Introduction

The Seduction Code

Sandra LeBrown

Introduction

or

The part of the book where I raise the question, “Are we all programmed like computers? And then outline how the seduction code was first discovered and passed from the discovering professor, to a Graduate Assistant, and finally ended up with the Graduate Assistant’s roommate.”

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.  And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly …      And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.                                                         -Genesis

 

 

In the California University system in the early seventies, excitement mounted regarding a theory that proposed a universal system of innate rules governing all human interaction.  Though proponents of this idea had been around for many years, a growing number of scholars were speculating that there might indeed prove to be a universal system of rules central to all human relationships including conversations, social conventions, and even intimate exchanges such as bonding and mating. 

Not only did the researchers feel that this structure controlled the unwritten guidelines to social dealings, it also concluded, it was hardwired into the human mind … every human … regardless of her or his upbringing, socialization or racial makeup.  

Theory without evidence is worthless.  But evidence was being established; and for the first time research was beginning to be uncover, bit by bit, of the unwritten innate codes of human interaction.  Neologistic terms describing the researcher’s findings such as body language, conversational analysis and universal language began to tiptoe into the living room of everyday conversations among sociologist, anthropologist and social historians.  Were we on the verge of discovering the Rosetta stone of human behavior? 

At the center of this excitement was a scientist from Orange County California who proved to be so brilliant and so peculiar that even other linguists and sociologists found him a bit odd.  To name him would be doing a disservice to his memory, but the fact remains that many of his peers believed he was on the threshold of discovering what he said was, “The unwritten rules for social interaction”.  His arguments and discoveries were in fact so foreign to most scientists that they agreed that he must be correct. 

Unfortunately, we will never know, for Professor X worked in the period just before the advent of the personal computers, not that he would have bothered using one.  Practices such as note taking, publishing, and personal hygiene were, as his colleagues would later confirm, not his strengths.  And one evening in the middle of spring quarter as he was driving a narrow back road from the university to his home he dropped a cigarette in his lap and was killed in the ensuing auto accident.  All Professors X’s notes which he kept loose in the backseat of his dilapidated yellow Volkswagen Bug must have burned in the fire following the accident people speculated. 

The university tried to keep alive his work, but was unable … soon his efforts lapsed into obscurity; or so most people thought.  A group of California politicians close to the then ex-actor turned governor had taken note of the professor’s studies long before his death, and found his work worthy of study.  These politicians had been wondering among themselves, If the brain is hardwired then maybe it can be controlled; and wasn’t it our duty to be the ones in control?  They had approach the professor asking for copies of all his work, surprisingly Professor X agreed, but he never gave this cabal any of his work.

For months before his death the members of the political group ask for the papers, set up meetings and tried to get the papers from the professor.  He was always helpful, agreed to all their requests and never once gave them anything they asked for.  They believed that the professor was either incredibly absent minded, or just a stupid twit that really didn’t know anything.  Some said that maybe the professor didn’t even have any research to share.

The fact of the matter was that the professor was using a simple tactic he’d just picked up from his reading of studies concerning Japanese businessmen. He decided to try their technique that he called, Yanking Their Chains. 

The technique was to never to tell the targeted party anything negative, always say maybe, when you meant no. There were variations to this technique.  For example, if you really didn’t like the target party then you might promise to do whatever it was they wanted, never do it, and then laugh about them behind their backs to your friends and associates.  Since he couldn’t blow the politicians off directly, due to funding from the state, he decided to try this indirect approach.  What he didn’t suspect was that it really got the politicos angry when they found out they had been made fools of.

The politicos decided to find someone to break into the professor’s apartment and copy all his research. Whether the cabal ever got their hands on the professor’s work is still a matter of speculation, for shortly after this the professor died, the cabal dissolved as if it never existed.

There is one thing that is certain though, and that is that unknowingly, the professor did not have all of his research with him on the night that he died.  One of professor X’s Graduate Assistants had borrowed his file on Human Grooming Rituals.

The Graduate Assistant, William Astoanian, had different reasons than Professor X to be interested in these “unwritten rules” of human grooming.  Where Professor X was interested in what the rules were, William Astoanian was interested in determining how they worked.  The particular file, which William secretly kept in his dorm room, held the key to human courtship and most particularly, seduction.  If he could break down the key to courtship, William reasoned, he could unlock the box to the ultimate power of the world; the thing wars were fought for, the building of nations, the key to all power … for he would have the key to the seduction code.  A key so powerful that he could initiate it on any woman, at anytime, any place.  No one would be safe from his control, nun to nurse, queen to catholic schoolgirl; he could use his power to overcome any wall of protection a woman might construct.  He could melt it away into a passionate response of sexual desire. 

What William owned in lust and depravity he unfortunately lacked in imagination.  He made no progress on understanding the strange rantings of Professor X, women still found him intolerable and highly refusable, and he misjudged the fact that other people might somehow determine that he had the professor’s file and might want it for themselves.  Then one evening, just a mere six weeks after the death of professor X and the supposed dissolution of the political cabal, William Astoanian died in an unfortunate car crash on a seldom traveled back road not far from the university. The police report indicated that William Astoanian had dropped a cigarette in his lap while driving, even though his friends testified they had never seen William smoke.

But many things were strange to the investigators at the time, and there were other questions the investigators were never able to answer to their own satisfaction. 

First, what was William doing on that isolated road so late at night?  Why did his car catch on fire?  Though it was determined that he had been struck head-on by a large truck as he rounded the corner, the truck and driver were never found.  Why was his dorm room thoroughly ram sacked after the accident as if someone were looking for something vital?  And the final mystery concerned William’s roommate who disappeared after the accident and was never heard from again.  That is, not by his birth name anyway…

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