Daydreams are swell. I suppose we’ve all had our share of mental wealth or fame or travel or fantasy. But to sit in a chair and drink warm beer and realize that the dream of ages isn’t a dream anymore, to feel like a god, to know that just by turning a few dials you can see and watch anything, anybody, anywhere, that has ever happened — it still bothers me once in a while.
I know this much, that it’s high frequency stuff. And there’s a lot of mercury and copper and wiring of metals cheap and easy to find, but what goes where, or how — least of all, why — is out of my line. Light has mass and energy, and that mass always loses part of itself and can be translated back to electricity, or something. Mike Laviada himself says that what he stumbled on and developed was nothing new, that long before the war it had been observed many times by men like Compton and Michelson and Pfeiffer, who discarded it as a useless laboratory effect. And, of course, that was before atomic research took precedence over everything.
When the first shock wore off — and Mike had to give me another demonstration — I must have made quite a sight. Mike tells me I couldn’t sit down. I’d pop up and gallop up and down the floor of that ancient store kicking chairs out of my way or stumbling over them, all the time gabbling out words and disconnected sentences faster than my tongue could trip. Finally it filtered through that he was laughing at me. I didn’t see where it was any laughing matter, and I prodded him. He began to get angry.
“I know what I have,” he snapped. “I’m not the biggest fool in the world, as you seem to think. Here, watch this,” and he went back to the radio. “Turn out the light.” I did, and there I was watching myself at the Motor Bar again, a lot happier this time. “Watch this.”
The bar backed away. Out in the street, two blocks down to City Hall. Up the steps to the Council Room. No one there. The Council was in session, then they were gone again. Not a picture, not a projection of a lantern slide, but a slice of life about twelve feet sqaure. If we were close, the field of view was narrow. If we were farther away, the background was just as much in focus as the foreground. The images, if you want to call them images, were just as real, just as lifelike as looking in the doorway of a room. Real they were, three-dimensional, stopped only by the back wall or the distance in the background. Mike was talking as he spun the dials, but I was too engrossed to pay much attention.
I yelped and grabbed and closed my eyes as you would if you were looking straight down with nothing between you and the ground except a lot of smoke and a few clouds. I winked my eyes open almost at the end of what must have been a long racing vertical dive, and there I was, looking at the street again.
“Go any place up the Heavyside Layer, go down as deep as any hole, anywhere, any time.” A blur, and the street changed into a glade of sparse pines. “Buried treasure. Sure. Find it, with what?” The trees disappeared and I reached back for the light switch as he dropped the lid of the radio and sat down.
“How are you going to make any money when you haven’t got it to start with?” No answer to that from me. “I ran an ad in the paper offering to recover lost articles; my first customer was the Law wanting to see my private detective’s license. I’ve seen every big speculator in the country sit in his office buying and selling and making plans; what do you think would happen if I tried to peddle advance market information? I’ve watched the stock market get shoved up and down while I had barely the money to buy the paper that told me about it. I watched a bunch of Peruvian Indians bury the second ransom of Atuahalpa; I haven’t the fare to get to Peru, or the money to buy the tools to dig.” He got up and brought two more bottles. He went on. By that time I was getting a few ideas.
“I’ve watched scribes indite the books that burnt at Alexandria; who would buy, or who would believe me, if I copied one? What would happen if I went over to the Library and told them to rewrite their histories? How many would fight to tie a rope around my neck if they knew I’d watched them steal and murder and take a bath? What sort of padded cell would I get if I showed up with a photograph of Washington, or Caesar? Or Christ?”
I agreed that it was all probably true, but—
“Why do you think I’m here now? You saw the picture I showed for a dime. A dime’s worth, and that’s all, because I didn’t have the money to buy film or to make the picture as I knew I should.” His tongue began to get tangled. He was excited. “I’m doing this because I haven’t the money to get the things I need to get the money I’ll need—” He was so disgusted he booted a chair halfway across the room. It was easy to see that if I had been around a little later, Phillips Radio would have profited. Maybe I’d have been better off, too.
Now, although I’ve always been told that I’d never be worth a hoot, no one has ever accused me of being slow for a dollar. Especially an easy one. I saw money in front of me — easy money, the easiest and the quickest in the world. I saw, for a minute, so far in the future with me on top of the heap, that my head reeled and it was hard to breathe.
“Mike,” I said, “let’s finish that beer and go where we can get some more and maybe something to eat. We’ve got a lot of talking to do.” So we did.
Beer is a mighty fine lubricant; I have always been a pretty smooth talker, and by the time we left the Gin Mill I had a pretty good idea of just what Mike had on his mind. By the time we’d shacked up for the night behind that beaverboard screen in the store, we were full-fledged partners. I don’t recall our even shaking hands on the deal, but that partnership still holds good. Mike is ace high with me, and I guess it’s the other way around, too. That was six years ago; it took me only a year or so to discard some of the corners I used to cut.
Seven days after that, on a Tuesday, I was riding a bus to Grosse Pointe with a full briefcase. Two days after that I was riding back from Grosse Pointe in a shiny taxi, with an empty briefcase and a pocketful of folding money. It was easy.
“Mr. Jones — or Smith — or Brown — I’m with Aristocrat Studios, Personal and Candid Portraits. We thought you might like this picture of you and… no, this is just a test proof. The negative is in our files…. Now, if you’re really interested, I’ll be back the day after tomorrow with our files… I’m sure you will, Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Jones…. ”
Dirty? Sure. Blackmail is always dirty. But if I had a wife and family and a good reputation, I’d stick to the roast beef and forget the Roquefort. Very smelly Roquefort, at that. Mike liked it less than I did. It took some talking, and I had to drag out the old one about the ends justifying the means, and they could well afford it, anyway. Besides, if there was a squawk, they’d get the negatives free. Some of them were pretty bad.
So we had the cash; not too much, but enough to start. Before we took the next step there was plenty to decide. There are a lot who earn a living by convincing millions that Sticko soap is better. We had a harder problem than that: we had, first, to make a saleable and profitable product, and second, we had to convince many, many millions that our “product” was absolutely honest and absolutely accurate. We all know that if you repeat something long enough and loud enough many — or most — will accept it as gospel truth. That called for publicity on an international scale. For the skeptics who know better than to accept advertising, no matter how blatant, we had to use another technique. And since we would certainly get only one chance, we had to be right the first time. Without Mike’s machine the job would have been impossible; without it the job would have been unnecessary.