The scientist’s accidental aphrodisiac

The three scientists were stumped. They had been working together for four years, so far without any success. They had tried electronic devices, drugs, even at one stage, out of sheer desperation, a psychic, but not surprisingly her mutterings had no affect on the problem.

When first presented to them, the challenge seemed comparatively simple. All they had been asked to find was a way to see into the future, on a reliable basis. No insights, no déjà-vu and no mediums professing to be able to contact the dead. Just a simple ability to say, with a high degree of certainty that such-and-such was going to happen, and when.

The early part of the project had been mostly talking, among the three scientists themselves, and a few ‘experts’ they scraped up. Not surprisingly, they found that absolutely no one had any idea of how to approach the problem. They had taken it for granted, never having looked seriously at the problem before, that it would simply be a matter of assembling information, and from that, build a machine or create a drug that would do the job.

But those early months had been a total waste of time, and far from moving forward to the next stage of the project, they found themselves right back at square one.

Next, they built a series of machines that produced electronic signals, to be projected into the brain of the subject, and designed to alter the way their psyches worked. Seven of these units were built in all and the best that could be said about their effectiveness? Well, at least the person wearing one of them kept quiet while it was working, although with a look of fear on his face. The worst occurrence came with the fourth machine which, when turned on, immediately set the poor wearers hair on fire and made his ears bleed, accompanied by screams of anguish. You could say that machine worked to a certain extent – as soon as it was switched off the man who was wearing it looked into the future and said, “I’m going to kill you bastards if I ever see you again!”

After the failure of their machines, the three scientists began to play around with drugs, unwilling to chance their luck with electrical gadgets of unknown power any more, and at first they did seem to have some success.

A woman they gave one of their brews to, a mousy, quiet little secretary from the admin department, took the offered drug, then lay back on the couch they had provided, prim and demure at first, waiting for something to happen.

And after about five minutes something did! She started to look at the three men in a most odd sort of way; her eyes becoming sultry and her voice taking on a deep, husky tone.

“I’m going to have at least one of you three, before the night’s out!” she said. The scientists, not listening too carefully at first, glanced at each other in delight. This really did look like a view into the future.

Then exactly what she had said sank in and their enthusiasm turned to shock, then fear. It was obvious they had inadvertently manufactured some sort of powerful aphrodisiac, not a method of seeing into the future at all! The poor woman was saying in her drugged state, what she intended to do, not forecasting something that was going to happen because she had been able to see into the future!

The three scientists got out of the room as fast as they could, leaving the secretary moaning softly to herself, writhing on the couch, and stroking various parts of her body; their only hope, that the drug’s affect would wear off quickly, so that they could come back and get on with their work .

The three men are trying even harder now, looking for something, anything that might solve the problem, but it seems likely, after four years of effort on their part, that we have to accept the fact that humans are just not intended to be able to look ahead.  Maybe it’s just as well, (though apparently the company they worked for, eventually made a handsome profit from the new aphrodisiac!).

Do you think that predicting the future will be possible, in the future?