poly_chromatic | Action / Accidental Video

Entry tags:

mad men - michael ginsberg

Action / Accidental Video

[There’s no way Ginsberg’s been looking at the communicator. No, it might as well not exist at all, although it is recording, although he's unaware of it. Instead, he’s sitting on the edge of the fountain, soaking wet, talking to… whoever happens to wander by -- and, apparently, to the network, as well.]

Where am I? Is this some kind of drug induced hallucination? Because let me tell you right now, I don’t do that kind of thing. If someone snuck something into my coffee, I’m gonna be mad. I keep telling everyone, that stuff makes me paranoid. And now something’s making me hallucinate a whole city.

[He scrubs a hand across his face, shaking the water out of his hair as he does so.]

I have work to do. This account, this Manischewitz account, I have to get to the meeting.

[A slight grumble, and then…]

Not that I want to go, anyway. If someone could point me back to Madison Avenue, though, that’d be great. Really great. In fact, look, I’ll buy you lunch or something if you can get me out of here. Just get me out of here.

[He puts his head in his hands.]

I don’t know what the hell’s going on...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How? If someone were brought to this planet when they were little, if everybody told them a story about where they'd been born, if everyone lied to them their whole lives, how would they ever know they'd been born off-world?

Why would everyone lie? Especially in your time! It would be very exciting to have a child who was born off-world in the twentieth century, correct?

Yeah, but it'd also be dangerous. If that kid was the only one, people might try to take them away and study them. They might have to lie to keep the kid safe. I don't know, it's a hypothetical thought, anyway. It could happen.

There would be no reason to study them--they would be biologically human, like everyone born on Earth. Even hypothetically, your time is very strange.

They might be biologically human, but that doesn't mean our government wouldn't study them. They study anything they can, anything they think is different at all. And it's not just our government. It's governments all over the world. They say it's so they can make progress, but it usually just ends up being about war.

You are from a very dark time in Terran history. Sometimes I wonder how humanity survived all of the great wars to make peace.

Honestly, I'm surprised to hear that they did. At least, according to you. Maybe in my own timeline, things're different. As far as I can tell, we're all on a path to destroying each other within the next couple of years.

There are an infinite number of possible outcomes. For your sake, I hope that you are from one of the timelines where humanity survives to be wiser.

I guess they must have in your timeline. You're human, right, and you're still here. I mean, even if you're not from Earth. Which is still hard to believe, by the way, but I'm going to believe it, because really, what's the alternative?

We are not fully enlightened, even in my time.

What, it's harder to believe that I am from Earth in the future than everything else you have been told?

Well, it's all hard to believe. I don't know if I can create a hierarchy of difficulty to believe, you know? It's just... trying to picture what things are going to be like in the future is almost impossible. It's overwhelming even thinking about it.

I think that it would be to your benefit to think about your current situation rather than mine. You are in a foreign universe.

And apparently I'm stuck in this foreign universe. Which means I'm definitely not going to be making it to my meeting on time. Dammit.

Your meeting will wait. When you return home, you will arrive the moment when you left.

Really? So all of this...

[He gestures to the City vaguely.]

... none of it matters. It's all just one, big, extended dream sequence, basically. You come here, you spend days, months, years here, and then you go back home and it's like nothing happened. So in reality, you have the chance to have two lives -- the one here, and then the one you return to back at home.

[A frown.]

That's... kind of amazing.

Yes, exactly! Very few people see it that way, but it is an opportunity to have a life that you would not have had otherwise. What isn't so good is that no one remembers the City once they return home.

That's all right. Sometimes not remembering things is better. We usually don't remember our dreams, either. This can be like a dream.

[A long pause.]

Of course, unlike a dream, there're still the mundane questions of what we do around here to get food and shelter. I assume people have jobs? This isn't some kind of utopia where no one needs to work?

There are dreams that I would like to remember.

Ah, no--not a utopia. Jobs aren't difficult to find, and I think that they pay well enough. What work would you do?

Not the really weird dreams, though. Not the ones that're more like a surrealist painting than a dream. And that's what this is.

I'm a copywriter at an ad agency. There probably aren't many job opportunities for copywriters around here, are there? Since we're all stuck here, I doubt most companies need to advertise -- talk about a captive audience.

Do you think so? It isn't surreal to me, but maybe I have been here for too long.

There are advertisements. Not many. What does a copywriter do? I have never heard of this position.

Copywriters write the text for advertisements. You know, if there has to be a catchphrase or a slogan, we come up with it. If there has to be an advertisement on television, we come up with the script. We tell the story, basically, and the art directors come up with the images to go with it.

[He's riveted. This is fascinating information.]

Then many people read what you write? Some of them even memorize your words, I would think. You're a famous author.

Edited 2013-09-15 18:17 (UTC)

[This is literally the most flattered Ginsberg has ever felt. Good job, Chekov.]

A lot of people hear the things I write, yeah, and a lot of them see the ads on TV, but they don't usually think about who's behind them. I mean, as far as they're concerned, it's just an advertisement for a car company, or a airline, or ice cream. The ads get famous, not the writers.

Yes, but the words are still yours! It is like coming up with a new equation and not having it named after you. There is something out there--something that's yours--being used by others, even if they will never learn your name.

That's true. And I'll always have that smug sense of satisfaction every time I hear someone quoting an ad that I came up with. Partially because most of that stuff is bullshit, and partially because it's my bullshit.

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