The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2

TAKE A DEEP BREATH by Roger Thorne

It has become axiomatic, though none the less true, that advances in the technology of communication can be a double-edged sword: bringing individuals closer together and increasing their understanding of each other; or imposing a kind of mass subservience to the spoken (or written) word, producing a herd man, unthinking, who understands nothing except what he is told.

Sit down . . . make yourself comfortable . . . relax . . . that’s the idea . . . take a deep breath . . . go ahead ... a real deep breath . . . hold it just for a second . . . now . .. very very slowly . . . let it out. .. slowly, mind! . .. There! . . . Feel better, don’t you? . . . Feel relaxed .. . at ease . . . at peace with the world . . . and it’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it? . . . Feel a little sleepy, maybe? ... Go ahead and yawn, you’re among friends ... a big yawn . . . feels good, doesn’t it? . . . Close your eyes if you feel like it... why not? ... Steal a little cat nap ... nobody will mind . .. just take another deep breath . .. . . . close your eyes . . . let it out slowly . . . and while you do . . . let your mind drift.. . drift on the calm sea ... drift on the clouds ... drift... drift... drift like the subtle scent of Oriental tobaccos ... blended by masters .. . to please your restful hour ... to fulfill your deepest drifting desires . . . drifting . . . drifting . . . drifting desires ... and where ... in what cigarette ... can this fulfillment be found? ... In Navigator . . . Navigator . . . Navigator and no other . . . ask for it alone . . . it and no other . . . Navigator alone and no other . . . Navigator . . .

It began like that: a smooth-voiced announcer speaking gently but authoritatively against a background of soporific music. Next to him, centered on the TV screen, a gyroscope—the Navigator trademark—spinning slowly, evenly.

Restful it was: a pleasant change, a novelty, the first time you encountered a Navigator commercial. Refreshing, after a spate of hysterical barkers, hopped-up jingles, neurotic cartoons, the endless frantic urges to buy, buy, buy.

And the public appreciated the new approach. I know. I wrote a column for a TV magazine at the time, and my mail was full of letters from viewers “in all walks of life,” as they say. Stuff like: “It is certainly a relief to be treated like an adult for once. The Navigator cigarette people ought to be commended . . .” (impeccably typed under a lawyer’s letterhead). Or: “Them adds for Navigator are the best ever out they sure do sound nice & they are not so loud like most...” (hard lead pencil on ruled paper).

I welcomed the letters. They filled a lot of space in my column. I printed some of the most typical, and prefaced them with: “Navigator will be glad to know their relaxed, mesmeric commercials are making a hit with the public. Here’s what a few viewers have to say.” It was an easy column to write—just two sentences—but it elicited an inquiry from the Beaumont Agency, asking if I would be interested in working for them.

When their letter came, I wondered how they happened to have picked me. I did a little research on the telephone and found out that one of their clients was Navigator. That was the connection, obviously, but why? I was familiar enough with my column to know that its style was not likely to seduce lucrative offers from ad agencies.

What could I lose? I made an appointment with Mr. Beaumont himself and saw him the next day.

It was a small agency. Beaumont was in his mid-fifties: short, compact, with vaguely saurian features. His iron gray hair was clipped short and white at the temples and his ears were set flush against his bullet head.

“Hi. I’m Ted Beaumont. Pull up a chair.” That, in a gravel voice, and a quick handshake started the interview. Forty-five minutes later, I was shaking his hand again and he was saying, “See you next month.”

I got the job, at a figure so high I had to stifle an involuntary gasp when he named it. As I rode down to solid earth in the elevator, I realized that I still didn’t know exactly why he had wanted to hire me in the first place.

“We’re a new agency,” Beaumont had told me. “Ideas are welcome here. New ideas, screwy ideas, any ideas. Don’t be afraid to suggest it, no matter how different it may be.” Before the interview, I had caught another Navigator commercial and had written one along the same lines. Beaumont slipped on a pair of black-rimmed glasses and read it. “You’ll do,” he said, with a quick alligator grin.

And so, after giving the TV magazine a resignation notice of decent length, I went to work for Beaumont. I submitted several brilliant ideas, but most of them bounced. Despite Beaumont’s talk about “new ideas,” his policy was as fixed and strict as a Blue Law. Every piece of copy followed the same pattern. “Our formula can be stated in four words,” he told me. “Prestige (we always use one of those Rock of Gibraltar announcers, never the folksy or casual types), attention (the gyroscope, for example), relaxation (our copy encourages the listener to loosen up, even sleep), and—most important—repetition. Listen to this.”

He snapped on a tape recorder and I heard an old commercial: “... In Navigator ... Navigator ... Navigator and no other ...”

Pretty soon I got the hang of it and turned out yards of that formless, free-association stuff. Went for weeks without once typing a period or a comma: just hundreds of sets of those spineless three little dots ...

I handled Navigator exclusively. Wrote all the radio and TV commercials, all the magazine and newspaper ads. The printed stuff Beaumont let go by without much comment: it was the broadcast copy he went over with a fine-toothed comb. We watched Navigator sales anxiously. They were steadily climbing. I felt good about it.

One day, feeling that a writer should be close to his subject, I bought a pack of Navigators and lit one. It was lousy. Tasted like one of those weird off-brands that cropped up during the war years. I went back to my original brand and kept the pack of Navigators strictly for cadgers.

I didn’t think much about it then. After a brief philosophic moment while I pondered the potency of the 20th century adman and flattered myself that a cruddy cigarette was selling great guns only because of my rich beautiful prose, I forgot the incident.

My status grew steadily with the Beaumont Agency. Next to Mr. B. himself, I was the biggest man in the place—because Navigator was our biggest and most important account. Salary hikes came along periodically without my asking: Beaumont seemed determined to keep me happy. One of them was so substantial that I wondered who I was required to do in. “You’re going to write the entire TV show for Navigator,” Beaumont told me abruptly.

My jaw dropped. ‘The whole thing? Gags, continuity, everything for the Hymie Davis show?”

“We’re dropping Hymie Davis. No more comics for Navigator.” He paused and sat back in his chair, fixing me all the time with his eyes. It was a familiar item out of his bag of tricks, something to preamble any announcement of more than usual weight. At one time it had had an effect on me, but I had grown much too accustomed to it, and the suspense had worn thin. As he looked at me, I could think only of a carnivorous lizard peering through jungle foliage with unblinking eyes.

“You’re OK, sport,” he said at last. “You’ve been doing a good job. I think it’s time I let you in on my long-range planning.” He paused again, not as long this time. “Know why I hired you?”

“No.”

“To shut you up. I didn’t know, at the time, that I’d got myself such a good man in the bargain. Main thing was to have you here where I could watch you—not out somewhere writing a TV column read by millions.” He fished in his desk and came up with a yellowed clipping. He handed it to me. It was a piece out of my old column. In one phrase, “. . . their relaxed, mesmeric commercials . . . ,” one word had been heavily circled in pencil: mesmeric.

“You see?” said Beaumont “You were catching on. I had to get to you, keep you from spilling the beans.”

“Catching on? Spilling the beans about what?”

He took time out to light a cigarette. I noticed it was not a Navigator. “That’s a touchy word, mesmeric.”

I nodded, adding, “But isn’t our method essentially the hypnotic technique?”

He blew out a cloud of smoke. “Sure. What advertising isn’t? They all use repetition and such devices to hammer home the message. They all try to induce a conditioned reflex of sorts. What we’re doing is no different—except that it’s more efficient. Talk about penetration!” He chuckled, broke off and shot a question at me. “Ever smoke a Navigator?”

“Just one.”

“Lousy, wasn’t it?”

“Terrible.”

“Seen the latest sales reports?”

“Not the latest . . .”

“Then I’ve got news for you. Navigator is outselling every other cigarette on the market, cancer scare or not. And it’s junk. Can you tell me why?”

It didn’t take long for that to sink in. “You’re not serious, Ted.”

“I am serious. There’s no other explanation. No person in his right mind would smoke a Navigator unless he had been ordered to smoke it”

He leaned forward. “I discovered Navigator. I looked around to find the shoddiest product on the market. Something absolutely without merit, slated to collapse. Navigator fitted the description perfectly. I offered them my services for a fee so ridiculously cheap they couldn’t refuse. And until sales began to pick up, I even bought air time out of my own pocket.”

“I don’t get it, Ted. Why would you deliberately go out of your way to promote a weed like Navigator?”

“You’re slow, boy. It was a test. A dry run. A preliminary before the main event.” His lips pulled back and revealed his teeth: I guess you’d call it a smile for want of a better word. “It worked. That’s all I wanted to know. Now I’m ready for the real thing. Are you with me?”

I felt almost hypnotized myself. At any rate, I had always found it difficult to say no to Beaumont. So I nodded, swallowing hard. Yes, I was with him.

He mapped it out. Hymie Davis was to be replaced by a daily quarter-hour of news comment. The standard Navigator commercial would be given by the commentator himself (Hatfield Crain, no less) at the start of the telecast. Almost without modulation of any kind, he would slip into the news of the day: reportage, comment, opinion. Lots of opinion. And, all the while, next to him, a globe of the world would spin slowly, evenly.

I stayed with Beaumont for nearly two years after the news show began. It took that long for me to grasp how really “long-range” his planning was. By that time, it was too late. All I could do was quit. Don’t think it was easy. Leaving big money like that is never easy. One morning, however, I didn’t go down to the office. Instead, I packed my effects and got on a train to another city. I’m there now, writing catalog copy for an obscure mail-order house. I’m making $65 a week and the work is pure drudgery, but Beaumont won’t find me here.

Once in a great while I sell a piece to a magazine, under a nom-de-plume, to bring in a little extra revenue. That’s really the only reason I wrote this. It won’t do any good you understand. It’s too late for that. But at least you’ll know the reason when an overwhelming majority votes for Theodore Beaumont at the next presidential election.

Because they will. Just as sure as they lit up Navigators this morning, they will.