Serious Business

Serious Business is an application on Dad's PDA. It works much like Twitter, where the users can leave short messages that anyone can view.

Though all the users of Serious Business are clearly office workers and businesspeople in general, John believes the Serious Business users are his Dad's "fellow street performers" before learning of his Dad's real occupation.

During Act 1, a timestamp appears next to the screen name of message senders, indicating when they sent the message. However, after the &quot;cataclysmic event&quot;, all of the timestamps consistently read "??:??." This is most likely due to the PDA being in The Medium, part of the Incipisphere, "a place untouched by the flow of time."

"Serious business" is also the attention notice on the letter for Dr. David Brinner carried by Peregrine Mendicant.

Serious Business Users

 * pipefan413 : Dad. No messages written by Dad are seen. However, given greyslacks66 and wellPressedAttire's inquiries on his health, it's obvious he's used it at some point in the past.
 * grayslacks66: Accidentally dunked the tip of his tie into coffee and sought help with Serious Business. Ended up going home for a fresh tie instead. Later, grayslacks66 asked Dad for the 'status of [his] health/wardrobe.'
 * wellPressedAttire: Gave grayslacks66 help during the 'coffee dunk incident.' Later, showed concern over Dad's well-being and provided encouragement for fedorafreak.
 * officeurchin1280: Not much is known. If the number in his screen name is a birth date, officeurchin is rather young for a businessperson, which goes well with the screen name.
 * 2busy4this: So far only posted one message. The screen name and use of abbreviations leads one to believe him or her to be very busy. Is fedorafreak's server player.
 * fedorafreak: A user whose neighboring house was hit with a &quot;flaming projectile&quot;. He began evacuating all his expensive garments, and after the apocalypse of Earth is reduced to drinking his own (filtered) urine to survive. Given his screen name and priorities, it's easy to tell he has a big love for fedora-style hats, all of which are now unfortunately rumpled and unsightly. He is implied to be the only surviving user by the time John loses his PDA. He is later seen possibly in the medium in which he comes across an Alchemiter and replicates his wardrobe. Later tries alchemizing outfits but end up outlandish such as very long pants. He runs out of grist and needs to procure more from the underlings, and ends up heavily injured before collapsing on a "horizontal stone slab exhibiting unidentified iconography" to rest. Before his battery on the gray, serviceable hand-held computing device he uses died, Nannasprite told him a story of her past. He seems to have also been transported to the medium and has discovered an Alchemiter, Grist etc. "confidence in martial prowess perplexingly swells." could be a potential sign of him scaling his echeladder.

According to Andrew Hussie, when Fedora Freak dies in his Quest Hat, he will ascend to the god tier and become the Gent of Piss. (it should be noted that Andrew said this on Formspring, and that he likes to say outlandish, ridiculous things on Formspring.) However, this was stated some time before the scene where Fedora Freak finds his quest bed was posted, so this appears to have evolved into an ascended meme.