Hawkett, the human embodiment of a meeting that should have been an email, presided over his desk at the ‘Consortium for Intangible Assets’ – a place where logic came to have a nervous breakdown. The door creaked open, and Mr. Pester entered, clutching a leather-bound folio to his chest. His unassuming appearance belied a terminal case of vision.
“Excuse me,” Mr. Pester said softly. “Is this the Consortium?”
Hawkett’s head snapped up. His eyes, wide and alarmingly focused, fixed on the newcomer. “It is a Consortium, yes!” he boomed, his voice filling the small room. “And you are a Stakeholder. I can tell. You have the look of someone who holds stakes.”
“Well, I’m more of a visionary, really,” Mr. Pester offered, stepping forward. “I was told you were the foremost experts in… bringing the abstract to market.”
“Precisely!” Hawkett slapped the desk, causing the plastic plant to tremble. “We are at the bleeding edge of the abstract. We are market-facing, client-centric, and diagonally-integrated. What do any of those words mean? We don’t have to know. That’s the core of our business model.”
Mr. Pester beamed. “Wonderful. Then you’re the perfect man to hear my proposal.”
He placed his folio on the desk and opened it with a flourish. The pages were completely blank.
“My project,” Mr. Pester announced with quiet pride, “is a series of silent symphonies.”
Hawkett leaned forward, his expression one of deep, professional interest. “Go on.”
“They are symphonies composed entirely of silence,” Mr. Pester explained. “The first movement is a quiet silence. The second, a more contemplative, thoughtful silence. The third is a tense, dramatic silence, followed by a triumphant, roaring silence for the finale.”
Hawkett stared at the blank pages for a long moment. A lesser man might have been confused. Hawkett saw an opportunity.
“A bold, content-light initiative,” he declared, nodding sagely. “Minimal overheads. Zero-decibel disruption. I like it. This is a very scalable silence. We can sell it by the minute. By the room. We could franchise the silence!”
He stood and began to pace. “Here’s the strategy. We launch a pre-awareness campaign. We send out press releases with nothing on them. We generate buzz. What kind of buzz? A very, very quiet one.”
“That’s exactly the kind of nuanced approach I was hoping for,” Mr. Pester said, his eyes shining with admiration.
“Of course it is!” Hawkett stopped and pointed a finger at Mr. Pester. “I am a professional. My team is the best in the business. They are currently on a team-building exercise I designed. I have locked them in the stationery cupboard to foster collaborative problem-solving. They have been very quiet. Perhaps they are rehearsing your symphony.”
He leaned against the wall, striking a pose of casual genius. “Let’s discuss rollout. Phase one: Market Penetration. We identify key venues. Libraries, meditation retreats, examination halls. Places already aligned with our core brand values.”
“I had considered concert halls,” Mr. Pester mused.
“Too noisy,” Hawkett dismissed with a wave. “Full of people. Coughing. Breathing. It would dilute the product. You have to protect the integrity of the silence. This is basic asset management.”
He returned to his desk and sat, steepling his fingers. “Now, for the legal framework. We need to copyright the silence. My barber is a lawyer. He was disbarred, but he still has the letterhead. We will send sternly worded letters to anyone who engages in unauthorized silence. We will sue the concept of quiet contemplation for infringement. And if necessary, launch a class action against inner peace.”
“Can we do that?” Mr. Pester asked, his brow furrowed in earnest concentration.
“We can’t not do it!” Hawkett’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “It shows we are serious. It demonstrates a proactive litigation strategy. It is important to appear ‘litigious’. It’s the new charisma.” He made two stabbing motions in the air with his fingers. “Air quotes.”
Mr. Pester nodded, completely won over. “You have such clarity.”
“Clarity is our deliverable,” Hawkett said, his face a mask of sincerity. “We provide end-to-end solutions for problems that don’t exist yet. It’s future-proofing. For example, what if your silent symphony is too successful?”
“I… hadn’t considered that,” Mr. Pester admitted.
“I have. That’s why you come to me. The risk is that the world becomes too quiet. Productivity plummets. Society grinds to a halt. It’s a silent apocalypse. We will have cornered the market, but there will be no market left to corner. It’s a paradox.” Hawkett leaned back, looking immensely pleased with the crisis he had just manufactured. “But do not worry. We also have a subsidiary. A rival company, which we also own, that sells bespoke, artisanal noise. Air horns, klaxons, recordings of spirited arguments. We will disrupt our own disruption. It’s a two-pronged attack.”
The room fell into a hush that suddenly felt monetizable. Mr. Pester looked at the blank folio, then at the whirlwind of ill-conceived strategy sitting opposite him. He saw a man who didn’t just understand his vision; he had already created a five-year plan and a potential global catastrophe around it.
“I’m in,” Mr. Pester said, his voice trembling with excitement. “What’s the next step?”
Hawkett’s face split into a grin of pure, unadulterated triumph. “The next step is the first step. And the first step is a meeting to determine what the next step should be. It’s the best way to get radical inclusion and plausible deniability in one convenient time slot.”
He paused, thoughtful. “Assuming my team has found the emergency release latch, they’ll handle onboarding. If not, they’ve learned to photosynthesize and we can cut the catering budget.”
He extended a hand across the listing desk. Mr. Pester took it, and they shook firmly. It was a handshake that sealed no deal, clarified no terms, and was based on a tower of mutual, magnificent misunderstanding.
Hawkett handed over a receipt for zero dollars. “This confirms the purchase of an intangible asset at full conceptual value,” he declared, with the gravity of someone quoting internal policy. Mr. Pester nodded solemnly. Behind them, the office fax machine began transmitting nothing to an unsuspecting world.
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