“My God,” Gusterson gasped, “are those the kind of jolts it’s giving you now?”
“Don’t you get it, Gussy? You never load your tickler except when you’re feeling buoyantly enthusiastic. You don’t just tell yourself what to do hour by hour next week, you sell yourself on it. That way you not only make doubly sure you’ll obey instructions but you constantly reinoculate yourself with your own enthusiasm.”
“I can’t stand myself when I’m that enthusiastic,” Gusterson said. “I feel ashamed for hours afterwards.”
“You’re warped—all this lonely sky-life. What’s more, Gussy, think how still more persuasive some of those instructions would be if they came to a man in his best girl’s most bedroomy voice, or his doctor’s or psycher’s if it’s that sort of thing—or Vina Vidarsson’s! By the way, Daze, don’t wear that beauty mask outside. It’s a grand misdemeanor ever since ten thousand teen-agers rioted through Tunnel-Mart wearing them. And VV’s sueing Trix.”
“No chance of that,” Daisy said. “Gusterson got excited and bit off the nose.” She pinched her own delicately.
“I’d no more obey my enthusiastic self,” Gusterson was brooding, “than I’d obey a Napoleon drunk on his own brandy or a hopped-up St. Francis. Reinoculated with my own enthusiasm? I’d die just like from snake-bite!”
“Warped, I said,” Fay dogmatized, stamping around. “Gussy, having the instructions persuasive instead of neutral turned out to be only the opening wedge. The next step wasn’t so obvious, but I saw it. Using subliminal verbal stimuli in his tickler, a man can be given constant supportive euphoric therapy 24 hours a day! And it makes use of all that empty wire. We’ve revived the ideas of a pioneer dynamic psycher named Dr. Coué. For instance, right now my tickler is saying to me—in tones too soft to reach my conscious mind, but do they stab into the unconscious!—‘Day by day in every way I’m getting sharper and sharper.’ It alternates that with ‘gutsier and gutsier’ and … well, forget that. Coué mostly used ‘better and better’ but that seems too general. And every hundredth time it says them out loud and the tickler gives me a brush—just a faint cootch—to make sure I’m keeping in touch.”
“That third word-pair,” Daisy wondered, feeling her mouth reminiscently. “Could I guess?”
Gusterson’s eyes had been growing wider and wider. “Fay,” he said, “I could no more use my mind for anything if I knew all that was going on in my inner ear than if I were being brushed down with brooms by three witches. Look here,” he said with loud authority, “you got to stop all this—it’s crazy. Fay, if Micro’ll junk the tickler, I’ll think you up something else to invent—something real good.”
“Your inventing days are over,” Fay brilled gleefully. “I mean, you’ll never equal your masterpiece.”