An Inquiry From Our Sponsors.

Purely hypothetical, of course.

You have fallen ill with a serious, but not necessarily deadly, illness. You can swap it in for one you really have irl, i dont mind. For the sake of the hypothetical though, lets say it’s random. It’s a type of illness that has symptoms that severely affect how you live your life. Think something like blindness or paralysis from your legs down.

The illness doesnt kill you on its own though, so through careful consideration of your actions you can stay alive for your entire normal life expectancy. The condition/illness doesn’t ever get any better however. So, for example, you were blind, while it would never get any worse than blindness on its own, it would never get any better either. Shortly after getting diagnosed with this illness, you are greeted with news of both the good and bad variety.

First, the good news. There is a cure for your illness. And the process itself of getting this cure is very simple and has little if any lasting effects on your body. It would feel as though the illness was never an issue to begin with.

The bad news, however, is that the cure to this illness is insanely expensive. Like, “more money than you will ever seen in your lifetime” expensive. It would take a miracle for you to be able to afford it.

One evening, while you are resting in the hospital, a lawyer enters your room remarkably quietly. After introducing himself, he hands you an unsealed envelope. With a quick glance you can tell what it is to some extent. It’s a contract. He tells you the man he works for is a famous billionaire, and wants to cure your condition. He also wants to turn it into a chance at some good pr for himself.

In the moment, this seems like a great exchange on your part. But the lawyer tells you to read the contract very throughly before signing. There are some terms that weren’t discussed that you might want to consider very carefully. He says if you accept the contract, to sign the paper and send it away to the return address already on the envelope he gave to you. If you dont accept, throw away the paper inside and forget anything ever happened. He tells you theres no rush to make your decision, and leaves as silently as he appeared.

With your newfound alone time you decide to read through the contract. Nothing out of the ordinary; some NDA stuff, some stuff about how your finances will work, and other things if that sort. As you get closer to the end however, you get to a section of the contract labeled “Your side of the deal.”

This section gives you a surprising amount of freedom to talk about your experience earnestly. The deadline for keeping the pr rolling in a positive direction is relatively short, and beyond talking to cameras a few times they aren’t asking for much. Except…

The billionaire wants you to brand his name and company logo into your skin. Permanently. This will be a publicly known part of the contract, but you are never allowed to speak negatively of this aspect of the experience, nor are you allowed to state or imply that you did not want to be branded in the first place. You are required by the contract to show this to anyone who asks, as long as it is appropriate to do so. (No taking a shirt off at work, for example) The scar from this will never heal in a way where its no longer recognizable, and it will be in a place on your body that is below the neck but partially visible to most without proper consideration to hide it. Exactly where the name and logo are to go is going to be decided by the billionaire, not you.

You have a few more questions, but the lawyer is gone. And with no contact info and no ability to travel to the return address on the envelope, this is all the help on the legal matter you’re going to get. Do you sign the contract?

(i wrote this in bed at like 2 am very tired, and was more just having fun writing than actually trying to get a serious question in. looking back, its def an easy decision to make. whatever tho.)