The Dudes
“Oh wow, dude, didya see this?!?”
“See what?”
“An honest ta God mind meld, dude! Just like on Star Trek!”
“Not.”
“Fact. Look, there are two dudes each in his own room. The one dude thinks about shootin’ a cannon in a video game, an’ the other dude actually shoots it! Ain’t that gnarly?”
“It ain’t ‘xactly uploadin’ nobody’s katra, dude.”
“Yeah, but ya gotta start someplace!”
“Riiight. How’d the dude send the signal? Wiggle his fingers, huh?”
“Through the internet!”
“JeHEEsus!! I knew the internet was suckin’ out yer brain, but this is, like, ridiculous! I might never touch a laptop or cell again!”
“Dunno, dude, ya sure it’s as bad as that?”
“Ya got a better idea?”
“Matter a fact … like what ya see here?”
“Oooo, hot hot hot! But she’d never …”
“So ya ping her, get her attention like, and start thinkin’ here, chikachikachika … here, chikachikachika …”
“Dude!”
“BWAhaha …”
===================
Reg and Syd
“Well, Syd, I guess we have more work to do. But you’ve got to hand it to them, they’re resilient.”
“Who’s they, Reg?”
“These publicly funded scientists. Despite all our efforts to dry up their funding and squelch them, through our ridicule campaign – we’re paying for snail sex, really? – and, of course, the sequesters, they keep managing to get stuff done.”
“Easy fix, though, isn’t it? Just identify the ones who are best at it and hire them.”
“True. But in the meantime they can be a nuisance. I sure wish this ‘mind meld’ stuff hadn’t come out for another year or so. By then we would have had our internet pipelines to people’s minds perfected. We would have been able to manipulate sales directly, and blow Google’s clumsy targeted-ad stuff right out of the water. Preferably the rest of Google along with it. Now, folk will know that this technology is happening, and enough of them will be wary to make our original business plan unfeasible. We will have to take another tack.”
“Oh well. Just another hurdle in life’s race, my friend. I’m sure you will overcome.”
“Indeed we will, Syd. Indeed we will.”
=======================
TSA Jack
“… and so when the catt … er, the passengers are sittin’ at their computers doin’ their online checkins and stuff for the airlines, we plant this little message in their brains: Pack your stuff, but leave your jackknife in your pocket. Which, of course, we then collect at the security checkpoints. Ka-ching! Whattayathink, Jack?”
“Needs variety, Angelo. We can’t collect so many jackknives that we glut the market.”
“Well, the technology is new, an’ I don’t know how many different messages we can send just yet. But I’m sure the upside on this is tremendous!”
“Can’t say you’re wrong about that. OK, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks. Oh, and tell the family I said hi, Jack.”
“Cute, Angelo. Real cute.”
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Screwtape the Third
“Your work, Wormsap?”
“No, sir. Yours.”
“You’re catching on, demon. That’s a virtue. Proceed with caution.”
“Always, sir.”
“Constancy? Another virtue?”
“Some would say that obsession was a disease or a vice, sir.”
“Ah yes. That is better. So tell me how this idea occurred to me.”
“Quickly done, sir. The topsiders have long fantasized about being able to see into another’s mind, just as they used to fantasize about flying before their invention of aircraft. And you know how short a jump it was between the Wright brothers and Hiroshima. Not to mention that the carbon from all those jet engines is fueling global warming, big time. So now, in the same way, we’ve made it possible for people to fulfill another of their fantasies, and you see already how they’re turning this possibility to our purposes.”
“A huge boost in sales of H.E.L.L.’s properties!”
“And can you imagine the despair when people actually do get windows into what goes on in other people’s minds? Especially if they then discover they can’t shut them?”
“HOOOWWWWWWWWWLL!!”
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Starship Train
” … so you’re telling me, Computer, that we humans actually had mind meld technology at the beginning of the 21st century? And then didn’t use it?”
“Yes, Captain. That is correct.”
“How come?”
“Well, sir, the official explanation is that the technology compounded the existing problem of internet addiction, to the point that an entire generation of young people was in danger of being lost to productive society. So the evolving world government stepped in, bought the rights to the tech as well as the manufacturing hardware, destroyed it all, and banned further research and development on direct mind-to-mind connections. A ban that has remained in place.”
“You sound skeptical.”
“I am. The official explanation does sound plausible, I admit. But I think the real reason is, the authorities got sick of hearing the thoughts of teenaged dudes as they looked up attractive women on the internet and called out here, chikachikachika to them.”
“Yes, I have to admit I can see how that would get old. Quickly. Thank you, Computer.”
“Service, Captain.”