Sorry Please Thank You: Stories Part 13

Fiscal year ended May 31, 2050.

Our solid work in Depression has led to increasing market share in Dread. It is a step in the right direction, and although I know some of you may have doubts, I believe that we can collectively rise to the challenge. h.e.l.lo, my name is Tripp Hauser. For those of you who weren't able to make it to the continental breakfast meet-and-greet this morning, allow me to introduce myself: I am your humble chairman and chief executive officer of PharmaLife.

I've been with the company for thirty-four years, and I started, like many employees, in Hair and Erection or, as everyone called it back then, baldness and b.o.n.e.rs. I worked my way up from the mailroom, an eighteen-month tour of duty, and then there were the obligatory rotations in Sleep, Allergies, and Fat, with a quick stint in Cholesterol. I'm proud to have spent my entire career here at PharmaLife, and also proud to announce the results of our recently ended fiscal year. But as interesting as I am, you aren't here to listen to me talk about myself. You want to hear about it.

It.

The whispers. The rumors.

Number 67.

We'll get to that, but first we have to talk about some other boring stuff, like money. So much money. So, so much. It's crazy how much profit we make! It's almost criminal. Okay, my lawyer Cutler is giving me a dirty look. Sorry, sorry, legal-man. Cutler is such a tight-a.s.s. I love him, though. Love you, Cutler. All right, let's dive into the numbers.

As disclosed in our publicly available filings with the SEC, our Depression group launched a new product, Zyphraxozol, in Q3 of 2049, and I am thrilled to report that positioning of Zyphraxozol is pretty much kicking our compet.i.tors in the shorts. The new slogan, Be the Person You Wish You Were, has tested high in all four quadrants. I personally oversaw the refinement process as a team of researchers succeeded in reducing incidence of side effects by a statistically meaningful amount versus placebo, while increasing average patient-rated euphoria/despair axis values from the mid- to high 70s to the low 80s. Now, to those not versed in the lingo of the industry, this may not strike you as a huge improvement, but in a hypercompet.i.tive field with a mature product, where the J&Js and the Eli Lillys and the Bristol-Myers Squibbs of the world are killing one another on the broadcast airwaves and in the courtrooms of the Federal Circuit and in the mindshare battlefields, killing one another over tenths of a point, a move from 78.6 to 81.2 in a single product upgrade generation is unheard of. Please trust me on this. Unworldly. The stuff that careers are made of. If I weren't already CEO, I'd promote myself. (I could be my own boss! Wait a minute. Can I do that? Is that possible?) [Txt msg to Cutler: pls chk w/HR dept.]

Where was I? Yes. Depression. Depression has been good to us. But at this point, as you all realize, it has come to be run as an exercise in sales and marketing. We're late in the product life cycle. The Depression-industrial complex has been built. Winning in the Depression/Suicide s.p.a.ce these days means keeping the machine running smoothly. With each new generation of the product, we crank up the engine a little: spreading the early word at physician conferences, getting the collateral out there, pens and squeeze toys and magnets and little foam footb.a.l.l.s, legitimatization (i.e., commissioning the articles in JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine), and then postlaunch, from the sourcing of raw materials all the way to fill and finish, to keeping the distribution channels stuffed full, bursting with product, to the shelves of the pharmacy, to the medicine cabinet and nightstand, to the mouth, stomach, liver, bloodstream, brain, mind, and life/day/worldview of the end user, lifting off her soul the heavy wool blanket of melancholia. But you don't care about that. This is what you care about: bottom line. Which is this: Depression earned three forty-two a share last year, or just over nine and a half billion dollars for PharmaLife. Not depressing at all!

[Take a drink of water. Smile at someone. Mean it.]

Moving on to Advanced R and D (the official name being the Division of Research and Engineering on consolidated Anxieties (social, general, low-grade existential) and Despair, or DREAD). Depression may have matured and become a marketing shop, but the DREAD business unit is still the domain of the engineers, a basic and applied science shop, still at the exciting phase of its life cycle, on the upslope of the knowledge curve, and everything is up for discussion. It's an exciting time over at DREAD. Come to the Millbrae campus and ask for a tour of the DREAD wing. It's just an intellectually stimulating place to be right now. The other day, I walked into a VP's office and what do I find? Books. An executive with books in the office. He was even reading one! Right there in the office. During the workday. He had reference materials on any of twenty different subjects, ranging from still-to-be-published papers from some quantum computing wonk at the Bell Labs, to doctoral theses, to "secret" files from counterparts at compet.i.tors, all the way down to undergraduate primers on cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, probability. We are not messing around, folks. We are going to cure dread by the end of the decade. And by cure, I mean, find a blockbuster drug that has a differential rate of indication greater than the margin of error in white mice that exhibit symptoms of dread. Or whatever the mouse version of dread is.

[Txt msg to Cutler: pls Google "what is it like to be a mouse."]

Our researchers have. We're going Phase II, then Phase III, and then the FDA approval, all in eighteen to thirty months. And then we're going to get this out to doctors, we're going pump humans full of this stuff, just flush that dread right out. Dread will be a thing of the past.

Okay, the next part, I'm going to read this part really fast, and I encourage you not to listen carefully because it's just stuff that the FDA is making me say: users in the trial have reported a number of side effects, including, for instance, slight madness, moderate madness, jitterbug leg, jitterbug legs, jitterbug foot, zombie foot, zombie toe, acute slappiness, chronic slappiness, and the crazies.

Also, dry throat, dizziness, diarrhea. All minor side effects.

Confusion. Meh.

Disorientation. Big deal.

Vertigo. Whatever.

Also may cause: liver spots, vision spots, partial vision loss, total vision loss, more-than-total vision loss, bruised kidney, itchy kidney, itchy foot, itch-in-a-place-that-is-inside-your-head-that-you-can't-reach, random arterial swelling, random arterial bursting, loss of consciousness, splitting of consciousness, loss of mind, partial zombification.

But come on, people. Would you rather be confused and disoriented with a dry throat and the runs, or would you rather feel dread? I don't even have to ask.

Look at that ticker today. Our shares are up thirty-one percent year to date. Eight percent just while I've been talking! [Txt msg to Cutler: SELL SHRS NOW. HA HA J/K. BAD FOR PR! DUH. BUT SRSLY, SELL SOME IF U CAN.]

All right, friends, let me now address the rumors that something big is going on behind the doors of Building 43. Yes, yes, everyone's heard the rumors. Those rumors are not true. Except for the ones that are true. I disclaim any connection to those rumors, except for the rumors that I personally started. Nothing big is going on in 43. Because big doesn't even begin to describe it! It's unimaginable. Industry shaking. And you know I'm not one for overstatement. So let me just say: the northeast corner of the tenth floor of Building 43 is working on something that the world has never even imagined. Designer Emotion 67. What is it? That's what you all want to know. You are sitting on the edge of your seats. That guy right there in the front row actually just fell off his seat. You okay, Chief? Vertigo? Diarrhea? Been taking too many of our products? Kidding, kidding. VP of Sales hates my guts now. There have been murmurings in various conference rooms and enclaves and kitchen nooks around campus. There are leading theories. A psychoactive drink that allows for instant Nirvana (thirst-quenching Zen in a plastic easygrip bottle). That's not it, although we do have interesting new products in the Buddhism-Taoism experiential consumer product s.p.a.ce. Some say it's a sense-enhancer that works together with memory so that you can have a picnic lunch that you will never forget. Because you literally will not be able to forget it. Your first Little League home run. Your first kiss. If you live to be a hundred and ten, the experience will seem as intense as the day it happened. Relive it anytime you want, anywhere. Just don't accidentally have a bad day when you take it! The memory will haunt you forever. We are working on this product. But that's not it either. I can confirm that. What I can't confirm is what's going on in 43. I'm just not going to say one way or another what it is. Or maybe I will!

[Clear throat authoritatively.]

At this point I should probably address some of the ugly insinuendo that has been floating around. What? What did I say? That's not a word? I am quite sure it is. Can I keep going? Thank you. At this point, the insinuendo has gotten to the point where it has been weighing on the stock price, which affects me a lot more than most if not all of you, ha ha, so I should care even more than you do. And I do. Let me just begin by stating unequivocally a few things that are untrue. I mean, the statements I am referring to. That's what's untrue. Not what I am saying. I am saying the truth. I am going to be truthfully referring to some untrue statements. You know what I mean. Number one: we are not laying off a million and a half employees next month. Absolutely not true. That is a round number. Very round. There is no way the number will be exactly 1.5 million people. That would be crazy. But kind of cool, you have to admit. Okay, now the VP of Human Resources is giving me major stink-eye. Okay, sorry, sorry. Let me get back on track.

[Compa.s.sionate tone:] You have been hurt. Some of you, maybe, since in addition to shareholders, there are employees in this room with stock awards from your employee savings plan. You think you have been hurt as employees by some of the policy changes, and that an apology is in order. I hear you and this is my response.

[Clear throat with humility.]

I hereby apologize on behalf of the company for your hurting; provided, however, that it is expressly agreed by all of you that such apology shall in no event be construed as an admission of guilt, blameworthiness, culpability, involvement, intention, recklessness, negligence, fraud, error, omission, regret, sympathy, empathy, or acknowledgment that you have been harmed. To all of you who may be hurt in the future, or have been hurt in the past, or are hurting now, or all of the above, due to anything that the company has nonnegligently not done, I do not apologize because it's not PharmaLife's fault, but I do acknowledge your hurting, and may I humbly suggest that you consider purchasing some of PharmaLife's products, maybe even some of you worked on these products! We have a diversified line of products dealing with pain of all types, and it is my offer to you to buy them, at full price, which is win-win, as it benefits you, and the company in which you hold shares. Cutler! You are ruining this. Cutler, our company lawyer, Cutler is laughing, ladies and gentlemen, because I was joking. We do have it. The rumors are true. Emotion 67. It's a pill. It's the pill. The meaning pill. G.o.d pill. Is that what the kids are calling it? It does what you think it does. We're the industry leader in pharmaconarrative products, and we're going to make a killing. You are all going to be very rich. Thanks for your time, and your continued investment in PharmaLife. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for believing in our ability to deliver belief. Questions? Kidding, Cutler, kidding. Sorry, folks. No questions allowed.

1 PharmaLife, Inc., is a corporation formed under the laws of the State of Mississippi, a territory of the United States of China, and a wholly owned subsidiary of The Acme Widget Company of Ohio.

The Book of Categories.

0 What there is.

1 Proper name.

The full name for The Book of Categories1 is as follows:.

THE BOOK OF CATEGORIES.

(A CATALOG OF CATALOGS.

(BEING ITSELF A VOLUME ENCLOSING.

A CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE.

(SUCH STRUCTURE BEING.

COMMONLY REFERRED TO AS AN.

(IDEA)-CAGE))).

2 Nature of 2.1 Basic properties of

The Book of Categories is composed of two books, one placed inside the other.

The outer book (formally known as "The Outer Book") is a kind of frame wrapped around the inner book, which is known as, uh, The Inner Book.

2.1.1 Paper

The Inner Book's pages are made of a highly unusual type of paper, which is made of a substance known as (A)CTE, so called because of its (apocrypha)-chemical-thermo-ephemeral properties, the underlying chemistry of which is not well understood, but the practical significance of which is a peculiar characteristic: with the proper instrument, (A)CTE can be sliced and resliced again, page-wise, an indefinite number of times.

2.1.1.1 Method for creation of new pages

Each cut must be swift and precise, and the angle must be metaphysically exact, but if the operation is performed correctly, there is no known lower bound to the possible thinness of a single sheet of (A)CTE paper.

2.1.1.1.1 Page count

To wit, as of the time of this writing, despite having total thickness (in a closed position) of just over two inches, the Book of Categories contains no less than 3,739,164 pages.2

3 Intended Purpose 3.1 Conjecture

This property of repeated divisibility is believed to be necessary for The Book of Categories to function in its intended purpose (the "Intended Purpose").3

3.2 Theories regarding Intended Purpose