Professor Rice started as a sociologist, not a hypnotist. At a small liberal arts school, he spoke eloquently about the ways American society operated. His students passed his words around to others. Professor Rice would hold discussion sessions in coffee houses and bars that felt inspiring to the students.
The trouble began when one of his former students, Maxine, became a New York intellectual magazine editor. Maxine convinced Professor Rice to submit pieces, but they didn’t hit the page as cleanly as his lectures.
Still, Maxine persisted and eventually convinced Professor Rice to come to New York and give a speech about the city for the publication’s subscribers.
Everyone in the room was a Professor Rice fanatic by the end of the address. It’s impossible to validate the brilliance of Rice’s thoughts because the lecture wasn’t recorded. I have some suspicions that New Yorkers’ desire to hear great things about themselves contributed to the problem, but I can’t prove it.
If the right ten people talk about you in New York, you become a phenomenon across the country overnight. Even so, it took days for Professor Rice and his school to realize his impact. Seeing an opportunity, his college set up a big lecture in the nearest convention center and watched their previously unknown professor sell out the first show, then a second and a third until all of the hotel rooms in town were booked.
We can’t talk to Professor Rice, so we only know the accounts from his children, but he became agitated and concerned as the lecture series drew near. How could his lecture live up to the hype?
One of Professor Rice’s four children, Malcolm, remembers his father starting that first speech strong, but then his whole demeanor changed. The professor spoke slower and moved his arms as if through water. Malcolm and his three siblings looked around and realized that everyone else in the building was asleep within three minutes. There were five souls awake in the convention center—all with the last name of Rice.
The professor continued his lecture. His children, unaffected, reported a typical speech from their father. Then, near the end, Professor Rice snapped his fingers, and the whole audience woke up. The disoriented audience suddenly broke out in heavy applause and a standing ovation.
The reviews poured in with positive praise. People talked of Professor Rice’s words reverberating into their subconscious and filling their dream worlds with hope and energy. The following two nights were the same way, creating a frenzy for the Dream Lecturer.
Professor Rice rocketed to stardom, putting audiences to sleep around the country. He made sure that no one recorded his lectures, and he only spoke in front of live audiences. His children say that as the addresses continued, they became increasingly worse.
Finally, his son Malcolm decided to take action after listening to his father compare plumbers to caterpillars in front of a sold-out sleeping crowd at Radio City Music Hall. He recorded the following performance and then consulted with his siblings.
The four children held an intervention for their father and explained that he had lost his edge somewhere in the dream lectures. They asked him to sit and listen to what he was saying.
Malcolm hit play on the recording and watched Professor Rice listen intently. The siblings watched their father’s concerned expression as he listened to his ramblings about soft serve ice cream as a metaphor for small-town politics. Then at about the two-minute mark, Professor Rice’s eyes became heavy, and he fell asleep. When they tried to wake him up, he would open his eyes for a minute and then fall asleep again as if his thoughts overwhelmed him.
Professor Rice’s house now includes 24-hour care. He gets gifts from his admiring fans and visits from the greatest minds and doctors trying to wake him up. Among the frenzy, he has only become more famous. His children, raised by a level-headed man, do not blame themselves. They’re less convinced of the idea that the professor has hypnotized himself.