"Of course," said Blik, with a manly grin, "we have the thing we call our 'playboy milieu' which is strictly a sensual sort of a thing. It often appeals rather strongly to new subscribers, although I have to warn you that it soon becomes an Experience which palls on you."
He almost had me with that one, because after all I have normal male curiosity and all that, and naturally it's always these "playboy milieus" that you hear the most about among people who are non-EL subscribers. Yes, for a minute or two there, I was teetering on the brink, but my better sense did ultimately win out and I could feel the emotion of resistance welling up inside me.
"Well, actually, gentlemen, it isn't a case of not finding the right milieu, because I'm sure you have anything that I could ever want. It's more on philosophical grounds that I find that I hesitate to go along with Electronic Living," I said boldly. Just saying it gave me a tremendous lift.
"Ah," said Long, looking at the ceiling and making a tent of his fingers in front of his chest. "I always enjoy talking with a man who has a philosophical bent. In fact," he said, unfolding the tent and leaning close to me and lowering his voice a little, "it's the one big pleasure I get out of this job."
"I'm afraid that I have to agree with you there, Jack," said Blik, digging his toe into the rug in a distinctly boyish manner.
"Why don't you sort of fill us in on your thinking, Mr. Gaines?" urged Long.
"Well," I said, feeling warm under the collar and allowing my hand to tremble slightly with emotion as I got into what I now realized was the meat of my resistance to EL. "Well, let's take it from the word go. If I sign up with you now, I'll go down to the Electronic Living Center tomorrow or the next day and they'll take me into an operating room and put some tiny probes into my brain, and aside from a momentary twinge or two, I won't feel a thing. And then when it's over I'll walk out of the room looking just the way I did before, except that I'll have a neat little connection mounted high on the left side of my head where it can be tastefully covered with hair when not in use.
"And I'll probably come back to this apartment to find the Electronic Living Machine installed in that corner, tastefully decorated to look like an old-fashioned antique bookcase, or a modern bar, or whatever I want it to look like. But whatever it looks like, there will be a comfortable chair unobtrusively attached to the ELM and sooner or later I'll sit down in that chair and read over the list of Life Experiences and select one.