by NANCY GONGLIKWANYEOHEEEEEEEH, Alternate Reality News Service Technology Writer
Sanderson Delft dreamed of killing Jerzy Kosinski. Most often, this involved using a smelt to saw through the safety bar of a roller coaster so that he could throw the author out of the car when it reached its highest point. Sometimes it involved a contraption involving so many coils, balls rolling down ramps, dominoes and popping balloons that it would have made Rube Goldberg dizzy, all to deliver a spoonful of arsenic in Kosinski’s morning tea. Once, it involved a curare-laced dart blown from two miles away (he had a military-grade scope).
There were two problems with Delft’s dreams: Kosinski had died in 1991, and Delft had no idea who he was. He had never read The Painted Bird. He had never seen Being There. The only reason he knew it was Jerzy Kosinski was that he always screamed, “Jerzy Kosinski, this is for Omaha!” before committing the murder.
Delft was not the only person who dreamed of killing dead authors they had never heard of. Clementine Obsidian dreamed she killed Upton Sinclair by buying him an all-inclusive weekend ski vacation to the Alps, where her yodeling caused an avalanche that engulfed him (in fact, he died before she was born). Marci Chicklets (of the Dingle Dell Chickletses) dreamed that Art Buchwald died of asphyxiation when she tickled him mercilessly (actually, he choked to death on a ham performance of Hamlet). Gerhardt Kabuki dreamed he killed Stanislaw Lem by ratting him out to the Spanish Inquisition.
Did these people have anything in common? Why, yes. Yes, they did. They all celebrated their birthdays in October (even though Delft was actually born in May). Buuuuuut, that’s not really relevant. They were also all enthusiastic users of the (patent pending) Power PerspirerTM.
A product of Outside the Box Energy, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of MultiNatCorp, “We do environmentally ambitious, if ambiguous, stuff”), the Power PerspirerTM harvests the energy in a person’s fingertips while they sleep. Over the course of eight hours, a person can generate enough energy to keep a moderately smart watch (of IQ no greater than 87) or two absolutely stupid Flitbits (each with IQs less than 43) going for an entire day.
There are more sweat glands in a person’s fingertips than in their underarms, explained Tamarind Adirondack, Chief Technology Officer of Outside the Box Energy. “The reason we don’t have antiperspirants for our hands,” she stated, “is because fingertip sweat evaporates faster than friends who’ve heard you’re late on your mortgage payments.”
The Power PerspirerTM breaks down the lactate in sweat with an enzyme to produce energy. Or, so Adirondack told me. I…didn’t do well in high school chemistry class, so I couldn’t really follow what she was saying. Millions of people have bought the device, so I assume she knows what she’s talking about. Unless you did really well in high school chemistry class, you should probably do the same.
What could be the connection between the Power PerspirerTM and homicidal dreams? “Obviously,” Delft told me, “the energy the device creates disrupts the electrical impulses in the brain. I didn’t do well in high school chemistry class, and I didn’t take biology, but even I know that!”
Oh, umm, obviously.
“Wait a second!” Adirondack interjected. “The amount of energy the Power PerspirerTM generates is too small to affect user’s dreams!”
“The amount of electrical energy devoted to a single thought is minimal,” Delft pointed out. “It wouldn’t take much to disrupt it.”
“Oh, umm obviously,” Adirondack reluctantly allowed.
The dream of science…well, scientists…I mean, certain scientists – and, when I say dream, I really mean unholy ambition – is to scale up the Power PerspirerTM so that people’s sweat could be used to power cities.
“Aww, heavens to Murgatroyd, no!” Delft moaned. “You know how your fingers get all pruny when you’ve been in water too long? Imagine that happening to your entire body!”
Understood. But, who is Murgatroyd?
“My lawn darts bowling buddy. Hi, Murgatroyd! Has heaven come to you yet?”
Adirondack even more reluctantly allowed that the problems scaling up the technology were substantial. “But, they said that faster-than-light flight was impossible, so I hold out hope that we can overcome those problems.”
When I pointed out that we don’t have faster-than-light flight, Adirondack sighed and responded, “I didn’t say that my hope was well-founded!”
Despite their less than ideal side effect (there are a lot of writers he has read whom he would happily dispatch in his dreams), Delft continues to use the Power PerspirerTM. “The dreams aren’t that violent,” he said. “Now, if I start having dreams about spray-painting pornographic graffiti across the foreheads of living authors I know, I may reconsider…”