"Maybe that's not such a dumb idea," said Salomon slowly.
"How, Start?" asked Linck. "There isn't enough money in the world."
"No, not money, but -- " Salomon was sketching on the pad in front of him. He tore off the sheet and held it up: he had drawn a circle in which a scribble of a face appeared, and around the edge he had lettered: YOU WERE NICE TO ME.
"Call them 'Gene's dollars,' "he said. "Hand them out at meetings, maybe five or ten to a customer. The idea is, they give them to people who are nice to them. And so on. An instant reinforcement."
The group was silent for a while.
"Instead of tokens, we could pass out our own credit cards. People could get them punched, or something, when they were kind to somebody else."
"Rubber stamps -- you could stamp somebody's forehead."
"Free balloons."
"Or gerbils -- they breed like crazy, so that would take care of the manufacturing problem."
They branched out into suggestions about the meetings:
"There should be music."
"Not rock."
"No, something very quiet, to give a kind of feeling of expectancy."
"Moog would be best."
"You need ushers to lead people to their seats, and so on. Give them something distinctive to wear."
"Not a uniform. Smocks, maybe, or little vests."
"The lighting is important. It has to be bright enough so they can see the healing, but it ought to be diffuse, kind of golden."
"How do they sign up? There has to be a long table at the front, and people to take down their names and addresses, give them membership cards or whatever, and maybe little leaflets -- "
"If you want the organization to grow, you're going to have to pick out leaders right away, and help them set up the local chapter or whatever."
"What does the local chapter do? If it holds meetings when Gene's not there, you can't have the healing every time."
"They could take applications for the next time he is there."
"What about having films of Gene healing? That would be the next best thing."
"Yes, and videotapes for TV."
"You need somebody to speak at meetings, and they have to know what to say."
"There should be a manual for heads of chapters."
"Not only that, I think we need a training course. You need the manual, and you've got to train the people who train people."
"Dinners and picnics."
"Little envelopes for donations."
"We have to think of ways to encourage recruiting. Announce the number of new members every meeting, and tell who signed them up."
"Give them special badges or something for recruiting ten people or more."
"Put their names on a big bulletin board."
"About publicity -- we should arrange for all the interviews we can get, naturally. And I think Gene should write a book."
"Thanks a lot," said Gene.
"Well, I think so. And, I'm looking ahead now, there ought to be some TV specials, and maybe a weekly newspaper column."
The discussion came back to "Gene's dollars."
"I think we should use paper money instead of coins. Otherwise it's a bottleneck. You've got to get a wax model made, then dies, and you've got to find a manufacturer, and we're going to need billions of them. Paper is quicker, cheaper, you can get more run off whenever you need them. It doesn't have to look like real money -- it shouldn't, in fact."
"It ought to be a little bigger than real money, so people don't get them mixed up."
"You could have little folders for them, so you could pull one out whenever you want it."
"It shouldn't look like any foreign currency, either. Make it an unusual color, pink, for example."
"How's this? I was thinking about the printing costs. Put a portrait of Gene on the front, and all the stuff we were talking about, and then on the back, divide it up into spaces for signatures. Everybody who gets one signs it before they pass it on, and when. you get one that's full, you can turn it in for ten more."
Eventually Gene called a halt, and Margaret read the list of suggestions aloud. There were murmurs of agreement for some of them, silence or rude noises for others.
"Gene, how big an organization are we talking about here -- I mean how many professionals? I think we ought to see what we're getting into."
Linck said, "I have been making a list as we went along. I can't tell you numbers of people, but perhaps it will help if we just see how many sections there are. We need first of all a planning section -- we need economists, demographers, and God knows what to draw a master plan for at least the first five years. We need an executive section. A personnel section, to find and recruit the people we need. A training section. Then there is housing: someone has to find office space and arrange for leases and so on. Legal section, probably quite large. Publicity section, that will be very important. Transportation and liaison. At some point we will probably need a political section, with lobbyists in Washington and in other countries. Security. Public relations. Procurement. Accounting. That is thirteen sections so far, and probably there are others I have forgotten."
"Translation," said Margaret.
"Yes, a very good point. That would come under the heading of an information section, I think, but we will also need interpreters."
"Let's talk about some of the legal problems," Cliff Guthrie said. "Is this going to be a not-for-profit corporation, or what? Do you want to incorporate it as a church, for the tax advantages?"
"Not a church," Gene said. "There are one or two things I won't do, and one is to let anybody put a halo on my head."
"Then probably it has to be a scientific and educational corporation, but I.R.S. doesn't like to hand out that designation. Then there's another thing. A non-profit corporation can't engage in political activity of any kind. That means lobbying is out."
"Here's something we haven't talked about. The organization has to have a name -- what are we going to call it?"
"Maybe an acronym, something with the initials G.E.N.E.?"
"General Exodus of Nuclear Energy."
"Why not just something descriptive like, A World at Peace?"
"Peace is a good word, but a lot of people are using it."
"There are some other words we can't use either, like Crusade. Popular. People's."
"How about 'A World for Mankind'? Then you could have a great logo, with the 'W' and the' M.'"
"What happened to womankind?"
"I like the idea of getting 'World' into it, and I like the M. World of Miracles."
"Let's keep this simple. Remember whatever we pick has to be translated into a lot of languages -- you don't want any ambiguities."
"The World Movement."
"Sounds like a giant laxative."
"One World would be perfect, but that's been done."
"As far as the initials are concerned, they've got to be different in every language anyhow, so let's not get hung up on them."
Wilcox suggested a committee to look into the question of names; Gene promptly appointed him the head of it, and then said, "Let's break for lunch. Afterward, I'd like to spend the rest of the afternoon talking to you in the library, one at a time -- or if two or three of you want to come together, that's all right." He got up and left the room.
The others got up more slowly. As they straggled out, Stan Salomon said, "Do you realize that when we went in there it was just a game, and when we left we were committed?"
Gene's place was still vacant at lunch.
"You know, it is possible, what he is talking about," said Coomaraswami. "It really is possible. It took about a century for the Islamic movement to spread through North Africa and Spain, and it took a lot of fighting also, but imagine what Mohammed could have done if he had been able to go around the world on jet planes, and preach by television. It is very much easier now to persuade a lot of people very quickly. And if you tell them something sensible that they want to hear, and you also can demonstrate a kind of supernatural ability, then you sort of get them both ways, because you are giving them something practical, and also something transcendental. I am willing to believe that he can do it. The only question in my mind is, will it be a good thing or a bad thing?"