Читать книгу Overturned - Rothilda von Rotortod - Страница 15

The expedition leader nodded to the assistant who thereupon put on her demonstration glasses. The others – a total of ten Kadohanians took part in the mission – did the same. Now they could all see the assistant as well as the illustrative material she used for her presentation.

The introductory picture showed Heimenross in the large showroom of StarWind, next to the windmill dummy that seemed to grow towards the sky in the middle of the room. In order to reinforce this impression, they had even made a ceiling breakthrough. The wind turbine now seemed to pierce the ceiling and thus vividly symbolised the "reach for the stars" promised by StarWind. At the same time, it reflected the idea that the profits to be achieved with the new energy would "go through the ceiling". Furthermore, the dome that vaulted over the wind turbine lent it a sublime, almost religious appearance.

"Is everyone ready?" the assistant asked. After a unanimous nod, she began her explanations: "For programming the test subject, we have resorted to established image-pairing procedures. In addition, we have used neural amplification mechanisms. Whenever we could identify a brain region that responded positively to the stimulus, we amplified the corresponding brain activity with a reward serum."

The assistant tapped briefly against her glasses. These then conjured up a recording from the early days of the experiments. "As you can see, the test subject first reacted very unfavourably to pictures of concrete pillars and rotor blades," she commented.

In fact, Heimenross' negative reaction was extremely strong. He pulled a visibly disgusted face and even turned away from the picture when he was exposed to it for a longer time. All the more astonishing was the change that the assistant and her team had apparently brought about after only a short time.

Another tapping against the glasses, then another recording of the experiments appeared. This time the proband's negative emotional responding was already much less pronounced. "We first tried to change the subject's attitude by using a combination of concrete and piles of money or concrete and nature pictures," explained the assistant. "However, we were only able to achieve a satisfactory effect when we combined both approaches. The test person responded particularly well to pictures of sunflowers. Apparently the subject has a special emotional relationship to them."

The next recording already demonstrated the success of the test setup. It showed Heimenross in front of the miniature wind turbine, which in the virtual world was flanked on one side by a blooming sunflower and on the other side by a large pile of money. His face glowed with enthusiasm, full of passion he shouted: "Wind power is green, I want wind power, green is the future, green is wind power, we need more wind turbines, wind turbines are green, so green, they are greening so green ..."

"A bit excessive, don't you think?" asked the expedition leader to the group.

"Yes, and at the same time a bit too wooden," another agreed with him. "We should inject him with a bit more respectability. Otherwise no one will take him seriously!"

"Be patient – that was only the beginning!" the assistant made clear. "We first had to arouse a certain passion in the test person. Only then was it possible to immunise the subject against the negative side effects of the stimulus source."

A renewed tapping against the glasses conjured a big bird in front of the eyes of the expedition members. It flew straight towards the wind turbine and got caught in its rotor blades. Tumbling it fell down and hit the ground with a heavy thud. Into the animal's last twitching Heimenross shouted: "Only wind power is clean, nothing is purer than wind power. Whoever wants clean energy must be prepared to make sacrifices. The sacrifice of today is the foundation for the life of tomorrow. Only wind power can ensure the future of our children."

"That makes him look more statesmanlike," confirmed one of the group.

The assistant nodded contentedly. "Yes, we have certainly made significant progress in our experiments. But I must confess: It was hard work. The hardest part for us was overcoming the subject's resistance to cutting down trees for our reinforced concrete towers."

This statement was followed by another recording that illustrated what the assistant meant. While a chainsaw was cutting into a tree trunk, Heimenross covered his ears and pulled his face in disgust.

"In the end, however, we achieved the desired stimulus-response coupling," the assistant summed up. "But we had to increase significantly the secondary stimuli for this – especially on the monetary side."

She was tapping against her glasses again. Now Heimenross was completely unimpressed by the tree felling. While next to him a gigantic clearing machine cutted a swathe for transporting wind turbine parts into the forest, he explained unmoved: "The single tree means nothing, the forest means everything. We have to save the forest, for that we have to plant wind turbines, more and more wind turbines, because wind power is green, therefore it alone can save the forest".

Spontaneously everyone raised their index fingers next to their foreheads – a sign of highest recognition on Kadohan. Only the expedition leader corrected himself shortly afterwards and clapped his hands instead, in order to adapt to the customs on Earth. "Really a very impressive result, Mrs Black," he praised the assistant.