Char Ivan
Planting an idea Cleve Backster has lately been in town getting lot of newspaper publicity for his researches Into the emotional life of plants. Backster, you
Will remember, is the American lie-detector
Pert, formerly employed by the CIA, who s°'"fle years ago was happily inspired to wire his TIachine up to a pot plant in his office and scover that it registered different responses ,according to the thoughts passing through his Bead.
,.. Well, students of Fleet Street will not have been surprised to observe that the stories Printed were pretty much the same as what
aPPeared in the British press back in 1972, even though Backster wasn't over here at the time. ,Ncl.r will the said students by surprised when I TII them that his original research has given "se to a number of important recent developIl)ents which our newspapers have completely Triored, Plant psychology has indeed long since eTnerged from the ivory tower of theory into the field of practical application. The most 1.r-reaching post-Backsterian discovery was at the emotional and telepathic receptivity of trees does not cease when they are chopped doWn. It persists undiminished in the timber to Which they are reduced and in the furniture Made from it. . Thus it comes about that we are surrounded wl our homes and offices by objects which we
by accustomed to considering inanimate but
,`I? which we are continuously and intensively ;`111tinised. This fact has already been turned b° commercial advantage by a company called rt,!elex Furniture, which quickly latched on to Tee Possibility that a properly wired-up wooden sk might be a better judge of the character of
Would-be employees than even the most
1skilled personnel officer. ,................. The prototype 1. eeiex desk was equipped with a single meter which registered merely the degree of sympathy or antipathy with which the wood reacted to persons seated next to it. The current production model comes with a whole array of dials visible only from behind the desk and which measure the principal characteristics (sincerity, aggressiveness, etc) of whomever is placed in front of it.
If Feelex's name is unknown to you that is because the company has as yet not advertised, believing that, given the somewhat controversial nature of the product, discretion is the better part of salesmanship. Obviously few potential purchasers would like prospective employees or actual clients to get the idea that they might be spied upon by a desk, if only because they would be likely to try taking counter-measures, such as asking to conduct their meetings in the corridor. So Feelex's marketing effort is a low-key one, taking the form mainly of personal approaches to managing directors. Unfortunately many of these are unimaginative ignoramuses ("hard-headed realists" is how they put it themselves) who not only reject the entirely accurate claims Feelex makes for its product but refuse even to give up a little time to watch a demonstration. The result is that, if the company had to rely upon ordinary commercial sales, it would not be making much of a profit. However, where sceptical businessmen have feared to tread, secret services have rushed in. On the strength of orders received from Backster's old outfit, the CIA, Feelex has been
enabled to undertake an elaborate research and development programme aimed at producing a variety of objects of furniture which will not merely respond to the personality of human beings but will, by means of complicated electronic circuitry, make a verbal tape-recording of those human beings' unspoken thoughts.
Naturally the progress, even the existence, of this programme is highly confidential, but I have it from a reliable source (the barman at the Cap and Bells, who gets to talk to a lot of very high-up people) that the technical
problems have been ironed out and that Feelex's Washington branch is even now preparing to refurnish and repanel the White House throughout in telepathic wood. Seeing the damage that ordinary sound recordings have already done to the Presidency, this doesn't strike me as such a good idea, but I suppose our American friends know what they're doing.
Presumably the pay-off will come when Brezhnev pays his next visit to the States and leaves behind a detailed record of what he was thinking throughout the banquets he was invited to. Let's hope it reveals more than his opinion of the food and how worried he is about getting his weight down. Speaking of the White House — and these days it is difficult to go very long without speaking of it — I find it difficult to believe the report relayed by my source that the President, cut off from most of his old political associates, is turning for counsel to a rubber plant. According to the story I have heard, one of Cleve Backster's fellow researchers recommended the plant as the most sensitive and intelligent he had come across. Wired up to a kind of teleprinter, it will give an immediate comment on any question put to it. Nixon is said to be spending hours every day talking to the creature, confiding in it more frankly than he ever did even in Bob Haldeman. It is the rubber plant which is reported to have talked the President out of any thought of resigning. His morale thus fortified, he has only one fear — or so 1 am told — and that is of what will happen if the rubber plant is subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee. The question, which has never yet been put to the test, is how deep does vegetable loyalty run?
Chad Babble
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