Smoke Wrings story
Advertising executive Jacqueline ends up hiring Barry, an ex-convict, into her firm despite his lack of knowledge in advertising. Barry shows off a strange device he carries that is able to hypnotize people and plant suggestions into their heads, hoping to increase product sales. What Jacqueline doesn't know is that Barry, in exchange for not being sent back to jail, is in league with her enraged ex-partner Alistair Touchstone, who seeks revenge against her after she stole his company from him. Directed by: Mandie Fletcher. Story by: Lisa Sandoval.
16 total · 3 choice · 7 major · 6 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| mind altering technology | choice | The main novelty of the story was an electronic device that could "hypnotize" people into accepting suggestions of varying complexity. |
| speculative hypnosis | choice | The main novelty of the story was a device that could "hypnotize" people into accepting suggestions of varying complexity. The precise nature of the mechanics underpinning this process was not made clear but it involved making people vastly more suggestible by artificial means, much like in many other fictional hypnosis scenes in fiction. |
| the desire for vengeance | choice | Alistair was orchestrating the main events of the story by blackmailing Barry into causing problems for Jacqueline and her company. Alistair was seeking revenge for being dumped as her business partner. Or so it seemed, anyway, until an incongruous final twist revealed that it was all in Barry's mind. |
| advertising in society | major | The story concerned an ad company that was trying to come up with a motif for one of its corporate clients. |
| blackmail | major | Alistair was orchestrating the main events of the story by blackmailing Barry into causing problems for Jacqueline and her company. |
| corporate executive | major | Jacqueline was the president of her company. |
| flirtation | major | Jacqueline was flirting shamelessly with some of her employees. |
| office romance | major | Jacqueline was having a clandestine affair with Frank but did not let that stop her from sacking him. She flirted with Barry. |
| the corporate world | major | The story concerned an ad company that was trying to come up with a motif for one of its corporate clients. |
| workplace rivalry | major | Barry and Frank were competing for control over the Chalmers Chocolates marketing project. |