"Phantom Vibrations"
The face that once graced billboards all along Interstate 5 from San Ysidro to the Oregon state line appears in the rear-view mirror, disillusioned and drowning under a cascade of tears in his self-driving car. Dr. Jones, PhD sheds his spectacles and stares at the man in the careening mirror once known as the “smartest man in the world” according to Vogue, the creator of TMAY™ technology, otherwise known as Tell Me About Yourself, a groundbreaking psychotherapeutic and pharmacological methodology that, according to the neural advertisement now streaming inside his head, is
proven to treat acute anhedonia via a patented dopaminergic suppository delivery system, which, when paired with Dr. Jones’ subscription-only psychotherapeutic podcast, can significantly quell societal angst and civilization malaise—subscribe now for a free trial and a 10% discount on the TMAY™ loyalty program, which includes a daily regimen of beta blocking suppositories guaranteed to make you feel not just better—but isn’t it time you felt your best?
Now back to Mervin and Marwin on the Ones. As we were saying before the break, given what’s happened to Mrs. Annie Jones—the fourth wife, by the way—I firmly believe there are only two places fit for these types of sociopaths obsessed with wealth and power: on some distant, uninhabited island, or preferably in county jail.
Dr. Jones removes his hands from the driver-less car’s steering wheel, a skeuomorph of a bygone era, and tells his neural implant to mute for five minutes.
“Very well,” Cassandra in the Cloud replies from somewhere inside his head. “This is your last override of the day.”
Dr. Jones is hell-bent on getting to the Oregon state line before the police show up at his Beverly Hills mansion and start asking questions. He can’t afford not to have a lawyer present when his 17-million-and-dropping subscribers learn about the longitudinal study published this morning at John Hopkins, his own alma mater—oh the humanity!—where he first began developing his theory of “listening sans intervening,” having studied under then-world-renowned Austrian dentist-turned-psychopathologist Reinhard Kleiberg, PhD, who helped jumpstart Dr. Jones’ storied celebrity career in psychotherapeutic dentistry before introducing him to not one, two, or three but four buxom wives—goodbye, sweet Annie—and a revolving-door of celebrity visitors to Dr. Jones’ private clinic, where they came for a teeth cleaning and to imbibe in ayahuasca suppositories, ketamine nasal sprays, and magic mushroom mouthwash.
It was there that Dr. Jones treated the likes of [redacted] and [redacted] with TMAY™ and developed his patented ART™ technology (Auditory Relationship Therapy), a deceptively simple technique based upon telling patients exactly what they wanted to hear whilst having their teeth whitened.
For decades, Dr. Jones, PhD, was the therapeutic reference in Lalaland for anyone rich enough to afford porcelain veneers and dumb enough to believe in consumption-based therapy.
What a difference a dead fourth wife and a peer-reviewed longitudinal study makes.
As his self-driving car whisks Dr. Jones towards the Oregon state line, he curses the culmination of his five-minute neural implant break.
Come on down to our ethical dog shop. It’s only dogs! And ethics for dogs!
If your dog’s unethical, bring him down.
We’ve got ethics for dogs. We’ve got hot dogs for dogs. We’ve got all the ethics you need for your dog to make sure the dog follows ethics.
Ethics for Dogs.
Two-for-one, ninety-nine cent deal.
Come on down to Ethics for Dogs!
The commercial reminds Dr. Jones of a simpler time—of a time when he and Annie used to feed caramelized popcorn to their pet, Joey, an obese Australian shepherd whom they overdosed on Prozac last year.
But it was thanks to Joey’s untimely death, after all, that Dr. Jones and Annie were able to travel to the Himalayas and co-write a NY Time Bestseller-favorite amongst afternoon talk shows geared towards empty-nesting women: The Apex is But a Base for the Sky, a self-help book about the myriad ways in which high-altitudes and enriched oxygen can help suburbanites cope with suffering, resulting in in Dr. Jones’ next $200-million acronym, The Sky is But a Base (SIBAB™), an esoteric philosophy combining Janism, Astrology, and Intravenous Ketamine therapy that places the individual human being at the “disassociated center of the multitudinal expanse,” a complex idea which, according to the investigative journalist’s voice that is once again reverberating in Dr. Jones’ inner ear,
SIBAB, like all of these idiotic acronyms, is psychological snake oil of the most dangerous kind, which sets a dangerous precedent for psychopharmacological tourism. This incessant need to pathologize in order to derive meaning and/or identity is almost certainly why every. single. one of Dr. Jones’ four wives overdosed.
“Stop it!” Dr. Jones screams, covers his ears, curls up in the fetal position in the driver’s seat but he can’t ignore the journalist’s voice, and he can’t stand his penchant for alliteration, for the voice is coming from inside Dr. Jones’ award-winning head:
…and these so-called success stories living their quiet lives of desperation—celebrities like Dr. Jones and his ilk, morally bankrupt megalomaniacs that we’ve been inculcated to venerate and emulate, by the way—we should try and release their warped souls from their wretched wishes for wealth and wining. We ought to try and release them, by example of our own lives, as Jimmy once said, from this viral era of vapid veneration. Go out and dance. Watch and listen to live music. Leave the black screen of death at home. And mark my words, for I know you’re out there listening, the John’s Hopkins report is only the beginning—TMAY™ and ART™ and SIBAB™ have killed far more than Dr. Jones’ four wives. This endless pursuit of hedonism at the expense of pursuing a reason will soon face a reckoning. We have become slaves to the solipsistic sarcophagi in our pockets—more than a fact, it’s become a feeling—and I fear in the years to come, many of us will become little more than phantom vibrations.
Dr. Jones rocks back and forth in the driver’s seat of his driverless car and weeps like a baby. Hannah, Elodie, Vera, and now Annie … who will be next?
“When will I love again?” Dr. Jones asks Cassandra. “And how far until my destination?”
“Great question. I’d be happy to help you find a suitable romantic partner via BumbleBee™ Dating. I have stored your biometrics, personal chat history, and logged your live-cam recordings, but perhaps you would like to provide me with extra information? We are two miles from our destination.”
Dr. Jones raises his head to cherish the sight of the Oregon state line, but in the rear-view mirror there’s a blue flash, and then a red one, and then an amalgamation, and now he can see little red and blue lights flashing high up in the sky, and now the lights are descending towards him, reflecting off of the driverless car’s front windshield, and so Dr. Jones begins to scream at Chauffeur Cassandra to drive faster as the law enforcement drones emit a coordinated EMP blast, forcing the driverless vehicle to yield.
