by Josie Brown
As Mary reaches over to smack him on the head, his milk glass tips over—
But I grab it just in time.
“Okay, alright! No more sudden moves,” I warn them. “I don’t need my best tablecloth stained over something as silly as a video game.” I turn to Jeff. “What’s an FPS?”
He frowns. “It means ‘first person shooter.’ Why do you want to know?”
I blush. “It’s a good thing to know, for my new job.”
“In fact, GoreGasm is one of Shazaaaam’s games,” Jack points out. “Super bloody.”
“Really? Well, maybe Jeff can teach it to me—after we clear the dishes.”
Jack raises a brow in my direction. He knows I’m putting off the inevitable—telling the children about Carl.
He follows me into the kitchen with a stack of plates, but waits until Mary rinses them and Jeff stacks and Trisha has run the soiled cloth napkins into the laundry room before he murmurs into my ear, “The sooner we tell them, the better.”
I grab his hand and pull him into the pantry with me so that the children can’t hear what I have to say to him. “We’ve just gotten home. Carl promised he won’t be here for seven days. Can’t we have this one last week, all happy and together, before I ruin their lives forever?”
I’m in ballerina flats, and he towers over me in heels, so you can imagine how far back I have to tilt my head in order to look up at him. What I see in the deep green recesses of his eyes lets me know that he thinks I’m making a big mistake. I also see tenderness, and concern, and adoration.
I see my future, despite my unforgiving past.
All the more reason I’m so surprised when he says, “Okay, look. It’s Thursday. The earliest he’ll be here is a week from tomorrow. We’ll shelve it for now. But come next Thursday…”
I nod. “Yes, I know. We tell them.”
He’s given me a reprieve. So why does it feel like a death sentence?
Shazaaaam’s fifteen-acre campus is a verdant oasis in an otherwise dusty valley dry humping the 405 in the southern-most quadrant of Orange County.
To top it off, the offices—dark green glass buildings of varying heights and dimensions that look like Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz—are clustered at the base of a tower that thrusts skyward, and is capped with a large glass dome, like a porcini mushroom.
Elevators, located on the outside of the structure, are lined vertically with tiny LED bulbs. As the elevators move up into and down out of the dome, the lights pulsate upward, creating the image of a gigantic throbbing circumcised penis.
The Shazaaaam wizard stands on the tower’s hooded tip. His scepter is raised toward the sky, releasing laser beams into the cosmos.
“It’s the ultimate phallic symbol,” Arnie whispers reverentially.
“Spoken like a true man boy,” I mutter. “Next you’ll be telling us that your own Little Arnie goes by the name Shazaaaam.”
His wide-open mouth shuts quickly, but I get my answer with his blush.
Jack and I exchange glances as we follow him into the phallic tower. Everything in its three-story lobby is meant to entice, enthrall, and enchant. The walls—really, columns covered with bark, leaves, and moss—are staggered in such a way that they look like a forest of trees. The flooring is textured with embedded pebbles, giving one the feeling of walking on a woodland trail.
The receptionist’s desk is really a trestle table made of roughhewn lumber cobbled from various woods. It sits on thin metal legs. The only thing on it is a telephone console. Frankly, I’m somewhat surprised that the person behind the desk isn’t a Keebler elf, but a young slender woman with a mane of long russet-hued tendrils that hide her tiny headset. She wears a diaphanous top over leggings and booties, leaving the impression that you’ve just spotted a woodland fairy.
Or, in Arnie’s case, a fantasy, come to life. “Oh my God! That’s—that’s Nymphette!”
I frown. “Who?”
Arnie looks at me as if I’ve just landed from another planet. “One of the most popular characters in Fantasy Forest is based on her! She’s the high priestess of the largest cult in Shazaaaam’s Fantasy Forest game. Many of Shazaaaam’s employees are players’ favorite avatars, since their faces are the first to be animated.”
I shrug. “Oh, joy.”
“What Arnie means to say is that she wields a lot of clout in Shazaaaam’s most profitable MMORPG—massively multiplayer role-playing game.”
“Great.” I yawn. “She also mans the front desk. Maybe she’ll be kind enough to get me a cup of coffee.”
Arnie’s eyes open in horror. “Don’t you dare ask her that!”
To assure I don’t embarrass him, he practically runs to the reception desk. “Donna Gray, Jack Green, and Arnie White are here. We’re new employees.”
For this assignment, Jack and I aren’t a couple. I go by Donna Gray, and he’s Jack Green. That way, if Shazaaaam does an alphabetical roll call, odds are we’ll end up beside each other.
Of course, most companies don’t do roll calls, let alone alphabetically. Then again, most companies don’t have employees whose ages dip below eighteen. With all the game testing that’s needed here, Shazaaaam has actually implemented an “internship program” with some of the local high schools. For four hours a day, the gaming tower is teeming with kids. No longer can their mothers warn them, “No one is going to pay you to play with that thing all day long!”
Turns out someone will, and pay handsomely, too.
If only all of life were this simple.
Granted the inclusion of Jack and me has inched up the employee age statistic, but only by a tenth of a percentage point at most.
Nymphette pops her bubble gum in Arnie’s face and points toward some chairs that are shaped like toadstools. “Take a seat. I’ll ring Human Resources.”
Noting I’m about to open my mouth, Arnie quickly adds, “Do you have an employee lounge, so that we can get some coffee?”
She rolls her eyes, sighs, then hands him three tiny white tiles. “Fill these out. A waiter will find you.” She points towards a guy in a tux with a rainbow-hued bowtie, who scurries past us. “When you get your company cell phone, it’s equipped with an app that allows you to order anything on the Employee Desire Board.”
Arnie bows as he walks away, backward, as if in the presence of royalty. Frankly, I think it’s a good thing that she doesn’t notice because she’s tapped her headset to take a call.
Arnie hands each of us a tile. When pressed to the ON position, the tiles open a screen with a menu. To order, recipients can tap the tiny boxes beside each item.
I scroll until I find a box for a double decaf mocha cappuccino.
Oh, and a chocolate croissant to go with it.
Something tells me I’m going to love coming to work.
I hate this gig.
My take on it: I’m not cool enough for school.
Everyone else on Shazaaaam’s payroll is brainier, hipper, and certainly younger.
At least, that’s the impression I’ve been given by Lilith, our New Employee Guide. After making us watch a stupid 3D IMAX video on employee do’s and don’ts, she walks us around the Shazaaaam campus, mentally grading us by the number of ooohs and ahhhs we put out as we pass the company’s many amenities that are designed to keep its employees blissfully resigned to a nonstop work schedule.
Needless to say, Arnie is in the lead. He practically swoons as we walk past the fleet of round-the-clock food trucks dotting the velvety lawn, which serve up pork belly tacos, or sushi, or even a full menu of gluten-free dishes, all created and prepared by celebrated chefs who once were Food Network somebodies.
I’m afraid he’ll wet his pants when he sees the “Fun Huts” interspersed throughout the campus. “Here, employees aspire, or are inspired, or they conspire,” Lilith proclaims seriously.
In other words, the huts are hangouts for mid-day breaks for, say, yoga or spin classes. Employees can also hang out in the huts after work to cat
ch Cirque du Soleil shows or concerts by pop bands whose astronomical fees are a pittance in comparison to the cost of replacing the skilled engineers who rock out to them.
When we stroll by the Olympic-sized pool and an enclosed gym with an NBA-sized court, I have to catch Arnie before he passes out.
Jack comes in second on our guide’s most-favored-newbie list just because he gave her a wink and a nod when we passed one of the company’s many “decompression chambers”—large darkened coffins fitted with Sleep Number Innovation Series i8 Bed Pillowtop mattresses and pumped with pure oxygen.
In fact, if you’re to believe the gossip in Valleywag, a few privileged employees are allowed to preorder a “sleeping partner” from a stable of women who were hired for their expertise in animating a particular piece of anatomy.
That being said, if the chamber’s a rockin’, don’t come a ’knockin’.
Everything and anything that entices its employees to create the company’s next big game is right here, in ShazaaaamLand. And, although eighteen-hour workdays aren’t mandatory, they are certainly the norm—the ideal career for those who are smart, young, obsessed with fantasy worlds, and unable to establish deep, ongoing relationships.
“Donna, you’re awfully subdued. I know! You’re overwhelmed at the world we’ve created here!” Lilith’s compassionate tone is undercut by her icy smile. “But, you know, nothing is too good for those who strive to make the world a better place.”
I tamp down the urge to argue, so why don’t you use some of your gazillion dollars in profit to cure cancer, or stave off world hunger?
When I choke on my smirk, Arnie and Jack fail miserably as they try to elbow me into silence.
When she scans her iPad for my employee file, a finely plucked brow goes up. “Ah, I see,” she murmurs. “You’re working on Queen of Hearts.”
Why the disdain? I wonder.
It’s only when she takes me to my group that I understand why. Every single one of my cohorts wears this business era’s equivalent of a pocket protector:
Google Glass, the wireless eyewear.
In other words, they are the ultimate nerds.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Emma murmurs into my ear bud. “Don’t worry, let’s just get through today. Today is Friday, and you’ll have the weekend to recover.”
I love her for saying it. Even more so, I love her for meaning what she says.
Last night, she came over with a few items that she felt would help me fit right in. After dressing me for the role (today I’m wearing a pair of Rag & Bone park pants topped with a linen raglan long-sleeve tee and platform booties), and French-braiding my hair, and tinting the ends a hot pink, she gave me a hug of approval and whispered, “Now you look like a real gamer goddess!”
She is living vicariously through me.
I have no problem with that, because she’s a true asset on this mission.
Spook Rule #1: If you can’t fake it, channel someone who can.
A woman never likes being ignored.
Especially from the head up.
I’m beginning to wonder if their Google Glass uses some sort of imaging software to determine the dimensions of my bra cup.
My team is made up of one Caucasian dude with a goatee. “His nickname is Fu Manchu,” Emma whispers into my ear, and another who is too tall and too thin. “Ichabod,” Emma deadpans. “Hey, don’t look at me. It’s what the other geeks call him.” There is also an Asian-American guy, a chubby dude with a ponytail, and an East Indian guy. “Orphan of Zhao, Wise Ass, and Bollywood in that order,” Emma informs me. They are dressed in the shlubwear coveted by the industry: a T-shirt touting some startup, a hoodie or ironic meme sweatshirt, and cargo pants or saggy jeans, with sneakers or flip-flops.
Already, I’m the odd-person-out in this geek clique cliché.
If they had the nerve to ask, I’d go ahead and tell them so that I could get on with the task at hand: spying on our team leader and boss.
Shazaaaam’s celebrated creative director, Roger White, is in the middle of a pep talk when I take my seat. He is around my age, maybe a year younger. His hair is bleached platinum and held in a topknot, he wears a V-neck black tee shirt over tight black jeans.
Too tight, in fact. I wonder if there’s an app that will validate that he’s wearing an inordinately flattering codpiece.
“—got to get on the ball, people! The damn thing still has a serious A-bug!” Roger stares pointedly at Fu Manchu, who cowers in his chair. Noting that his victim is duly chastised, Roger continues, “Have you forgotten that we’ve only got another forty-eight hours before code release? Wiz expects this to be a triple-A game with an LTV to CAC ratio of five-point-eight! All of us—all of you, have to pull your—” Finally, he notices me, “weight.”
He gives me the onceover. I don’t like the smirk on his face.
Or the fact that his eyes never reach my face, but stay chest-high.
Click goes his Google Glass.
I swear, if I find out it’s equipped with an x-ray app, I’ll stomp it into the ground—while he’s still wearing it.
“Who the hell are you?” Roger demands.
I hold out my hand. “Donna Gray, the tester for Queen of Hearts.”
He stares down at my hand. Finally, he grasps it cautiously.
Limply. Let me put it this way: if Tinder rated handshakes, he’d never get a right-swipe.
“Is this the rest of my team?” It’s a duh statement, but hey, I’ve got to break the ice somehow.
Roger shrugs, then waves toward the others. “Yeah, right. Meet Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo.”
The others snicker and wave weakly.
“What do I need to know about the game?” I ask.
“Queen of Hearts still has a bug or two to work out. We’re talking about it now, as a matter of fact. But, as far as you’re concerned, all you need to know is that it’s a combination of MMORPG and life simulation. It’s geared at female players with families, preferably stay-at-home moms with discretionary income.”
“Cough—MILFs—cough!” Wise Ass thinks he’s being cute.
While the others giggle, Rodney flips him a bird. “The goal is to ensure Queen of Hearts is realistic, engaging, and most of all, addictive.”
In other words, currently the game is viewed as a money pit for the company. And yet, he shows less interest in it than the yacht sales website on his screen. A lot less interest. A little eye contact would be nice—but no, I’m all but invisible.
“We’re under a tight deadline,” he continues. “So, if you hit a bug, signal any of these cretins, but keep playing. When you’re done with your pest report, offer beta keys on some of the free beta-test loops. Maybe you can tempt a few suckers to give you feedback before Wonder-Con next weekend, Friday through Sunday.”
I pray that whatever the Mad Hacker warned us about goes down on Friday, so that it’s out of the way before Carl shows up on my doorstep.
And if it goes down the way I hope, he’ll be met by a SWAT team.
“Speaking of Wonder-Con,” says Zhao, “Since QofH has its own booth, I presume our team gets free passes, right?”
Roger shakes his head. “Wrong. After my pass and the booth babe’s, I’ve got just one pass left. How ‘bout you guys strip to your skivvies and death-match it out?”
His suggestion goes over like a wet fart. No doubt, each of them still wakes from nightmares of gym class.
Roger shrugs. “Thought not. Okay, here’s the deal. Since this clown”—he points to Fu Manchu—“can’t find the A-bug, let alone his dick, I’ll make the pass the reward for the programmer who can exterminate it, and I’ll let the winner choose the booth babe. How’s that?”
They high-five each other, but none of them has the balls to glance over at Fu Manchu, who is steaming over Roger’s diss.
I’m steaming too. If I don’t get into that booth, Acme loses its eyes and ears during the hand-off.
“Time is money, so g
et to work.” He motions me toward a glassed-in cubicle with a door that actually closes. It holds a glass-top desk and a laptop.
The second I sit down in the chair in front of it, I hear Emma’s voice through my ear bud: “Guess what they’re doing right now.”
“I have no idea,” I mutter, as I turn around to look into the group pit.
They are staring back at me. When I wave at them, they snicker and blush.
Emma growls, “They’re taking bets on your bra size.”
I sigh. “Let me guess, those Glass-holes are using some sort of x-ray app, coded with some sort of size algorithm.”
“Nothing like that is on the market yet, but I’m sure one will be available soon. In the meantime, handle it any way you want.”
I hear a ping on my cell phone. Emma has sent me a transcript of a group chat:
Roger: Time’s up. All bets in, guys.
Ichabod: 32 A?
Fu Manchu: I’m in a generous mood, so 32 C.
Bollywood: Grow a pair! They’re at least 36’s! I say 36 B.
Wise Ass: UR giving her too much credit. I’ll go with 34 B. Maybe a C.
Zhao: I’ll double that to 36 D.
Roger: Then that leaves me with 32 B. What can I say? She underwhelms me.
I underwhelm him?
I do my best to hold my head high (and to jut my breasts out).
Instead of glaring, I smile pretty and blow him a kiss.
The smirk on his face is replaced by a frown. His eyes narrow as he scrutinizes the newest member of the team that will make his reputation, one way or another.
He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m his worst nightmare.
After six hours of nonstop playing, I’ve come to the conclusion that the game outright sucks.
My avatar is a sweet-looking mommy whom I’ve named Donna S. Like me, she has medium brown hair, gray eyes, dimples, and loves simple sundresses. Her life is also simple: husband, three children (two girls and a boy sandwiched in the middle) and two dogs—a collie and a German shepherd.