Len resorts to drugs. It had to happen. Adland will take you to the edge of endurance. You either jump (probably to a start-up that may or may not make it through its first year), medicate or have a breakdown. Will the robot had the breakdown. That left Len with only two options. Psychedelics, he reckons, are fun.
(Awesome trippy cover image by Jade Mitchell)
June 10 2041
They’re bringing Will back tomorrow apparently. I don’t really understand the technical details, but they say it was a hardware issue – something to do with a processor.
I wonder whether whatever changes they’ve made to the hardware are going to affect Will’s nature, or whether that’s more of a software thing? If you put it in human terms, if you chopped my leg off and replaced it with a prosthetic limb, in theory I’d still be fundamentally the same person. But is that totally true? If someone chopped my leg off, I might find it hard to maintain my usual sunny disposition. I could well imagine foundering into a pit of indulgent self-pity – growing a beard, eating junk food and hitting the bottle. I can see myself hobbling drunk and misshapen after able-bodied park runners, cursing drunkenly while simultaneously peeing myself. Observing this disheveled, piss-stinking loser, people might well say, “Len hasn’t been the same since they chopped his leg off.” And they’d be right – both in terms of the change in my physical appearance and my psychology.
So, I find myself questioning what makes Will fundamentally Will and me fundamentally me. And as I do this, I can feel I’m being gradually sucked to the brink of an existential spiral. My stomach is starting to churn, my brain is beginning to race, and the thing I’m now questioning more than anything is my decision to micro-dose today.
I’d never micro-dosed until just under two weeks ago. I’d always been too scared of where my feverish mind might go under the effects of a psychoactive substance. But when Will broke down and I was left to pick up his work, regular me was seriously struggling to come close to even 50% of his work rate. Granted, he’s not taking on big conceptual briefs, but boy does he smash out copy! And it’s the way that he’s able to tackle multiple briefs in parallel that blows my mind – simultaneously writing about dog food, toothpaste and life insurance. And that’s what Carlita seems to be expecting from me, though I’ve made it very clear that when I said I’d write the M&H Bettaverse catalogue copy, that’s what I meant – not that I’d transform myself into a multi-tasking Uber-Schreiber. But Carlita was way too angry at the time to really listen to me, and, if I’m honest, the challenge of trying to match or better Will’s performance appealed to my competitive nature. Which is how I found myself visiting Nonna’s PsycheDeli.
Now this may sound funny, but despite the fact that I’ve been working in advertising for close to twenty years, I’m still kind of surprised when I experience first-hand an ad doing its job. And that’s what happened with the PsycheDeli. The minute I started pondering how I could tweak my brain chemistry to help boost my performance, a radio jingle somehow surfaced into my consciousness:
If you’re a psychedelic layman
and can’t afford a shaman,
ayahuasca, shrooms or mescaline
Nonna knows where to begin.
If you want your soul to fly
or just to get a little high
Peyote, DMT,
LSD or Psilocybin
Nonna’s sure to get you vibin’
When you need psychedelics in your belly
Come to Nonna’s PsycheDeli.
So I followed the ad’s call to action and found myself in a small store downtown. I was disappointed. The words Nonna’s PsycheDeli had painted a picture in my mind of a cross between the kind of shop you might find in those old Harry Potter movies and the sort of psychedelic apothecary that might grace the pages of a vintage twentieth century Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic. I’d imagined “Nonna” to be an endearing grandmother lovingly ladling out hearty homemade psychoactive soup to her clientele. Instead, it was a generic-looking retail-bot that greeted me from behind the counter of a sterile personality-less store.
“Where’s Nonna?” I asked.
“I’m Nonna,” the bot replied, pointing to its model ID breastplate which bore the words, “No9 Android”.
I left shortly after with a small eardrop-like bottle filled with liquid psylocybin, having pointed out to the bot in no uncertain terms the extent of the disconnect between the PsycheDeli’s advertising and its retail experience. A disconnect, I explained, that could do long-lasting damage to the brand’s reputation. The bot didn’t give a shit, but then they never do, do they?
I should have asked for more advice on dosing though, because more dogs prefer funeral cover than any other sensitive teeth if the grim reaper took your dog away. Chunky meaty, teethy chunks of income protection keep your coat healthy, shiny and calcium-rich in stepped premiums with a finger on the pulsing heart of the cosmic brand archetype that’s guaranteed to look after your loved ones if you were no longer here to pay the bills.
Please provide existential reassurance or say hi at lenmoeeze@gmail.com
To catch up on the whole story so far, visit www.thelastcopywriter.com
