way glass, which took up most of the wall that separated them from the participants.

The client paying for the focus group, the Paxton Media Group, planned to introduce a new tabloid on the market.

Initial research had shown that currently there was in the air a certain nostalgia for the daily paper-based newssheet, and now twelve ordinary people were sitting in small blue chairs on the other side of the glass wall, frantically twisting the knobs on the ‘stop-boxes’ in their hands.

In front of them, on a huge monitor, ran a presentation of various versions of the first and last page of the future newspaper.

A black and white first page. Click-clack, the people reacted scientifically, ranking what they saw from one to ten.

A two color page. Click-clack.

A full color page. Click-clack.

Fat round letters on top. Click-clack.

Gothic letters on top. Click-clack.

Click-clack. Click-clack.

Attached to their arms and chests were electrodes, which relayed information concerning their heart rates and blood pressure fluctuations. People did not mind this, as long as you kept a straight face when you told them to do it, the payment for participation was slightly higher than usual, and they didn’t even have to undress completely.

After the session was over, Natalie and Bob would superimpose this biological data over the ratings given by each person, and concentrate on the low and high marks that were accompanied by the more dramatic changes in the bio data.

The statistical quirks of decisions taken on a superficial level would be thus weeded out and the deepest reactions to the shown stimuli would be highlighted.

This technology was an innovation introduced by Natalie herself a year ago. It was the devil’s job to convince the head of the agency, Mister Blonski, that the idea was not ludicrous and that it would pay for itself in the long run.

Neither austere slide shows with statistics nor snappy power point presentations helped. Finally, after spending a weekend at his villa with his family, playing with his dog, and gossiping with his wife, she had succeeded in getting him to give it a try.

“Look,” Bob whispered, without taking his eyes off the monitor, “the fat guy with the bucket hat is having a surge again, and he just gave a one for the reds.”

Natalie walked over to the n-pad and peered at the screen. It faced away from the one-way glass, so that its glow would not remind the participants that the moderators were monitoring them. Indeed, on one of the twelve sections on the screen, the fat guy’s feed was showing serious changes in blood pressure and heartbeat rates.

Either he really hated what he saw with his whole brain, soul, and body, or he really needed to cut down on the junk food. Perhaps both.

“Yes, and he’s not alone, looks like they’ll have to be black after all,” Natalie whispered back.

As she stood there, notebook in hand, pencil tapping lightly her lower lip, she was concentrating mainly on the reactions of the participants and was already trying to summarize the data, but at the back of her mind, there was a subtle parallel process. She was also meditating on the need of the next step in technology.

But. But, but, but. She was only twenty-six, and although already respected within the firm, there was a limit to the credibility of her proposals. Her ‘mad scientist’ credit was still low.

For two months now, she bugged old Blonski about the need for brain wave data from the focus groups. He was still in the stage of laughing the idea off.

Some day...some day...perhaps after another weekend at the villa...

Natalie looked at Bob, who was standing slightly hunched, hands in pockets, darting alternating glances at the TV screen and at the glass wall.

Bob was of the old breed. Already forty-something, he completely accepted the need for guesswork and intuition to augment the imperfect data collected by traditional sociological means like questionnaires, polls, and focus groups. He’d given up on the idea that data can actually be iron cast, objective, totally empirical.

Being of a fairly easygoing disposition, he admitted this, unlike most other sociologists and various social scientists, who were locked in madcap denial of the overwhelmingly subjective nature of the interpretations on which their conclusions were based.

Yes, at least Bob didn’t seem to feel threatened when confronted with the facts. Away from the ears of clients and bosses, he would be the first to admit that a large percent of what they did was no more objective than fortune telling by use of bird entrails.

Still, it was obvious he had no burning desire to contribute to the further development of the science itself.

Natalie had that desire.

She felt acutely that this science, her science, lagged far behind times and felt that she would ultimately remedy this state of affairs.

Enter the brain scanners. Why guess and fantasize, and pray that a sufficiently small percent of the population lies, when you can go straight to the core, straight to the brain and the body?

The voice may lie, the eyes may deceive, the face may mask, but the brain cannot lie. The body cannot deceive.

Already they were light-years ahead of their competition in terms of accuracy of data, just because of the heart and blood reading. In another two years, they would be on par with the established mega-agencies.

If their methodology didn’t leak that is, which was doubtful.

If they could actually observe the areas of pleasure, or anxiety, or daydreaming; at exactly which instances the relevant parts of the brain started working more intensely…then advertisement and PR could finally really count on precise data from their partner: sociology.

Natalie daydreamed of the possibilities for so long and they seemed so seductive that her throat would begin contracting when she dwelled on it too thoroughly.

For instance, with a little basic photo doctoring one could determine scientifically which combination of haircut, suit, and smile, would win a politician the best brain wave reaction from the voters.

That would certainly get rid of the fashion quacks.

Even something simple, like the shape and colors of a soft drink bottle, or a chocolate bar, could be based, not on the guesswork of some pretentious marketing nitwit, but on solid scientific data, based on the brain and body reactions of a group of kids sitting in those chairs and being projected the various possible looks of the new product.

* * * *

The last version of the future newspaper appeared on the screen, the participants made the last twists on the ‘stop boxes’, and it was time for Natalie to wrap it up. She went out of the observation room and heard Bob lock the door behind her.

This was standard practice. You wouldn’t want some of the participants to look for the toilet and wander into the room on the other side of the one-way glass.

Although this was all perfectly acceptable sociological methodology for at least the last sixty years, still everyone knew that it was better if the participants were not unduly reminded of how things stood. No specific acts of deception occurred, that would be unethical, but a certain amount of subtle precautions was usually more than enough.

Natalie entered the focus group room.

Inside sat seven women and five men, more or less evenly representing the three age groups and the two levels of income. Racially, they were unrepresentative, too many whites and only one East Asian, but one had to make do with the available material.

As Natalie opened the door, all eyes turned to her. She was pretty, black, five feet four, very thin, and dressed in a tight gray dress, with a thin plastic pink belt loosely hugging her hips, and dark flowery stockings covering her spindly legs.

Her hair was in an authoritative bun, with half a dozen thin wavy strands hanging suggestively here and there, and her dark brown face was almost entirely free of makeup.

“Well, everybody,” she said, clasping her hands in a finalizing manner, “thank you very much for participating in this research, and we hope you weren’t too bored.”

As people popped the electrodes off themselves and began putting on their jackets. They made polite noises concerning how interesting the whole thing had been, and how curious they all were to check out the newspaper once it sees the light of day.

Natalie nodded with a professional smile and reminded everyone that their cash awaited on the second floor of the building.

Half an hour later, as she went into the office of Mister Blonksi. He met her with a jovial roar, “Ah, the young genius, Natalie. No brain scans available soon, I’m sorry to say, hur hur.”

He chuckled good-naturedly, his plump, large-pored face flushing with the emotion, and although Natalie knew that he was not really making fun of her, she couldn’t help feeling attacked by the mention of the brain scans.

She gave him a thin and cold polite smile. “I brought the preliminary notes that Bob and I took at the focus group, and the report will be ready by tomorrow morning.”

Her boss looked gaily at her. “Hang the report. Tell me what your first-hand impression is.”

His whole demeanor was of someone who would not let any trifle ruin his mood. After all, he was almost seventy, had two heart attacks, and was now more or less succeeding at taking it easy, in spite of running a formerly minor, now an up and rising, market data agency.

He rummaged in his desk drawer and took out a small, black wooden ashtray. “You can smoke here if you want to,” he said and after a jolly wink, his face smoothed out into his general amiable countenance.

Natalie cursed him silently. In the last two weeks, she had managed, after reading Also Sprach Zarathustra, to cut down from two packs to seven or eight cigarettes a day, and here was Blonski, tempting her to up her daily dose.

She shook her head vigorously and opened her notebook. “It looks like they most liked the black Gothic logo, and hated most the red and round logo.”

“Hm, hm.” Blonski nodded. “What about the colors themselves, do they want a black and white newspaper?”

“Either a black and white newspaper, or full color. They hated the two colored version.”

Blonski looked at Natalie in mock surprise. “Why, in my day we were happy when there were two colors in a newspaper.”

“Well, now we are all spoiled by glossy magazines and colorful websites, sir,” Natalie answered. “It’s either black and white, or full color.”

Too late. Her boss fixed his stare on something beyond the room’s walls, and began telling a long and complicated story of what newspapers were like forty years ago, what someone had once said to him concerning a certain article, and what he had answered.

Natalie resigned herself and delicately drew flowers and eyes in her notebook as her boss rumbled on and on.

* * * *

When she returned to her home in the evening, she was wrung out as usual, and her vision was a little blurry from all the work behind a computer monitor. Although it was supposed to be radiation free and magnetically contained and whatnot, it still strained the eyes.

She put on her home gown, switched on the TV, and poured herself a glass of red wine from a half-full bottle—followed, very soon, by another glass.

Forty minutes later, she was quite relaxed, or at least as relaxed as she could reasonably expect to get, for she could never completely unwind after work, nor did she try to achieve total unwinding.

To the contrary, on some unconscious level she enjoyed being highly strung, for it gave her a feeling of focus, of strength and of purpose.

She did need to let off steam from time to time, and as she gently touched her thighs, she suddenly remembered the touches of the two gigolos, Archie and Rafael, who had done such a perfect job half a year ago. She had solemnly promised herself to never stoop to using their services again.

That was then and this was now.

She had deleted the number of their firm from her phone, but had neglected to throw away their business card.

It was a matter of minutes before she found the card in a drawer with other odds and ends and soon she was talking to the operator of the ‘Salt and Leather Lonely Hearts Club.’

Rafael was still working for them, but Archie had left. They did, however, have a wonderful new guy named Shane, who would come with Rafael. They would be over in an hour, and the whole thing would cost only a third of her monthly wage. Natalie wished the operator a good evening, hung up, and lay back on her sofa with a dreamy expression.

“Face me, face me, I want you to face me...” she sung softly to herself and giggled. She decided to allow herself a ninth cigarette.

After that, she would put the special sheets on her bed.