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“Every few hours she gets up to go to the bathroom and sometimes she can’t go back to sleep” volunteered Bobby. “Getting old is Hell sis, even if you don’t get cancer.”
“She’s single-handedly keeping that bookstore she likes in business” continued Janet. “Instead of watching television she reads. Gets through about three books a week now, even with the kids here every day. Thankfully she found a book donation drop-off, otherwise we would have boxes of the things around here.”
Gina changed the subject in case they ran out of time to talk. “You began a question before leaving.”
In a more serious tone Janet asked “How big of a risk are you willing to take?”
“Financially . . .” asked Gina dragging it out.
“With our lives basically” answered Janet. Two sets of lives got saucer like staring at her.
“It’s a serious question. One I need an answer to before I can continue with this train of thought” Janet replied to their blank stares. “At some point what you do will get found out. Governments will do anything to seize the technology. Even if you don’t manage to record and store a brain for later transplant into a lab grown body, your ability to generate dreams will leave you a target no matter how deep you layer on the shell companies. Won’t be you at first. Will be your data center and technology. Eventually it will be you personally and us, probably more use than you because we could be seen as leverage.”
“I hadn’t really given that part much thought” Gina answered honestly.
“Scientists rarely do, that’s why this family needed a matriarch” answered Janet. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with all of this. Bobby doesn’t know it yet, but eventually we will have to move from this mansion to a more secluded estate with security. Don’t look so shocked husband. It’s the price of being fabulously wealthy. If you want the children to have a stable school environment you have to have something of a compound to protect them. We are fine for now. Might even have enough room near the gate for a decent guard residence, but we will need to move eventually. Possibly out of California to a state where all our neighbors are heavily armed.”
She paused to let it sink in then continued “There is truth in the old joke. Why don’t butcher shops get held up? Because robbers can’t dodge all the knives.”
“You’re bringing this up because . . .” Bobby uttered.
“Because neither of you has thought about the risk level we are already at. While I’m sure both of you believe money can keep the possibility of prison time at bay, it will attract those who wish get rich by taking hostages. When word of your future product gets out it will also attract unwanted government attention. It can avoid such attention for a while by being advertised for $19.95 on late night television but as it becomes successful, it will be looked into.”
“And your proposal?” questioned Gina.
“Since we are already headed to this risk level and you are both brilliant enough to pull off the custom dream enterprise thing, we take it up a notch. The risk is the same but the billions it will generate will dwarf the income of custom dreams” Janet stated.
“Go on” Gina prodded.
“It all depends on how good a job you two do on the custom dreams” continued Janet. “If you can script dreams. Really good dreams with plots and sub-plots just like good stories, you can make an ocean of money with subliminal advertising. The Holy Grail of marketing. Way beyond catchy jingles and buzz phrases. Hidden in the dream is a simple message, perhaps they happen to see it as a commercial on a television. What is important is it becomes part of their subconscious and influences their decisions.”
“That certainly is possible, but keeping it quiet would be difficult” Gina responded.
“It doesn’t even have to be a dream” answered Bobby.
Gina gave a shocked look at her brother. Janet answered “He’s correct. He told me how the current dream technology works. You record by passive reflection, much like those anti-theft tags on store merchandise. You transmit by passive blending. A compatible frequency and wave which matches each brain’s normal harmonics. The dreams are welcomed while in a dream state.”
“It’s possible for the brain to become accustomed to receiving the input and respond to it while awake” answered Bobby.
“Much like a mother can hear her child’s voice in a room full of noisy rug rats” continued Janet. “Idiots always have their idiot phones on. The app could send out short bursts of messages based on time of day like telling them every 15 minutes from 10am till noon that they want a foot long from Subway. Or once per day telling them they really should be driving a Cadillac, at least until their social profile says they now own a Cadillac.”
“People have tried to market subliminal advertising for a very long time” answered Gina. “It’s banned in the U.K. and several other countries.”
“It’s also never been prosecuted because it is impossible to prove” stated Janet, “yet advertising uses all of those same techniques today. Remember how cigarette companies used to nearly finance movies just so their brands would be smoked by the actors in the films? How many times have you seen Dell and Apple computers in a show? Think it is an accident? Subliminal advertising is now called product placement. You can still see people smoking in shows today, but no where near what it was in the 60s and 70s.”
“She has a point” Bobby stated. “Television and radio charge more for restaurants to advertise from 4-7pm because that’s when people are thinking about what to do for supper. Medicare supplemental insurance blankets the airwaves during the enrollment period. The only thing which has really been banned is those fraction of a second things stuffed into other things. Her Subway and Cadillac examples where it is a random self contained commercial, however short, is stand alone. Not subject to the law. Likewise a featured product in a dream or a course of action wrapped into the subplot of a dream wouldn’t be subject to such laws either. At least I’m willing to believe mediocre lawyers could defend that.”
“We don’t hire mediocre lawyers” Gina stated. “We would never be able to market such a service though. Speaking of it would out it and bring the dream side of the business down before it could fund everything.”
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