‘Introducing Tamagotchi! Are your parents super lame and refusing to
buy you a pet? Well, eat my shorts, mom and dad! With the all-new Tamagotchi you can have the
best pet you could ever ask for. Living in the digisphere in your pocket! With three simple buttons and a chain to hang
your keyrings on, you can make your Tamagotchi your own. Care for it day and night. Watch
them sleep, play bodacious games, and make sure you keep an eye out for if they need
to go to the toilet! Peeeeyyyyeewww! Throw it in your backpack and take it to school,
just don’t let your teacher catch you… oh snap! Tamagotchis are da bomb. Bet you really wanna
go and buy one now, don’t you?’ The Detective throws her bag onto the couch.
She wanted nothing more than to have thrown it off as soon as she walked through the door,
but if anything in it broke, she’d be screwed. They don’t have the money for rent at the
moment, can’t be adding additional costs onto that. Her Boyfriend barely glances up at her from
the couch. Still wearing the same blue t-shirt he’d worn to bed last night and with a packet
of Doritos next to him, it’s pretty obvious how he’s spent his day. The TV switches
to another commercial. She taps him gently on the shoulder, offering
him a warm smile. He jumps a little, seeming to come out of a little reverie. Affection
fills his eyes as soon as he sets them on her. He hastily brushes Doritos dust off his
hands and holds them up, tapping out words in sign language. ‘Sorry, I zoned out. How was your day?’ The Detective sinks into her usual spot on
the couch and snuggles up next to him, nuzzling her head into his neck. After a quick hug,
she untangles her hands and signs her reply. ‘Long.’ He kisses her on her forehead. She goes on
to tell him all about the case she’s been working on. It’s more of a hunch at this
point than a case really. There has been a big spree of shopliftings, burglaries, and
muggings over the last couple of months. A significant uptick from this time last year,
but everyone is at a loss to figure out why. She’s having to spend a lot more on gas
driving around to break-ins at the moment. Her Boyfriend watches her hands recount the
events with a tender look of concern on his face. ‘Don’t worry,’ she signs. ‘I’ll
make sure they reimburse me for the gas.’ He nods and seems to relax a little. She hesitates
before signing the next bit. ‘Did you do any job applications today?’ Her Boyfriend sighs and shakes his head, he
looks ready to be told off but instead she gives him a big cuddle. Something in him seems
to break and after a moment she can feel him shaking in her arms. Even though she can’t
hear him, the Detective knows her Boyfriend well enough to know that he is crying. She pulls away from him and makes firm reassuring
eye contact with him, before signing. ‘It’s okay. We can do the next one together
if that would be easier?’ And so the two of them do that. They cook
dinner together, her Boyfriend listening to the radio while she enjoys the feeling of
the bass in her chest. Then, once everything is washed up and the apartment is dark and
cozy, they sit down at their kitchen table and hand write a cover letter. They would have typed it up on their Macintosh
but they’d sold that and their printer a few months ago to cover their utility bills.
But handwriting is okay too. Her Boyfriend had been working at Dell when
they met. 1993, the height of the Dot Com boom when any kid with a math degree and a
keyboard could shoot up the ladders in tech giants across the country. Two years later, that bubble burst, and he’d
lost his job. Fiercely smart and incredibly kind, her boyfriend hadn’t been able to
find work for around 13 months now. Every day the Detective’s heart broke a little
more to see how low his confidence was dipping. He was an amazing person, by far the most
exceptional guy she’d ever met and ever would meet, and yet the constant rejection
letters, failed interviews, and lack of options had steadily worn him down to a delicate and
exhausted ghost of himself. But that only makes her want to love and support
him even more. He scrawls a signature at the bottom of the
cover letter, and they carefully fold it, along with his resume, and slide them both
into an envelope. She cuddles him from behind and gives him a gross wet kiss on his cheek,
enough to make him giggle. There. At least he’s got one happy moment
from today. He turns to her and grins, raising his hands to talk to her. ‘I might buy a Tamagotchi.’ ‘A what?’ ‘The commercial on TV. It was playing when
you got home. I really want one, can I buy one?’ A little twinge pulls at her heart. She really
ought to say no. Money is so tight at the moment with them both relying on her income,
and it’s hard to… ah what is she saying? He’s clearly going through a lot right now,
and maybe something fun would be good for him. Even if it does just look like some silly
kids toy from Japan. She raises her hands. ‘Of course, you can.’ And the pair of them go back over to the TV
and flick it on. * The next day is a bit of a blur. It’s the
Detective’s first day on yet another shoplifting: her first foray into fashion. Pairs of Air
Jordans on display had been stolen, smashed glass everywhere, but the thieves had left
all the cash in the register. A couple other items were missing too, all very hip stuff.
Tie-dye shirts, jnco jeans, a lot of camouflage, that kind of thing. Stuff that’s on TV and
the radio all the time at the moment. By the time the Detective gets out, she’s
only got 10 minutes to rush to Toys R Us before it closes. Thankfully, the Tamagotchi display
is right by the front entrance. Almost totally sold out, but with one lone box left, she
snatches it up and cheerfully takes it to the cash register. As she walks out of the store and looks down
at the box in her hands, she can’t help but wonder, why the hell would her boyfriend
want to play with a little children’s toy? * As soon as the Detective opens the door to
her apartment, she is struck by a change. Instead of sitting on the couch watching TV,
her boyfriend is in the kitchen, radio belting out at full volume. Her heart flutters. Could
it be…? Has he heard back from one of his jobs? He sticks a head out from around the kitchen
door and grins at her, beckoning her inside. She grins back, quickly hiding the Toys R
Us bag behind her back. It smells amazing in here. Onions and garlic,
oregano, rich tomatoes, a hint of wine in the sauce, he’s really gone all out making
her favorite chili for dinner tonight. He waves her over to the pan and motions for
her to take a deep smell. She does, enjoying all of the aromas filling the air. There’s
something smoky in there too, a new smell she doesn’t recognize. She turns to her
Boyfriend quizzically. He grins and explains to her in sign language
that it’s charred peppers, held over the flames on the hob just long enough to blacken
and then thrown into the food processor to… ‘Hang on,’ she interrupts him. ‘We don’t
have a food processor.’ Her Boyfriend grins proudly and steps to one
side to reveal a brand new shining food processor sitting proudly on their countertop. He explains
to her that he bought it that day. It has ten speed settings, multiple blades you can
switch out, a miniature container for spice blends and… She stops him again. How much did this cost? He looks sheepish. A wave of realization crosses
his eyes, and he looks back at it guiltily. ‘I just really wanted it,’ he signs. ‘Thought
it would make a nice romantic dinner for us.’ The Detective softens. Of course, he was just
trying to make the effort for her. It wasn’t fair of her to tell him off for doing that.
Opening the Toys R Us bag she pulls out the Tamagotchi and holds it out to him. Compared
to this expensive food processor, her gift looks pretty insignificant, but her Boyfriend’s
face lights up straight away. He grabs it off her and rips the toy out of
the packaging in a frenzy. His eyes shine and dance around as he hatches his first Tamagotchi.
He looks like a child on Christmas day. She can’t help but join in laughing with him,
as they go to sit on the couch and watch some TV together. But the next day, when the Detective gets
home, she notices a hole in their wall. A literal hole. Their landline is missing. Her
Boyfriend’s face pops out from around the corner, just as it did the previous day, with
that same grin. Only this time, he’s brandishing a brand new cell phone in his outstretched
arm. It’s tiny, about the size of a brick, with the name Nokia emblazoned across the
top. That can’t have been cheap. This time she doesn’t share in his excitement.
Indeed the next day, she can’t even muster up a smile when he proudly demonstrates the
alarm on his new G-Shock, laced up his new Jordan’s, and started excitedly flipping
through his box set of R. L. Stine books. That is enough. She can’t deal with this anymore. She’s
been struggling so hard to make ends meet. Meanwhile, he is throwing away hundreds of
dollars on products he had never mentioned before. She snaps. It can be very frustrating
being mute because you can’t shout to let your anger out. All that energy instead goes into her sign
language, her hands swinging and slapping into each other as her face contorts. What
is wrong with him? Why is he being like this? She’s doing everything she can to keep a
roof over their heads while he’s just throwing all of her money down the drain? How could
he be so cruel? The more she rants, the more guilty her Boyfriend’s
face becomes. Tears fill his eyes, his bottom lip starts to tremble, and before long, he
is bawling in front of her. Can’t keep going, not seeing him like this. Her hands fall limply
to her sides. After a moment, he raises a sniffling face to her and signs something
simple back. ‘It’s the TV. The commercials, they’re
just too persuasive.’ She snorts a laugh. That’s it. If he’s
not going to give her a serious answer, she’s not going to have a serious conversation.
She storms off up to bed, leaving him alone downstairs. He switches the TV off. That next day, she wakes up to breakfast in
bed, but no sign of her Boyfriend. She doesn’t touch any of it, getting a coffee and croissant
on her way into work instead from this up-and-coming coffee place called Starbucks. Today is a chance for her to take her mind
off things. She’s at a crime scene, in a poor neighborhood. The previous night the
man who lived there had been sitting downstairs with his blinds open out to the street. He’d
noticed a suspicious figure walking past who’d peered in through the glass. Before he knew what was happening, a brick
crashed through his window, and the burglar was in his home, running from room to room,
ransacking the place and trying to make off with different items from the house. The homeowner
had run to his gun safe and shot the burglar in the back four times. This crime scene investigation was mostly
a formality, but as the Detective arrived, one of the officers came over to her. He didn’t
know sign language, so the pair of them wrote down their conversation on her Detective’s
notepad - yes, she carries a notepad, some stereotypes are true! The officer has a hunch and a good one. The
burglar broke into the house, knowing full well the homeowner was watching him, a highly
risky thing to do. But what was most peculiar was the list of items that the burglar had
been trying to steal. The officer shows her the list and her jaw drops. G-Shock watch
Food processor Nike Air Jordans
R. L. Stine books A Tamagotchi An officer across the room remarks that these
are all really high-demand items at the moment. His own wife and kids have been pleading for
some of these for weeks. The crime scene photographer agrees. It all gets written on the notepad
so that the Detective can follow the conversation. ‘What was this man’s employment status?’
she asks. ‘Unemployed.’ She looks around the room. There’s not much
in the way of furniture here. Just a couch pointing at a big TV… The Detective drives home right away, to the
surprise of her Boyfriend. He gets up from the couch and comes to see her right away.
He’s dressed much better, a white shirt on. He’s tidied the house. The TV is off. He goes to start apologizing as soon as she
walks in, but she brushes it aside, signing urgently to him. ‘I need you to tell me everything about
what you’ve been watching on TV.’ Confused, he runs through his list of regular
shows that he’s been watching. Buffy, Quantum Leap, The Fresh Prince, Friends, of course.
She shushes him. ‘What about commercials? All the things
you’ve bought recently, talk to me about those commercials.’ He looks stumped. They’re just normal TV
commercials. Nothing special or exciting. They’re all different. Different actors,
messages, companies. It clicks in the Detective’s head. That’s it! ‘What about the voice over?’ ‘I don’t know. It’s a man I think. Yeah,
it might be the same man. You know what, I think it is. It’s the same voice each time.’ ‘And he only does those commercials?’ Her Boyfriend thinks hard for a second. He
nods. It takes a long time for the police to mobilize.
As usual. The Detective takes her findings to the Commissioner at her first opportunity
but he looks pretty non-plussed. This spate of burglaries and muggings, all because of
some persuasive voice over actor? Really? Everyone wants a Tamagotchi, everyone wants
a pair of Jordans. These are just passing fads, that’s all there is to it. So she does it herself. The Detective visits
all of the advertising agencies that ran the local versions of the commercials she has
listed and finds the details for the voice actor on her third try. He’s in the same
state but another city. But by the time she gets an afternoon to drive out and pay him
a visit it’s too late. The apartment she visits is empty. After banging
on the door for several minutes, a neighbor sticks their head out of a window and yells
something at her. The Detective can’t understand however, so the woman comes downstairs and
writes a grumpy note. ‘He’s dead. Yacht accident or something.’ Only she can’t spell yacht properly. * The Detective pushes open her apartment door
dejectedly. All that effort, all that chasing for nothing. It wasn’t so much about trying
to solve the burglaries. Those were just things being taken. It was about understanding what
had happened to the love of her life. Her kind caring Boyfriend, the man who’d brought
her so much joy, who had always been so considerate and gentle with her, suddenly going on a spending
spree and almost bankrupting her? It just hurt too much and now coming back to her apartment
and having to face up to that tense relationship just felt… Arms wrap around her and hold her tight. Her
Boyfriend’s hand brushes the back of her hair, and the smell of his cologne fills her
nose. After a moment, her arms wrap around him. After another moment, they both start
to cry together. He leads her into the kitchen where he’s
cooked her favorite chili again, only without the smoky smell. She looks around the kitchen.
The food processor is gone. He pulls away from her and explains that everything is gone.
All of his bad purchases he’d made have been returned, he hands her the cash for them
in full. He still wants those items - he wants them more than anything else - he explains. But more than any of those things, he wants
her. The TV is gone too. So as they sit down that
evening together, they just enjoy doing nothing together for a bit, catching each other’s
eyes over dinner and smiling uncontrollably before getting out a sheet of paper and writing
another job application. There’s something about this application,
the Detective thinks. This one could just be the one. Ask anyone about the 90s, and they’ll have
more fads to tell you about than historical events. Furbies, Beanie Babies, Gel Pens,
Napster, the list goes on. But for residents in a certain part of the USA, some of these
trends seemed to be a touch more… obsessive. And that is all down to the actions - or rather,
the voice - of one man. SCP-661, the world’s best salesman. We didn’t get to meet SCP-661 today so allow
me to introduce him to you. The salesman is a middle-aged caucasian male. He is somewhat
overweight, but with no major health issues aside from what is typical for someone of
his age and size. If you were to have a conversation with SCP-661,
and I advise you not to, you would find him rude, abrasive, and tiresome. He has a short
temper and makes regular demands. You would quickly find that he is very much used to
having his own way, and for good reason. For you see, this salesman is persuasive. Very
persuasive. Foundation testing has found that this SCP
is capable of extreme manipulation, verbally persuading you to want what he tells you to
want virtually instantaneously. It sounds dramatic in those words, but the effect is
far more subtle than you may realize, which is the reason why he was able to operate for
a while before being discovered by the Foundation. Test subjects report the effects of his persuasion
as feeling like a continuous low-level compulsion - a desire bubbling away underneath the surface
- until they encounter an opportunity to act on it. At this point, it becomes an all-consuming
obsession, not satiated until you have fulfilled the urge. The effect is strongest with physical objects,
which is likely why this salesman enjoyed so much success providing voiceovers for local
marketing campaigns. Any product that he was selling would fly off the shelves anywhere
where the commercials featuring his voice were aired. Perhaps those crazes in the 90s
weren’t so innocent after all. Testing on the salesman has proved enlightening.
D-class personnel was ordered to physically assault him, but he was able to stop the attack
almost immediately by simply explaining to them that they didn’t want to hurt him.
However, test subjects who were threatened with execution if they stopped attacking him
were able to continue to beat the salesman up for several minutes before the researchers
decided he’d had enough. Though, notably, they made it abundantly clear the entire way
through the assault that they didn’t really want to hurt him. SCP-661 naturally poses some level of threat
to the general public as his ‘abilities’ could easily be used for far more nefarious
purposes than selling a few more Troll Dolls, and so guards have permission to terminate
him in the event of his escape. That seems… unlikely. SCP-661 is held in a standard holding cell
measuring 6m x 8m. Any researchers interacting with him must wear noise-canceling ear protection
at all times, unless they are deemed to be totally deaf by SCP medical staff. Incidentally, it was the work of the Detective
you heard about today that drew the Foundation’s attention to SCP-661. Unaffected by his commercial
work, she was in the perfect position to connect the dots and uncover his existence. With operatives
through law enforcement, the Foundation was quick to catch onto her theory and apprehend
him before word traveled too far. That ‘yacht accident’ story was enough to keep the public
from ever discovering his existence. That said, you should still be careful out
there. Who knows if another instance of this SCP exists somewhere? Have you ever seen a
commercial too tempting to ignore? Watched a YouTube ad that you decided not to skip?
No? Me neither. But still, be careful! If you want to support our important mission
here at Dr. Bob, check out the Dr. Bob Patreon and become a junior researcher today! Now
go and watch another entry from the files of Dr. Bob, like SCP-3063 - A Fly Is Your
New Telepathic Therapist, for another SCP with an offer you can’t refuse.
