Telempathy

In the glittering guise of a Hollywood “Huckster Heaven,” a high‑end restaurant that stages entire cultures for the pleasure of the advertising elite, campaign wizard Campbell “Cam” Schofft meets the hulking Everett O’Toole. Over a flamboyant feast, Everett reveals a startling claim: his associates have unlocked a form of tele‑empathy, a way to feel the exact emotional pulse of any consumer before a product even reaches the market. The promise of such perfect insight teeters between brilliant opportunity and dangerous hubris, and Cam finds himself drawn into a clandestine world where advertisers barter in dreams and dread alike.

The conversation leads Cam through a maze of themed banquet halls and whispered deals, from Viking feasts to the shadowy boardrooms of a tobacco empire that churns out billions weekly. As the notion of “selling empathy” takes hold, the story asks how far a marketer will go when the future of desire can be tasted before it’s even imagined. The first act sets a tone of seductive intrigue, leaving listeners eager to follow Cam’s uneasy plunge into this uncanny marketplace.