Part 1:
You are Dr. Bouchard, but everyone in the company calls you “Doc Bob”. You don’t know who started it, but whatever, you been called worse back in school.
You are one of the head genetic engineers at Hasbio LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro corp.
You are part of “Project Equus”, what’s going to be the first of a series of biotoys the company is working on.
Everything was going well until the marketing team got ahold of the project and started changing things. Right now you are in the office of the head of marketing and new project leader, some douchebag called Steven McCormick
You are trying to convince him to change project Equus back to what it was, before the proposed changes to the project under the “fluffy pony” concept.
“So Steve, about the project…”
“We are not changing it doc, you know what the results from the focus group were”
“Yeah but it wasn’t fair”
“What? what you mean it wasn’t ‘fair’?”
“I mean our prototype still needed debugging, while you showed a computer simulation of the fluffy concept”
“And? it’s basically what we are planning to ship”
“It’s not Steve, its impossible. You cheated, you showed an idealized version of your concept while the people there had to deal with the obvious problems our version still had. Yours was a 3D tamagotchi running off a server and–”
“And yours looked like the unholy union of Mr.Ed and an ugly dog, and the shaking…”
“We were working on that, we isolated the part of the brain that caused the seizures, we were this close to solve it until our funding got cut and we had to start working on these abominations your team came up with”
“Wow! language! abominations? these are the dream of every child out there: a tiny pony with a fluffy coat in vivid colors, wings, a horn, and on top of it all it talks!”
“It doesn’t Steve, Equus talks-”
“Yeah right, too bad the size of the head made it almost impossible for it to walk”
“It was a compromise to get the first prototype out, we were going to solve that”
“How? giving it a bigger body? a pet pony the size of a mastiff? no one is going to buy that”
“They will! Equus has the ability to engage in meaningful conversation and-”
“Yea, that’s creepy, nobody wants that”
“Oh and they prefer your MLP chatbot instead? with the hardcoded phrases and limited intelligence? the scripted playing? you know we are going to have to change the programming each time it needs to speak a new language for a different market right?”
“This is a kids’ toy Bobby, we can’t make it bigger than a labrador, and that awful shade of brown…”
“Awful how? its natural, its what a real horse looks like. You want to make them day-glo orange, electric blue, hot pink, its unnatural! the only animals with that shade of purple are poisonous frogs”
“We are simply following the ideas from our MLP franchise”
“That was a cartoon! a fantasy for little girls made in the 1980’s!”
“Oh and Mr.Ed is real then? a talking horse from the 1950’s with a deformed head?”
“Don’t call it ‘Mr.Ed’, its ‘Project Equus’”
“Whatever, we’re not changing course right now, this biotoy division its already over budget and missed every deadline put in place by the previous CEO”
“Look, your concept? the fluffy pony? its going to be a disaster”
“Don’t be a sore loser…”
“I’m serious, you asked for a size that’s impossible so we had to compromise everywhere else. Now its not only practically retarded but it also has almost no bowel control because the intestines on this thing are 1/3 the length it should be, its gonna shit liquid crap everywhere unless it’s right next to a litterbox at all times”
“Look Bob, you know this ain’t gonna be a cheap pet right? we’re planning to start launch pre-orders at $10,000 for the basic ‘Earthie’ model. People who can burn that much cash on a pet have a maid 24/7 to clean any shitstains around the house, let alone extra space for the ‘safe room’ habitat idea we proposed”
“So what happens when we need to move down market and sell it to people who don’t have a butler and a big mansion with rooms to spare?”
“Don’t over-react, that’s years from now and we will find a way to solve–”
“There is no way to solve that, no animal could properly digest its food with those tiny bowels. It would have gone extinct long ago, it wouldn’t even have evolved in the first place!. And that isn’t the only problem oh no, remember that short round snout you guys wanted? well to get it to look like that we turned the damn thing into a mouth breather. Now is going to drown trying to drink water from a dish”
“Big deal! we use a water bottle…”
“Also look, I know we won’t sell fertile ones but we are cutting a lot of corners for the breeding operation. In order to hit 6-to-10 foals per litter you wanted under these tiny frames females will be prostrated during the late stages of pregnancy thus needing help to feed and it wont be able to walk even to defecate.”
“I don’t see the problem Bob, these things wont be breeding outside our warehouses, and if it can’t move that means we can shove it in a smaller cage and get more foals in the same amount of space. Its a win-win”
“Speaking of the foals, cutting down gestation from 2 months to three weeks brought a massive amount of problems. The foals come out with their bones uncalcified”
“Meaning…?”
“It means their bones are barely even there Steve, a foal will be so fragile it could be broken by all”
“Heh, that’s funny”
“No it isn’t”
“Whatever, look these things will be churned out within our facilities, we have it under control”
“Lots of foals are going to die”
“So? we compensate for the fact production rates are so high. 3-4 weeks of pregnancy and the females can get pregnant again the same day. Leaving aside the R&D costs we are talking about costs in the cents per foal that will then sell for thousands of dollars. The team in charge of reproduction said they could do it, it will work”
“You know how dangerous this is? there is no mammal this big that breeds this fast, we are playing with fire here, if fertile units got out–”
“They wont get out Bob, its impossible”
“How? how is it impossible? what keeps a guard or a technician from stealing a couple? even selling the foals at half our price they are looking at $50,000 every month or so, that’s more than what they make in a year”
“You think someone could sell fluffy ponies without our authorization? we own it, we own every line of genetic code in this thing, we got patents all over the world. Nobody can even sell accessories or food specifically for fluffy ponies without paying royalties to Hasbio”
“Look all I’m saying is that if it gets out in the wilderness it could get really ugly real fast. I’m talking about plague-levels here, this thing is omnivorous because you guys wanted to increase profit margins on the kibble feed by putting anything on it. What that means is that unlike other animals these things can feed on almost anything that’s remotely edible. And their crap guts will turn them into shit machines that leave a trail of feces everywhere they go, spreading disease and–”
“Look Bob have you ever read sci-fi? because that’s what you are yammering about: sci-fi. The fluffy isn’t getting out and even if it did how it would survive? you do remember we made it weak by design because the assholes from legal were freaking out about ‘what if it bites a kid and we get sued? what if it kills the family cat?’ right? you were there during the metting”
“Yes I remember, that is why we changed the hoofs from keratin to leather-like pads. It wasn’t as difficult to engineer as getting those ‘Fluffies by Hasbio’ logos in the hoofs like that chick from your team suggested.”
“See? problem solved”
“Not really, we ran some tests and while a fluffy pony’s feet will start bleeding if walking over say hot asphalt instead of a tile or carpet floor the pads could eventually harden allowing it to walk outside unhampered. It will never be as resilient like a real horse’s hoof or even a cat’s feet but it will be enough, I mean is not like it can run or anything with the stupid stumpy legs you guys demanded”
“Its all part of the charm, you eggheads don’t get it but people don’t want an actual horse, real horses are ugly with their bony limbs and long heads”
“Can we even call these things horses anymore? Equus was based on horses but we had to splice so many genes from other animals to get it to look like your fluffy concept that now is more guinea pig that horse!”
“So? guinea pigs are adorable, horses are not”
“Steve, I’m serious here: I have a bad feeling, that somehow these things will get out and become a problem so big eventually people will abhor them no matter how cute you make it look like. Breeding like this in the wild it will become as common as rats, whatever appeal its novelty has will wear out and the unique shape you gave it will actually make fluffy ponies more hated because of how artificial and fake it looks. And because its not an animal it will have no rights, people will be free to do as they want with them, and they will!”
“Alright I’m tired of this conversation Bob, I’m tired or your negativity and toxic mentality. You clearly have no experience in team building coming here and talking to me like this. Does the word ‘synergy’ means anything to you? we are too big to fail and I don’t need a goddamn speech from some nerd, this isn’t biology class. I have a meeting with the PR team so adios”
And just like that Steve left his big office and you had to go all the way back to the labs in the underground level.
Part 2:
In a lab many years ago a small box sits on a table next to a 40-something guy in a lab coat. Inside are three fluffy foals, all earthies.
“Be nyu daddeh?”
“Pwease fwuffy wan daddeh!”
“Nuu! nu choos twose fwuff! pick fwuffy!”
“What? ‘daddeh’? why they keep saying that Bob?”
“Did you miss the briefing Rich? its the new programming, that’s how the product calls humans now”
“Fwuffy luvs daddeh!” said a bigger mare in a cage nearby
“I told you my name is Doctor Hessen, Richard Hessen”
“Umm…daddeh?” said the mare again
“Jesus christ Bob, what is the deal with this?”
“Yeah the marketing guys wanted these things to be able to memorize and recall names, you know like Equus did. But you know how they bitched about Equus size and big head, and well that’s how it could learn so many things, because his brain was over 4 times bigger than the ones in this product” said Doc Bob as he opened another cage and picked up a navy blue pregnant mare
“So the neuroprogramming guys had to once again come up with a workaround. With the little available space in this product’s brains they went and created a generic term for all owners. Right now it calls everybody ‘daddeh’ but the foals inside this breeder here will be able to call female owners ‘mummah’ as well, and other people who are not its owners will go by ‘hoomin’ or ‘mista’. Is the best they could do”
“Sounds kinda creepy you know? calling me ‘daddy’ with the fucked up pronunciation”
“Again, its not Equus, these things can’t actually learn to speak, its all hardcoded” replied Bob
“I know I know man, but still this daddeh thing sounds odd, who came up with the term?”
“Guess…”
“Those marketing idiots?”
“Of course, who else? Steve plans to sell this product as a companion as well and not just for little girls having tea parties with their plush toys. Guess they realized that at $10k a pop not a lot of girls’ parents will be able to afford one so they had to appeal to the grown ups as well. Maybe they want to exploit childless couples, old folks, who knows”
“That, that’s seems wrong” replied Rich
“Well that’s business for you, they killed Equus because it wasn’t marketable even though it was the superior version. These things will be dumber than cats and repeat the same old tired dialog over and over, and with their joke of a lifespan a lot of people are going to be upset. But Steve didn’t want a long-lived product because it prevents the purchase of a new one, planned obsolescence and all”
“Figures, though they did improve the resilience. Revision 0.433 had bones like fucking glass, remember the nickname from the tech guys?”
"Yeah, ‘little brittles’ " said Bob
“Hahaha yes! like half were born with broken legs and ribs, didn’t last long…”
“The accelerated gestation period was a bitch to deal with, but adult fluffies should be able to wistand a lot of punishment and-” said Rich
“Yeah but” Bob interrupted “I don’t like what the guys from neuroengineering did with the product’s pain management.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you know? they increased pain output from the nerves so ‘the product will more readily warn its owner about impending damage to it’ but what it means is that even the slightest harm will be extremely painful to it”
“Jeez, but wont it give the thing seizures or something?” said Rich
“Nah, somehow they managed to keep it from blacking out, probably so kids wont get scared at the thing going stiff. But what that means is that this product could be harmed constantly and not only be in incredible pain but also be unable to faint. I warned them but the head of the department said it was an ‘acceptable tradeoff’ and that Steve had already approved it”
“So now you could even rip a fluffy in half and it wont be able to die instantly from the shock? that’s retarded” said Rich “Fucking Steve…”
“Don’t say it out loud, I don’t want to be canned before my stock vests and I get my bonus for working on this stupid project. Its bad enough that Equus will never see the light of day.”
As Bob lowers the pregnant mare into an open-top cage he notices a cut on its flank
“Hey Rich tell the techs they need to be more careful with the product, this one needs some needle and thread work now to close this wound”
“Don’t worry about it, it will scab”
“No way a gash like that will health inself” replied Bob
"This revision has increased coagulation, marketing was afraid a fluffy could bleed to death too easily so they asked for this change, they even came up with a brand and everything, its called ‘QuickCloth™’ "
“For fucks sake! now it will get strokes! who was the genius behind this?”
“Guess…” said Rich
[An alarm clock goes out]
“Uhh wha…?”
You used to be Dr. Bouchard, used to go by the nickname “Doc Bob”.
But not anymore, now you are some old nobody who just woke up after a dream down memory lane in a dingy apartment where you live after you life took a dive.
After a meager breakfast you got out of your basement apartment. You were in a hurry, they don’t give jobs to people your age too often so you can’t afford to be late. Because of that you didn’t see what was waddling out from a crack in the fence of a construction site.
Suddenly you lose your balance and you slip, your right foot stepping on something soft and slick. You fall back and land on your ass, sharp pain like needles in your hips.
“SCREEEEEEEE” you hear with your eyes closed due to the pain. When you open them you get a glance of what you stepped on: a light blue pegasus filly with an orange red mane.
The filly’s backside is flat, smeared on the concrete of the sidewalk and your shoe’s sole. The other half of the foal is still alive and screaming for help, dragging itself away with its front legs while most of its intestines follow behind it. Thanks to its superb coagulation and inability to go into shock it will stay well awake for hours suffering until it finally dies not from the unbelievable pain or blood loss but from hypothermia due to all the body heat its losing.
As you carefully stand up feeling the pain in your bruised skin and muscles you clean the sole of your left shoe on the edge of the sidewalk, scraping the pieces of the filly away. Between the smashed guts, red-stained blue fur and brittle pulverized bones only two pieces remain mostly intact: the filly’s tail as one long rope of red strands caked in filth and blood, and one of the hooves.
In that hoove you can easily see the heart-shaped “Fluffies by Hasbio” trademark logo you spent weeks coding on the fluffy’s genes so long ago.
Through the crack in the fence you can see the mare that was this filly’s mother dead nearby, it is covered by a broken piece of paper that read “stomp me” written with a black marker, put on it by a prankster and it was clear by the blood stains and how its ribcage was now concave that someone had indeed taken the challenge, most likely when the mare was still asleep. The flat blotches of different colors near the mare’s abdomen must be the other foals killed by the work boot that ended their mother, this bisected filly escaping because it was sleeping between the mare’s front legs.
“A ‘bestest babbeh’ then” you think. Probably wandered off the nest after realizing there were no miwkies to be had anymore. It just had to go looking for an owner right when you were walking through there. It is probable that the filly thought you were going to adopt it simply because you were getting near it, after all you remember the marketing dept demanding fluffies be made as gullible as possible to avoid rejection and thus returns. $10,000 is a lot of money to reinburse when the product only costs $0.05 to “make”.
So you pick yourself up and dust yourself off then keep walking to your job as the filly keeps dragging itself and its inards while yelling for help. You could stomp it and end its suffering but if someone were to see you they might think you are an abuser, or even worse try to livestream it and get a social media hate mob on you. On the other hand if you keep walking and leave the filly to suffer you are just some old guy who stepped on a feral “shitrat” as they call them now. Helping the fluffy foal carries more judgement than leaving it to slowly die…
As you walk to your boring retail job you start remembering something…
“Fwuffy wan’ huggies!”
“What, what the fuck? why is it talking like that?”
“What do you mean Steve?”
“That lisp Bob, it should say ‘fluffy wants a hug’, its talking like a retard with a cleft lip. I thought the lyrebird genes meant it would say things exactly as programmed!”
“Steve I sent that memo like half a month ago, we couldn’t splice those genes on the prototype, of all 20 test batches none reached even embryo status. We had to stick with parrots and the lisp is because these things don’t have beaks”
“Mistah wuv! gib nummies!”
“What the hell is it saying? it has no syntax for christsakes!”
“Steve look this product has less brains than an african grey, a border collie would outsmart it even if the product didn’t have to waste brainpower on emulating human speech. This is why Equus had a big head…”
“Alright alright don’t start with your frankenhorse again Bob, can we get this speech thing fixed for the holiday season launch?”
“No way, we are way behind on other aspects, we just came up with a fix for the foal shaking syndrome and it was half assed at best, we make it believe its dancing. We might be able to improve the speech a little with upcoming versions”
“What about the special edition? the “alicorns”?”
“We were able to cram more words in their repertoire but they have the lisp as well. This problem is way deeper than fake wings and keratin horns Steve”
“Alright alright! it don’t matter okay? I’ll have a talk upstairs and we’ll do another focus group, we can spin this speech thing somehow, saying its for cuteness, baby-talk or something…”
“Baby-talk? they’ll never ‘grow up’ off this Steve, it isn’t a phase you know?. And another focus group? don’t you remember what happened last time?”
“What do you mean with ‘last time’?”
“When that guy picked up the mute stallion and it shat all over him, he was furious”
“It was a minor setback, nothing to worry about Bob”
“Don’t you remember the guy’s face? I thought he was going to beat that prototype up”
“He wouldn’t do that, we would have sued his ass”
“Yeah because of all the NDAs and other stuff we made him sign, but what if it was his own ‘fluffy pony’? what’s stopping him? legal says the lobbyists managed to get it listed as a ‘bio-toy’ and not an animal, it will have no legal protection”
“I don’t care what happens to it after its sold Bob, and besides at this price point nobody is going to dare break it, and if they do well…we get to sell them a new one”
“Remember Bob: cents for a foal, that’s our cost. It will be a goldmine”
Part 3:
“Next on the focus group is…mister Garcia? this way please”
Garcia walks through a door, inside there’s a stylish table inside a small meeting room and on the other side there are two men: ‘Doc Bob’, head of product engineering and Steve the project manager and director of the fluffy pony subdivision.
“Hello Mr. Garcia, I’m Steven McCormick but you can call me Steve. Next to me is Doc Bob, we want to hear about your experience testing the fluffy pony we gave you for a week”
“Yea well, it was really impressive, like at first but…”
“But?” said Bob
“Look I don’t want to offend anyone with this but are you really going to sell this?”
“What do you mean? of course we will” said Steve
“The one that was given to me, the orange one with pink hair…”
“Mane”
“Excuse me?”
“Mane, that’s the marketing term for it, mane” said Steve
“Uh okay sorry, its just that it looks more like doll hair or something”
“That’s ok just tell us about your experience mr.Garcia” said Bob
“Well at first it was really cool that it talked, it was blowing my mind it could do that. But after a while I realized it was not very…ehhh…intelligent”
“You mean?”
“Well with the talk and all I thought it already knew how to do stuff like ‘go to the bathroom’ but actually it didn’t. It would say something like ‘litterbox’ but it didn’t recognize it, really odd. Had to actually carry it myself to the litterbox the first few times”
“…right, what else?” said Steve
“Another thing is I thought these things…”
"Fluffy pony" Steve remarked again, mildly annoyed.
“Right, fluffy pony. I thought it could keep itself clean but even if I gave it a bath every day the backside was always covered in its own filth. It comes out almost liquid and the…‘fluffy pony’ wont even figure out it has to lower its behind when it does its business most of the time so like half of the crap gets stuck on the fur and tail. Oh and I can’t believe how scared it is of taking a bath, it started screaming and the neighbor thought I was doing something to a kid. It was a very awkward moment”
“I see, you do remember you signed an NDA right?” said Steve
“Yeah I know, I didn’t let him see the fluffy pony or anything, told him it was the TV, almost didn’t believe me. Thank god he didn’t call the cops. Back to the cleaning part, its so smelly you know? I have owned a few pets but the odor that comes out of these fluffy ponies its…unbelievable, almost like a skunk. First time it took a dump, in the middle of my kitchen by the way, I thought I got a sick one but then the support hotline you gave me said it was normal…is it?”
“…yeeeesh well during design we had to you see…” said Bob right before Steve gave him a look and cut him off.
“Excuse me but you did follow the dietary instructions right?”
“Yes, did exactly what it said on the booklet, only feed it the special kibble you guys gave me”
“Right well maybe it ate something else by accident, something off the trash can maybe…what did you think of it as a companion?” said Steve
“Excuse me?”
“Did you find it friendly? was it entertaining?”
“Uh well as I was saying before it was really impressive at first with the talking, like when I was told it could talk I was picturing something like a parrot that would repeat things you know? but then it started speaking out of nowhere using words I never said to it, that was really cool…”
“Good to hear”
“…but then the accent it has gets a bit annoying, and sometimes its difficult to understand too. Also at first as I said it was cool but then it was just repeating the same words and phrases over and over. I tried teaching it new words but it wouldn’t learn any, not even my name. Hearing it calling me ‘daddeh’ all the time was really weird, I don’t have any kids yet.”
“Alright, what about the temperament? did you find it amusing?”
“Not really, it tries to be friendly and cute but its also very demanding. The support guys said I should order it around but it wouldn’t listen, kept saying the kibble was bad and that it wanted ‘sketti’, what is sketti anyway?”
“Its just a dietary supplement we are developing for fluffy ponies” said Steve
“Well there isn’t much else to say. I tried playing with the fluffy but besides following a ball around it couldn’t do much else. It kept asking for ‘bwockies’ but support said it had to be hasbio-brand ones and those weren’t available yet, that I couldn’t get regular toy blocks since it might get injured, are these thi…‘fluffy ponies’ that fragile? how could it know about a toy it doesn’t exists yet?”
“Its just a precaution don’t worry about it, anything else you want to say?”
“Well I’m going to need to change the carpet on the spare room I set up as a ‘safe room’ since it craps everywhere when it gets scared which is all the time. Also my maid quit after having to clean all that, said she rather go back to Haiti than deal with this thing again and…”
“You need to talk to legal about that, thanks for you time Mr.Garcia”
Then the door opened and Steve signaled for him to leave. Just as it closed Bob turned to Steve…
“I told you the sketti idea was bad, it creates a huge surge of endorphins so of course the product gets addicted to it. Its not a treat its like crack!”
“Look Bob we need the product to desire the dietary supplements and accessories to increase the profit margin”
“Profits? We are going to make $10k on these things and it only costs us like $0.15 to breed a foal!”
“Did you miss the meeting with the bean counters? all that goes to cover R&D costs alone, and it will take years until hasbio can pay that debt. Right now hasbro is paying the bills and our wages Bob. And when we start moving down market and have to sell these things for less those margins will get much slimmer”
“We interviewed 20 testers so far and all of them had similar complaints. Steve seriously, number 34 got beaten up when it shat over the tester’s legs, and I just heard from the logistics guys who went to retrieve number 79 that the tester went crazy and tried to kill it. Broke two of the unicorn mare’s legs burned one of its eyes with a cigarette and ripped out its tail, it was so damaged we had to write it off and send it to the lab for vivisection. Results show it had nothing abnormal compared to the other fluffies in the production run for the focus group and customer service said the tester had no history of animal abuse or any criminal records showing violent tendencies.”
“So what! maybe he’s one of those closeted psychos that seem normal until they explode”
“…or maybe all the compromises we made to get your concept done turned the product into an awful horrible pet, and one that’s not illegal to abuse! we need to make some drastic changes here Steve!”
“Bob listen, we’re overdue with the launch okay? I know you lab nerds don’t get it but we already missed the original deadline, we can’t miss the christmas launch else its going to be a disaster.”
“What’s going to be a disaster is if we sell these things as-is and we start getting returns, and what if people start talking about how awful fluffy ponies are?”
“Big deal, every first product has problems Bob, people will be too mesmerized with the ponies to pay any attention to some sour assholes on the internet. Let me tell you a story: when I first started I was working at PR for this big videogame company and some losers living in their parents’ basements were complaining about how we were paying the press to say what we wanted and shill our games. My team had the brilliant idea of spreading the word that those neckbeards were harassing female game developers instead, and everybody fucking believed it!. We kept paying the press to say our shitty rushed games were great and guess what? people kept buying them and nobody cared about what those basement dwellers had to say. We paid so they would get banned from most social media sites, much cheaper than doing any changes to our product”
“So that’s your plan? pay people so they say fluffies are great? get everyone who complaints banned from the internet?”
“That not the point you moron! we wont have to do that because our product is fucking awesome! it’s the iPhone of pets!”
“Steve nobody uses iPhones anymore, Jobs died and then Apple went slowly to shit…”
“Who cares? they got to be the biggest company in the world for over a decade! nobody gives a shit what happens next, what matters is what happens NOW and right now Hasbio is on the verge of becoming this decade’s Apple, get it?”
“We still haven’t fixed the breeding control problem, how does that factor in your be-like-apple plans Steve?”
“Still with this shit Bob? I told you that’s the least of our problems, these things can’t breed outside our installations.”
“Oh really? like the GloFish? the sterile eggs that turned out to be fertile? all they could do was tell the owners selling the eggs would be illegal, as if the black market cares!”
“We are not some shitty company making fluorescent fucking fish Bob! what we are doing is bigger than that! bigger than anything any other gen-tech company has done before!”
“So who we are Steve? the Enron of genetics? too big to fail?”
“I’m DONE with your negativity Bob! DONE! just…just go back to your lab I’ll do the rest of the interviews with my assistant”
“Fine…”
You are Dr. Bouchard, aka Doc Bob. You are really rethinking your career choices now that the biggest project you have ever been involved with could go down in history as one of the biggest corporate fuckups ever. Not just financial, you know that if these GMO pets got out it could be an environmental disaster.
As you go to your office you see the dissected #79 on a table. All tester units go through an interview of sorts that gets compared to what the tester said and the footage the safe room cam gets. In this case you could see in a monitor nearby an edited loop that more or less showed the problem Steve refuses to see: the first thing in the video is a hasbio logistics guy setting up the camera, below him are the tester and fluffy #79. At first everything is nice and fun between the fluffy and the tester. Sure the fluffy does stupid things like shitting on the floor, falling upside down, crying its eyes out every time the tester/‘daddeh’ leaves the room, but the guy puts up with it. Well the first days at least, since now you can see in his face how stress is getting to him. Last recording has the tester giving the fluffy some kibble, the fluffy stomping and yelling saying it wants ‘sketti’ which the tester doesn’t even knows what it is something he tells the fluffy as he pinches the bridge of his nose trying to keep a headache at bay. Suddenly the fluffy turns around lifts its tail and takes a huge liquid dump all over the kibble and the tester’s Italian leather shoes. The tester just stays frozen then suddenly turns around and leaves the safe-room closing the door behind him. Fluffy #79 starts beating the door and yelling it wants sketti while insulting the tester and stamping its shit stained hoofs across the white door and walls. It doesn’t take long for the tester to come back with different shoes. He then suddenly grabs fluffy #79 by the tail, lifts it off the ground and stomps his way out of the safe room with the fluffy crying from the sudden pain. The loop starts again after that.
“That’s some crazy shit isn’t it?” said Reggie. He’s one of the guys from legal and like every lawyer he seems like a nice person until he’s working for the other side and getting paid to tear you a new one.
“So what happens now?”
“Well…” said Reggie “he should pay the full MSRP of the product plus damages and cleanup costs but the thing is marketing had the great idea of making a focus group entirely of rich people who would be the main market of the product at first.”
“So?” said Bob
“So as every rich guy this one has lawyers of his own and is now threatening to sue us. We could threaten to make that cam feed public outing him as an animal abuser which would make him look quite bad at the country club, but Steve had this ‘brilliant’ idea of making testers sign NDAs so now that recording its private information we can’t release and the tester knows that.”
“Well at least he wont talk about his experience before the launch”
“Maybe, but he could always go anonymous on the internet and spread it…”
Original art by @Quickhorn