"What kind of project?"
"A TV remote finder."
"We own all marketing rights outright," the interviewer said quickly.
"Two conditions," said Rod. "I get marketing rights."
After a three-day negotiation involving slamming telephones, harsh words and veiled death threats, Rod Cheatwood agreed to split marketing rights on anything he developed with the Sam Beasley Corporation fifty-fifty.
In his first day they explained color therapy to him.
"Color therapy?"
"It's old. It's very old. The Pythagoreans used it to heal the sick. So did the Greeks and Egyptians. They found that exposing the eyes to different colors produces different psychological effects on the brain. We discovered it works. We just need to make it work on a grander scale."
"With lasers?"
"The brighter the color, the better it works. Lasers are as bright as color gets outside of nature."
"I follow," said Rod Cheatwood, fingering his tufted chin.
"We want you to develop the brightest, most colorful laser light possible."
"We're talking a cold laser here?"
"Yeah. We don't want to burn holes in tourists by accident. It might kill repeat business."
"An eximer laser system is what you need. But I can't guarantee it will do what you want."
"We can prove it to you."
"Go ahead."
"You're still unhappy over our contract negotiation?"
"You people," Rod said bitterly, "probably don't bury your dearly departed dead until you yank the gold fillings from their teeth, sell their bones to make gelatin and remove the fat for tallow."
Surprisingly they took no offense. One even smiled with a quiet inner satisfaction.
"How's your blood pressure these days?"
"My blood pressure has been elevated ten points since I started here," Rod added testily. "And it's only been a day."
"Come with us."
They took him to a sealed chamber in Utiliduck beneath Beasleyland. The door was labeled Pink Room.
The door was not pink, but when it was opened, the room was certainly pink. The walls were a mellow pink. Overhead lights shed a warm pink radiance. Even the recliner chair was pink. And when they closed the door after him, Rod saw the other side of the door was also pink. He was entirely enveloped in a womb of pink.
"Sit down," he was told by intercom.
Rod sat. He reclined in his chair and at first he didn't feel anything. After a few moments he relaxed. Then he really relaxed. His muscles softened. Even his bones seemed to soften.
When they came to take him out fifteen minutes later, he didn't want to go.
"Please let me stay a few minutes," Rod begged.
"Fifteen minutes more. But you have to sign a release."
"Anything," Rod said, signing without reading a sheet of paper thrust under his nose.
After the fifteen minutes were up, he still refused to go. A Beasley doctor was summoned, a blood-pressure cuff was clamped over his exposed bicep and, when the doctor announced that his blood pressure was perfect, Rod was surprised.
"Can I work in there?" he asked.
"No. You won't get anything accomplished."
"I don't mind."
Eventually they had to shut off the lights and leave him alone in the dark room until he begged to be let out of the Pink Room.
"Our research tells us color therapy works through the second visual pathway."
"There's more than one?" Rod muttered, staring at a pink spot on the other man's tie. It brought back calming memories of the Pink Room.
"The first visual pathway goes from the retina to the optic nerve. That's how we see. But there's a second pathway, a more primitive one, that goes from the retina to the hypothalamus, which is in the reptile part of the brain."
"Did you say reptile?"
"Evolution has successively added layers to man's brain structure, sort of like stacking blocks," one of the Beasley boys explained. "The human brain is stacked atop our animal brain, and under that is the most primitive-the so-called reptile brain. That's where the second visual pathway leads. Other than to trigger melanin production, biologists don't know what it's for. But we've determined that strong primary colors follow this evolutionarily abandoned pathway to affect the reptile brain in a very primal way."
"I've always hated green. Hated it with a passion."
"Orange makes me nervous. And bright red can trigger seizures in some epileptics. It's our reptile brains reacting to color stimulation of the retina. As I say, it's an ancient psuedoscience that's still kicking around. They paint prison walls in some penitentiaries pink to calm down the most-violent inmates. Works like a charm, too. In fact, it's the secret behind the success of our Technicolor cartoons. We used only positive hues."
"Okay, you sold me."
"Good. Now, get busy delivering a laser that will pacify a planet."
Rod went to his lab, but he wasn't thinking of pacifying planets. He was thinking of making his TV clicker impossible to lose ever again.
Every TV remote, he knew, operated on the infrared principle. Different wavelengths of infrared light triggered different relays in the TV photocell receptor.
It had been Rod's fantasy to implant a signal beacon in his clicker so that when he lost it, all he had to do was put on a pair of special goggles and hunt around for the constant infrared pulse.
Trouble was, when Rod tended to lose his remote, he really lost it. Infrared light could pulse from under the couch, beneath a pile of magazines or from the bathroom. Rod had TV sets all over his house. And because too many remotes were almost as much trouble as no remote, he carried a universal remote whenever he walked through his house so that every set responded to his commands.