At first thought, you wouldn't have imagined there would be much call for inventing a gas which can make people lose their inhibitions. Where would be the value in that? That's what Wendy had thought when she first came to work on the project, mixing the right cocktail of hallucinogens, relaxants, anaesthetics and other esoteric substances, trying to get the correct mix that would provide a temporary alteration to a person's behaviour without sending them into a trance, a trip, or a coma.
But then you start to think; what about the people who might need it? What about the people too afraid of social repercussions to do even the most everyday tasks? Could it not have therapeutic value for them to be able to breathe in a wonder substance that would help them achieve things their neuroses would not allow? What about couples in dire straits because they simply couldn't lose their inhibitions and open up to one another emotionally - or sexually? Wouldn't it benefit them? Or imagine a performer, a gifted singer or dancer or orator, suddenly crippled by stage fright? They too could be helped by this product, perhaps.
It was Dr Avery Bennett, the project lead, who raised the idea of more revolutionary applications. The chemist had a photograph pinned up behind his desk. It was apparently a piece of graffiti written on a wall during the riotous Paris uprising in 1967.
The graffiti read, in English: "THERE IS A POLICEMAN INSIDE ALL OF OUR HEADS. HE MUST BE DESTROYED."
"What is it that holds society together?" the doctor had asked his team one day. "Certainly authority, police, law, but what gives these things license? The civilian population of any country far outnumbers the army or law enforcement. They do not have to be obedient, yet for the most part they are. Why is this?
"The threat of punishment is enough for some, but for the majority, it is the
social contract
. The unspoken agreement between people;
this
we can do,
this
we cannot.
This
is acceptable,
that
is taboo. The thing within humans that holds us to the centre line. The policeman in our head.
"What if we could make it so that people could no longer hear the policeman any more, only their own id? What if we could make it that there was suddenly for them no 'cannot' - only want and don't want? Would a society hold together without the social contract, without personal inhibition?
"Imagine, we could reduce an invading army to anarchy, destabilise a brutal regime, liberate an oppressed country, all without firing a single bullet..."
That was why, in an effort to try and secure more funding, they had begun to showcase the potential of the gas to the sort of people who bought technology for the military. Dr Bennett had chosen Wendy to assist him on many of these trips to meet powerful people in suits and uniforms; in part because she was one of his most capable scientists, but also because they'd been having an affair for some time and they liked to use their overnight stays to carry this on untroubled by the risk of discovery by Dr Bennett's wife.
On this trip, as she had done many times before, despite it not really being advisable, Wendy had removed the samples of gas from the laboratory the night before, so she would not have to make a detour back to the facility on the way to the railway station early the next morning. Avery Bennet was energetic for a man almost twice her twenty-five years, and she always felt better if she had a good night's rest before one of their little sojourns, as it was unlikely she would be having much sleep while she was away.
Her head full of plans for tonight's liaison, and the spicy red lingerie she planned to wear under her sensible twinset, it was perhaps understandable that she didn't notice that one of the three small canisters of the gas - which the scientists had informally christened Uninhibitol - was not in her bag, not until they were well on their way.
Even then, she had registered only a mild sense of annoyance that they would have only two canisters to show - but she wasn't terribly concerned about the whereabouts of the third. It had doubtless rolled under the coffee table in the living room, or perhaps under the stairs of the house she shared with her two roommates, and she would find and return it to the lab on her return.
Which would have been fine, if it had been one of the canisters that
wasn't
faulty.
--