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The Professor Waits - The Half Man -
The Dark Passage - Questions to the Machine

No answer.
“Tal!”
No answer.
“It’s been half an hour, what’s going on down there? Mister Tom!”
No answer.
The professor looked over at her companion, he was tapping his heel at an uneven staccato and clearly frustrated by this recent turn of events. The hole stretched on a ways, or at least it had seemed that way when the rock they dropped down it took a good few seconds before a distant whisper announced its arrival at the bottom. They pleaded with Tal not to go down there, that the portfolio the ancient influencer spoke of in their Snapchat story was merely a myth, a fairy tale invented for likes, but he never listened, that boy. The professor was a learned woman of sixty one that night, and truth be told, she had stayed warily away from shenanigans before that rascally Tal Tom had dragged her into his life. She stood there contemplating her life’s choices, looking down into that woebegone chasm of disrepute when her companion had clearly had enough.

“That’s it! I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.”

But the professor knew better, he wouldn’t budge. It was unsurprising, he owed them, but over the years it had evolved into much more than a debt. They had found him in an asylum in Gibraltar, a PR nightmare tucked away into a crater they hoped nobody would ever find. When Uber was losing increasing market share to Lyft they grew reckless, and eventually desperate. They went against the advice of their marketing team, their CFO and 15% of their shareholders: they had no choice, they turned to the shadowy advertising agency known only as Dark Sector 5.

A few weeks later DS5 pitched an experiential so nefarious it wouldn’t just lead to a 15% increase in web traffic, but rock the very foundations of this world to its core. It would be the first time the professor and Tal Tom faced Dark Sector 5 and their creative director, Dr. Copernicus K. Shroudbaum, but it wouldn’t be the last. Her impatient companion was the sole survivor of their stunt gone awry. Sure, it had done exceedingly well on socials, blowing up on both Instagram and Twitter, but it had also twisted their companion irreparably, and now he stood almost 6’9, the cyborg known only as the Uber mensch. Still, she understood where he was coming from, she was worried about Tal too.

____

All he could do was continue taking steps forward. The corridor was just tall enough for him to stand, but he couldn’t see a thing. In Tal Tom’s right hand was clutched a Parker Big Red Duofold pen that his grandfather, Thaddius Tom III Esq. had famously won in a copywriting duel with Albert Lasker himself in 1928. It was the only thing that gave him comfort in that cimmerian miasma that pressed down upon him, but he would have preferred a flashlight. He couldn’t remember being in a situation this precarious since his time with Ashley and Alec Adams, the alliterative art director twins who had helped him in a race against time to stop a pharmaceutical activation gone wrong that had legitimately went viral (See: Tal Tales issue #32). Even the focus group would have called this bleak walk into seeming nothingness foolhardy, but hashtags had yet to steer him wrong, and more than that, he trusted his gut. On cue, inklings of light swam into his vision, and as his eyes adjusted, he knew he had reached both his destination and his destiny.

SCANNING - TARGET IDENTIFIED - TAL TOM - DOWNLOADING KNOWN ALIASES: THE COPY KID,THE FASTEST PEN IN THE EAST,THE PUNISHER,THE BRIEF BOXER,THE RHETORICATOR, MR.WRITE

The text-to-speech voice came from seemingly everywhere at once, an ominous surround sound devoid of human emotion. A beam of light shown down onto the center of the room and there, atop a vermillion pedestal inlaid with champagne gold markings lay a thick leather bound folder. Tal Tom had found it, the pernicious portfolio of Babylon. It was said to contain the first round of Shopper Marketing the Snake pitched to Adam for Tree of Knowledge apples, Troy’s influencer PR for Helen, the rebrand that made the grail ‘Holy’ and even Shakespeare’s rejected copy for graphite pencil billboards.

QUERY - WHY HAVE YOU COME?

“I seek the portfolio.”

CALCULATING - ACCESS DENIED - DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS INITIATED

Tal was in danger. The machine known as the SPHINX 6000 Mark V was a marvel of temporal multi-dimensional technology, existing in all realities and times omnipresently. It was built by the greatest minds of the 84th century in a time that was said to have perfected marketing research. Corpocratic entities would blow end-of-year budgets sending their lead strategists with their most dire advertising needs. Unfortunately, the machine exacted a terrible price, and demanded human sacrifice for a minimum 33% ROI. It was the greatest advertising tool ever made, and it had killed thousands. But Tal had come prepared.

“May I ask a question please?”

HALTING - CALCULATING - REQUEST GRANTED - ASK

“What we’re currently looking for is a game changing paradigm shift of brand awareness that’s ripe for disruption, something to leverage our core competencies and ecosystem to growth hack digital native millennials into early adopters so they can to pivot to video through gamification. We want the value-add of data-driven content to synergize with storytelling ideation and wearable tech to architect scalability and leverage thought leaders through real-time engagement.“

Even from all the way at the top of the hole, the professor could hear the explosion. The ground began to shake and move until she and her companion had no choice but to flee. They made it out of the mouth of the cave just as the rocks crashed down and barred the entrance. They tried their best to move the stones, and yelled Tal’s name for what felt like an eternity, but they heard nothing. The professor couldn’t believe it, after all this time, it couldn’t just end like this.

Just then, she felt more rocks shift behind her.

“Looking for someone?”

There Tal Tom stood, covered head to toe in dirt and soot but no worse for wear. Under his left arm was a leather bound folder.

“You did it again, you son of a bitch.”