He didn’t apply for tenure again at VDGU. He and Evelyn made do with their meager salaries and postponed having children once again. She was denied tenure in medieval history because of 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, 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 roundtrip ticket to Kansas City, Missouri, the corporate headquarters of a major televangelist, Dr. John Baptiste Feelwell. (Wallace suspected the man’s PhD 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 had room left over.
Wallace caught a whiff of musky cologne that attempted to mask a man’s body smell. Wallace almost gagged on the intensity. He’d given up all fragrances himself and grown a beard so he wouldn’t have to use aftershave. He’d gotten to the point where 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. Angry words coiled on the tip of his tongue.
“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 his lanky frame as if custom tailored. He made Wallace look frumpy and slovenly in his off-the-rack navy blue pinstripe 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 freshman who questioned his authority in the classroom.
The ad man squirmed in his chair.
“You might as well leave, Leland,” Dr. Feelwell intoned from his place at the head of the table. “I haven’t got all day and clearly Dr. Beebee will not continue until you do leave.”
“But… but the account is supposed to be mine! How can I apply a new invention to your telecasts if I don’t see it tested?” Leland protested.
“Seeing is not enough. My invention goes beyond the limited sense of sight. You must use your nose, and yours is tainted by your overpowering aftershave. You will have no part in 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 manage my invention.” Wallace pointed to a small woman who’d scrubbed her face and hair free of 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.”
Immediately, Wallace’s emotions swung to guilt. He’d ruined his chances here. He’d never sell Beebevision now.
Leland eventually slunk out, but not until he’d protested and argued seniority and several other points. Wallace had to begin disconnecting his device before Dr. Feelwell put his foot down and threatened to fire Leland if he did not leave.
Once more the television screen brightened gradually. The logo of a lily of the valley with lines radiating outward opened before them. The voice, Evelyn’s beautiful, sexy voice, which could enthrall an auditorium filled with bored freshman. Then the three scenes Wallace had carefully chosen to evoke pleasant emotions.
A grandmother in a kitchen wearing an apron and removing a freshly baked apple pie from the oven. Smiles broke out around the room as noses filled with cinnamon.
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.
A cityscape with lightly falling snow and bright holiday lights accompanied the scent of cut fir trees and bayberry candles. The scrubbed woman sighed blissfully with childhood memories.
Pleasant smells, pleasant memories, pleasant endorphins coursing through the bloodstream.
“How does it work?”
“What will it cost?”
“How fast can we get this up and running?”
Wallace smiled and answered each of the questions with pleasure.
“A pherometric ionizer 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 DVD and recreates those molecules based upon their magnetic charge and hydrocarbon content.”
“I want to see how it works before we commit.”
“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 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 for a new unit.”
Looking around the room, smelling the greed and the 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 frontmen kept at him with more and more detailed questions. But 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 one 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 Beebevision; that sounds like something out of the Jetsons,” the scrubbed woman chimed in.
“The invention is mine. It carries my name,” Wallace insisted. He’d have his revenge on the tenure committee only when his name became a household word. Soon they’d be begging him to accept tenure.
But he’d show them. He’d teach somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Or maybe not teach at all, if the money became as good and regular as he hoped.
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 grumbled. He really wanted his name to become a household word. He’d have to settle for going down in history as the inventor.
And the money. Dr. Feelwell had his own television channel. The highest-rated of all cable channels. So he had the clout to get personal television units on the market within weeks. He also did many personal appearances that made use of big-screen televisions so that all fifty to one hundred thousand members of the audience could feel as if they were in the front seat of the massive stadiums and auditoriums.