The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible - Bastiat Institute

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Chapter 10 • The Dream Machine
“There’s nothing but an old music box in there!” declared
Jonathan.
“What do you expect,” said the man, “a fairy godmother?”
“I don’t know. I thought it would be a little, ..uh, mysterious.
After all it takes something special to make people’s dreams come
true.”
A sly grin spread across the man’s thin face and he gave Jonathan
a long, hard look. “Words, my curious friend. It just takes words to
make some dreams come true. The problem is you never know just
who will get the dream when you wish for something.”
Seeing Jonathan’s puzzled expression, the man reached into his
pocket and produced a tiny crisp white business card. He introduced
himself in his staccato nasal twang, “Tanstaafl ’s the name. P.T.
Tanstaafl .” Just then he noticed that he had given Jonathan the
wrong card, one that read “G. Gomper” instead. He snatched it
back. “Excuse me, son, that’s yesterday’s card.”
Shuffl ing through his wallet he found another card of a slightly
different size and colour presenting today’s name. He then pulled
out a poster with elegant gold lettering that he pasted over the
original name on his sign. It now read, “DR. TANSTAAFL’S
DREAM MACHINE.”
The man explained smoothly, “People have their dreams, right?
It’s just that they don’t know how to make dreams come true,
right?”
Dr. Tanstaafl nodded his head every time he said “Right?”.
Jonathan began nodding dumbly in unison.
“So you pay money, turn the key, and this old box plays a certain
subtle instruction over and over again, right?” Tanstaafl nodded
again, Jonathan followed with a bob. “It’s always the same message
and there are always plenty of dreamers who love to hear it, right?”
“What’s the message, Mr. Tanstaafl ?” asked Jonathan, suddenly
conscious of his head bobbing up and down.
The man corrected Jonathan, “Please! Doctor Tanstaafl . As I
was saying, the Dream Machine tells people to think of whatever
they would like to have, and...”, the man glanced around to see if
anyone else was listening, “…then it explains to the dreamers what
to do – in a very persuasive manner, right?”