Episode 6 - January 18th 2212

“Nice of you to join us Art.” said Nepty with a wink. Her new HoloJumper™ glowed with slowly shifting snow scenes. Shame WeatherTech™ had screwed up again (or been bribed) and it was 20 degrees C outside.
 

I’d been early to the gym - trying to lose those last few GreedFest kilos.  I could hardly walk, but very smug because I’d beaten my avatar ‘training buddy’ on the VirtuTrack™ by a good ten metres. I’d set him to 2207 image and fitness levels. Not smug that he seemed a good bit thinner than me, and what was I thinking of back in 2207 with that Mohican and the black body suit?
 

Walking past Dorid’s office I saw he was just signing off from an impromptu vMeet with Lee Fyu Choor from TimeTravelTech. Lee’s cheery face was just shimmering out of sight, right hand raised in some kind of dodgy lodge salute.
 

Dorid leaned out of his office, beaming.
 

“Hi Art. Told Lee about your four ducks concept.”
 

2212 was the ‘Year of Three Little Ducks’. I’d flippantly suggested TimeTravelTech did an AdHolo with four ducks and the copy line “Waddle you do in 2222?” as a way of convincing people they had a credible product. It was meant to be a joke, I don’t think Dorid really understood.
 

“He hated it,” Dorid went on, “But he wants to brief you on a new campaign. He wants you to go in and meet him with his R&D team. You can’t go virtual because he wants you to touch things and press buttons.”
 

“Can I call in yesterday?” I wondered if I could get out of it – Nice happy guy, but Lee was constantly showing off clever, but useless products that never got to market, and TTT was based in one of the nastier parts of Old Kensington.
 

Dorid continued blithely “He doesn’t have much time, and your diary for tomorrow is empty. His PA seems to have vanished - some kind of accident - so can you get back to Lee Fyu Choor and confirm a time?”
 

“...and when you get there, see if you can get him to pay up - he still owes us for July’s ‘TimeTravellers do it last week’ campaign.”
 

------------ January 18th 2212
 

It’s not quite a Skoda, but I didn’t want to leave my car anywhere near Old Kensington, so I got a RoboCab. Obviously programmed to protect itself, it dropped me half a click from TTTs unit, and I had to actually walk.
 

I got there without incident, other than being scrutinised by HoloCops on every street corner. Occasionally they put a real cop in, so you can’t be rude. The DoorBot™ read my retina and swung open.
 

Asked by the HoloSec™ to hang up my coat, I went to put it on the peg. There was a deep hum and the peg moved. And it did it again. Every time I went for the peg it moved somewhere else.
 

I heard Lee laugh behind me. “Ha! Good innit! Scanner read action, send peg split second back in time - you can never catch it up!”
 

I let my coat slip to the floor. “That’s very amusing Lee, did you apply the same technology to our July invoice?”
 

“Ha!” he replied with a wink, “I will pay that last June!”

(To be continued)

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Episode Five - January 10th 2212.

So GreedFest was over, the office seemed stark without the HoloDecs™ exploding into life every few seconds, but I really didn’t miss; “So here it is, Merry GreedFest”, or “Santa - put your sleigh on RoboDrive!” hammering out across the office.

I also didn’t miss HoloChocks™ that vanished when you opened the wrappers, or “PartyPloppers” that covered you in virtual phosphorescent slime.

And some media wag had christened 2200 the “Two Little Ducks Century”, so we now had “The Year of Three Little Ducks” for the second time in a decade. Everywhere you went there was an infernal trio of quacks.

Dorid frowned at me across the office. He looked tanned, but fatter, from 2 weeks GreedFest vacation on Lunar.  “What PGFP gimmicks you got in mind Art?”

It took me a while to get his latest acronym. He meant ‘Post GreedFest Promotions’. We didn’t do consumer, which was rife with hunger-suppressing implant diets, SlimSims™ and the latest SythiHales™ that were so benign they may as well have been tubes of fresh air. Generally as a B2B agency we stayed away from “PGFP’s”

“Dunno Dorid, I was wondering if we might do an ad for BlastM2Bits Security, showing three little ducks getting fried by a LectroGrid™. Copy line ‘What’s cooking in modern security?’”

“Like it!”

“Or one for HoloCorp saying “How can you do three ducks without 3D?”

“Brill!”

“And we could do an AdHolo for TimeTravelTech showing four ducks in a row with the tagline "Why wait?" – might convince some people that TTT have still got a credible product.”

“…nope, don’t get it…”

“Waddle you be doing in 2222?”

“Sorry?”

“Anyway, most of our customers won’t wear the duck stuff. Why don’t we do an in-house promo and just say ‘Happy New Year from all at Artlie-Saturn?’"

“Where’s the ducks?”

“At the top. We’ll call them the Three Wise Advertising Ducks. One for an agency that doesn’t duck the issue, one because we're always happy to float new ideas, and another because our bills are never too big.”

“Cheesy.”

“Quacked it.”

(To be continued - for earlier blogs, scroll down)

And a Happy New Year from all at Hartley-Stone!  

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