The Playmor booth was visible from across the hall, with its tall banners waving all the way to the ceiling. The company had spared no expense. XP Expo—or simply XPO in the fan vernacular—was key in the industry; visibility here was worth tens of thousands of dollars in catch-up marketing elsewhere.
As he approached, however, the booth looked lopsided. Games and accessories filled two-thirds of the space, displaying Playmor’s extensive catalog of products. The remaining third was an empty wall of signage and two empty tables. That was where the limited edition early release of Hellraisers Menace was supposed to be displayed, along with related merchandise like t-shirts, themed notebooks, buttons, and stickers. “Any word?” Adam called as he approached.
Brenda, the marketing chief, waved him absently to silence as she continued a conversation on the phone. “Okay, well, let me know when you hear something. Any time, I don’t care about business hours. We’re on convention time here, anyway, twenty-four hours a day. Thanks. Bye.” She clicked to end the call and looked at Adam. “You’ve heard?”
“About the truck? Yeah. But it should be here soon, right? Before Sunday, anyway?”
“So they tell me. I hope they’re right.” She shook her head. “But even so—you saw all those people waiting outside? About half of those people are going to come to this booth as their first or second stop, trying to pick up Hellraisers product, and we have to tell them to come back later.”
“Ow,” said Adam. “That’s not going to go over well, especially not for people who lined up for hours.” He frowned. “I wonder if we could send someone to make announcements to the line, explaining the truck was delayed, so we don’t get the full onslaught here at the booth? It wouldn’t make anyone happier, but it’d be a lot easier to explain with people lined up and listening.”
Brenda brightened. “And we could have the line volunteers do it. Send in a different messenger with the bad news.” She glanced at her watch, “Or not. No time.”
Across the hall, the doors opened and the swell of sound grew as the crowd surged inside. “Do not run!” shouted a few door guards, but their voices were quickly drowned out. Adam turned to see the tide entering, sweeping along the aisles and eddying at major vendor booths.
“This is not going to be fun,” said Brenda.
The booth staff spread across the front of the booth’s entrance, hands raised to slow the rushing shoppers. Enrique, the sales manager, climbed atop a play-testing table and waved for attention as the confused crowd slowed. “I’ve got good news and bad news for you,” he called, and the crowd quieted to better hear him. “The bad news is, the truck with most of our Hellraisers product had trouble and is stuck two states over. So as you can see, we don’t have our product here yet. But—!” he shouted as groans and rumbles of discontent rose. “But, it’s being repaired and we should have everything arriving soon. We don’t know exactly when—but the games will be ready to go on Sunday, we’re sure.”
“What about the other stuff?” called a voice. “Limited edition figures and stuff?”
“They’ll be here,” promised Enrique.
“But do we get a ticket for being here now?” came the response. “I was in line three hours so I could be early enough to get the special figurines. If we come back later, we’ll lose our place. Do we have to line up again and keep losing time? Are you doing a list or tickets or something?”
Enrique hesitated. “We can make a list,” he said. “For the limited edition figures only—we can’t have a list for every product. We’ll take five hundred names, and you have to pick up and pay before noon on Sunday or we release your option to someone else. Does that make sense, sound fair to everyone?”
The crowd mostly nodded, and Enrique gestured for one of the booth staff to bring a clipboard. Adam turned to Brenda. “That wasn’t quite a debacle. We can get through this.”
Brenda looked at him and exaggerated crossing her fingers.
The next forty-five minutes were busy, with Hellraisers hopefuls squeezing into a makeshift queue as others purchased separate Playmor products from the various product lines. Adam was not technically supposed to be booth help, but he could hardly have walked away from Brenda in this time of crisis. He did what he could, pointing shoppers to items they couldn’t find in the press of bodies or answering whether the mud elementals were found in kit number three or number four.
The crowd was everywhere, suffocatingly close, and he could feel himself sweating. It had been a long time since he’d felt panicky in a crowd, long enough that he’d thought he was over it, but he was definitely sniffing about the edges of a freak-out. He swallowed, and it felt as if he were pushing past a marble. His hands were slick as he handed a gamer in a Spiderman suit a set of color-coded dice.
It was that stupid panel, that ridiculous complaint about him, he realized. And then the stress about the truck. He loved being on a panel, he needed that kind of exposure for his career, and a complaint like that could kill his chances in the game world. The delayed product wasn’t his problem, not really, but it was a Hellraisers problem. If Hellraisers flopped after all this hype it wouldn’t be Lee Cole, legendary game designer, who would be blamed, nope, and Adam Sullivan would never work in game design again.
On top of all that, he was standing in a room with literally thousands of people shuffling elbow to ribs around him, so that he couldn’t get out even if he tried, and he was trying not to think about that. He rubbed his hands on his pants.
A tall redhead in a Firefly shirt, with her hair in a ponytail, wriggled past him to stare at the empty wall, marked only with posters and price tags on empty bins. “They can’t be sold out already,” she protested in hopeful disbelief to a shorter brunette. “Surely not.”
The brunette frowned. “I told you we should have come here first.”
“It’s not sold out,” Adam said. “Word’s going around, but the truck was delayed, so the Hellraiser product isn’t in stock yet. It’s coming.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Really? Ouch. That’s gotta be rough at XPO. Is there a list to get on, for rainchecks or something?”
Adam pointed. “He’s taking names in order for the limited edition figurines, but that’s the only list. Everything else, it’s come back later.”
She stared at him. “You’re kidding me.”
Adam was so tired of explaining this and of dealing with people and of being in this hall. “Not kidding. No reason to make that up in this kind of mob. I’ve been repeating it for a solid hour now.”
“So you work here,” she realized. “And you expect all these people to just keep coming back every hour or two in the hope that the truck has arrived, and when it finally does, stuff goes to the people who were lucky enough to guess right?” She shook her head, her ponytail swaying. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s going to work just fine,” he said, more out of a need to counter her than any real conviction. “Stuff happens. No one at Playmor is responsible for a flat tire. People need to recognize that.”
“I didn’t say Playmor was responsible for the truck trouble,” she returned. “I meant this is going to kill sales. The momentum can’t take that kind of hit.”
“Haven’t you heard of supply and demand? It might work even better, making the game scarce.”
“But there’s not a scarcity of games,” she said. She gestured about them to encompass the whole hall. “We’re standing in the Mecca of games. Thousands of games, from a couple hundred companies. Sure, Hellraisers is a big deal and people want it, but if people just can’t get it, they’re going to buy something else. And if that was their game budget, if their demand isn’t elastic enough to buy extra games, then Hellraisers is going to lose their sales.” She shrugged. “I was an Econ minor, sorry.”
If Hellraisers didn’t sell, then Playmor lost a ton of money, a ton of prestige, and the budget for the expansions Adam was hoping to write. “A book can’t predict everything in the real world! You can’t just predict h
ow people act and react and what they’ll buy! You can’t actually influence people’s decisions like that!”
She stared at him. “Then why even do marketing and this booth at all?”
Enrique came by to retrieve a new sheet for his clipboard. “Wow,” he confided to Adam as he passed. “We’re holding, but it’s a madhouse. Can’t blame them, though.”
“But are you going to have the Hellraisers games and product in this weekend?” asked the redhead.
“It was just a bad tire. I don’t know why it was even this much of a delay, but I guess they’re specialty tires or something. Yes, we’re expecting it soon.”
The brunette spoke. “Can we add our names to the list?”
“Certainly.” Enrique lifted his clipboard. “What figures are you interested in?”
Adam saw his chance and decided to slip through the crowd. He needed a break. Brenda would understand. He wasn’t supposed to be here anyway.
“Hey, can you help me? I’m trying to find the new Hellraisers books.”
Adam choked back an exasperated sigh and began explaining for the thousandth time.
The man with the clipboard finished Angie’s figurine order and turned to Cassandra. “And what’s your name?”
“Cassandra,” she said. “Cassandra Highland. Aptly named, today.”
He wrote that down. “Oh? How aptly named?”
“Cassandra was a prophetess in Troy,” Angie explained. “And her curse was, her predictions were always correct but no one would ever believe her.”
“The advantages of the public school system no longer teaching a classical education,” Cassandra said. “You can make fun of people right to their face, and they don’t have the literature classes to get it.” She looked after the rude salesman, but he had his back to her and was talking to another gamer about the missing truck. “But he’s not listening, so he won’t have a chance to not get the joke.” She looked back at the man with the clipboard.
“So you said this wouldn’t work….”
“…And he didn’t believe me. Even though I’m right.” She shook her head. “No offense to you, I know it’s not your fault. No one’s fault. But you can’t build that kind of hype and then not have product available. People get upset, they go find something else to buy.”
He frowned. “We’re doing the best we can.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. I said it was unfortunate it happened at XPO. And I said an order list would be the best way to handle it.”
“We can’t have a list!” snapped the first salesman, turning back. “There are thirty thousand people here, and we can’t hope to track everyone down if we take names. All product, including Hellraisers Menace, will be sold first come, first serve.”
“But I, and a lot of others, came first.”
“You know what I mean. You can pick up a game after the truck arrives.”
“But what about people with scheduled events? You could take names and have a pickup deadline, or the games are released again. You could charge extra for shipping if they’re not collected.”
“We’re not stupid, we thought about those options,” he said. “But the truck is already late, so by the time we have stock, the turnaround for a pickup deadline is going to be really short. If we might need to ship, that means we need to run different credit card payments or take extra cash, and we won’t have the customer present to authorize the card or to pay the additional amount. It’s much easier if we just do a point-of-sale transaction, you pay for the game and walk out with it.”
“But I have con events scheduled!” she said. “I left this time open to come to the vendor hall.” She thought of the hopeful eyes waiting for her, and of going home to disappoint them. “I spent months working to ten stars!”
He blew out his breath and all but rolled his eyes. “Elitism isn’t a thing here. And nobody’s impressed by a girl with ten stars. I don’t care if you have ten stars or two, you can’t just demand a game.”
Cassandra started to retort and then caught herself. “That’s not what I meant, that I deserved special treatment for being a girl GM. It had more to do with my dedication to getting to this game. It’s a pity you don’t have a similar dedication to getting your game to gamers.” She turned. “Come on, Angie, let’s go find someone who will sell us a game without making it a gender issue.”
“No, look, I didn’t mean—I should have said—”
She pushed past him into the crowded aisle, and Angie followed.
They’d gone about five steps when Cassandra whispered, “Hideous remorse,” and flicked a hand over her shoulder. A second later there was a satisfying slap of flesh against flesh.
“He just hit himself in the forehead,” Angie whispered, peeking back.
Cassandra nodded. “Yep.”
“You have got to be kidding me! This isn’t happening!”
Adam looked up from his rubbery chicken strips, purchased from a convention center vendor in lunch desperation, and braced himself for this new crisis. “What are we talking about?”
“The truck is still in Missouri,” announced Brenda.
“What?!”
She squeezed her phone in a stranglehold as if it was at fault, a modern killing of the messenger. “The truck. It’s still in—”
“Missouri, I heard you. But why? I thought they were fixing the tire?”
“They fixed the tire, but then the driver slipped getting into the cab and fell. And broke his leg. Compound fracture in his shin or something.”
Adam stared at her, trying to work his mouth around some suitable profanity.
“I know, right? Like, what else could go on this weekend?”
Lee Cole cut in. “Can’t he drive with his other leg?”
Lee had stopped by the booth to schmooze with fans and answer some general questions about the Hellraisers line. Adam had put off his mediocre lunch for a while just to take the opportunity to stand beside him, two fellow game writers in the Playmor booth.
“Lee, he’s on codeine. No, he can’t drive. If he tried, he’d probably end up in a swamp in Florida or something instead of XPO.” Brenda threw her eyes to the ceiling as if accusing the fluorescent lighting of treachery. “And then the EPA would fine us for introducing role-playing games to the gators.”
Adam closed his eyes and took a breath. “Where’s the truck?”
“Far Reach, Missouri. Wherever that is.”
Adam pulled his own phone and began tapping as Lee grumbled about Missouri and drivers and logistics. “Can’t they transfer the boxes to air freight? The freight company should pick up the extra cost, but even if they didn’t—”
“She says that’s not possible,” Brenda interrupted. “Something about needing additional authorization that they can’t complete on a weekend. Trust me, the office is so going to hear about that come weekday business hours, but in the meantime, she says the driver’s sitting in the cab to keep the cargo safe. We don’t need it safe, we need it here!”
“What we need,” Lee declared, “is our own driver.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” cut in Adam. “Look, it’s ten hours to Far Reach, Missouri. That’s twenty hours round trip. Plenty of time to get the games and get back by event start Sunday.”
“You have a curious definition of ‘plenty,’” Brenda answered. “Hellraisers Menace games start at eleven Sunday morning. It’s almost noon now.” She gave him a dubious look. “And it’s not going to be twenty hours, anyway, not even if everything is perfect. You’d have to stop for gas. And toilets. And probably food and drink. Plus, that truck is not exactly a sports model, so it’s not going to be a record-setting trip back. That’s going to be twenty-two hours at best, at the very best. And since nobody wants to drive twenty-two hours straight—especially not in a cursed truck which will probably flip over and explode if you get drowsy—you’ll need nap time as well.”
“That’s what energy drinks are for.”
“Lee, we are in enough trouble a
lready. If a sleepy driver crosses the line and crashes head-on into a minivan full of soccer kids, it’s not going to do us any good. Or the kids.” She shook her head. “And we’re at a con, in case you forgot. Everyone’s running on half-empty already. It can’t be done.”
“Two drivers,” Adam suggested. “One naps while the other sleeps. When no one’s sleeping, they talk to stay alert. It’s the Cannonball Run, with a truck full of special edition RPGs.”
Brenda brightened. “That would be fantastic,” she said. “Who can go with you?”
“What, me?” Adam gestured to his chest in surprise. “I didn’t volunteer to—”
“I didn’t ask you to volunteer, I told you to go.” Brenda pointed at Lee. “Lee has a half dozen panels this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I cannot handle the burning building that is this PR crisis from a truck cab in Missouri. And don’t ask me to list all the reasons we can’t send the teen volunteers or the sales staff. You, on the other hand, have already finished your panel and have nothing else booked before the big event on Sunday.”
“Brenda, I’m a game designer, not a truck driver.”
“And McCoy is a doctor. But more important, you’re not even a game designer if you don’t have a game.” She paused and took a breath. “Adam, look, it’s an unusual situation. We have to take on unusual tasks if we’re going to get through it. I know you think you can just walk over to End Run Games if Playmor gets egg all over our face, and maybe that’s true, but I can’t, not after a marketing disaster on this scale. Throw me a bone. Go get the truck.”
There really wasn’t much of an argument to make. She was right; his single panel was over, and he had no more official duties until the Hellraisers Menace debut game started—and that was going to be never, not at XP Expo, unless they got that truck. “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be obstinate, I just was caught off guard, that’s all. Get me an address and some Red Bull.”
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