BTW, I think this belonged on Escape Pod. I don’t understand the comments that it should be on Pseudo Pod.

What happened to Spork?

Having said that, I think the author was clever to not write the story like another “Dark Future” scifi-noir. The light-hearted tone nicely complements what would have otherwise been a very disturbing topic, and makes the story more approachable and enjoyable. It’s only after we stop listening to it, that we understand how scary the story actually was.

I detected a couple of false notes in the story, one of which struck me as a misplaced attempt at humor. Tacking on names of conglomerates ad nauseum as a comment about multinational-something-or-other-ism doesn’t work. People can only ‘chunk’ a short set of phonemes at a time, which is why only law firms have proper names composed of five or six proper names–and why we never remember those names.

The second point concerns the method by which crave drugs are administered. Someone commented that there isn’t any way that administering these drugs by means of darts would pass FDA muster. Indeed, that is true, but the additional fault I find with Lindsey’s use of that method is that I wouldn’t expect a firm that is smart to administer the drugs in a way that so alienates (and pains!) their customers. For example, think about how much labor costs would run the firm if they are training and hiring snipers to shoot individual darts at individual people in order that the target buy…an order of small fries. There is absolutely no profit in that method whatsoever. The way a fast food chain makes money on contracting Crave to do this baffled me. This is a bumbling mistake that soils an otherwise wonderful story.

Much more simple and effective would be releasing those drugs in an aerated form–quiet, inconspicuous, no training required, not subdermal so not painful and your employees can do it on the subway or street en route to work–viola!

Last point–pardon the length–if I were CEO, I would include some kind of stimulant along with the crave drug itself. Make them happy that they’ve been ‘infected’. Even better, make them both happy that they want to go get some fries AND make them unaware that they’ve just been drugged into it. Customers fighting against themselves after being shot with a dart would not endear them to patronize that restaurant in their non-drug addled lives. Had Lindsey thought like a capitalist a bit better, the story would have been improved.

Ryan

Of course, Tom is one of the best kind of villains–the one who doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. I’m pretty sure that he sees behavioral modification in roughly the same way Jeff Skrilling of Enron saw his claiming profits on an idea before it actually made money–if he was smart enough to come up with an idea, than it’s his right to get every possible benefit from it. I can see him shooting the heroine in about 20 years with a b-mod dart that makes her suicidal, and shooting a younger woman with a b-mod dart that inspires love.

It’s a great commentary on marketing, whether or not you should use your ideas, and where the line is drawn between selling something and forcing it. I wonder how many CEOs have heard this story, and have instructed their marketing departments to come up with something similar.

I’d welcome a sequal with some of the children become immune to the darts due to over use and rebelling to take over the world! A ten year old for president….or would that seem any different?! Oops sorry political joke there from a friend across the pond in the UK. No shouting please!

Liked the story. Even if the bad guy won.

As for the guest intro, it was great but I feel the urge to point out that the black lodge speak was a bit more complicated than “just” playing it backwards. The really tricky part was that the actor Michael Anderson had to say the lines backwards (and walk and dance backwards too) so that when they reversed the audio and the video he sounded like he was talking “normally” but sounding really odd and appeared to be walking forwards. Hope I don’t sound too much like a know it all now.

Hm… rubs the lump on her own forehead

Also, would these things be allowed on airplanes?

Keep it comin!

I find it difficult to believe that the government would really stand by and allow the chemical manipulation of its citizenry by large corporations. Unless, of course, the government was also manipulating its citizenry. You think campaign ads are bad now? Just wait until you’re hit with a Vote Cheney dart.