If you missed previous segments of the CMEslinger saga, you can read them here:
And now, our latest segment:
Part 6 (Scott)
The man in black snarled as he turned on his heels to go find Marge. The CMEslinger took his time, lingering a few feet behind, letting his nemesis have this final small victory.
“Room 242,” the man in black muttered. “Here we are.”
As the CMEslinger approached, the man in black opened the door to find Marge, as expected, pouring one last time over a mountain of invoices and receipts. She had already given her blessing to each man’s expenditures, assuring both parties that this was a fair fight, but no one was surprised to see her doing one last check. Her fastidious nature was the reason she had survived 23 years alongside Phinneas as the organization’s accreditation guru. Often a thorn in the sides of everyone around her, Marge was as pure as a mountain stream, a rare bastion of fairness that made her the only possible choice as referee of this “winner take all” competition.
It had been a complicated 3 months, ever since the day that Phinneas summoned the men to his office on a warm September afternoon. With a tear in his eye, he addressed them both that day.
“Men, watching the two of you grow as CME professionals is among my most cherished accomplishments. And yet watching one small incident tear you apart is among my biggest disappointments. I am tired of the bickering, the back and forth ‘he said this and he said that.’ This needs to end. Today.”
He spent the next 30 minutes going over the rules of the “loser-leaves-CME” competition. He had already secured a satellite symposium time slot from 6-8 pm on the opening night of the biggest specialist meeting of the year. The rooms would be identical in size, each seating a maximum of 472 attendees, equidistant from the hotel lobby. Each man was given $200,000 to spend as they saw fit – activity design, audience generation, faculty recruitment, staffing, you name it. Whoever had more butts in seats at 7 pm–exactly halfway through the symposium time slot–was the winner. Of course, Phinneas pointed to Marge sitting quietly in the corner and told both parties that all receipts would need to be handed over to her to ensure a fair playing field.
“There will be no shenanigans,” Phinneas said. “Everything remains above board. I put my trust in the both of you as gentlemen.”
Neither the CMEslinger nor the man in black knew it would be the last time they saw Phinneas in person (he never told anyone that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer 5 months ago), but they nonetheless knew that this competition would be a fair fight. They might not trust each other anywhere else, but this time, for these stakes, they did.
Not surprisingly, both parties took a very different path. The CMEslinger, being a technology geek, invested a good chunk of his dollars in VR technology and scientific programmers, promising every attendee a chance to latch on a headset to see on a molecular level how the latest therapeutic breakthrough worked. The man in black scoffed at these methods, instead relying on the old school approach of securing the biggest name faculty in the industry to man the stage as well as a detailed promotional plan with multiple waves of print and electronic announcements.
As Phinneas always said, “What’s newer ain’t always better. Except when it is.”
The clock ticked toward 5 pm when the symposium rooms would open to the public, but neither man broke a sweat. This was the moment that would define their careers, the moment to prove once and for all who was the King of CME.
What they didn’t know was that Phinneas had one last surprise in store for them both.
CMEPALOOZA 
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