Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [84]
He ran his hands through his hair and rolled his eyes. "And the selling points—my God, the selling points! No expensive toys for the kids. For the price of a trip to the movies, people can buy thirty hours of euphio. For the price of a fifth of whisky, they can buy sixty hours of euphio!"
"Or a big family bottle of potassium cyanide," Fred said.
"Don’t you see it?" Lew said incredulously. "It’ll bring families together again, save the American home. No more fights over what TV or radio program to listen to. Euphio pleases one and all—we proved that. And there is no such thing as a dull euphio program."
A knock on the door interrupted him. A repairman stuck his head in to announce that the power would be on again in about two minutes.
"Look, Lew," Fred said, "this little monster could kill civilization in less time than it took to burn down Rome. We’re not going into the mind-numbing business, and that’s that."
"You’re kidding!" Lew said, aghast. He turned to Marion. "Don’t you want your husband to make a million?"
"Not by operating an electronic opium den," Marion said coldly.
Lew slapped his forehead. "It’s what the public wants. This is like Louis Pasteur refusing to pasteurize milk."
"It’ll be good to have the electricity again," Marion said, changing the subject. "Lights, hot-water heater, the pump, the—oh, Lord!"
The lights came on the instant she said it, but Fred and I were already in mid-air, descending on the gray box. We crashed down on it together. The card table buckled, and the plug was jerked from the wall socket. The euphio’s tubes glowed red for a moment, then died.
Expressionlessly, Fred took a screwdriver from his pocket and removed the top of the box.
"Would you enjoy doing battle with progress?" he said, offering me the poker Eddie had dropped.
In a frenzy, I stabbed and smashed at the euphio’s glass and wire vitals. With my left hand, and with Fred’s help, I kept Lew from throwing himself between the poker and the works.
"I thought you were on my side," Lew said.
"If you breathe one word about euphio to anyone," I said, "what I just did to euphio I will gladly do to you."
And there, ladies and gentlemen of the Federal Communications Commission, I thought the matter had ended. It deserved to end there. Now, through the medium of Lew Harrison’s big mouth, word has leaked out. He has petitioned you for permission to start commercial exploitation of euphio. He and his backers have built a radio-telescope of their own.
Let me say again that all of Lew’s claims are true. Euphio will do everything he says it will. The happiness it give is perfect and unflagging in the face of incredible adversity. Near tragedies, such as the first experiment, can no doubt be avoided with clockwork to turn the sets on and off. I see that this set on the table before you is, in fact, equipped with clockwork.
The question is not whether euphio works. It does. The question is, rather, whether or not America is to enter a new and distressing phase of history where men no longer pursue happiness but buy it. This is no time for oblivion to become a national craze. The only benefit we could get from euphio would be if we could somehow lay down a peace-of-mind barrage on our enemies while protecting our own people from it.
In closing, I’d like to point out that Lew Harrison, the would-be czar of euphio, is an unscrupulous person, unworthy of public trust. It wouldn’t surprise me, for instance, if he had set the clockwork on this sample euphio set so that its radiations would addle your judgments when you are trying to make a decision. In fact, it seems to be whirring suspiciously at this very moment, and I’m so happy I could cry. I’ve got the swellest little kid and the swellest bunch of friends