The Pause Button

by Brian W. Aldiss


Despite advances in genetic engineering, it seems that human society will  never
improve. Fortunately, something has been done  to remove a few of its  stresses.
The Pause Button has been invented.

Although our  physical world  is now  fully explored,  and automated instruments
have charted the planet  Mars, a much more  complex world has been  opened up by
science, and its confusion of passageways traversed.

The topography of the brain has at last become understood.

A small firm in Birmingham decided to put the knowledge to practical use. Conrad
Barlow owned a motorcycle shop. It happened  that he drank once a week with  his
cousin, Gregory Magee. Both men had  a keen interest in football, and  supported
their local  team. Otherwise,  their lives  were very  different. Conrad  was an
expert on any kind of engine, while Gregory was a surgeon at the local hospital,
specialising in cranial and brain injury.

Gregory -  known privately  to the  nurses as  'Mad' Magee  because of  a slight
eccentricity - had to operate on a team member of Birmingham North End,  injured
in a match. The player, Reggie Peyton,  had developed a blood clot in the  right
temporal  lobe.  It  was  easily removed.  However,  Peyton  did  not return  to
consciousness when  the anaesthetic  wore off.  He seemed  perfectly fit  in all
physical aspects. For almost two days  he remained in a comatose state.  When he
woke, he was perfectly well, and returned home. But he did not play again.

Somewhere here  was a  mystery which  Gregory alone  perceived. He discussed the
matter with Conrad over a pint that Saturday night.

'Excitory transmitters failed to function,' he said.

Conrad drummed  his fingers  on the  bar. 'This  was in  the right-hand temporal
lobe? Greg,  isn't that  where Cotard's  delusion takes  place? You remember, we
were talking about Cotard the other week?'

From that casual remark onwards, they knew they were on the trail of something.

Cotard, the great  French psychiatrist, identified  a syndrome whereby  patients
believe themselves to be dead.  The illusion persists, despite such  evidence to
the  contrary  as  heartbeat,  lungs  functioning  perfectly,  body  temperature
sustained. The self-evident impossibility of the notion causes it to break  down
after a while.

Here was the  clue that led  to the invention  of the Pause  Button. Despite its
popular  nickname, the  micro-function that  Conrad and  Gregory devised  was  a
molecular machine.

A small molecule was sited on a large molecule where, like an enzyme, it  bonds.
Other  molecules  are  added,  until  a  complex  structure  is  formed.  Thus a
nanomachine is  created which  is controlled  by molecular  tapes responsive  to
adrenaline rises in the brain of as little as 0.0001 per cent.

When correctly positioned  in the right  temporal lobe of  the brain, the  Pause
Button, more properly  known as the  Delay Functional Reflex,  has the following
function. In a crisis situation, the person with a DFR is given pause.  Although
the delay is momentary, it allows the  person to think about what he intends  to
do. Our  brains have  been so  constructed that  emotion overrides  intellect in
crisis  situations.  Anger   blots  out  thought.   The  DFR  circumvents   this
phylogeneric trait.

Much violence is prevented. Beating the  dog, the child, men beating the   woman
- such things  are forestalled. The  percentages of male  violence against their
female partners were alarming: in the U.K., twenty-five per cent, in the U.S.A.,
twenty-eight per cent. Many such elemental attacks were launched when the  woman
became pregnant. Since the widespread  introduction of DFRs, these figures  have
dropped to eleven per  cent and twelve per  cent respectively (there has  been a
greater take-up in the U.S.A. than the U.K.).

At  first, Conrad  and Gregory  were able  to sell  their device  only to   such
institutions as prisons, where the insertion  of a DFR earned a prisoner  a five
per cent reduction of sentence.

An enlightened government saw wider  opportunities. Motorists were tempted by  a
reduction in cost of their vehicle licence if they underwent the operation. Road
rage became a thing of the past. Accidents rapidly decreased.

The general public became  interested. It was pleasant  to remain calm. The  DFR
also prevented hasty  words spoken in  anger. There was  greater harmony between
partners than previously. Euphoria became popular.

No longer are we asking, 'Why did  I do that?' or, 'What was I  thinking about?'
We now take the opportunity to know.

Perhaps  the  most dramatic  change  came in  political  habits. Politicians  in
democracies were  elected, in  many cases,  to solve  problems almost beyond the
province of politics, such as how to stop wastage of valuable resources, how  to
assist and educate the disempowered, how to prevent racial tensions. Voters  may
say they support these ambitions. However, the promise of tax cuts may  persuade
them to think  differently. If a  slight reduction in  taxes is offered  against
increased funding of education, it  is not infrequently education which  goes to
the wall.

So politicians utter  hypocritical promises. They  swear to effect  changes that
could not be carried though within  the five year electoral term. Both  sides of
the bargain are lulled by false promises.

But now comes the Pause Button effect!

Everyone  is  given time  to  consider. So  we  are becoming  more  honest, more
realistic. We now have time to consider the value of honesty, to weigh the truth
behind promises - we who were so accustomed to a diet of lies.

In the year that Conrad Barlow and Gregory Magee received the Nobel Peace Prize,
we voted in the United Reality Party to govern the country.

The great challenge now is to link  the DFR into the genetic chain, so  that its
effects become inheritable.

Of course  this will  change us.  Our ramshackle  societies will  change. Later,
fully evolved human beings will look back  on today much as we look back  on the
denizens of the Stone Age.
