Progress Report -- December 1, 1997

by Dr. Dystopia

Long-Term Son of Ether/Verbena Cooperative Experiment
 

Experiment: Effects of Psychoactive Gasoline Additive on Urban Populations

History: After the end of the Second World War, the Technocracy became very interested in the human mind, both in any inborn powers it might possess and how to affect and control large numbers of people. To this end, the governments of the major world powers of the time, the United States and the Soviet Union, began conducting top secret experiments which involved administering various psychoactive substances (LSD, for example, was one of the milder substances used) to unknowing groups of Sleepers in order to gauge their effects and potency (see Library file Progenitor Population Control Methods - Historical for more detail).

From the mid-1940's until the late-1980's, communism was seen as the greatest enemy of the capitalist style of life in the West. During this time of ideological fervor, many Scientists ended up on either side of the political fence. These men and women used their personal Theories and research toward the eventual victory of their chosen philosophy over the other. Some Scientists, however, used the methods of the time not for political gain, but more properly in our continuing struggle with the Technocracy.

One laboratory, composed of two Scientists and two Verbena, came together in 1948 in order to use their combined abilities to create and measure dissatisfaction for urban life, and its resultant effect upon the perception of the over-reliance on technology as a factor in that dissatisfaction. The group’s main Theorist, Doctor Dystopia, believed that if life in heavily urban areas could be made perceivably worse, and an over-reliance on technology could be shown as the cause, the benefits would be three-fold: first, urbanized areas, as centers of Technocratic influence, would be made more difficult for the Technocracy to control; second, rural areas would be increasingly seen as preferable to urban, a slower, simpler life preferable to a complex, fast-paced one; and third, over-confidence in and over-reliance upon high technology as a cure-all would be slowed or even reduced. Their first dilemma was how to test this theory under actual conditions.

After months of research and debate, Verbena Helen March realized an elegantly simple solution. With the end of the Second World War, previously scarce commodities such as nylon, steel, meat, rubber and gasoline, needed for the war effort, were now widely available. One consequence of this was that Americans were now driving their cars more than ever, and a boom in the automotive industry resulted. The laboratory, acting through dummy corporations over the span of five years, purchased controlling interest in certain manufacturing companies. Each of these companies made, among other things, gasoline-pump hoses. The Scientists then altered the production process such that the hoses were now impregnated with a unique chemical that bonds readily with and leaches into any gasoline pumped through it. Suspicious Syndicate agents could check the large, underground tanks which held gasoline at service stations for tainted product, only to find nothing unusual within. (As of this writing, Technocratic agents are unaware of the chemical’s presence in the gas hoses.)

Effects: The chemical’s properties are released when the chemical-bonded gasoline is burned, specifically within an automobile’s internal-combustion engine. The resulting exhaust would contain the activated compound of the laboratory’s formula. The compound is inhaled by people nearby, where, via the process of respiration, it goes to work on the brain almost instantly. The chemical stimulates the subject’s amygdala, causing him or her to react more aggressively to situations than they otherwise might. The effect has a short duration, lasting only a few minutes after the end of the subject’s exposure. The laboratory’s expectations were that highly-urbanized population centers would be exposed to more of the chemical, thereby experiencing a more pronounced effect. The chemical’s primary effect is psychoactive in nature, though exposure to the chemical has shown no innately harmful effects. This is not to say, however, that the experiment has proceeded without incident.

Since its start nearly 50 years ago, several unusual phenomena have been documented that appear to be connected to the experiment. The number of cars driven in the United States has been increasing almost exponentially and, consequently, the amount of gasoline being burned has similarly increased. During the oil crisis of the mid-1970’s, gas stations were places of both high visitation and high emotion. With the close proximity to automobile exhaust and tension over gasoline scarcity, gas stations were the scenes of numerous arguments and fistfights. Another phenomenon began in Southern California in the mid-1980’s, when several cases of motorists shooting other motorists were reported. Since then, the incidents have both escalated, generalized and spread to other urbanized areas of the country. The violent activity has reached the point that Sleeper scientists have coined the term “road rage” to describe the range of aggressive behaviors that are carried out by urban motorists. Not coincidentally, America’s urban population centers have also been exposed to higher concentrations of the experiment’s chemical. Additionally, violent crime in urban areas has increased at a rate disproportionate to urban population growth. It has been concluded that concentrated, prolonged doses of the chemical cause more severe behavioral reactions.

While the Technocracy began reacting to the problems caused by the gasoline additive in the early-1990’s, they have yet to discover the source of their problems. Their efforts are hampered by the constant reformulation of the chemical’s formula, making it more and more difficult to detect. Progenitor chemists have stumbled onto the same method of transmission that the laboratory uses, unaware that Tradition Scientists have been using it for close to fifty years. In 1996, the Progenitors began a campaign to fight the effects of the gasoline additive with one of their own. Their additive, which oxidizes into a mild tranquilizing agent, is being tested in California, marketed to the public as a “Clean Air Additive” designed to reduce the natural, environmentally-harmful emissions produced by internal-combustion engines. The Technocracy hopes that, by tranquilizing the population, the problems of “road rage” and increased urban violence will be eliminated. It remains to be seen what long-term effect the Progenitor additive will have when applied in concert with the laboratory’s own. The laboratory is currently working on reformulating their additive so that it neutralizes the Progenitor chemical while maintaining its own effects.

1997 Derek D. Bass
 

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