• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2356 0

them with numbers indicating their value. The smallest chip was printed with the Arabic numeral 1, the next smallest with a 5, then a 10, then a 25, and the biggest and thickest wooden chip was stamped 100. Clever, no? Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars. They were different colors, too, painted with thick bright monochromatic coats of paint. I seem to recall the pennies were red, the nickels blue, the dimes green, the quarters silver, and the dollars gold. The valuations of the different chips took me several weeks of instruction to fully grasp. When Norm was reasonably sure I understood the chips’ value relationships, my rewards in the lab were no longer doled out in the form of raw goods, but in liquid holdings, with these idiotic colorful chips that I could later use to purchase food items from the company store, when I wanted to eat something. After that, whenever I performed a task correctly—sorting the items correctly, responding correctly to spoken commands to manipulate the objects, correctly playing a computer game designed to teach me symbolic logic—I was rewarded with one of these chips. For simple tasks they usually gave me a penny, and for more complex ones they might give me a nickel or a dime. Then I could cash up by turning in lower denominations for the higher ones. I remember the gestalt moment when I grasped that just one of the quarters was equal in value to twenty-five of the pennies—even though it didn’t look that way, because there were obviously a lot more of them. Now that’s symbolic logic. They also furnished me with a personal “bank” to keep my earnings in, which was a cardboard shoebox with a slot cut in the lid for me to deposit my wages.

The second part of this system was the company store. The company store was made out of one of the lab tables pushed close to a wall to serve as a counter, behind which the food items were stored in cabinets and a little refrigerator, both locked, and a locking metal cashbox. I was not allowed behind the “counter.” Norm printed up big wobbly sheets of laminated paper with pictures of all the items that could be purchased at the store, with their prices printed above the pictures. A “menu.” When I wanted to buy something, I walked up to the counter with my “money,” pointed at the picture of what I wanted from the “menu,” paid up, and then they gave me my food. I even clearly recall (or may as well) the prices:

1 raisin 1¢

1 grape 1¢

1 regular M&M 1¢

1 peanut 1¢

1 almond 1¢

1 cashew 1¢

1 small handful of peas 1¢

1 small handful of blueberries 1¢

1 small handful of raspberries 1¢

1 peanut M&M 3¢

1 Milk Dud 3¢

1 cube of caramel 3¢

1 strawberry 3¢

1 plum 5¢

1 apricot 5¢

1 carrot 5¢

1 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup 5¢

1 bite-size candy bar (Snickers, Milky Way, etc.) 5¢

1 peach 10¢

1 apple 10¢

1 orange 10¢

1 pear 10¢

1 marshmallow 10¢

1 hard-boiled egg 25¢

1 banana 25¢

1 full-size candy bar (Snickers, Milky Way, etc.) 25¢

1 cup of yogurt 50¢

1 hot dog 50¢

1 Popsicle 50¢

1 Fudgsicle 50¢

1 meatball 50¢

1 mango 50¢

1 cupcake 50¢

I suppose Norm’s introduction of a capitalist system to the small society of the lab had its desired effect on me. It took me very little time to build a psychological association of the monetary chips with a sense of inherent goodness—to see them as precious, even. I became miserly. I deliberately ate less so that I could save more chips. I came to desire the chips more than I had ever desired the little bits of food that were to be consumed immediately—because the more chips I had, the more potential goods I knew I had the purchasing power to acquire. I did always reliably want their filthy little monies. I horded them in my shoebox. I loved to dump it out and look at them, admiring my wealth, then close the lid of my bank and pick up each chip and put them back in the box, dropping them through the deposit slot one by one.

Nor did it take long for the scientists to begin using the chips as bribes. If they wanted me to participate in a certain experiment, if they wanted me to come to a certain area