Prescription for Chaos by Christopher Anvil Read Free Book Online

for De-Tox.
    Hommel experienced the fervent wish that he'd thrown the original report in the wastebasket. Or touched a match to it. Or just slid it in a drawer of his desk, ignored its possibilities, and put the men onto something else. In the beginning he could have suppressed it in any number of ways. Instead, never imagining how it would turn out, he had gone straight out to the golf course, where old Sam Banner himself instantaneously saw the commercial possibilities, and said, "O.K. Push it."
    Hommel had come back with a faint professional contempt for Banner's apparently snap decision, but quickly lost that as the old man breathed fire down his neck. Meanwhile, the work unfolded like a freshman laboratory exercise, no untoward side-effects showed up, and the next thing Hommel knew, they were in production.
    After that, it was a succession of new sales records, bonuses, and salary raises, plus fantastic coverage in national magazines, with Banner himself turning down honorary degrees, and trying to explain that he was a business man, not a Benefactor of Humanity. Banner solved the problem by shoving the credit off on Hommel, while Hommel, who would willingly have kept the credit, had it violently wrenched away from him by the chemist who had sent in the original report.
    The uproar finally died down, the new drug became a standard household item, and there was nothing to do but work the cash register, and send out friendly reminders that De-Tox was a registered trademark, and not to be referred to as "de-tox" or "detox."
    It was not many months after this that Hommel, a little before noon one morning, got word to come to Sam Banner's office without delay.
    Banner was seated at his desk, swirling a glass about half-full of water, and staring out the window. He glanced at Hommel.
    "Something funny about these De-Tox pills."
    "What do you mean?"
    Banner swung his chair away from the window. "This psycho thing. They can't put the subject under after he takes the pills."
    Hommel frowned. "You mean, the drug interferes with induction of the hypnotic trance?"
    "Can't put them under," corrected Banner, who had a distaste for long words. "They go through all the usual stuff, and the subject won't go under. Even when they've got him trained to go under at the snap of a finger. Funny."
    "Hm-m-m," said Hommel. "That is curious."
    Banner nodded, and set down his glass. "TV sales are down."
    Hommel blinked, but said nothing. If there was a connection, it would appear shortly.
    Banner said, "New car sales are down. Used car sales up. Liquor sales way down. Movies are in trouble. Buying on time is down all across the board."
    Hommel started. "Are you saying there's a connection between the fact that hypnotic suscept . . . er . . . that it's hard to put the subjects under, and that there's been a change in sales patterns?"
    Banner nodded. "You've been tied up, Mort, so I don't know if you noticed it. But not long ago, the biggest car maker in this country came out with a campaign to put over a new style car design. For a month, anybody who used TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, or looked at a billboard was blind, deaf, and dumb from having the thing thrown at him. You know how many of this new style they've been able to unload so far? Eighteen thousand."
    "That's fantastic."
    "You bet it is. You study enough sales charts, and you'll see things that will stand your hair on end. People just don't react the way they used to. Not since we came out with these pills."
    "But are we sure there's a connection?"
    Banner tossed over a professional journal opened to an article titled, "Complex Interrelations of Social Phenomena and Waking Suggestibility."
    Hommel frowned at it. It was out of his field, and the style made it abundantly plain that the article wasn't intended for the general public.
    "Hm-m-m," said Hommel a few minutes later. "Well, I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the terminology—"
    "Take a look at the footnote on page