Wasserman & Clement hired Allison McDougal to write advertising copy based on a campaign she hadn’t even worked on. But it had been her idea, and that was enough.

“Allison – okay if I call you that? -- what you did on the Kleenex campaign was terrific!” Abe Wasserman waved his perpetually unlit cigar and grinned. “What a fucking tag line! ‘You’ve only got one nose, so don’t blow it!’”

Allison blinked. Behind round lenses in sky-blue frames, her eyes were large, UPS brown and very round. She was gently pear-shaped, and with her full cheeks and glasses and encircling bob hairstyle, she seemed assembled from an assortment of concentric circles. “McDougal,” she said in a voice that suggested she said it a lot. “I go by McDougal.”

                  Wasserman swept his cigar in a rolling concession. “Sure, whatever you like.” He leaned forward. “You’re making what, eighty-five? We’ll pay you a hundred.”

                  Allison stared at him like someone curious as to planet of origin. She didn’t say anything, and after a while Wasserman began to feel uncomfortable.

                  “Okay,” he said, glancing at a sheet of paper that contained salary and bonus numbers for all of WC’s advertising specialists or, as Abe called them, his ‘creatives.’ “We can go to a one-twenty-five base.” When her expression didn’t change, he sighed. “Plus another ten as a signing bonus.”

                   Allison cocked her head, wondering how long Wasserman had been chewing on that particular cigar. Did it start to smell after a few hours, or flake and crumble? Could you get cancer from an unlit cigar? She had a dog once who ate a cigar that he found on the sidewalk, and she always wondered if that had anything to do with him dying only a few months later. He was kind of a weird dog, but still.

                  “Allison -- uh, McDougal? What do you say?”

                   Allison shrugged; she was already bored. “Okay,” she said. “I guess so.” 

***

Her first assignment was to create a campaign for a baby stroller. Manufactured by a Danish company with the self-important name of Gravitas, the stroller boasted disc-brakes, an ergonomically-designed push-bar and a heated seat that vibrated at the touch of a button.

“Why does it need to vibrate?” Allison asked the Gravitas marketing exec, a sixtyish Dane named Martin who smiled and bobbed his blond head like a chicken. Allison thought him strange but oddly endearing.

“It soothes them,” Martin said proudly, stroking the handle of the sample he brought with him. “Less crying, more sleeping.” He bobbed his head, and Allison ducked down a bit to see if he had one of those things that chickens have on their necks. Disappointingly, he did not.

“I was thinking maybe that could be the slogan, you know?” Martin continued.

“What?”

“Less crying, more sleeping.”

Allison closed her eyes. “It’s not a terrible idea,” she said eventually, and Martin beamed. She glanced at the stroller. “Does it have a name?”

“It’s Danish,” he said. “Thyra.”

“Thyra,” she repeated. “What does it mean?”

“It’s a Viking Queen. It means ‘Warrior of Thor.’”

Allison nodded. “Cool.” She popped to her feet and Martin scrambled to pop up too; apparently, the meeting was over. “You have nice hair, Martin,” Allison said seriously. She glanced at the stroller. “I’ll have something for you in a few days.”

The following week, FedEx delivered an oversized envelope to Martin’ attention at Gravitas’Copenhagen offices. Opening it, he found himself looking at a drawing of a fierce baby girl in Viking regalia. Like Washington crossing the Delaware, she stood bright-eyed and ramrod-straight in the prow of her stroller, Thor’s Hammer clutched tightly in her raised right hand. Below the drawing, in an elegant Loura Soulful Norse Runic font, the text read,

‘Here Ride the Brave and the Strong. Thyra.

***

Abe Wasserman sat in a conference room at WC, a copy of Allison’s stroller ad spread out on the table. Wasserman had loosened his tie and his face was flushed.

“McDougal,” he groaned, running a hand through his thinning hair, “what in hell’s name were you thinking? They’re not gonna go for this. No way.”

Allison took off her glasses. “Why won’t they go for it?” she asked mildly.

“Because strollers aren’t chariots!” Wasserman sputtered. “Because babies aren’t Viking warriors! And because your ad doesn’t say one goddamn thing about why this stroller is better than other strollers.”

Allison laughed, which only made him madder. “Something funny?”

  “Did you look at that stroller?” she asked. “By Thor’s Mighty Hammer, it looks like – what does he call them, you know, Musk’s silly new truck?”

“The Cyber-truck?”

“Yes! It looks like a cyber-truck for babies. It’s got disc-brakes and a heater and it vibrates and weighs as much as a small car and it costs twenty-five hundred dollars!” She shook her head. “To sell this thing, you don’t argue it makes sense. You tap into their emotions.”

“And this does that how?”

“It appeals to their egos. Parents want to believe that their baby is the best. The prettiest, the most talented, the bravest and the strongest. And they want everybody to know it.”

At that moment, Wasserman’s assistant poked his head into the conference room. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said apologetically, “but there’s a call for McDougal. Martin Madsen. He says it’s important.”

“Put it through to the conference room,” Wasserman barked. He glared at Allison. “That didn’t take long. First he’s gonna fire us, and then I’m gonna fire you.”

Allison wasn’t looking at him. On the wall of the conference room was an enormous photograph of a sea otter floating on its back in the waves. Its whiskers were wet and flecked with foam and on its stomach it held a dark-hued mussel and a rock. Allison wondered if the otter had reasoned that it could use a rock to crack the mussel, or had it been taught? Did some otters learn quickly while others never quite got it? How did otters who couldn’t figure it out survive? How did Mr. Wasserman survive?

“McDougal?” It was Martin’s voice on the speaker phone.

“McDougal’s right here, Martin,” said Wasserman. “And before you say anything, please accept my apologies for the rough concept she sent you. We don’t—”

“Apologize? What do you mean? It’s perfect!”

“You … uh … I mean, yes, I just meant that we usually wait until we can send clients something that’s, you know, a little more polished.”

“McDougal,” Martin said, brushing past Wasserman, “my boss asked me to thank you for this personally. When I showed him your drawing he actually began to cry. He said it’s the first time that any of our marketing firms has understood what Gravitas is about.”

Allison was still thinking about the otters. This is a sea otter, but aren’t there river otters too? Do they know how to use rocks? Aren’t they kind of like ferrets? Wasserman cleared his throat, and she realized that Martin was waiting for her to say something.

“It’s a nice stroller, Martin,” she offered, reminded of what for her mother passed for wisdom: be polite.Like manners mattered most. “I looked up your name. Do you know what it means?”

“Um, yeah. ‘Warlike.’”

“You don’t seem very warlike to me, Martin. Maybe you should change it.”

Wasserman stared at her like she had lost her mind.

***

When Wasserman called Allison into his office to give her a new assignment, he paced behind his massive desk, unable to sit still. Allison thought he looked like one of those mechanical ducks at the carnival booth, scuttling back and forth, waiting to be knocked down. Her dad took her to a carnival once and she still remembered the pie-eating contest. A fat boy lost to a skinny one and cried blueberry tears.

“Are you listening to me, McDougal?” Wasserman was saying, jabbing the air with his cigar. “It’s the third-largest hardware store chain in the Mid-West. Over sixty stores.”

“Do people still go to hardware stores? If I need ant-traps or rubber cement, I get them on Amazon.”

“Sure, people still go to their local hardware store ….” He stopped in mid-stride. “Rubber cement?” He rubbed his chin. “What on earth do you do with rubber cement?”

Allison was about to tell him that she liked the smell when he waved her off. “Never mind, I don’t care. The company – Milton’s Hardware – just fired their old agency and they’re looking for a new campaign. Their CEO, Felix Milton III, will be here next week. I want you to meet with him.”

Allison was still thinking about the rubber cement. It wasn’t just the smell; you could make little rubber balls, patch a pair of shoes, even stick boards together in a birdhouse, although she sometimes worried that the birds might eat it. When she was in kindergarten, one of the boys in her art class used to eat paste. It didn’t seem to hurt him, so she tried it; it didn’t taste that bad but she wondered if it could stick your stomach to your liver or kidneys or something.

“McDougal?” Wasserman was standing right in front of her, bending down so he could look into her eyes. “Can you handle this, McDougal? Or do I need to give it to Carter or Linovitz?”

***

Felix Milton III – Felix Milton III to his friends – didn’t strike Allison as a hardware kind of guy. Tall and thin with little granny glasses like the ones John Lennon used to wear before that maniac shot him down outside the Dakota, he looked like he wouldn’t know a reciprocating saw from a bandsaw.

“You don’t look like a hardware kind of guy,” she said when they sat down.

Felix Milton III uncrossed his legs. “You don’t look like an advertising sort of woman,” he said sharply.

Allison thought about it. “No,” she said after a while, “I suppose I don’t. What do you think an advertising woman looks like?”

Felix Milton III shrugged. “I don’t know. Sharp dresser. Sophisticated. Maybe a British accent.”

Allison nodded. “Lives in SoHo, drives something sporty. Probably having an affair with John Hamm.”

Felix Milton III raised an eyebrow. “Dead on.”

“Well, you got me instead. Walk-up in Riverdale, don’t drive, closest friend is a cat named Boris. Do your stores have wooden floors?”

“What?”

“When I was a kid, the local hardware store had a plank floor. It was faded and you could feel it give when you jumped up and down.”

“We don’t have floors like that,” Felix Milton III said a little indignantly.

“Well, do you make keys?”

“Um, yeah. But  it’s a dying business. Why?”

Allison remembered going to the hardware store with her dad. The man made keys while they waited; he wore goggles and the key-making machine made a huge grinding noise and threw off sparks. It felt exciting to watch something being made out of nothing.

                  Allison stood up. “I have to go now, Felix Milton III.” She smiled; the name just rolled off her tongue and she liked to say it over and over, like Anders standing in the outfield softly repeating ‘they is, they is’ in that Tobias Wolff story. “I’ll have something for you in a few days.” And before another word could escape Felix Milton III’s open mouth, she was gone.

Less than a week later,  Abe Wasserman got a call at home just as he was about to sit down to dinner. It was Felix Milton III. As a gesture of trust and commitment, Abe liked to give prospective clients his home phone number, knowing that few if any would use it. Felix Milton III had no such compunctions and skipped the pleasantries.

“I just received the proposal your girl – McDougal – put together,” he said. “It’s not what I was expecting.”

Wasserman pulled off the napkin he had just tucked under his chin. “I … I haven’t seen it, Mr. Milton,” he said. “I specifically asked McDougal to run it past me before she sent it out – perhaps she forgot.”

“Well, you should look at it. Because it’s not what I’m looking for.”

Abe’s neck was prickling and he was starting to sweat; Felix Milton III sounded mad, and in Abe’s experience angry clients quickly turned into former clients. Or, in this case, never clients.

“I see. Let me take a look and I’ll call you tomorrow. If McDougal isn’t right for Milton’s Hardware, we’ll find someone who is.”

Wasserman was sitting in Allison’s office when she came in the next morning. He didn’t say a word while Allison hung up her coat, went out to the break-room to get a cup of coffee, sat down at her desk and turned on her computer. Nursing an angry scowl, he just sat there watching her.

“I asked you to send me your proposal before you sent it to the client,” he said finally.

Allison looked up. “They haven’t signed the retainer agreement yet. Technically, they’re not a client.”

With an effort, Wasserman controlled himself. “You know what I meant.”

“I thought you said what you meant,” she said, shrugging. She sipped at her coffee and frowned; it tasted like vanilla. She must have added the wrong creamer. The creamer came in those little capsules and if you didn’t look closely it was easy to mistake the vanilla capsule for the plain one. They both had a tiny picture of flowing milk on the top while the label – vanilla, hazelnut, plain, whatever – was on the front. The capsules were kept in a drawer, so when you opened the drawer you could only see the top. Reaching for a pen, Allison scrawled a note to herself; capsule creamer re-design.

“Show it to me,” Wasserman was saying. “Now.”

His voice was tight and Allison blinked, wondering why he was angry. It was hard to say, he seemed to be angry a lot. She worried he might have a heart attack or something and was about to suggest that he lose some weight when her screen flashed a notification. A call from Felix Milton III. She ignored it, turned on the TV and cued up a video. She hit play and leaned back to watch, silently mouthing to herself,  Felix Milton III, Felix Milton III.

The video opened to the instrumental beginning of Jackson Browne’s Before the Deluge and a black-and-white montage: an aproned village blacksmith pounding horseshoes on an anvil; a farmer and his young daughter loading goods onto a horse-drawn wagon; a dozen men in overalls and suspenders hauling on ropes to raise a barn; and, as the music swelled, an old-fashioned small town hardware store. Dutch doors, worn plank floors, shelves stocked with everything from chisels and saws to screws and nails. Behind the solid wooden counter a kindly grey-haired man in a leather apron held some kind of hand tool, patiently explaining to his customer how to make it sing.

As they watched, the old store faded, seamlessly replaced by a present-day Milton’s Hardware store with wide plank floors, casement windows, a solid wooden counter and – helping a customer select just the right electric plane -- a smiling, grey-haired salesman. As the music faded and the commercial closed, a tag line appeared:

‘While Everything Else is Changing, Milton’s Has Stayed the Course for More Than Sixty Years. Come in and Find out Why.’

As Allison turned off the TV, Wasserman exhaled; he’d been holding his breath. “You … you put this together in three days? How is that possible?”

“Four days.” She shrugged. “It’s not hard to find old footage. But Milton’s is going to have to re-do its stores; for that part I had to use computer graphics.”

“Felix Milton III called me at home—”

“Did you know that the first planing and matching machine was invented by a man named William Woodworth?” Allison laughed with delight. “Woodworth!” She wondered if that was his real name, or if he had changed it when he realized that his fortune might be made in wood?

Wasserman was talking. Something about Felix Milton III not liking the ad and figuring out what the client wants before sending them anything and running it past people internally.

“He called me,” she said, interrupting him in mid-sentence. “Just a few minutes ago.”

Wasserman got up and started to pace. He had a decision to make, and he needed to make it quickly. Milton obviously hated the ad; the prudent thing to do was to call him, agree whole-heartedly and offer to assign another specialist to the account. Maybe fire McDougal to show WC’s commitment. He and Clement built WC on the principle that since it was the client’s product and the client’s money, the client should have what it wants. It was a philosophy that had been successful but which had also produced campaigns that still made Wasserman shudder. The giant rat plugging Chuck-E-Cheese. Kendall Jenner solving society’s ills by handing a can of Pepsi to a cop at a protest rally. The turd-like Hershey’s Kisses design. All horrible, all client-driven. But WC hadn’t lost any of those clients. If Felix Milton III had his head up his ass, Wasserman’s job was to compliment him on the view.

The problem was, he liked the ad; visually and thematically, it was brilliant. McDougal was strange, and worse, she was insubordinate and either reckless or oblivious. But WC wasn’t a bank, it was an advertising agency. In this business, lines of authority tended to be loose and weirdness was often a feature, not a bug. He wasn’t sure he wanted to throw McDougal under the bus for the crime of creating a great ad for a client too stupid to see it.

“Felix Milton III?” he heard McDougal say. “This is McDougal. You called me?”

Wasserman looked up, horrified. Frantically he crossed his arms back and forth, mouthing ‘no! no!.’ McDougal didn’t seem to notice and Wasserman sat down heavily, a look of resignation on his face. He’d see what could be salvaged once Milton was done yelling at her.

Apparently Felix Milton III was doing all the talking, because McDougal wasn’t saying anything, just nodding. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, gotta go, thanks. She hung up.

Wasserman looked at her expectantly, but she just  back stared back at him. Like she was evaluating the state of his health, or wondering how he had managed to build an advertising agency. He was older and more accomplished and he was her fucking boss, but somehow he found her intimidating, he wasn’t sure why.

“Well?” he said finally.

“What?” Her expression was maddeningly blank.

“Milton. What did he say?”

“Oh. He wants to start running it in Ohio, Missouri and a few other states, I forget which ones. He said they were going to double their media buy and run it three or four times a day.”

“What?” Wasserman was dumbfounded. “I thought he hated it.”

“He does. He said his plan was ‘to bring Milton’s ‘into the 21st century,’ or something like that. He thinks the ad is too 19th century.”

“What changed his mind?”

“He showed it to his mom, and I guess she liked it.” Allison shrugged. “Turns out she’s the chairman of the board.”

Wasserman took a sharp breath. That explained a lot.

 ***

Wasserman spoke to his legal counsel, a slick corporate guy who billed out at twelve-hundred bucks an hour. He spoke to the agency’s creative leads; to the woman who ran the graphics department; to the head of HR. To each of them, he posed a single question: what do I do with an ad specialist who doesn’t follow instructions, fails to address clients appropriately, is disrespectful and barely listens when I’m speaking to her, and creates some of the most original and creative ad campaigns I’ve ever seen?

For the most part, the responses he got were predictable. The lawyer suggested that he have her countersign summaries of their interactions. The HR head suggested that he deliver a performance  evaluation that praised her contributions but included a performance improvement plan directed to her ‘weaknesses.’ The graphics woman said she had no idea, didn’t understand why he was asking her, and wondered if he’d be as bothered if McDougal was a man. And the creative leads, insecure and already jealous, unanimously urged him to let her go.

The only useful advice he received came from his partner, Alphonse “Big Al” Clement, a 6’6” former college basketball star who went into advertising after wrecking his knee two weeks before the NBA draft. After listening to Wasserman explain his dilemma, Big Al broke out laughing.

“Abe,” he said, “are you fucking kidding me?” He leaned over his desk. “Let me tell you a story. When I was playing ball, we had a guy on the team named Chuck. Fastest guy I ever played with, a great shooter and an even better passer. He averaged twenty points and six or seven assists a game. The previous year, we lost two-thirds of our games. Once we had Chuck, we started winning and we kept winning. He was that good.”

“But there was a problem. See, Chuck’s idea of personal hygiene was to shower once a month – tops. You could smell him coming, and the whole locker room reeked like a sewer. Guys were actually getting nauseous.”

Wasserman had never played sports, but he got the point. “Did somebody talk to him?”

Clement nodded. “Oh yeah. He’d look at you like you were crazy and say, ‘Well, I don’t smell nothing.’ Couldn’t get through to him. Eventually, we went to the coach and said hey, you gotta do something, we can’t stand this much longer.”

“What did the coach do?”

Big Al sat back, a grin on his long, creased face. “Coach looked at us and said ‘Gentlemen, you’ve got two choices. Chuck can stay with the team and stink. Or I can boot him off, in which case all of you guys will stink.”

***

  Wasserman slept on it overnight. When he came in the next day, he called Allison and told her he’d like to meet with her.

“I can’t,” she said distractedly. In the background he could hear what sounded like hip-hop. “I’m right in the middle of my music survey.”

“Your what?”

“My music survey,” she repeated more loudly. “All ten categories.”

“Categories?”

“Yes. Commercials need soundtracks, right? Hold on a sec.” There was a shuffle and a click and a new song started playing; this one sounded like a Gregorian chant.

“McDougal, I want—”

“So, categories. Obviously there are others, but I use ten: Ominous, Somber, Sensitive, Light-hearted, Comical, Effervescent, Inspiring, Romantic and Sexual. Pick the right music and everything else just follows. Do you want to hear—”

“McDougal, stop. I am your boss, and I need to see you. Now.”

“Um, okay,” Allison said after a lengthy hesitation. Like after thinking about it she had decided to play along. “After this song.”

When she arrived at Wasserman’s office twenty minutes later, Allison was wearing baggy yellow pants that were gathered above the ankle, a white blouse that seemed to be made of chiffon and a black, knee-length outer garment that looked to Wasserman like a cross between a bathrobe and a kimono. She wasn’t wearing shoes.

Wasserman stared for a moment but decided not to make an issue of it. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Still, he was curious and couldn’t help himself.

“Where are your shoes, McDougal?” he asked, mentally noting the brilliance of a strategy that had him ignoring the crazy stuff she was wearing.

“They’re in my office. Near the door.”

“No, I mean, why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

“Oh, I read that going barefoot can enhance creativity and cognitive function.” She paused. “Besides, it feels good.”

Wasserman worried he might be losing it; it sort of made sense. “I suppose you can’t argue with science,” he mumbled. “Um, McDougal, speaking of cognitive function, have you ever heard of Cognition Corp.?”

Allison nodded, but was only half paying attention. She was beginning to second-guess her decision to categorize Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da as Comical; maybe Effervescent would have been a better choice. When she was six she begged her mom to let her take guitar lessons; she wanted to play Beatle songs. But her teacher, a sixty-ish Korean named Park, would only teach her to play Go Tell Aunt Rhody, Freight Train and the Blue Danube Waltz. She wondered whatever happened to him and suspected he might have bored himself to death.

“… ready to go to market with a new AI thingie – you know, like Chat PGT.” Wasserman understood computer software only vaguely and generative AI chatbots not at all. “Anyway, they just raised a hundred million or so and want to make a splash when their product comes out. TV, print ads, the works.” He looked at Allison expectantly, thinking she’d be eager to work on something as cutting edge as AI. 

Allison just yawned. “What do they need us for?” she asked, whipping the belt of her kimono-thing back and forth across her lap. “Why don’t they just let their AI do it?”

Wasserman had wondered that too and had called his son, who worked for Microsoft and knew about such things.

“You might think so,” Wasserman agreed, reading from his notes, “but AI systems can only operate on existing datasets and are inherently derivative. Cognition wants something creative and original. McDougal, I told them you were perfect for this. The Cognition marketing guy is coming in this afternoon. You in?”

Allison had just finished reading Ishigura’s Klara and the Sun, and despite her instinctive hostility to anything trendy or fashionable, she had to admit that this could be interesting. She might have turned out differently if she’d had an artificial AI friend like Klara. Or any friend at all. It was lonely sometimes, being different.

“Okay,” she said, getting to her feet. The carpet in Wasserman’s office was soft and thick and Allison scrunched her toes in as deep as they could go. “This is nice,” she said. “Can I get this in my office?”

***

Allison and Percy Thimble, a thin, rat-faced Englishman with tiny hands and a natty blue blazer, were seated in the WC conference room. On the large monitor at the end of the table, the Cognition AI software was loaded and ready to strut its stuff.

“Ask him something,” Percy prompted, proud as a parent at his kid’s first-grade play.

“Him? How do you know it’s a he?”

Percy bristled. “Our research suggested a male persona might be more, um, more … credible to our target demographic.”

  “Is that why you named him Dave?”

“Well, yes. Apparently Dave is a name that people tend to trust. Salt of the earth and all that.”

“And your ‘target demographic’ is …?”

“Early adapters, who tend to be young and male.”

A montage of bro-y techies flashed through Allison’s mind. Pimpled teens in headphones gathered in front of a giant monitor playing some murderous game; nerdy twenty-somethings in short-sleeved shirts drinking Red Bull and coding furiously; prematurely-affluent young men sitting at a bar drinking expensive Chilean reds just like John Wick. She rolled her eyes. Fun.

“Okay,” she said, sliding her hands to the keyboard. She thought for a few moments and began to type….

***

It was more than three weeks before Allison felt ready to send her proposed TV spot to Cognition. Wasserman had made it very clear that she was to show it to him before she sent it out, but she paid no attention; she didn’t want to take a chance that he might not like it.

Up until now, she had always thought of product marketing as a puzzle and ads as solutions. She might not care that much about strollers or hardware stores but she had a talent for understanding what would resonate with customers. To Allison, it was simple: to design a successful campaign, you don’t focus on the product. You focus on the customer.

This campaign – this product – was different. Dave wasn’t one thing, he was a thousand things. A million. And he was different for each person. Sitting there with Percy at her elbow, she had asked Dave dozens of questions. What do dogs think about? Why are New York bagels better? With all that butter in their diet, why aren’t more French people fat? Was William Blake the first psychedelic poet? How do you pit an olive? How do you change someone’s mind?  She asked Dave whether he ever grew tired of getting stupid questions, how he knew what level of detail a particular response required, and whether he considered himself free. She typed question after question, and he patiently answered each and every one. And when she finally turned away from the monitor after an hour that seemed like only a few minutes, she felt like she had just had a conversation – no, multiple conversations – with one of the most interesting and well-informed individuals she had ever met. She respected Dave – how could you not respect the repository of so much knowledge? – but even more surprisingly, she liked him.

Shortly after she sent the ad to Percy, Wasserman and Clement appeared at her office door. “We’d like to see what you’ve got on the Cognition campaign,” Wasserman said brusquely. “Before you send it out.”

“Abe, relax,” Clement said, stepping past his partner and nodding to Allison. “Your work’s terrific, McDougal. I can’t wait to see what you’ve cooked up.”

Allison looked up from her computer. She and Dave were in the middle of an interesting conversation about Dave’s gender. “I sent it off an hour ago,” she shrugged. “I showed it to Dave, and he thought it was pretty good. You can see it if you want.”

Wasserman flushed, turning to Clement with an expression that said, now do you see what I’ve been dealing with?  “Conference room,” he said sharply. “Show us.”

In the conference room, Allison drew down the shades and turned off the lights as Wasserman and Clement waited in the semi-darkness. Without saying a word she plopped into a chair, opened the video player and hit Play.

The video opened to the soft but insistent strum of an electric guitar, the instrumental opening of Wake Up by Arcade Fire (Category: Inspiring). The scene is a home office. A man, fifty-something and handsome with a greying beard and a pair of glasses tipped down on his nose, sits at his desk in the dark, his features lit up by the computer screen. The question he has typed is superimposed on the screen: Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is next month and I want to surprise her. Any ideas? The AI’s response, also superimposed on the screen, comes in seconds:  How about a weekend road trip to the coast, just the two of you? No plans, no phone, just time to remind her why she said yes.

The scene shifts to a sophisticated-looking woman sitting at a glass-and-steel desk in a modern office, a Hockney on the wall behind her. She has auburn hair and is wearing a dark green skirt, heels and a white blouse. Like before, her question is superimposed on the screen: I’ve got 36 hours between meetings in London next week. Ideas? Again the AI responds promptly: How about the Borough Market for breakfast, then the Tate Modern and, if you have time, a walk through Hyde Park. Finish with cocktails at Sky Garden—the view is unbeatable.

The scene shifts again. A girl, eleven or twelve, sits up in her bed, an open computer in her lap. Superimposed on the screen is her question: How do you make friends? The AI responds: Be kind. Be curious. Be patient. Lots of kids are just waiting for someone brave enough to say ‘hi.’ And by the way: hi.

The girl smiles, warm and genuine. Leaning forward, she types her response: Thanks Dave! As the music quiets and the image fades to black, the word “Dave” and the Cognition logo fill the screen. Superimposed below is a single word: ‘hi.’.

As Allison closed the video player, Wasserman and Clement exchanged a glance. She started to get up to turn on the lights, but Wasserman held up a palm. “No, McDougal,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Play it again.”

Squandering his undergraduate degree in English Literature, Richard Abramson spent thirty-five years practicing law, first as an intellectual property litigator and then as General Counsel of a major scientific research institute. After retiring in 2015 he taught for seven years at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. During this period he wrote and published a novel about Lord Byron entitled The Virtues of Scandal. His stories and essays have been published in 34 th Parallel, Boomer and Emerging Civil War.