Excerpt:

Change the Way You See the World. That was the slogan. Simple. Non-specific. The product could be anything, yet what it was the company would not reveal. The ads started in mid-summer, just after the 4th of July. At first they were static, appearing on highway billboards and on posters in train stations and bus stops. Just the slogan. A few weeks later, the TV spots start running. Short ones. Just fifteen seconds, sandwiched between ads for bleach and mini-vans and the hottest new Barbie. There were no tricks of light or sound, no flashing or fading, no shouting or music. Only the slogan sitting quietly in white text on a plain black background, over which a deep male voice announced, “The Advent is Coming.”

No one knew what product or service was being advertised. No one even knew which company was in charge of these ads. Presumably money changed hands and all the legal T’s were crossed to get the ads on the air. Yet, no one could figure out where to assign blame, or credit. Soon the original ads grew redundant. “The Advent is Coming” became a catch phrase the same way “Just do it!” and “Is that your final answer?” had infiltrated society. Speculation ran rampant in every media source about what, exactly, “the advent” might be. Christian religious groups stepped forward en masse to point out that it was clearly, and could only be, an announcement of the Second Coming of Jesus during the upcoming religious season of Advent. A fitting time for such a return, they said. A prominent, but not specifically Christian, cult claimed that this was proof of their righteousness, because the called their leader “The Advent.” Two days later, a short article appeared in Forbes magazine clarifying that “the advent” had no religious connections of any sort. The article contained no by-line, and the production staff insisted that no one knew where it came from, who wrote it, or how it ended up in print. This, effectively, granted the article absolute legitimacy.

All Helena Delgado and her friends knew for sure is that “the advent” needed to be theirs.