Heley, who by now had inherited and updated Ken Kesey's role as charismatic visionary of the San Francisco psychedelic underground, invited the press and public to sample the Smart Bar and other attractions at the ''cyber disco'' party. While he tells only the facts to the press, "Smart drugs enhance neurofunctioning legally and safely,'' he shares the real secret of his success with anyone who thinks to ask.
''My theory is that all that's happening is really the same thing. There are cultural viruses which are actually no more than elaborate placebos to draw people in. They're not the actual things that are happening. For example, smart drugs and virtual reality, these are two of my favorite cultural viruses because they really hit wide and hard. Virtual reality comes from the heart of a society which is really wired in to technology; it's a powerful cultural virus for people to interface with a computer in a harmonious way. And yet, if you try to experience it, you're sadly disappointed. Or you take a smart drug and even after designing an intelligent program, you realize that you've had all this inside you in the first place. People think they're going to get evolved using smart drugs, when actually you've got to be evolved to want to use them in the first place.''
But Earth Girl shares a different story. Her enthusiasm for smart drugs and her newfound fame are irresistible. She puts her hair up in a Bardot-meets-Diller dredlocked beehive, and wears Day-Glo silk robes. She offers her take on the smart drug virus to the crowds who have gathered.
''For me they're really good `cause I do enjoy getting high, as everyone does. I love altered states – they're fun. But I can't do the `body degeneration trip' anymore, especially the mental one. Pot turns me into a moron. And a lot of these other kids are doing so many drugs in one night that they're depleting themselves of vitamins and minerals that these drinks put back. Will they feel more love and communication ability from the Psuper Cybertonic? Probably not. But at least they're going to be maintaining a balance. They're tripping forever. They don't eat for days. So I say, `Okay, here, have some of this, this is all of the daily whatever you need. It's cheap, and it's actually, really, really, really, really good for you so just like get into it.'''
Mark gets pretty annoyed as Earth Girl babbles on to the press. He knows her words are heartfelt, but they're also mindless and dangerous. Soon, Earth Girl is more of a phenomenon than the smart drinks themselves. She's gathered a posse of young, mostly gay or sexually nondescript hangers-on whom she calls the Foxy Seven. To anyone uninvolved in the scene, Earth Girl begins to look more and more like a space cadet – or, in even the best light, a new version of the stereotypical San Francisco ''fag hag.'' The control she begins to exhibit over her seven assistant bartenders is absolute. She is their mother and spiritual guide. She holds out the promise of glory and adventure, and it's all in the form of an elaborate theater/comic book/cosmic fantasy.
Earth Girl shares her new vision of the Smart Bar mission with her squadron as they set up her portable booth.
''We're doing this because what we really are is, writers and performers. This is the perfect way to get in. We're going to make our own comic book. We can keep launching all of our stuff. That's why we all have to dress up. We're the Foxy Seven – Earth Girl, Galactic Greg, Dynama, Greenfire. We get to play. Play and serve ''
Earth Girl takes on the tone of a restaurant manager briefing her new waiters, but in the language of a Course in Miracles instructor on local cable access. ''When people are talking to you and asking questions, they're looking at you like you're an authority, so you conceive thought. And the stuff that we put up – the pictures of mushrooms, quotes from The Starseed Transmissions – it will help you keep on suggesting all this stuff hypnotically and subliminally. I mean, everyone needs a little awareness kick, as far as I'm concerned.''
Heley begins to feel it is Earth Girl who needs the awareness kick. First, she has started bringing the Smart Bar, which Toon Town paid for, to other clubs. Heley has been working a carefully controlled culturo-viral experiment – now it is ''out.'' Second, the kind of indiscriminate, overflowing enthusiasm she exhibits clouds many of the issues that Heley is attempting to clarify. She's even been on national television news saying, "Smart drugs are really really really really really really really really really really good!''
But things get even worse when Rolling Stone shows up to do a piece on smart drugs. Of course, Earth Girl is the center of the interview: ''Alcohol, cigarettes, coffee – work culture is drug culture,'' she explains to their reporter. "With smart drugs, there's no hangover, you're not depressed, you have a better memory. Instead of getting fucked up and making a fool of yourself, you're more in touch.''
Heley is incensed by her blanket statements, which counteract months of his machinations. He broods in a back room with the contempt of spurned lover. ''Alcohol is out there. Its dangers are well known. It's promoted by a massive machine. She's running up against something which she can never ever hope to defeat. What are they going to do? Stop selling alcohol? No fucking way. It just has to be played out. What you've got to do is move the ground. You don't attack the monster. You infect him, like a virus. Neysa's attitude is almost like a sixties' `left' thing; it's like, `attack the monster.' But if you do that, you become the monster. You're playing to spectacle. What we should do is simply infect the monster and let it destroy itself. By activating a media virus. And a media virus isn't a media attack, it's something which exposes things internally.''
This conflict made for a tense week in Cyberia, as Earth Girl explains: ''Honestly, the best way to tell on a reflection level is the weather, as I'm sure you know. And if you just check the weather out for the past three days it's just like ... it's still ... we're coming out, we're trying to come out of it.''
It seemed to be a week in which cyberians were learning that somewhere else, someone else was doing exactly the same thing they were. Someone else was writing a book about cyber culture. Someone else was mixing a new house tune. Someone else was creating a club. Someone else was doing a Smart Bar. In addition, it had been raining for four days, and nearly everyone was fighting the same cold. No one was fully sick, but everyone felt under the weather.
Sitting with Earth Girl in a Thai restaurant on Haight Street, I take some of the herbal formulas that Lila Mellow-Whipkit has given me for my sniffles. Earth Girl explains to me how everything fits together. In spite of her generalizations, Earth Girl is a sensitive, ''spiritually mature'' young woman. It would be a mistake to let her cosmic jargon obscure her quite perceptive observations on human nature in the trenches of Cyberia:
''The weirdness of this weekend is that everyone's discovering all these parallel things that are going on and everyone's reeling from the fear of `do it first.' But this is just the realization of a universal mind! Of course everyone's doing it all at the same time. It's all part of the same thing! Everyone's fighting a cold, and feels like they've got a cold, but ... it's not breaking through ... it's a slightly physical thing, but it's much more psychological because in this time all the fear can get in and all these negative thoughts and all this stuff can get in, and it is getting in. It did get in ... but now I feel today we're coming out of it. We've still got a lot of shit we've got to work out personally, like, group-wise.''