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weights
with sweat across his muscled abdomen, a soldier holding a bloody
rag against his eye in a news bulletin, dead bodies beside a
burning tank, an attractive couple deep kissing surrounded by
candles, men chaining up another man in homoerotic bondage, a woman
in lingerie slowly opening her legs to the camera.
    “Like I said,” George
added. “Middle of the road stuff. Down at number one it’s violent
as fuck whilst at number ten it’s wall to wall porn. This is what
you wanted, right? Pornography and violence scaled across the
spectrum?”
    “It is,” Brian said.
“It’s perfect.”
     
    ----- X -----
     
    The Consec psychologist
was an older man with a completely bald head and thick rimmed
glasses. He brought with him his analysis of the V-Test results and
passed copies to Brian and Peter Fluorite, then lit a pipe. “It is
quite remarkable what the V-Tests have shown.” He puffed tobacco
smoke into the air as he spoke. “But the one thing that really
startled me was the importance of removing context.”
    Fluorite flicked
through a few pages of the report without really reading. “Why is
that important?”
    “I would say it brings
emotion neutrality. Let me give an example. If you were to see a
film of a man shot and killed for no reason it would be terrible
violence. You would view that violence in and of itself and your
emotional response would be to the violence alone. There would be
no narrative, no explanation to cloud your feelings. But let us
suppose you preface the story by saying this man had shot up a
school playground, that many children had been murdered, then you
watched a film of this school gunman who, when cornered by police,
was shot and killed. This time, your reaction would not be to the
violence exclusively, but rather to the emotions brought forward by
the narrative. Your emotional response would be to the story as a
whole, not the violence in isolation. I have surmised that the
removal of context is an important factor in sharpening the impact
of Veraceo. Make sure, when you make your programme, that you keep
your material without context.”
    “I’m sorry,” Brian
interrupted. “Did you just say, when you make your programme?”
    Fluorite put his
analysis document down, sensing Brian’s confusion. “Did Barry not
tell you about this?”
    Brian shook his head.
“Tell me about what?”
    “We’re going to shoot
some test video. Make our own content.”
    “I haven’t spoken with
Barry in a few weeks. What is the proposal? What are we planning on
doing?”
    Fluorite shuffled on
his chair uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. I was
talking with Barry yesterday and I assumed you knew all about this.
The idea is we need to test the limits of Veraceo, but the V-Test
videos George is cutting together are assembled from stock footage
and he’s struggling to find the right sort of material. Now that we
understand Veraceo works with sex and violence, we’re going to
produce something original, soft porn mixed with a little
aggression. With this we get to control the exact tone of the
programme.”
    Brian turned to the
psychologist. “And this is what you’re working on?”
    “Yes,” the psychologist
said. “Mister Convex asked for my input a little over a week ago.
That’s what I’m trying to help with. I’m trying to guide you on how
to produce your content. As I understand, Consec have already
released the funds and provided studio space.”
    There was an
uncomfortable silence on behalf of Brian. He broke it himself when
he asked, “So our content must be without context. What else do we
need to know?”
    The psychologist puffed
some more smoke then went back to his analysis. “I would also
remove swearing. Bad language is a form of linguistic violence. It
is aggression vocalised, but not only that, it’s analgesic;
swearing out loud works as a pain reliever. It’s important because
I believe Veraceo works on the deepest levels of the brain. The
basal part.