“Alright, settle down,” declares a spry elderly woman as she sweeps into a large conference room. Though the woman is dressed in a well pressed and tailored suit, she appears as if she hasn’t had a good night’s rest in a year. She moves immediately to the head of a polished hardwood table, at which 14 others are seated. A gleaming golden name badge hangs from her lapel, with the name Arie Winters emblazoned on it.
“Straight into old business, we’ll start with the easy one first, how is the new emblem coming along?” she asks as soon as she is seated.
A shorter woman, sitting next to a tall and dour looking man, makes a motion upon the table with her hands and six images project themselves upon the wall at the foot of the table.
“We continue to go through different iterations of simple but recognizable symbols, but these are the ones that we have found fitting the criteria of ‘would not be mistaken for the old emblem at a distance.’ Also, we have determined just implementing this one icon alone will cost us 0.5% of our gross revenue for the year.”
General murmurs sound around the table at this number. The dour looking man speaks up, as he is prone to do in these meetings since he is one of the major stakeholders in one of Winter Pharmaceuticals subsidiary companies.
“Madam Winters, must we continue to entertain this farce? You have been panicking about a ghost for months, and your paranoia is reaching down through the ranks. Why must we cut into our profits for this? It is one tiny little thing we use to market things, it has become iconic for our company. That is just the implementation costs, not taking into account how it will change how our customers perceive us.”
“Your concerns are again noted Lord Helox,” Winters says before promptly ignoring him and asking the man wearing a lab jacket sitting across the table a question, without her eyes ever leaving Lord Helox.
“Chairman Mo, enlighten the board what we have found out about the ‘Day Zero Chills.’”
Chairman Mo, regretful of the fact that was the name their CEO settled upon for the event, nevertheless carries on the conversation after motioning upon the table.
“Two things to report regarding the event as it were. The first and most alarming of them is this. After we received the first handful of tips that people had gotten chills after consuming our Elixer, in particular at the behest of M’nan Kingdom’s Minister of Health after half of the king’s cabinet were found to have chills the same day, we started looking into the event. As you are aware, all of us were skeptical of this event being related to anything besides the local weather. As such, we made a token effort in the days afterwards to determine if there was any cause, and noted the areas we had complaints from were abnormally cool for that time of year, and that was that. However, after the adventurer returning from the Great Dungeon caught our CEO’s attention six months ago, I was instructed to make a formal inquiry regarding this event, to the fullest extent possible.”
“Yes yes, we know,” interrupts the man across from him. “What’s the point in retelling this?”
“Lord Helox, not every department chair is focused on rumors surrounding our greatest product. Despite the dearth of reliable information, we did a full review. You are well aware of our numbers, but for the rest of the board, year to date of the event, we had sold approximately 14,000 elixirs worldwide. Of the elixirs consumed, 94% were found and able to comment on the question, “Did you have chills” on the date in question. And this was the response.”
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Chairman Mo projects a simple graph upon the wall, with a yes and no column listed across the bottom of the graph. As murmurs begin among the table members, he continues swiftly.
“And we extended this to any person who had ever taken an elixir, and this was the response.”
The graph, previously showing approximately 12,000 ‘yes’ responses, and zero ‘no’s, shows the total ‘yes’ column skyrocketing while ‘no’ remains at zero.
“Our interviewers were trained to follow up with this, among other questions in order to obfuscate our goals. They asked about a general or specific time for the occurrence, and after adjusting for local time differences, they all occurred at the same time, worldwide.”
“Those numbers have to be fake!” Lord Helox declares, slamming his palms on the table. “There is absolutely no way everyone would be in agreement about something like this!”
“Lord Helox,” begins an elderly gentleman who is sitting two seats closer to the CEO. “You have never had the misfortune of requiring or using an Elixir before, is that correct? I did, back in the ki’bx raids forty-one years ago. That moment of chills was unlike anything I had ever felt before, going down into my soul, as if some great tragedy was about to fall upon us all.”
“That still doesn’t prove anything!”
“Young man, you would ordinarily be correct. However, what if the event were engraved upon your Akasha?”
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An hour later, an emotionally exhausted Arie walks into her office while speaking with the elderly head of Winter Pharmaceutical’s Legacy products department, M’b DuLay, the one who spoke of the ki’bx raids. However, they are greeted by the sight of two young women in contrasting suits lounging upon the splendid leather couch located to the left of the door. The first is wearing a fine white suit with the jacket buttons, pockets, and lines highlighting the collar, cuffs, and links being a black that appears to be but a hole in space. The second wearing a suit precisely the opposite, a suit seemingly stitched of a fabric from the Void, with white buttons, pockets, and liners, collar, cuffs, and links.
Standing in synchrony, the leftmost lady in white begins after hardly a half second of silence.
“Young Lady Arie, this one is Beth,” she states, placing her right hand over her heart and slightly bowing while the second continues.
“And this one is Jessie,” she says and matches Beth’s bow.
“
“Please, take a seat,” Beth says, eyes flashing with magic as she gestures gently to the luxurious chair across from them, while Jessie does the same towards Arie’s large polished ironwood desk.
Sitting themselves, Jessie continues without providing a pause, “We must say, you have done well in assuming the costs of rebranding your merchandise, while we are quite pleased with the third and sixth designs you showed today.”
Somewhat startled, M’b manages to interject after sitting in the chair Beth indicated.
“Young ladies, I may be getting old but I do not recall you being present at our meeting today.”
“Oh, young he says!” lightly declares Beth, “such a flatterer!”
“Young sir,” Jessie begins, “we have seen many proper empires rise.”
“And we have seen them fall, break and scatter.”
“But is it so surprising? After all, this place is filled with remote monitoring devices, both mechanical and magical.”
“Now, don’t give him too hard of a time Jessie, after all the most surprising part is this,” Beth finishes, flourishing her hands and snapping her fingers. Arie’s badge disassembles and floats over to her palm, quickly making itself known as the monitoring device.
M’b looks at Arie Winters in shock, and is somewhat relieved to see her facade cracked and showing shock and bafflement as well.
Arie, coming around to herself finally, asks the two sitting across from her, “And what precisely are you here to discuss regarding my penance?”
“Oh, perhaps you may just survive,” Jessie says bluntly.
“But your family’s actions have now spread responsibility quite far, so don’t give yourself more power or responsibility than is proper.”
“You have one month to show your sincerity, which you will express at a press conference.”
“We would encourage you to ensure your employees, from managers to custodians be present or watching.”
“And by all means, we would encourage you to tell your story properly as the Ancient One will be there, and intends on showing his magnanimity. We trust you are aware of many things regarding him, as you are even printing his symbol.”
“Naturally, he will say a few words as well, though which words he speaks will depend greatly on that which will be performed this coming month.”
“Give up that which you ought without a thought of holding back.”
“And perhaps the end of the era will be kind to you.”
“Though if we had one piece of advice for you before we leave, it would be this -”
“