Early that week a concert was announced. It was to be performed on a stage set up for the event in a field by the local high school. I had never heard of the performers but this is a small town. Everyone takes what comes.
That night, I drove to the field. Technicians in laboratory outfits were injecting people as they sat in their cars. It was an invisible drive-in. Both screen and what was projected unfolded on the seats of rows of cars parked in a silence broken only by the occasional clinking of laboratory glass and the discrete voices of administration.
Subsequent accounts of the performance convey a deep sense of shared experience. But they diverge at the level of detail. Some describe a massive crowd in an open-air setting; others an intimate event in a small dimly lit club. Some saw a trio, some a duo; some mention a horn section while others describe turntables.
I added my account to the network:
There was a deep sense of shared experience. My performance was sitting on a nearby hill looking through binoculars at a neighboring field filled with parked cars between which technicians in laboratory outfits moved. The silence was total except for the occasional clink of laboratory glass and the discrete voices of administration.
Sometime afterward, another appeared:
What you have just experienced is an entertainment of a new type, one made possible by a convergence of the latest advances in pharmacology and technology.
We are expanding the frontiers of entertainment through Memory Redesign™.
We will soon be able to provide you with new experiences that are continuous with all your favorite previous experiences. If some evening you want to see three consecutive performances by your favorite band, you will be able to do it. The musicians will never tire. The music will surprise but never startle. Best of all, ticket prices will approach zero.
Memory Redesign™ entertainments will allow for an explosion of new-ish creativity.
And, for a modest fee, you will be able to enhance your encounters with the new-ish by using our proprietary customization interface, which will allow unprecedented experience optimization through fine-tuning your own doses of novelty.
Our scientists have created memory redesigns to activate a variety of media. What you are now seeing is an example, a triggered experience of words on a paper-like background that we built into our prototype performance-enhancement injections.
This virtual medium will soon be available separately in the form of 250 mg. capsules attractively packaged in yellow and black.
The story you have always wanted is just a pill away.
Well yes. "Memory Redesign™ entertainments will allow for an explosion of new-ish creativity."
Interesting piece, Stephen. Good voice. I like.