ABANST -- Free Short Story

ABANST

by Michael Panetta

After dinner, Suzanna undressed her sister Maddie, then hefted her from the wheelchair to the shower chair.

“The therapy app is helping,” Maddie said as she squirted body wash onto a loofah.

“That’s great, Maddie.” Suzanna faked a smile. “Really.”

“Isn’t it, though? You should download it. Our insurance covers it. It’ll help you deal with the ethically questionable shitshow you call a ‘job.’”

Suzanna began lathering shampoo into Maddie’s hair. “I’m already violating the NDA by telling you about work. I can’t risk my job by talking to a therapist.”

Since the government evisceration of Medicare, Maddie was on Suzanna’s health insurance plan, which her employer fully paid. Despite the existential tailspin that her job regularly sent her into, Suzanna knew she was incredibly lucky to have it; she could never afford Maddie’s coverage otherwise, and finding another job that offered fully paid coverage was proving difficult.

“I’m sure a therapist would keep work-related details confidential,” Maddie said.

Suzanna detached the showerhead. As she rinsed Maddie’s hair, “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Hm. Generic conversation starters. So how’s work?”

“Seriously, Maddie?”

“Humor me. Tell me more about ABANST.”

ABANST. Advertisement-based audiovisual neurostimulation technology. “Mock it all you want,” Suzanna said, “but don’t forget that ABANST is similar to what your therapy app uses.”

Maddie snorted. “Sans the AB part.”

“Well, I do work in marketing.”

“But that whole mouthful of a name, it just sounds so . . . evil?”

Suzanna scoffed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

#

When Suzanna arrived at work the next morning, she sat in her car for a few minutes, numbing herself to the evil she was helping to soon foist upon civilization.

Her employer, Voilà, LLC, was a start-up marketing firm. Voilà didn’t have clients yet, but their novel advertising approach, which promised to utilize cutting-edge neuroscience to “augment the consumer experience” -- basically manipulating people to impulse-buy unsellable trash -- had attracted investors from all over. The heavy research had been completed before Suzanna was hired. Much of it was “classified trade secrets,” but between informal chats with senior coworkers and sifting through Voilà’s earliest investor reports (the company, eager to gain investors in the beginning, had been more open about their research), she’d parsed the big picture.

Voilà’s goal had been to identify neural patterns linked with pleasure or displeasure when a consumer either purchased a desired product or rejected an undesired one, and then to figure out how to map pleasurable responses to the neural patterns associated with an undesired product. The science was already being used in certain “well-being” contexts, like Maddie’s therapy app; Voilà had only needed to apply it to their own purposes, which entailed hundreds of hours of people wearing specialized headgear and analyzing how their brains respond to stimuli. From this, Voilà cataloged thousands of “neurostimulation beats,” a kind of mental trigger used to design advertisements.

Suzanna made the dreadful walk into work and hid in her closet-sized office, where she answered emails and popped antacids. Then she headed upstairs to the conference floor. In the observation room, her boss, Karen Mead, sat with two representatives from one potential future client. A one-way window overlooked a roomful of children.

After introductions, Karen took Suzanna aside.

“These reps flew in from Munich last night,” Karen whispered. “Let’s razzle dazzle ‘em.”

Suzanna forced a cheery smile. “Of course. But the focus group . . . they’re children.”

“That’s because the reps work for Weltschmerz, only Europe’s largest toy company. They wanna see how our ads work on kids, specifically ages seven through twelve.”

A prime demographic, Suzanna thought as her heartburn bubbled. She imagined the garbage that Voilà might someday pressure confused parents to buy, like religious-themed video games and decade-old graphic T-shirts featuring forgotten boy bands.

Suzanna left the observation room and drifted through the hallway to the conference room. The children went quiet as all eyes locked onto her; she felt like a school teacher. The children, situated four to a table, each had a company tablet.

Suzanna pressed her palms together. “Hello and good morning!”

The children stared silently.

Suzanna pointed at the wall-mounted screen behind her. “Today, you’ll watch a short video. Then you’ll be given a questionnaire. Any questions before we begin?”

A little girl stopped picking her nose to raise her hand. “What’s a questionnaire?”

“It’s like a test,” Suzanna said.

A wide-eyed boy raised his hand. “Is it graded? I didn’t study.”

“It’s not that kind of test. It’s just to see what you think about the video. Any other questions?”

Except for the little girl picking her nose again, the children sat motionless.

Suzanna dimmed the lights. She walked to her laptop and started the video, a thirty-second advertisement for a fictitious product called Acordios, which were pants shaped like accordion bellows that became shorts with the pull of a string. Acordios were purposely designed to be as unappealing as possible, and the advertisement utilized none of Voilà’s technology.

When the video ended, Suzanna sent the questionnaire from the laptop to the children’s tablets. The questionnaire wanted to know what they thought of Acordios -- would they wear Acordios, would they ask their parents to buy Acordios, et cetera.

The results came to Suzanna’s laptop in realtime. As expected, Acordios was a dud.

“Okay,” Suzanna said, “now we’ll watch another video, and then we’ll do another questionnaire.”

Suzanna loaded the second Acordios advertisement, which was identical to the first one but with neurostimulation beats inserted throughout -- dozens of specific sounds and images, each a fraction of a second long. She put on noise-canceling headphones and looked away from the wall-mounted screen.

She hit PLAY and waited. When the video’s countdown timer on her laptop reached 0:00, she removed the headphones and dispatched the second questionnaire.

This time, every child wanted a pair of Acordios. On a scale of one to ten, the lowest rating the product received was a nine. As the questionnaire results came in, Suzanna felt sleazy and gross.

Afterwards, she met with Karen and the German reps in Karen’s office.

“We are most pleased and excited,” one of the reps said.

“Yes, our company will go with Voilà for all marketing needs,” the other added.

Suzanna kept quiet behind another cheery smile. When the reps left, Karen exhaled loudly and sank in her chair, like she was a leaky balloon.

“We did it,” Karen said.

“. . . Yeah.”

“You okay?”

No, I’m not, Suzanna wanted to say. She was frustrated that the reps hadn’t expressed concerns over manipulating children for profit. Not once had they asked about government oversight, or the technology’s effect on brain development.

Every focus group she’d worked with until now had been adults. The most meticulously constructed neurostimulation ad couldn’t force a roomful of adults to unanimously grant a product high ratings. She slept at night believing that ABANST could be resisted. Sure, she had expected ABANST to be used on children -- but to see it in action, and to see it work so well, was unnerving.

“Suze?”

Suzanna touched her belly. “Sorry. Indigestion.”

Later, Suzanna locked herself in her office. She composed a polite, carefully-worded email outlining her concerns with ABANST. She did her best to appear objective and neutral, framing herself as a “devil’s advocate.”

Before she could second-guess herself, she sent it to Karen, then headed home.

#

“Don’t rock the boat,” Maddie said.

Suzanna got comfortable on the couch with a plate of microwaved leftovers. “I’m already regretting it.”

“I guess it isn’t so bad. Stupid, definitely. But they won’t fire you over an email -- especially not over this one; the optics would be terrible. And if they do, tell the FTC.”

“Who?”

“The Federal Trade Commission,” Maddie said. “The government agency that would love to know that your employer is planning noncompliant usage of regulated medical technology.”

“You sound like a lawyer.”

“I’ve been reading up on this stuff.”

“Well, it’s all moot. You know I signed the NDA.”

“Which is null and void if the agreement concerns illegal activity.”

After Maddie’s shower, Suzanna checked the job boards for the umpteenth time. One position offered an eleven percent salary cut if she relocated to Alaska. Another, which offered better pay, sought “a 24/7 Alfred Pennyworth to a very busy Bruce Wayne,” but Suzanna wasn’t interested in becoming someone’s butler-dad. She had paid a service to “optimize” her resume, yet whenever she submitted an application, hardly a few days would pass before a form rejection email arrived -- if the employer hadn’t outright ghosted her.

Dejected, she had a glass of wine, then lay in bed with the novel she’d been reading. Once she realized she’d read an entire page without having grasped any of it, she put down the book and shut her eyes. Sleep wouldn’t come, though, so she grabbed her phone and searched for neuro-based sleep apps.

She selected D-REM, which had the highest average rating, and skimmed through the reviews. The “D-lux” version could be had for a monthly subscription, which came with a headpiece that zapped the user with electromagnetic pulses throughout the day. She downloaded the free version.

After a string of tedious advertisements, Suzanna registered as a new user. The main page was a simple user interface: a sliding switch to select how many minutes to run the program for, and a BEGIN button below that. Suzanna slid the timer to ten minutes, the maximum allowed before a new string of ads would interrupt, then got cozy and tapped BEGIN.

Patterns of various colors flashed in slow succession, accented by droning pink noise. Suzanna lay on her side and focused on the screen.

Unstoppable drowsiness muted her worries and soon she was out.

#

“My boss wants to see you upstairs this afternoon,” Karen said from Suzanna’s office doorway.

Suzanna hid her hands under her desk. “It’s about my email.”

“Probably.”

“I shouldn’t have sent it.”

Karen stepped fully into Suzanna’s office and shut the door behind her. “My inbox isn’t private. If you had come to me privately, we would’ve discussed your feelings and left it between us.”

“You think I’m fired?”

“I sure hope not. You’re a valuable team member.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Karen opened the door. As she left, “Good luck, Suze.”

At the designated time, Suzanna rode the elevator to Room 1, where a giant, halo-shaped ceiling light hung directly above a steel conference table. At the table’s far end sat two women and one man, dressed in business formal, hands clasped, all plastered smiles.

“Have a seat,” one of the women said.

As Suzanna sat, she reminded herself of the key points of the apology she had worked out.

“Suzanna Jonsdottir,” the same woman said. “Do you know who I am?”

“Christine McDermott,” Suzanna said. One of Voilà’s senior operations managers. “Nice to meet you.” Suzanna couldn’t place the other two people. Maybe they were HR.

“How are you, today?” Christine asked.

“Nervous,” Suzanna said. “Is this about my email?”

“Yes.”

“Am I fired?”

Christine’s smile faded. “If I wanted you fired, you’d already be gone. Take a breath.”

Suzanna took a breath, whether by instinct or command she didn’t know.

“I’d like to discuss Madeline.”

Suzanna tensed. “My sister? What about her?”

“She was teaching you to drive when you crashed her car. Is this accurate?”

“. . . It was my first time behind the wheel. I was sixteen.”

Christine shook her head. “It must be soul-crushing to live with survivor’s guilt.”

Suzanna gritted her teeth, holding back an urge to cry. “I don’t see why this is relevant.”

“This will sound clichéd, but you’re part of Voilà’s family. Technically, your sister is my sister. And it broke my heart to learn about Madeline’s condition. And you . . . you’re so strong for being her caretaker. I’m moved. So here’s what I’m going to do: 24/7 nurse care for Madeline. How does that sound?”

Suzanna felt whiplashed. “Why would you do that?”

“Because family look out for each other. We look out for you, you look out for us.” Christine gave the biggest shit-eating grin Suzanna had ever seen. “Voilà is a small, tight-knit family. Your happiness is our happiness. So what do you say? Would you like help with Madeline?”

The last thing Suzanna wanted was Voilà’s hospitality, especially since accepting it would be an implicit agreement to sit down and shut up. But it wasn’t wise to decline, not if she valued her job -- and Maddie’s health coverage.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Perfect,” Christine said.

At home that evening, Maddie was watching an old cowboy movie and eating spaghetti.

“Your plate’s on the kitchen counter,” she said.

Suzanna slipped off her shoes. She went to the bathroom and washed her face. She had no appetite, so she poured herself a glass of wine and sat on the couch.

“How was work?”

“Weird.”

“Oh?”

“They called me upstairs to have a talk.”

“The email,” Maddie said knowingly.

“Yeah, sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

Suzanna took a long sip of wine. “They bribed me, Maddie.”

“How much money did they offer?”

“None.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They discussed giving you home nurses around the clock.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“When does that start?”

“It doesn’t,” Suzanna said. “I mean, I told them I would think about it.”

“What’s there to think about? Do you enjoy wiping my ass and bathing me?”

“It’s a matter of principle.”

Maddie grimaced. “Oh, please! There are far worse evils in the world -- like the gun industry, or how Big Pharma jacks prices on life-saving drugs. Every time you use a mobile device, you’re enabling companies that buy cobalt mined with child labor. But I doubt you’ll stop using your phone anytime soon.”

“Why are you being so nasty?”

“Because you’re sacrificing something that can improve my quality of life, and for absolutely no reason besides your cafeteria morality.”

Suzanna sat in silence, sipping wine and watching the movie. When her glass was empty, she took it to the kitchen and poured more. She tossed her untouched dinner into the trash.

Later, while in bed, she shut her eyes and tried -- really tried -- to imagine life as Maddie. Suzanna envisioned herself in a wheelchair all day, always dependent on someone else, her whole future gone in a flash.

Christine McDermott was right in her serpentine way. The brutal truth was that Suzanna had destroyed Maddie’s life, and nothing she could ever do would atone for it.

#

For the rest of the week, Suzanna buried herself in her work. She even acclimated to working with children, largely by reminding herself that what Voilà was doing was no different than what salespeople have done for millennia, just to a heightened degree; there was no moral demarcation between bullshitting with words versus with neuroscience, just degrees of acceptance.

On Friday morning, Karen barged into Suzanna’s office.

“Suze! The rough cut for the Weltschmerz ad is done.”

Suzanna looked up from her email inbox. “Huh?”

“The water gun ad for the German toy company. Production is emailing it out in a bit.”

The water guns. Suzanna remembered now. Weltschmerz, which had a licensing deal with a Hollywood studio, had made superhero-shaped water guns. The guns were designed to look like superheroes bent forward at a ninety-degree angle, and the trigger was a plastic tab protruding from the crotch. Weltschmerz had millions of unsold guns from the previous summer collecting dust in one of their distribution centers.

“We’ll focus-group the ad next week,” Karen said.

“Great,” Suzanna said.

When Karen left, Suzanna popped two antacids. She was tinkering with her resignation letter, which she’d started writing recently as a coping mechanism, when Production emailed the ad.

She debated whether or not to open the attached file. The ad was designed to manipulate children; it was, in no uncertain terms, evil. But because it was designed for children, could she resist its effect? If she was going to force this upon children, then the least she owed them was to endure it herself.

Hesitantly, she clicked the file, then turned up the volume.

Generic, inoffensive rock music introduced a group of diverse children, all smiles and laughter as they chased each other with Weltschmerz water guns through various settings -- a backyard, a beach, a playground. This rough cut ad was clearly AI-generated; the wobbly hands with too many digits and the uncanny way the faces morphed between expressions were dead giveaways. Suzanna tried to spot the hidden neurostimulation beats affecting her brain, despite knowing it was impossible to do so; if such subconscious triggers were that easily detectable, they would be pointless. So she let the content wash over her, giving her undivided attention to the end.

Afterwards, she returned to her resignation letter. While grappling writer’s block, she absentmindedly opened a search engine and typed Weltschmerz water guns. It didn’t take much effort to locate an unwanted factory-sealed one from the previous summer on an auction site. 

Suzanna entered her payment information, and was about to place a bid when she caught herself. Mortified, she closed the auction window.

#

That night, Suzanna poured herself brandy and Maddie a glass of cola. By the time she returned to the living room, whatever movie Maddie had selected was starting.

Maddie was parked beside the couch. Suzanna, eager to smooth the tension from the other night’s argument, sat close to Maddie with a bowl of popcorn on the armrest between them.

After the movie, Maddie turned for the night. So Suzanna put on another movie, got comfortable, and dozed off.

She woke up at midnight and noticed a sliver of lamplight like tape stretching from Maddie’s barely-open bedroom door and along the hallway floor. Groggy, Suzanna reached Maddie’s door and was about to push it open when she heard Maddie talking.

“. . . suicidal thoughts,” Maddie said. “Constantly, now.”

“I’m prescribing the second stage of the app for you,” a tiny voice said. “You’ll see the link in your texts in a minute.”

It was a video chat -- a telemedicine visit.

“I see it,” Maddie said. “Thanks for taking my call so late.”

“Thank you for calling, Madeline. If the feeling is strong, don’t ever hesitate to call. Please.”

Suzanna’s heart was racing as she snuck to her own bedroom. Shaken, she sat on the edge of her bed.

Suzanna thought she knew Maddie well enough to notice any hint of suicidal tendencies from a mile away. It was like a black hole had opened between herself and Maddie, and Suzanna was helpless to navigate around it. She wanted to scream and cry, and also run into Maddie’s room and hug her, and scold her. She hated herself for being so oblivious.

Before neurostimulation therapy apps existed, people relied on drugs for managing mental health. The rare mental health drugs still prescribed were on the road to obsolescence as the technology improved. The technology could be administered from the comfort of one’s home, as Maddie was doing, and unlike drugs, there were no side effects, at least not when used in accordance with medical guidelines. It was a clean, efficient medicine. It was saving Maddie’s life. It was good.

From a certain perspective, Voilà had taken something that was good and right and pure, and twisted it into a perverse thing with horrific consequences.

Suzanna hated Voilà before, but now she despised them.

#

What happens here stays here.

Karen had explained this on Suzanna’s first day working for Voilà. The company’s research and all results obtained from focus groups was confidential. This was stated explicitly in the NDA Suzanna had signed and reiterated in team meetings.

On Monday morning, Suzanna thought about this as she prepared for the focus group.

The Weltschmerz reps weren’t around to watch from behind the one-way glass, but Christine McDermott was, along with other company VIPs; Weltschmerz was Voilà’s first client and today’s results were critical. So when Suzanna had decided to record today’s focus group, she knew she would need to be discreet. She’d purchased a miniature camera and stuck it to her laptop briefcase, which she placed strategically on a desk in the back of the room so that the camera would capture both the Weltschmerz water gun ad and the children’s reaction to it.

Once the children were ready, Suzanna dimmed the lights. She walked over to the laptop, and after a quick double-check from an app on her phone that the hidden camera was recording, she started the ad.

The video played. The children were mesmerized. When the video ended, every child rated the Weltschmerz water gun a 10/10. As extra evidence, Suzanna emailed herself copies of the children’s questionnaire results.

After celebratory congratulations from Christine McDermott and the other company bigshots, Suzanna sneaked away to her office. Alone, she panicked as she considered the reality of her plan.

Would her efforts make a difference? She would be risking Maddie’s health coverage, and possible legal repercussions, all for a video that didn’t necessarily prove anything besides her inability to protect confidential information. She wondered if any of her colleagues were facing their own moral quandaries about ABANST. Maybe they were waiting for someone else to make the first move. Maybe they didn’t care as long as their paychecks kept clearing. Christine McDermott could have bribed others into silence. If any of that were true, first-hand evidence like this video could get the ball rolling.

She grabbed a pen and sheet of paper and brainstormed possible negative consequences:

-- The FTC does nothing with the video.

-- Voilà discovers who made the complaint and employment is terminated, and Maddie loses health insurance.

-- Voilà sues for violating the NDA.

-- Her career tanks.

-- Without insurance paying for therapy, Maddie commits

Suzanna imagined finding Maddie’s body. She imagined Maddie’s funeral. The years of depression. The absolute, inescapable regret. Maybe Suzanna could afford Maddie’s insurance premiums with a second job, but she couldn’t see herself juggling two jobs on top of being Maddie’s caregiver.

She opened the spy camera app on her phone and stared at the single saved file.

Was trying to save the world worth losing her world?

With trembling fingers, she deleted the file, then chewed her two remaining antacids.

#

The nurse currently on duty, a bubbly, makeup-heavy twenty-something named Jocelyn, helped Maddie shower. Suzanna sat stiffly as Jocelyn wheeled Maddie into the living room. Jocelyn then disappeared into the kitchen, probably to finish whatever paperwork she’d been working on.

The Weltschmerz ad had been a massive success. It was impossible to watch TV now without seeing a Voilà-produced ad every few minutes. Suzanna stared at the empty spot where the TV used to be. She had justified selling it by claiming she was afraid of being influenced by the ads, but the real reason was that the ads were a constant taunt against her conscience.

“How was work today?” Maddie asked.

Suzanna blinked. “Work is . . . work.”

“How’s therapy?”

Recently, Voilà had begun offering employees free access to its own line of therapy apps. “It’s keeping me from drugging myself into oblivion.”

“Please don’t talk like that,” Maddie said.

Suzanna sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just hard being in my head right now.”

“But you’re sharing your feelings in therapy, right?”

“. . . Yeah.”

Jocelyn came out of the kitchen, phone in hand. “Madeline? Do you mind if I step out for my lunch break?”

Maddie looked up at her. “Sure, that’s fine.”

“Thanks. What’s the nearest store?”

“Depends on what you’re buying,” Maddie said.

Jocelyn stared at her phone, wide-eyed. “It’s the craziest thing. I saw this ad for cheese-flavored chapstick. And I really, really want to try it. What’s funny is I don’t even eat cheese; I’m lactose intolerant.” Jocelyn shrugged apologetically. “Isn’t that weird?”

Maddie turned to Suzanna.

“No,” Suzanna said. “Not weird at all.”

#

END