"Okay, you sold me."
"Good. Now, get busy delivering a laser that will pacify a planet."
Rod went to his lab, but he wasn't thinking of pacifying planets. He was thinking of making his TV clicker impossible to lose ever again.
Every TV remote, he knew, operated on the infrared principle. Different wavelengths of infrared light triggered different relays in the TV photocell receptor.
It had been Rod's fantasy to implant a signal beacon in his clicker so that when he lost it, all he had to do was put on a pair of special goggles and hunt around for the constant infrared pulse.
Trouble was, when Rod tended to lose his remote, he really lost it. Infrared light could pulse from under the couch, beneath a pile of magazines or from the bathroom. Rod had TV sets all over his house. And because too many remotes were almost as much trouble as no remote, he carried a universal remote whenever he walked through his house so that every set responded to his commands.
There wasn't a form of light known that could pass through solid walls. Therein lay the problem with the infrared beacon.
A new, more intense kind of color might solve that problem, Rod realized. Just as it might solve the Beasley problem. Two problems with a common solution, just like the condom.
Taking apart a universal remote, Rod got down to cases. He hooked it up to a power source and started converting it to an eximer laser.
"I need a pink several orders of magnitude greater than hot pink," he muttered.
Rod experimented with various pink dyes extracted from natural substances, mostly exotic flowers, pink minerals and gemstones.
And he knew he had it when he started feeling good-really good for the first time-since coming to work for the Sam Beasley Corporation.
The feeling passed the minute he shut down the hot-pink pencil of the laser.
When he showed his bosses what he had accomplished, they grinned under the pink radiance, clapped him on the back and told Rod Cheatwood what a wonderfully inventive employee he was, a credit to the Beasley Corporation, yesiree-bob.
When the laser was shut down, they turned on him.
"Not pink enough," one said.
"We need saturated pink," said another.
"Saturated?" Rod blurted. "I never heard of saturated pink. What is it?"
"We'll know it when we see it."
And they did.
Using a dye laser in which the essence of the pinkest natural substances was diluted in alcohol and beamed out in one huge pulse of light that instantly exhausted the power source, Rod found himself walking his lab in happy circles when the closed door jerked open and a dozen happy faces crowded in.
"You found it!" one Beasley boy crowed.
"It's perfect," exulted another.
"Do it again."
"Can't," said Rod. "It burned out the power source."
"Hookup another."
"Wait a minute," Rod said suddenly. "'How could you know what happened? The door was dosed."
"The pink pulse came right through the wall, it was so powerful"
"Eureka!" Rod shouted, because he couldn't think of anything more appropriate. "I did it! I did it!"
"He did it! He did it!" the Beasley boys said. "We have our saturated-pink hypercolor laser."
"No, that's not what I meant. You saw the pulse through solid wall. It's my TV remote finder. I'm going to be rich."
It was close to that moment when the pink pulse aftereffect began to dwindle, and the Beasley boys grew serious of face.
"Actually," one said, "Beasley gets rich. Not you."
"I own half the rights," Rod said.
"You owned half the rights."
"You signed them away, remember?"
"When? When?" said Rod. "Show me proof."
And they did. It was a short legal document, ironclad, and when he saw his more-flowery-than-usual signature at the bottom, Rod Cheatwood wanted to one by one tear out the larynges of the Beasley boys with his angry teeth and swallow hard.
"When did I sign this?"
"It was the release. You wanted fifteen minutes more in the Pink Room."
"I thought it was a medical release," Rod said in horror.
"Did we say medical release?"
"No one ever said medical release."
And the Beasley boys smiled that inner smile of theirs.
"Damn," said Rod.
"Let's have some more pink," one of the boys said.
"Let's renegotiate that contract," countered Rod.
And when the Beasley boys hesitated, Rod knew he had them. Sort of.
In the end Rod settled for ten percent, because truth be known, he ached to bask in the glow of the pink laser, too.
"It's really pink," the Beasley boys said happily.
"The pinkest."
"Hot pink."
"Let's call it Hotpink. One word. That way we can trademark it."
"What's next?" asked Rod.
"More colors." Try green.
"Then red."
"What will they do?" asked Rod.
"We'll find out when you generate them."
Because the color-therapy charts they had supplied said that green was a particularly soothing and healing color, Rod built a second dye laser that generated an extreme green pulse from the pigments of tropical lizards. Everyone wanted a sustained glow, but that damn eximer laser ate up power too quickly.
This time the Beasley boys stood around in front of the laser while Rod set a timer and, like a photographer wanting to be in the picture with his subjects, he rushed to join them. They were standing expectantly awaiting the green beam, which filled their eyes with the most vivid, hideous, stomach-churning green ever conceived.
When Rod Cheatwood woke up in the Beasley infirmary three days later, his first question was a strange one.
"What day is it?"
"Sunday."
"The sixth?"
"Yes. You've been under three days."
And tears started welling up in Rod Cheatwood's stricken eyes.
"There, there," the Beasley nurse with the starched white cap adorned with paper mouse ears said soothingly. "We expect you to make a complete recovery."
"I missed it...." Rod blubbered.
"Missed what?"
"The season finale 'Next Generation' episode," he said miserably.
When he was well enough to return to work, Rod told the Beasley boys, "I guess green is out, huh?"
"On the contrary, it's a perfect offensive color."
And they showed him a chart.
Most color charts broke down into complementary colors or contrasting colors. The Beasley chart was divided into offensive colors and defensive colors.
And they had new names. Hotpink. Supergreen. Contrablue. Ultrayellow. Optired. Infraorange. Deepurple.
Over time they cataloged their properties and created various beamers.
"How about we call them phasers?" suggested Rod. "They phase light."
"Can't. Not our trademark."
"Oh, right," said Rod.
When they told him he was being shipped out to Paris to install the first hypercolor beamers in Euro Beasley, Rod Cheatwood was horrified.
"I don't want to go to Paris."
"Why not?"
"They hate us. And they love Jerry Lewis." Rod shuddered.
"You don't have to go to Paris. You can live under Euro Beasley."
"Under? They have a Utiliduck there, too?"
"Utilicanard. It means the same thing."
It was not so bad. There were dorm rooms, with kitchenettes and TVs. And when the new pink lights were installed all over Euro Beasley, attendance shot up almost immediately.
"How about a raise?" Rod asked one day when even the Beasley boys could not disguise the dramatic turnaround.
"What do you need a raise for? You have your ten percent royalty."