The salesman looked down at his chunky gold Rolex - 9pm - it was late as hell for him to still be working. But, that's business when you're starting with a new client; getting to know everyone, taking tours of facilities, et cetera.

One would think that a local broadcasting station out of Tenessee would not have much to see, but that would be foolish considering its owner and director. A guy with some 40-odd years of TV expertise with so many royalties and syndication checks coming in he could have easily retired to a private island by now, but who didn't and instead funneled all that wealth into this.

A real mystery to any sane person, but a mystery that was giving Big Shot Tony Adison a second paycheck. And potentially... a way out of his first terrible paycheck. Thus, no complaints there.

Not that work wasn't work however. He was ready for this day to be over, but he was far from going-to-bed tired. The issue was what to do to get away from work. The thought which occupied him as he paced down the warmly lit studio halls.

He could go finish setting up his sad excuse of a new office, but that felt like work. He could go finalize his excuses to Queen on why he would be away for so long, but that felt like work too. The real solution would obviously be something outside of the studio and in the city, but the thought made his chest tighten -- Adison was from New York, what the hell did he know about Tennessee nightlife?

Eventually in his ruminating he took a few extra steps down and around a corner, where he saw the studio head honcho at the other end of the hall.

The figurative and literal TV giant stood before a wall of monitors, silhouetted by the glow of the day's recordings playing silently before him. His back was towards Adison, and by all means the salesman could have easily turned around and not been potentially dragged into another work discussion, but... Now wasn't the time to be antisocial. He had questions to ask and a client to fraternize with. And maybe if he played his cards right, this wouldn't feel like work.

Fixing his tie and further slicking back his hair, Tony Adison strut forwards towards the man. Forcing his antsy posture to straighten as he felt more and more dwarfed with every step he took. "Mr. Tenna! Good to see ya again before everyone headed out!" the salesman called from behind him.

The man in the red suit turned towards him with a big, dumb, award-winning smile. "Nice to see you too, Mr. Adison! How's the day treating you?"

"Heh, more like how HAS it treat-ED me," he gave a tense laugh, furiously hoping to impress that he was done working. "It's treated me well, ya got some real nice folks working for you here!"

"Yes, they're looovely!" Mr. Tenna sang as he placed a hand on his chest. His obnoxiously cheerful persona, as Adison had quickly learned, did not have an off switch, even backstage. "Almost like family to me. All of 'em are just so enthusiastic about keeping the spirit of live broadcast alive, I'm grateful to have 'em!"

While that was certainly the attitude that everyone aggressively tried to project in this studio (especially when Mr. Tenna was within earshot), it was clear that a good amount of the staff were just here to collect their paychecks and were otherwise indifferent to the eccentric mission statements. Not that they seemed downright miserable - a great sign in comparison to Queen - but selling unearned enthusiasm on top of the gruel of the old, old-school production management did not sound like paradise.

Thank God he was here to fix half of that.

"For-sure!" Adison replied. "But now that the day's over, I was looking for a way to unwind. Tell me! What do you people do for fun around here?"

The old showman gave a hearty laugh, the kind he gave people and cameras alike. "Well, I don't know about what everyone else does, but I like to spend my evenings rewatching the days performances! That's what I was up to just now.

Oh no... "Oh, absolutely! Always important to review your work! But what about uh... to get away from work?"

"Ha!" Another stage laugh and an even cornier wave of his hand. "Why would I ever want to do that!?"

Oh God... Adison groaned internally. He's one of THOSE people...

"After watching the day's airings I just go watch national broadcasts to brainstorm ideas for the next shows!" he replied, with excessive enthusiasm. Quickly dampened by a cough before he continued, "I mean... It can be really relaxing. When, heh, TV's your whole life like it is mine, it's all you wanna do or think about!"

"Heheh... yeah! A-Absolutely!" Adison struggled to keep his smile straight as he contemplated the error of his ways; assuming his boss wouldn't be more of a workaholic weirdo than him.

He felt sweat run down his brow as the moment before him weighed on him. The best option now would be to abort the whole mission and just go lay in bed till he actually felt tired, but before he could make that decision, Mr. Tenna made one for him.

He clapped his hands together, lightly startling the salesman. "Actually, you caught me on a great night! ABC's running 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' till midnight!" A second later he had his hand on the smaller man's shoulder and was leading him right back down the hallway away from the glowing monitors. "And why shouldn't my new mailman join me for my critical brainstorming sessions!"

The 'mailman' in question - nicknamed for probably his least interesting contribution to the studio so far - grunted in affirmation and stiffly walked besides him.

It was only natural that Adison had already seen Mr. Tenna's office a couple times by now, but this was his first time seeing his dressing room. He already considered the former a bit of a cluster-fuck with its almost insulting amount of Mr. Tenna posters, TV Time memorabilia, and excessive use of clashing starry wallpapers, but he could chalk that up to culture shock coming from the sterile, futuristic hell that is Queen Electronics HQ. The amount of posters Queen had of herself was ACTUALLY insulting.

But the dressing room was maybe a couple steps off of a well-regulated hoarding situation.

On the far wall, covering up a built-in mirror, it was almost like the old showman was trying to build another one of those mega-monitors like the one he was just in front of. Right at his feet, piled on either side of the doorway were separate little pyramids, and the vanity to his left seemed to have been overrun by the electronic beasts. One even sat in the showman's chair, presumably watching the one that actually looked like it belonged on the desk for viewing purposes.

Otherwise it was a spacious, cozy room, just cramped to hell with big, boxy boob-tubes.

"Don't mind all them!" Tenna chuckled, having caught the salesman silently gawking at the room from the doorway. "I'm a bit of a collector of old junk like this, especially TVs!"

"F-Fun hobby, I bet?" And probably one only a few steps off of something pathological, but that was for another day.

"A man's gotta have hobbies!" he shrugged. "But over here, this is the one of note." He waved Adison over to where he stood between a red sofa and a particularly large TV seated on a proper stand. Not that it too wasn't free of more randomly placed neighbors.

As the man walked over he noted that one of those neighbors was even seated on the couch itself. Without a word Mr. Tenna reached over to move it safely onto the floor. And without word, Adison took his seat.

Mr. Tenna however, forsook the couch and the remote atop the TV to switch it on and flip through channels via the control panel. His face right up against the screen letting each channel play for a moment before moving to the next, and eventually landing on ABC.

With a contented grin he stood up and out of the way of the screen, allowing his partner to take in the flashy, futuristic arena of the show as hundreds of people clapped for a contestant standing at the center. "Now 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is brilliantly simple -- you ever watched it?" Mr. Tenna asked, turning to the couch.

"Sure have!" Adison replied bluntly.

A silence opened between them where more elaboration may have been in store, but the salesman desperately wanted to avoid a lesson on the show that had already been promoted all over the station for months.

The showman did not get this clue. "It's grrreat, ain't it! It doesn't have that color of the classics like Family Feud and Price is Right, but it is pure knowledge and risk!" he babbled with increasingly showman-esque bravado. "Makes it incredibly easy to follow, and good for flexing people's trivia muscles."

A cheeky grin instantly stretched across his face, "You know something this show doesn't have in common with those other two though?"

"Uhm..." Adison twitched in his seat, trying hide his annoyance at being forced to scrounge up some detail from all the show's stupid promotions. "It's based on a British gameshow, am I right?"

The TV audience cheered, obviously for the contestant, but on cue for his answer in a way that lit Mr. Tenna's face up brighter than the studio lights. "Thaaat's correct!!" he boomed with a flourish of his hand.

A beat later he burst into laughter again, this time a bit less canned with more unevenness in his breath. "Y'know, one of my favorite gigs in the WORLD was hosting a gameshow! Variety programs are a hoot when you're younger and wanna keep up with the new talent, but nothing beats the pure, concentrated fun of a good family gameshow!"

The showman proceeded to get up and walk past the sofa, he spoke as he undid his costume bit by bit - silly antenna hat, blindingly red tuxedo, brushing his bushy bangs out of his face. "Marvelous Mystery Board was my idea start to finish," he said, calling back to a stint memorialized on every other wall of the studio. "It was a really good way to mix my variety roots into the formula. I loved getting to highlight not just what was hot in show business, but technology and the sciences and all that for kids!"

He spun back around to his business partner once dressed down into his vest, and leaned against the desk, his aged eyes now visibly smiling at him. "In the late 80s especially, once those Nintendoes started becoming big, the kids LOVED the little challenges we made for 'em. My favorite time was when the creators over in Japan gave us exclusive copies of an extra hard Mario they don't sell over here in the states." He gave a snort, and folded over. "Ha! Not a single one of those poor kids could get through it! I felt so bad for 'em, we just had to let them all walk away with prizes!"

As Mr. Tenna laughed at himself again, Adison made sure to join in out of tense courtesy. His client was a chattermouth - lots of people in business were, his own boss included, so he was used to it - but Mr. Tenna was a comparatively scary kind of chattermouth. The kind who talked way more about emotions and memories and dreams than raw numbers and portfolios. Any attempt to establish something concrete like viewership goals or renovation budgets over the past few days had been drowned in a torrent of ruminations just like this.

It put Tony Adison on goddamn edge. He couldn't parse the guy's real objectives till they struck him in the face from the sea of fluffy chatter.

"Ooh! Wait, Tony!" Mr. Tenna exclaimed, suddenly interrupting himself to point excitedly at the TV. The man startled in his seat and snapped his eyes back to the screen. "This is a REALLY good question!"

The contestant's pensive face stared down at an overlay displaying a question with four potential answers: What does the '64' in the console name 'Nintendo 64' refer to?

Mr. Tenna gave a strained hum in thought from behind the sofa, "Ah... it's something about its horsepower, or..."

"Ah! 64-bit memory processing!" Adison declared, not even entertaining the listed answers. And as if on cue, the parallel, far less specific answer on the screen lit green for the canny contestant.

"Aaamazing!" The showman cried, and a second later he was leaning right over the backrest beside the smaller man, practically towering over him. "I wouldn't've guessed that in a million years! What's that even MEAN!?"

Now, Big Shot Tony Adison gave a cool laugh -- this was his domain. "Memory processing's how much data a computer can store, and with the latest Nintendo console it's got a fully 64-bit central processing unit, pumping it with the power to run revolutionary, real-time 3D graphics Mario-style leaps and bounds above its contemporaries!"

"Really!!" The showman gawked at him, utterly engrossed. "But there's more of those 3D consoles than just Nintendo, aren't there?"

"There are, there are!" He grinned with a pointed finger. "But, Sega and Sony's offerings are only 32-bit -- they're just barely cobbling together 3D graphics from antiquated 2D processors. The Nintendo was built from the ground up as a raw 3D rendering beast!" he growled. "Running twice as fast as the competition!

"With Sega and Sony it's life in the slow-lane, but when you're playing with Nintendo, you are playing with POWER!" He leaned over and jabbed his finger directly into Mr. Tenna's dumb, giddy grin, "So tell me, old man! You ready to get N, or get OUT!"

The showman stared cross-eyed at the salesman's digit and shook his head with cartoonish vigor. "Ooh! I am ready to get N!" he laughed. "Is Nintendo paying you for this advert? You might've just sold me on a console I didn't even think I needed!"

Tony Adison fell back onto the couch and straightened his tie. "Eh, nah! But this salesman doesn't need special training to make a good pitch! Anywhere you are in the tech market you gotta keep tabs on the competitions' power and publicity, so harping on their slogans is just good practice."

"I sure get that! Always gotta keep an eye out for ideas. Like with this!" Mr. Tenna gestured back to the TV. "If I had the chance to host a proper gameshow again, I think I'd want to focus in on a single theme for some straight-forward quizzing like this, but still make it crazy enough to break into more fun gimmicks on the side..."

His voice trailed off with an inviting tone, practically begging Adison to turn towards him with a big smile. He continued, "Kids still love their video games..."

The salesman's heart skipped - half in panic and half in excitement - "And, as the console business grows more kids and developers alike'll be interested in learning all those juicy details about 'em!"

For a few more seconds their smiles only grew more manic towards each other, until Mr. Tenna broke away with a dismissive wave. "Ah! But that's an idea for far in the future!"

But despite his protest, a tricky smile still showed on his face. "Gameshows are no joke money and production-wise, and especially one that has to keep up with the latest tech. That's an idea maybe for... when we get a bigger boost?"

"Well," Tony Adison invited, shrugging as he crossed his legs. "You sure called up the right techie with those million dollar ideas of yours, Mr. Tenna! Once we get this place caught up with the current decade you will be big like you haven't been since you were back in Hollywood, my friend!"

"And those are the million dollar solutions I hired you for, Tony!" Mr. Tenna replied, standing and clapping his hands over his chest.

As the old showman began to ramble on a new train of thought, Adison took a moment to quietly survey the room again, taking in just how old and busted some of the models in the TV infestation were. Now was not the night to tell the guy that half this junk would probably be on the chopping block too. If not for parts than just to get him off his... whatever this was. This weird sentimental fetish.

But looking back up at him, something about the pale light of the modern gameshow shining on his old, eager face, Adison knew he was the man to break the poor fool into the 21st century.