#TruthAndLies

Just gotta relax.  It’s not like they’re unreasonable around here.  Hell, they’re anti-smoking.  If anything, they’re the most reasonable people you’ve ever met.  All you’ve gotta do is walk in there, pitch a new carton design piece for them to use in their campaign, and answer a few questions.  If they’re impressed, they’ll wind up doing all the ground work for you.  Easy as pie.

The fact that the waiting room keeps flashing different colors isn’t exactly a comfort, nor is that guy over there who seems to be having a seizure and enjoying it.  But it’s not that bad.  You’ve been to places that have Ms. Magazine as the only reading material available.  This place is downright normal by comparison

A door opens, your name is called.  Next thing you know, you’re sitting in the office and gesturing towards a pack of cigarettes.  You’re not quite sure how you got in here, or how it appears you’re around halfway through your pitch, but the man in front of you seems fairly invested in it.  Then again, he’s also invested in around four other things, on account of having multiples faces, but you might as well plow through on it.

"…so as you can see, regular cartons are far too ergonomically designed to make your campaigns effective.  If we’re going to make this work, we need to show people what things could be like.  If, instead of fitting perfectly into their pockets and showing the Big Tobacco brands perfectly on store shelves, the packs were designed to be as inconvenient as possible.

"To that end, I give you…" He struggled with his pants for a moment, then whipped out a small, pentagonal carton of Marlboros.  "The diamond carton!  Note the inconvenience of trying to fit them in and out of your pocket.  See,” you say, flipping open the top and struggling to get a single cigarette out, “how difficult it is to share them with friends.  Watch,” you place the carton on the desk multiple times, never quite managing to get it to stand in an ideal manner, “how it cannot ideally show off the brand name, or even what it is.  And thanks to its multi-faceted design, it takes a lot more cardboard to produce it, thus cutting down on profits.

"I don’t expect Big Tobacco to change anything just because of this, but if you guys do some stuff based around this, put it in a few campaigns, feature how the world could be a little different, then we might start getting somewhere!”  You pause and stare at the man behind the desk, who has turned all five faces on you.  This could either go really well, or really, really bad.

You open your mouth to speak, but he gets his open first.  ”James, bro," he says in a strange, reverberating voice.  How the hell does he know your name?  For whatever reason, techno music begins to fill the room, and the man behind the desk starts jerkily dancing towards you, as if he were a recording missing several frames.  "We #LoveLoveLove your idea.  Could be really great for #BringDownBigPharma.”

"But… you’re trying to take down Big To…"

"Don’t matter, don’t matter.  The #Point is, #Truth isn’t all about that.  We want to see people stop smoking as much as anyone, but…"  The room shakes, and lights begin to flash across the ceiling. "It’s just not good for us.  If everyone were to go from this…" He morphed into an ashen-gray man, who hacked up an entire lung as he took a draw on a cigarette.  "…to this…"  And into the spitting image of health.  "#NOBODY would pay attention to us!  We #Thrive on people’s attention here at #Truth.  Why’d you think we have all these lights set up?  #DanceParty?"

"Uh…"

He’s approaching you quite rapidly now, and reaches out to grasp your shoulder.  "Like I said, #LoveLoveLove the idea.  But we don’t really have a place for it.  So, y’know…"  His fingers clasp your suit, and begin to turn into… things.  You have no idea what they are, but they make you massively uncomfortable.  "#NoPlaceForYouHere.”

You panic, and do the only thing that makes any sense to you right now; you heft the packet of cigs up, and smack him straight across the face with it.

The man erupts, seizure-inducing lights flashing madly around the room as the music rises to intolerable levels.  He morphs across a wide variety of strange, inhuman shapes screaming in pain, shrieking, “OH GOD NO!  I DON’T WANT TO BE A SPOKESPERSON!  #IHAVEACHOICE!  #WECANEN D SMOKING!  GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME!!!”

And then he’s gone, nothing but a pile of smoking ash left behind.

Then you’re in the parking lot.  Whatever force blinked you into the office must have blinked you straight back out.  You’re still trying to process everything that happened over the last two minutes, but you’re slowly coming to two conclusions.

One: They are more than likely going to realize someone was responsible for whatever the hell that was, and send something out to interrogate you.  You should probably book it.

Two: That was just… fucking weird.  Not much of a realization, but it takes a while for it to really set in.  Like… Jesus.