Kaitlin:
You're too old for Star Wars.
Jim:
You didn't answer my question.
Kaitlin:
Okay, then, it's generic Hollywood Screenplay 101—Prince Amulon wasn't always a prince. He was born poor in the Mukki-Mukki village, near the Harkka Mushroom, and one day a war-hardened Yalli Sprite told him his destiny . . .
Jim:
Kaitlin, sorry—I just can't listen to any more of this. Do you have enough for your homework assignment?
Kaitlin:
I think so.
Jim:
Do you want to eat from craft catering, here on the set? It's "Flavours of Provence" week. Olive oil, foraged alpine mushrooms and pork loin. But the gummi bears are stale, for some reason.
Kaitlin:
Sure. Thanks, Jim.
Jim:
Look over there—it's Goldie Hawn.
. . .
We decided to pull an all-nighter to inject bonus gore into Ronald's Lair. It was Bree who had the idea: "What if Ronald was kidnapped and we saw him on Al Jazeera three minutes before his execution?"
"What is Ronald doing in the Middle East, anyway?"
"Secretly spying for Royal Dutch Petroleum."
"I don't know if he'd work for another corporation."
"Do clowns have religion?"
"Maybe clowns are like most people, and they merely adopt their parents' beliefs as their own, all the while flattering themselves that they're the ones who made the decision."
"Maybe he's there as an embedded corporate mascot. When they drive a tank through an elementary school, Ronald passes out Happy Meal coupons to the uncrushed."
"Which country's tank?"
"Good question. Do you think Ronald looks Middle Eastern beneath that white pancake goo?"
"No way."
"Maybe he's like that California rich kid who converted and went to Afghanistan. Rich kids are the most screwed up. When they swap cultures they go viral on their old culture."
"Has anyone here ever contemplated bailing out of Western culture?"
Silence.
"Didn't think so."
"Back to Ronald's plea for mercy. When those al Qaeda guys behead people, it's not like they do it in one swoop, like the Japanese in World War Two. They use a steak knife, and it takes forever."
It was that kind of night.
. . .
Next morning:
Steve brought in the new Conde Nast Traveler magazine and in it there's this piece on China by Douglas Coupland. He makes it sound like the country is one big cocktail lounge. "Visit the rural countryside, where old and new brush together, creating an almost sexual friction. There's chemistry happening here, folks. The air is filled with hope and passion flower scent. .."
Steve said, "I seem to remember the air being filled with scorched rubber boots and charred auto seats, but he's certainly right about chemicals being everywhere."
I was appalled. "Lies, lies, lies."
Mark said, "Ethan, I told you, he's a professional liar. Get used to it. You're just pissed off because you can't buy into his amazing new revolutionary technology."
"I'm not pissed off."
We heard a moan coming from the hug machine—a bug catcher from a basketball game team. (NOTE: Workers come to visit jPod all the time now. Kaitlin has to launder the terry cloth cozies every two days. She's getting lazy and doesn't want to do it at home, so she rinses them in hot water in the coffee room sink, microwaves them for a minute and then hangs them by the ventilator intake to dry.)
Steve said, "You might as well know it—marketing is now becoming spooked about SpriteQuest."
"No kidding."
"The eye candy's not good enough, and now they're worried that a fantasy game strays too far from their corporate tradition of sports franchises and licensing deals."
"We told them that ages ago."
"Nobody listens to you people. That's why you're not executives. My point is that they're planning on pulling the plug."
"They can't."
"Yes, they can."
John Doe moaned, "We have to stop them."
"This is rich, isn't it?" Kaitlin said. "Trying to save that stupid game after all we've been through. But they can't—they can't kill our Ronald . . ."
Steve said, "If you kids have done your homework, he's unkillable. Unfortunately, he'll be unkillable inside a game that's
DOA."
We spent the rest of the day in denial as we competed to find the goriest photos we could online, extra points for subtlety. Winners included:
• No seat belts in Mexico City
• PETA cow slaughter video
• Romanian wedding mishap
• Punch press accident
• Drifter takes a catnap beneath Pepsi delivery
truck
• Chickenpox vaccine complications
• Toenail removal surgery
• Thai alligator wrangler gets arm ripped off by
alligator
• Whale explodes in Taiwan
I honestly don't know how gore websites could exist without contributions from Mexico and Southeast Asia.
Then I went through a wave of paranoia, imagining everyone in jPod rich, except me. They'll all be using their Coupland money to live on easy street while I'm mopping the aisles of Wal-Mart.
The aisles of Wal-Mart. . .
It sounds like an enchanted faraway place, doesn't it?
. . .
The phone rang. It was this guy named Bruce Pao. He's the executive whose gossamer-thin spidery handwriting is famous within the company, and bizarre enough to merit a secret web page fully devoted to interpreting its hidden meanings.
"Ethan, I picked you at random from members of the SpriteQuest team—a quality control call."
"Sure."
"Why don't you meet me for lunch?"
"Lunch?"
"That's what I said. Today. In the cafeteria. At one-thirty, after the rush dies down."
"Sure."
Click.
Steve was drinking Zima with John Doe in John's cubicle, the two of them porn trawling using Steve's executive override code. I said, "Hey, that was Bruce Pao. He wants to have lunch with me today."
This wowed Steve. "That's three cherries in a row, baby. That guy can make or break the project. What does he want?"
"Quality control he said. Random interview."
"I doubt that. Just make sure the game comes out of it sounding good. By the way, he made $3.6 million last year in stock."
. . .
Why do companies like Toblerone or Pepperidge Farm bother having websites? As if people are going to say to themselves, "Gee, I wish I knew more about Milano cookies. I know! I'll go to their site!"
Just a thought.
. . .
Oh God, I succumbed . . .
Milano® Cookies
Milano®, our most popular Distinctive cookie, is a satisfying combination of rich, dark chocolate sandwiched between two exquisite cookies.
. . .
Bruce and I met by the coffee command centre at the cafeteria's entrance. He was in his suit, looking out of place, like your parents at a wedding party, dancing to gangsta. I said, "You came all the way from downtown to see me?"
"I'm a caring executive. What are you having to eat?"
The special of the day was veal Prince Orloff with baked pears Felicia for dessert. "I'm going to go straight to dessert."
"Smart."
We got our food and sat down. "So, tell me about SpriteQuest. Tell me something passionate. Something inspired."
I realized I had to make a plea here for Ronald's life. I began to speak, and as I did, I felt like I was taking a shit in the woods—you know, it's fine, but it also feels totally wrong at the same time. "Bruce, SpriteQuest is just the best project ever. It rocks. It's kickass."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. We're so stoked, and, I don't know... It's got this great aura about i
t—like we're making some sort of big leap forward game-wise."
Bruce said, "You know, Ethan, incremental improvements never win. We have to be vision busters."
Vision busters? "You said it, man."
"Tell me, Ethan, what are your favourite parts of the game?"
This was going to be a toughie, as I had none. Think, Ethan, think. "I like the way a player really gets inside Prince Amulon's head. Why does he want to find the sword? Sure, he needs it to enter the fire level, but the backstory of his father being killed battling with the Dark Warlord makes it personal. And the sprites' storage vault? Man, that place just smokes. And the way we retroed converted skateboards into Happy Carpets was totally inspired."
Bruce seemed mildly interested, so I said, "Hey, there's a rumour going around that the game's in trouble."
Now he seemed mildly surprised. "Oh?"
"Yeah. You can't kill it. It's such a great game, and the company needs it to establish itself as a creator of a quality fantasy franchise."
I didn't know what more to say, nor did Bruce. I ate a bite of dessert while he began to look bored. Shit I wasn't being enthusiastic enough.
Bruce said, "Your brother, Greg, sells real estate."
"Yeah. You know him?"
"Slightly."
"Did you go to school together?"
"No."
More bites of dessert. What a disastrous meeting.
Then Bruce said, "Actually, your brother's selling this place up at Whistler that I have an eye on. A nice little chalet."
"Oh?"
"Yes. He is."
The meeting was suddenly making sense. "Which part of Whistler?"
"The Maui North development."
"Pricey."
"You can't put a price on a dream."
What is it with these marketing executives and their love of crap phrases? "Any specific house or property?"
"Lot 49."
"Have you bid?"
"Yes. But someone else bid before me."
"Bummer."
"Yes. It is."
"Why Lot 49?"
Bruce looked around the room and lowered his voice. "Because I don't believe in the future. I think we're all doomed. A survivalist organization I belong to singled out the Whistler/Pemberton Valley region as the most hospitable given a multiple global warming, dirty bomb, crop failure and SARS Classic scenario. Especially properties like Lot 49, which has a year-round stream capable of generating twenty thousand kilowatts of electricity using only a minimal rotary conversion system."
I see.
During the pause that followed, I felt adult—me being in on a secret and being powerful enough to pull strings. "Why don't I call Greg tonight?"
"Yes. Give him a shout. But don't take too much time away from your work. We want SpriteQuest to be a smash."
. . .
I walked back to jPod to phone my brother. Kaitlin was fluffing some recently washed hug machine cozies, Cowboy was chugging acid pink cough syrup, Evil Mark was watching hockey fight MPEGs on some Russian website and Bree was glued to stars with-out makeup. com, a site that she estimates has sucked a half-billion people-years of productivity from the global economy.
Steve was sitting at my desk, speaking on the phone in his "old Steve" voice to somebody in the marketing division. "All right-a-roony. That's a yes from this camper . . . best team in the country. Workaholics. I tell them to slow down, but their drive is unstoppable. You got it." Steve hung up, looked around and said, "Come on, you lazy little fucks. You have to do something here in this wretched pod. I can't cover your asses forever."
Cowboy said, "Steve, fuck off."
The rhythm of John Doe's typing was growing more manic over on his side of the baffles.
"John, are you okay in there?" Steve asked.
It turns out somebody had sent John the first million digits of pi, and the beauty of it had reduced him to a jittery mess. I said, "John, pi is cool and all, but how come you're falling apart over it?"
"Ethan, pi is essentially a string of random numbers. Here's a fun fact: the chances of finding your phone number inside the first hundred million digits of pi—minus the area code—is 99.997 percent. To find your number with area code becomes a bit less than one percent—even to find fake movie numbers like (212) 555—1234."
"I know you have the autism thing going for you, but what's the big deal?"
"The deal, Ethan, is that news like this will spur people on to buy lottery tickets."
"How?"
"If people locate their phone number inside pi's first million digits, it'll make them feel lucky, and before you know it, they'll go out and throw money away on lottery tickets."
"John, regardless of your mathematics, somebody always does wind up winning the lottery, so what's the point of stressing?" Kaitlin said. "And while we're on the subject, what exactly is your beef with lottery tickets?"
"My beef is that my father won the Irish Sweepstakes when I was two and left my mother, who overreacted and became a power lesbian. It's a family legend. As a result I was home-schooled and didn't even know that capitalized letters existed until I was ten."
"What do lesbians have against capitalized letters?"
"Capitalization implies a hierarchy, that some letters are more special than others."
"Oh."
Meanwhile, Mark—possibly the most pragmatic of anyone in jPod, located a pi website with the first hundred thousand digits of pi. "Everyone listen up. I've just emailed all of you the first hundred thousand digits of pi. Into this list I've inserted one incorrect digit. The first person to locate this rogue digit will win"—Mark looked into his desk drawer and picked something up—"this bag of Korean shrimp chips. At the count of three, search. One, two, three— searchl"
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277857713427577896091736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881710100031378387528865875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537875937519577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989380952572010654858632788659361533818279682303019520353018529689957736225994138912497217752834791315155748572424541506959508295331168617278558890750983817546374649393192
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