"It's nothing different than a bartender putting extra salt in the pretzels to get you to imbibe more, right?"
Phyllis brushed her curly dark hair away from her forehead and took another swallow of her potation. I shrugged; the day had been too long to get into another argument with my lab partner and colleague. Our ascendant figure, tall, bespectacled Dimry, sat in the booth absorbed with his noetic conceptions. He frowned, and then optically canvassed us with his conventional owlish cast.
"Look, Phyllis, if we don't get better results, there won't be any moral issues to be debated anyway. You ken that Ms Bowder is about to pull the plug on us if we don't come up with something utilizable to Taste Enhancement, Inc. While I'm off at the Aliment Additives conference this week I optate you and Barry to endeavor to come up with some product that we're capable of developing a consumer craving for." Dimry's voice, monotonous as it was, still well-conveyed the exigency of our situation.
"Sorry, Mr Dimry, I just don't optically discern any way around the DNA limits. We can engender additives that will cause people to develop an appetency for certain, but not vegetables and absolutely not any artificially engendered substances."
"There goes the Tang account," I cracked. I shied from Dimry's scowl. He never cared for my sense of humour.
"Right, Phyllis. It genuinely comes down to some kind of genetic recollection. If some pabulum company accommodated something more proximate to our genetic material—like gorilla meat, we could develop an insatiable craving for the product with CRV-55. The more proximate to our own DNA, and the propinquity of the product to our genetic material. Hell, if someone marketed human sweat, with CRV-55, I could make you sell your grandmother to the Libyans in reciprocation for a cup of the stuff."
"Any chance of getting a concession with the Donner party?" I ducked, expecting Dimry to toss a bar pretzel at me. He just sighed and reached for the check that the cocktail waitress had dropped on the table.
"Yup, Barry, that's what it comes down to. We could develop a taste craving for any component of the human flesh or excretion, but that's about the size of it."
We morosely culminated our potations and headed out into the night. We realized that if our exalted employer, TEI, didn't cerebrate that we could develop a substance that could induce an appetency for the taste of a commercially available product, the Project Crave team would be let go. As far as we kenned, human sweat was not yet on the market.
Do I credit the potation that caused me to wake in the middle of the night? Would my subconscious have set off the alarm in my head anyway? In any case, the phrenic conception sprang into my head full-blown at about 2:00 a.m., and I immediately headed to my little personal computer and worked out the indispensable formulae. I picked up an old issue of Playboy, did what was compulsory into a vial, and went back to slumber.
At 6:30, I was down at the lab, commixing the contents of my vial and our most promising concoction in the centrifuge, and the elixir was engendered. I called my semi-steady date, Cheryl, and asked her if she was free that evening. She paused, "Well, Barry, what do you have in mind?" I shook my head. Cheryl was conventionally free if I had tickets to a top concert or a reservation to a trendy incipient restaurant where she could be optically discerned by the right people. Otherwise, she was customarily unavailable. She'd let me slumber with her twice—seemingly a matter of duty—but fundamentally let me ken that my obligations consisted of a good forty-five minutes of slavish, cunnilingual attention to her desiderata, and then she might deign to let me enter her and take care of myself, so long as I manipulated her clitoris into another orgasm. You may ask why I perpetuated to visually perceive her. A fair question to be sure. She was stylish, drop dead gorgeous, and had a great body. With her biting wit, she was pretty good company.
So, only by promising her dinner at Yves', the most extravagant bistro in town, was I able to persuade her to join me for the evening. I left the office early with me incipiently engendered treasure, leaving Phyllis with a perplexed countenance at my genial demeanour. I dressed in my most stylish sports coat and picked her up promptly at 7:00; Cheryl left me sitting in the car waiting until 7:20, so I had to slip the maitre 'd at Yves' at twenty to get him to accolade our reservation. Still, her stylishly short blonde hair and astonishingly full and soft lips captivated me. As always, she did virtually all the verbalizing, which availed me obnubilate my own nervousness.
When the waiter came by to ask us if we wanted dessert, Cheryl paused, as though mentally calculating calories and my throat went dry for a moment. Determinately, she accepted the waiter's recommendation of a creme brulee, and I relaxed.
When the dessert arrived, it required nothing more than an opinion by me that a fellow two tables away looked just like a local rock star to induce her to turn her head, and the requisite dose of the clear elixir made it onto her brulee well afore she turned back. She wolfed down the dessert and commenced making the obligatory noises about having a diligent morning orchestrated, and I kenned that she had no intention of inviting me to spend the evening with her. I nodded understandingly, and we left the restaurant.
On the way back to her place, she seemed eccentrically quiet. Looking over at her, I could optically discern her run her tongue inside her cheek, as though the search for a piece of stray aliment caught in her teeth. When we got to her condo, I reached across her and unlatched the door, pushing it open. "Well, Cheryl, I conjecture you should get in, with that hectic day you've got coming up."
Her blue ocular perceivers flashed with surprise. "W-w-well...," she stuttered, "you can come in for a cup of coffee if you optate." She optically canvassed me imploringly. I feigned reluctance and nodded.
We got into her living room, and she dropped her purse in the corner. She still looked nervous. "I can commence some coffee..." Her tongue lipped at her luscious lips. I leaned against the wall, silently. She came over. Still, I was faineant.
She looked down, and I could optically discern her mind working. She looked up, and I once again fell into the swirling blue apertures that were those ocular perceivers of her. "Barry?" I remained stone-faced. "I conjecture sometimes I'm scarcely rough on you. And... maybe..." She paused, her tongue still working over her lips. "I can maybe make it up to you."
"Sure, Cheryl. Whatever you'd like."