The Question

The Media Mogul

“This is the greatest story since Moses parted the Red Sea!” Tad Trumble enthused. “I want our full resources behind it.”

“Right, chief,” said the seventeen executive vice presidents arrayed down the long conference table.

“I mean our full resources,” Trumble said, pacing energetically long the length of the table. He wore his yachting costume: navy blue double-breasted blazer over white duck slacks, colorful ascot and off-white shirt. He was a big man, tall and rangy, with a vigorous mustache and handsome wavy hair—both dyed to a youthful dark brown.

“I mean,” he went on, clapping his big hands together hard enough to make the vice presidents jump, “I want to interview those aliens personally.”

“You?” the most senior of the veeps exclaimed. “Yourself?”

“Danged right! Get them onscreen.”

“But they haven’t replied to any of our messages, chief,” said the brightest of the female vice presidents. In truth, she was brighter than all the males, too.

“Not one peep out of them since they said they’d answer The Question,” added the man closest to her.

Trumble frowned like a little boy who hadn’t received quite what he’d wanted from Santa Claus. “Then we’ll just have to send somebody out to their spacecraft and bang on their door until they open up.”

“We can’t do that,” said one of the younger, less experienced toadies.

Whirling on the hapless young man, Trumble snapped, “Why the frick not?”

“W… well, we’d need a rocket and astronauts and—”

“My aerospace division has all that crap. I’ll tell ’em to send one of our anchormen up there.”

“In four days, chief?”

“Sure, why not? We’re not the freakin’ government, we can do things fast!”

“But the safety factor…”

Trumble shrugged. “If the rocket blows up it’ll make a great story. So we lose an anchorman, so what? Make a martyr outta him. Blame the aliens.”

It took nearly an hour for the accumulated vice presidents to gently, subtly talk their boss out of the space mission idea.

“OK, then,” Trumble said, still pacing, his enthusiasm hardly dented, “how about this? We sponsor a contest to decide what The Question should be!”

“That’s great!” came the immediate choral reply.

“Awesome.”

“Fabulous.”

“Inspired.”

“Danged right,” Trumble admitted modestly. “Ask people all over the country—all over the freakin’ world—what they think The Question should be. Nobody’ll watch anything but our channels!”

Another round of congratulations surged down the table.

“But get one thing straight,” Trumble said, his face suddenly very serious. He had managed to pace himself back to his own chair at the head of the table.

Gripping the back of the empty chair with both white-knuckled hands, he said, “I win the contest. Understand? No matter how many people respond, I’m the one who makes up The Question. Got that?”

All seventeen heads nodded in unison.