"All you do," said the salesman for the Telagog Company, "is flip this switch at the beginning of the crisis. That sends out a radio impulse, which is picked up here and routed by the monitor to the proper controller."
Ovid Ross peered past the salesman at the man seated in the booth. Gilbert Falck, he understood the man's name to be, but nobody would know him under that helmet, from which a thick cable passed in a sagging curve to the control board before him.
"So he takes over?" said Ross.
"Exactly. Suppose you've let yourself in for a date where there'll be dancing, and you don't know how?"
"I do, kind of," said Ovid Ross.
"Well, let's suppose you don't. We have in the booth, by pre-arrangement, our Mr. Jerome Bundy, who's been a ballet dancer and a ballroom dancing teacher--"
"Did somebody call me?" said a man, putting his head out of another control booth into the corridor behind the row of booths.
"No, Jerry," said the salesman, whose name was Nye. "Just using you as an example. Aren't you still on?"
"No, he gave me the over-and-out."
"See?" said the salesman. "Mr. Bundy is controlling a man--needless to say we don't mention our clients' names--who's trying to become a professional ballet dancer. He's only so-so, but with Jerry running him by remote control he puts on the finest tour-jéte you ever saw. Or suppose you can't swim--"
"Shucks," said Ovid Ross, staring at his knuckles. He was a long, big-boned young man with hands and feet large even in proportion to the rest of him, and knuckles oversized for even such hands. "I can swim and dance, kind of, and most of those things. Even play a little golf. My trouble is--well, you know."
"Well?"
"Here I am, just a big hick from Rattlesnake, Montana, trying to get on among all these slick operators in New York, where everybody's born with his hand in somebody else's pocket. When I go up against them it scares the behooligers out of me. I get embarrassed and trip over my big feet."
"In such a case," said Nye, "we choose controllers specializing in the rôles of sophisticate, man-of-the-world, and so forth. Our Mr. Falck here is experienced in such parts. So are Mr. Abrams and Mr. Van Etten. Mr. Bundy is what you might call a second-string sophisticate. When he's not controlling a man engaged in dancing or athletic sports, he relieves one of the others I mentioned."
"So, if I sign up with you, and tomorrow I go see this publisher guy who eats horseshoes and spits out the nails, to ask for a job, you can take over?"
"Easiest thing in the world. Our theory is: no man is a superman! So, when faced with a crisis you can't cope with, call us in. Let a specialist take control of your body! You don't fill your own teeth or make your own shoes, do you? Then why not let our experts carry you through such crises as getting a job, proposing to a girl, or making a speech? Why not?" Nye's eyes shone.
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