Johnson was reminiscing in the way old men do and I had been warned he would talk about chippers--those peculiar people who flashed across the business scene for a generation at the beginning of this twenty-first century of ours. Still, I had had a good meal at his expense and I was ready to listen.
And, as it happened, it was the first word out of his mouth. "Chippers," he said, "were just about unregulated in those days. Nowadays, their use is so controlled no one can get any good out of them, but back a ways--One of them made this company the ten-billion-dollar concern it now is. I picked him, you know."
I said, "They didn't last long, I'm told."
"Not in those days. They burned out. When you add microchips at key points in the nervous system, then in ten years at the most, the wiring burns out, so to speak. Then they retired--a little vacant-minded, you know."
"I wonder anyone submitted to it."
"Well, all the idealists were horrified, of course, and that's why the regulating came in, but it wasn't that bad for the chippers. Only certain people could make use of the microchips--about eighty percent of them males, for some reason--and, for the time they were active, they lived the lives of shipping magnates. Afterward, they always received the best of care. It was no different from top-ranking athletes, after all; ten years of active early life, and then retirement."
Johnson sipped at his drink. "An unregulated chipper could influence other people's emotions, you know, if they were chipped just right and had talent. They could make judgments on the basis of what they sensed in other minds and they could strengthen some of the judgments competitors were making, or weaken them--for the good of the home company. It wasn't unfair. Other companies had their own chippers doing the same thing." He sighed. "Now that sort of thing is illegal. Too bad."
I said, diffidently, "I've heard that illegal chipping is still done."
Johnson grunted and said, "No comment."
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