Years before, he had invented a module that, when a television commercial appeared, automatically muted the sound. It wasn’t at first a context recognition device. Instead, it simply monitored the amplitude of the carrier wave. TV advertisers had taken to running their ads louder and with less audio clutter than the programs that were their nominal vehicles. News of Hadden’s module spread by word of mouth. People reported a sense of relief, the lifting of a great burden, even a feeling of joy at being freed from the advertising barrage for the six to eight hours out of every day that the average American spent in front of the television set. Before there could be any coordinated response from the television advertising industry, Adnix had become wildly popular. It forced advertisers and networks into new choices of carrier wave strategy, each of which Hadden countered with a new invention. Sometimes he invented circuits to defeat strategies that the agencies and the networks had not yet hit upon. He would say that he was saving them the trouble of making inventions, at great cost to their shareholders, which were at any rate doomed to failure. As his sales volume increased, he kept cutting prices. It was a kind of electronic warfare. And he was winning.
They tried to sue him–something about a conspiracy in restraint of trade. They had sufficient political muscle that his motion for summary dismissal was denied, but insufficient influence to actually win the case. The trial had forced Hadden to investigate the relevant legal codes. Soon after, he applied, through a well known Madison Avenue agency in which he was now a major silent partner, to advertise his own product on commercial television. After a few weeks of controversy his commercials were refused. He sued all three networks and in this trial was able to prove conspiracy in restraint of trade. He received a huge settlement that was, at the time, a record for cases of this sort, and which contributed in its modest way to the demise of the original networks.
There had always been people who enjoyed the commercials, of course, and they had no need for Adnix. But they were a dwindling minority. Hadden made a great fortune by eviscerating broadcast advertising. He also made many enemies.
By the time context recognition chips were commercially available, he was ready with Preachnix, a submodule which could be plugged into Adnix. It would simply switch channels if by chance a doctrinaire religious program should be tuned in. You could preselect key words, such as “Advent” or “Rapture,” and cut great swaths through the available programming. Preachnix was a godsend for a long suffering but significant minority of television viewers. There was talk, some of it half-serious, that Hadden’s next submodule would be called Jivenix, and would work only on public addresses by presidents and premiers.
As he further developed context recognition chips, it became obvious to him that they had much wider applications–from education, science, and medicine, to military intelligence and industrial espionage. It was on this issue that the lines were drawn for the famous suit United States v. Hadden Cybernetics. One of Hadden’s chips was considered too good for civilian life, and on recommendation of the National Security Agency, the facilities and key personnel for the most advanced context recognition chip production were taken over by the government. It was simply too important to read the Russian mail. God knows, they told him, what would happen if the Russians could read our mail.
Hadden refused to cooperate in the takeover and vowed to diversify into areas that could not possibly be connected with national security. The government was nationalizing industry, he said. They claimed to be capitalists, but when push came to shove they showed their socialist face. He had found an unsatisfied public need and employed an existing and legal new technology to deliver what they wanted. It was classic capitalism. But there were many sober capitalists who would tell you that he had already gone too far with Adnix, that he had posed a real threat to the American way of life. In a dour column signed V. Petrov, Pravda called it a concrete example of the contradictions of capitalism. The Wall Street Journal countered, perhaps a little tangentially, by calling Pravda, which in Russian means “truth,” a concrete example of the contradictions of communism.
He suspected that the takeover was only a pretext, that his real offense had been to attack advertising and video evangelism. Adnix and Preachnix were the essence of capitalist entrepreneurship, he argued repeatedly. The point of capitalism was supposed to be providing people with alternatives.
“Well, the absence of advertising is an alternative, I told them. There are huge advertising budgets only when there’s no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that’s better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid. A strong country needs smart people. So Adnix is patriotic. The manufacturers can use some of their advertising budgets to improve their products. The consumer will benefit. Magazines and newspapers and direct mail business will boom, and that’ll ease the pain in the ad agencies. I don’t see what the problem is.”
Adnix, much more than the innumerable libel suits against the original commercial networks, led directly to their demise. For a while there was a small army of unemployed advertising executives, down-and-out former network officials, and penniless divines who had sworn blood oaths to revenge themselves on Hadden. And there was an ever growing number of still more formidable adversaries. Without a doubt, she thought, Hadden was an interesting man.
“So I figure it’s time to go. I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, my wife can’t stand me, and I’ve got enemies everywhere. I want to do something important, something worthy. I want to do something so that hundreds of years from now people will look back and be glad I was around.”
“You want–”
“I want to build the Machine. Look, I’m perfectly suited for it. I’ve got the best cybernetics expertise, practical cybernetics, in the business — better than Camegie-Mellon, better than MIT, better than Stanford, better than Santa Barbara. And if there’s anything clear from those plans, it’s that this isn’t a job for an old-time tool-and-die maker. And you’re going to need something like genetic engineering. You won’t find anybody more dedicated to this job. And I’ll do it at cost.”
“Really, Mr. Hadden, who builds the Machine, if we ever get to that point, isn’t up to me. It’s an international decision. All sorts of politics is involved. They’re still debating in Paris about whether to build the thing, if and when we decrypt the Message.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I’m also applying through the usual channels of influence and corruption. I just want to have a good word put in for me for the right reasons, by the side of the angels. Yon understand? And speaking of angels, you really shook up Palmer Joss and Billy Jo Rankin. I haven’t seen them so agitated since that trouble they had about Mary’s waters. Rankin saying he was deliberately misquoted about supporting the Machine. My, my.”
He shook his head in mock consternation. That some long standing personal enmity existed between these active proselytizers and the inventor of Preachnix seemed probable enough, and for some reason she was moved to their defense.
“They’re both a lot smarter than you might think. And Palmer Joss is…well, there’s something genuine about him. He’s not a phony.”
“You’re sure it’s not just another pretty face? Excuse me, but it’s important that people understand their feelings on this. It’s too important not to. I know these clowns. Underneath, when push comes to shove, they’re jackals. A lot of people find religion attractive–you know, personally, sexually. You ought to see what happens in the Temple of Ishtar.”
She repressed a small shiver of revulsion. “I think I will have that drink,” she said.
Looking down from the penthouse, she could see the gradated tiers of the Ziggurat, each draped with flowers, some artificial, some real, depending on the season. It was a reconstruction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Miraculously, it was so arranged that it did not closely resemble a Hyatt Hotel. Far below, she could make out a torchlit procession headed back from the Ziggurat to the Enlil Gate. It was led by a kind of sedan chair held by four burly men stripped to the waist. Who or what was in it she could not make out.
“It’s a ceremony in honor of Gilgamesh, one of the ancient Sumerian culture heroes.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of him.”
CHAPTER 14 Harmonic Oscillator
Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.