The Tomorrow File Read Free Page B

“What was it?”
    I hesitated a moment, then said, “Ultimate pleasure.”
    Paul switched on the lamp, reached to the bedside table. He picked up his note and unfolded it so I could read what he had written: “Ultimate pleasure.”
    I shook my head. “Not conclusive. Too subjective. It may have been an emotional or purely physical reaction on my part.”
    “Not so,” Paul said. “You’ve never used that phrase before. And besides, it is objective. It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a long time. I put a memo on it in the Tomorrow File. It proposes the development of an Ultimate Pleasure compound. In pill form. Cheap. Addictive. No toxic effects. No serious side effects. Working directly on the hypothalamus or affecting the norepinephrine-mediated tracts.”
    “That’s interesting,” I said.
    I turned off the bedlamp and we went to sleep.
    I was in the middle of an REM dream when I was awakened by the chiming of the bedroom flasher extension.
    “Flasher” was not the correct name for this device, of course. Technically, it was a Video Phone. Why flasher? Because the new devices had spawned a new breed of obscene phone callers. The conventional table or desk set consisted of a 3 dm viewing screen with a 5 cm camera lens mounted above and centered between the video and sound control dials and the push-button station selector.
    The obscene caller, ef or em, stood before the flasher so the face could not be viewed by the camera lens, and exhibited naked genitalia after calling a selected or random number. Such callers, and there were many, were termed “flashers.” The device took its popular name from them.
    I pulled on a patterned plastilin robe and sat before the flasher on my bedroom desk. Paul climbed out of bed and stood behind the set where he could not be photographed. I flicked the On switch. The color image bloomed blurry and shaky, then steadied and focused. It was a pleasant-faced black ef, wearing the blue zipsuit of a PS-7. We stared at each other.
    “Mr. Nicholas Bennington Flair?”
    “Speaking.”
    “Mr. Flair, are you AssDepDirRad?”
    “I am. ”
    “Would you insert your BIN card, please.”
    I motioned to Paul. He rushed to get my card from my discarded bronze zipsuit.
    Meanwhile the ef was looking at my image and then down at her desk, obviously comparing my features to a photo. Paul handed me the BIN card over the set. I inserted it in a slot under the screen. The ef read her output, sent by the magnetic-inked numbers on my card. She seemed satisfied.
    “Mr. Flair, this is DIVDAT in San Francisco. We have a message to you from Angela Teresa Berri, DEPDIRSAT. May I show it?”
    “Go ahead.”
    The printed message came on.
    It was a memo, dated that day.
    From: DEPDIRSAT.
    To: AssDepDirRad.
    Subject: IMP progress report.
    You personally rush urgent latest. Emergency, /s/ Berri.
    The operator came on again.
    “Did you get that, sir?”
    “I did,” I told her. “No reply, and thank you.”
    The screen went dead, a little white moon fading, fading. . I flicked the Off switch. Paul and I looked at each other.
    “She’s on a threeday,” he said finally. “Someplace south of San Francisco.”
    “I know.”
    “That report she wants—I wrote it. Strictly NSP—No Significant Progress. ’ ’
    “I know.”
    “Listen,” he said, “are you sure that was from her?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “You are?” He looked at me narrowly. “Oh-ho! Section code. I get it. ‘Rush urgent latest. Emergency.’ R-U-L-E. Verification code—right?”
    No idiot he.
    “Right.” I nodded.
    I looked at the bedside digital clock.
    “If we hurry I can make the 2330 courier flight from Ellis. Let me shower, shave, and dress. First, you lay on a cart and copter, and book me on the flight. Then put on some clothes and get me an
    Instox copy of that report from your office. Meet me outside in twenty minutes.”
    He nodded and we started rushing.
    Twenty minutes later he handed over the sealed report