We Are Watching Eliza Bright

by A. E. Osworth

  The tension is too much for her shitty sense of self. Or she is sure that she’ll be immune to consequences if she confronts them. Or she takes another swing into chaotic again; what she psychotically believes is Chaotic Good. Eliza clears her throat. “I know what 80085 means.”

  “We know you know,” Lewis says. A beat passes. Jean-Pascale looks down at the wood floor. “We know,” Lewis continues, “that you asked for a promotion.”

  “I didn’t,” Eliza says. She can’t figure out where to set her gaze, so she looks out toward Preston’s office. He sits at his desk staring at his computer, and Dog sits on the couch, his watery eyes on her.

  Lewis clears his throat again, heat rising in his face. He is awkward even at the least awkward of times, and this is not the least awkward of times. “We know you accused us of sexually harassing you.”

  “I didn’t, I actually don’t think—”

  “Do you know what that does to a guy? To have that accusation on his record? What, are you just trying to slash and burn us to claw your way to the top? And fuck all with the established team, the people who have been here all along? You think you’re too good for us—”

  “No, I—”

  “Yes, you do,” Lewis snaps. He is emboldened now that he understands what we have always understood: there is protection in the brotherhood of gaming; the company understands that sometimes men need to yell at work. Someone might have a Conversation with Lewis about it later, but then he will apologize and his point will still have been made, incontrovertibly burned into Eliza’s memory, and that’s what he needs. The Conversation mechanism is there to protect him, a leader, as he does what needs doing for his team. Or he loses his cool, forgets that Eliza and Preston are almost certainly sleeping together and that whatever he says might cause the CEO to retaliate. Or he knows it and will deny saying anything later. It’ll make her look even more crazy, like a lying bitch.

  “You can’t take a damn joke. We all got poked fun of and hazed or whatever when we first started—we’re used to it, from high school. And what, you think you should just get to be here? Some popular hack who jumps into games the instant it’s cool, the instant it won’t get your ass kicked.” Lewis stands; his hands curl into fists. “That you don’t have to do what we both did.” He gestures to Jean-Pascale, who looks up, wide-eyed and surprised to be included. “No, there’s a process. A set of dues. You don’t just waltz into the gaming world and take a great job from someone who’s studied for years, played games for years, put up with bullshit for years to get here. And you don’t do it in a way that none of us can. Marching all over the place, accusing us of sexual harassment. Fucking your way to the middle. We know about you and Preston.” Lewis’s eyes bug out, like a dollar store toy being squeezed and squeezed. “We can’t sleep with Preston to get a job or to ask for a promotion, and you shouldn’t get to either.”

  “We are absolutely not—!” Eliza shouts back, alarmed. She wants to finish the sentence with the word “fucking” but it is work and she isn’t sure if she can or should say it. Or she’s taken so much by surprise that she can’t respond, outshouted or outwitted by Lewis. Or they are fucking, and she finds it difficult to lie. Once again, Eliza looks around, this time for witnesses to this outburst she can barely believe is happening. JP is jittery like he’s taken a caffeine pill, scratching his arms and looking anywhere but at Lewis. Her eyes light on Preston’s glass office once more and, of course, he is working too hard to have noticed the commotion. Dog, though, has risen from the couch and sits at the glass wall, staring, mouth open in a silent whine.

  “Oh, sure, sure, you didn’t, you’re not, whatever. And then you tell Andy you have a boyfriend. Well, you didn’t before and now you do, now that you have a promotion. Did he pay you with that promotion, huh? Is that how you see it? Preston’s too good to see it that way and you’re going to suck all the fucking life out of him and then eviscerate him when you get what you want.” Lewis is more controlled now, more like Doctor Moriarty. A small spark of glee lodges somewhere behind his diaphragm: he’s embodying all those opposite parts, those choices he would make to be a different person, if he could. To be more powerful. To take the power that is rightfully his. He draws himself up and looks down at Eliza. He is short, but so is she, and it looks intimidating. “We were doing fine before you got here.”

  “I don’t doubt that, but—”

  “We’d have made this patch without you.”

  “Okay, but listen—”

  “And we’d have launched Vive support without you. We did all of that anyway.”

  “I understand, I only knew for a couple days—”

  “Your stuff doesn’t deserve special attention, it just doesn’t.”

  Eliza stamps her foot on the ground and shouts, “Did you even look at the part of the patch I wrote? Really look at it? Or did you just copy it in all chopped up without paying attention and decide it was filled with errors?”

  Lewis turns his back on her. “I don’t need to look at anything created by a feminazi whore who asks for promotions over her seniors. Because I know. I just fucking know.” He turns back around, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. Yes, yes. We feel this face. Deeply. We feel it so often. Lewis Fleishman is our hero. “Go run to your boyfriend.”

  Lewis steps back, fast, because Eliza gets what we’ll call dead shark eyes. Something turns off in her. Any sort of human compassion for another person flees her gaze and all that is left is darkness. Here is the villain we know she is, in her eyes at this moment. A few of us disagree, think we understand: she is tired. She is finished. Still more of us think she is on the rag: do eyes go dead when that happens, when you’re that emotional? She stands up and walks out of the collaboration room.

  When she arrives at the bathroom, she can’t even cry. She would have thought that’s what she’d do—she’s never been called a feminazi whore before. She’s never been accused of sleeping with her boss before. If she’d told past-Eliza about this moment, past-Eliza would have predicted tears.

  Or, when she arrives in the bathroom, she splashes water on her face and sets her mouth in a thin line, ready to take revenge.

  Or, when she arrives in the bathroom, there’s a twenty-minute gap between this piece of the puzzle and the next, because she does cry. She takes care to do it silently; if anyone hears her, she will be judged too sensitive, too feminine. Because she can’t get a good wail on, it takes longer than normal.

  We don’t really know what she does in the bathroom.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The entirety of Fancy Dog files into a movie theater Preston rented. The theater employees are under strict orders to stay out of the screening room; it is at the very end of the hall, up the stairs. The walls are soundproof. No one will be able to overhear the announcement outside.

  Eliza is buzzing on coffee and excitement while also weighed down with the knowledge of 80085, being accused of having an affair with Preston, and the proof positive that it still means something to be a man in this world, that there are still people here who would put her in her rightful place. It is a strange cocktail of emotions that results in a floating feeling, like breathing helium from a balloon. She can’t quite feel her face.

  “Welp,” Devonte says as he turns to Suzanne. “We have to go up front.”

  “What?” Suzanne asks around a mouthful of popcorn.

  “Eliza and I have to sit up front. We’re part of the announcement. We have cues to hit and everything.”

  “You mean you both know what this is?”

  Eliza and Devonte nod.

  “Son of a fucking bitch,” Suzanne says, shaking her head. Eliza worries that Suzanne is angry until she sees the little smile. “I can’t believe y’all didn’t tell me.”

  “They made us sign a thing,” Eliza says. She wishes she’d said it with her own mouth full of movie snacks, but when she’d gotten up to the counter, she found she was too nauseous to want anything. Almost as if her body latched on to her desk
mate’s suggestion.

  “It was killing me,” Devonte says, a Twizzler protruding from the corner of his lips like a celebratory cigar.

  “How long?” Suzanne asks.

  “Fuck, more than a year. Close to two.”

  “I only had to do a few days,” Eliza interrupts. “I can’t imagine keeping it for longer.”

  “This is where we leave you.” Devonte salutes Suzanne, who discreetly flashes a middle finger below seat level. Devonte snort-chuckles and turns toward the front.

  “Dev,” Eliza says. “Make sure you’re sitting between me and that guy?” She points at the back of her tablemate’s head.

  “Who, Andy? What’s wrong with Andy? He’s a nice guy.”

  “He hit on me right before this. Which is, like, whatever. I just don’t wanna deal.”

  He snort-chuckles again. “A little too nice, maybe.” When they get to the front row, Devonte puts his body between Andy and Eliza.

  “Do you have yours?” Devonte says.

  “Yep. It’s in my bag.” She holds up a cloth sling purse, weighed down by what a careful observer might guess to be very large binoculars; perhaps a scuba diving mask.

  In response, he holds up a strangely shaped Whole Foods shopping bag, which he stuffs down under his seat. “Weirdest-shaped avocados ever,” he says, and Eliza laughs. She is starting to have fun; being with Devonte is always easy. He’s calm, calming. The smile slides from her face, however, as Jean-Pascale and Lewis enter from the back. They are both carrying conspicuous neon-yellow backpacks and wear smug smiles. Their heads are raised like they are being led by the chin and they gaze, king-like, upon the uninitiated, their own personal unwashed masses. They are reasonably proud, given what they’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time. Eliza’s body shoots through with anger and her stomach flips upside down.

  She nudges Devonte with her elbow. “Do the teams have to sit together?”

  He nods and gestures down the row at the rest of his five-person crew. Andy lifts his hand to wave and Eliza turns quickly away. We sigh with relief: everyone in the front row—all the engineers (junior and senior), all the user interface designers, everyone who knows about the launch—all of them are men. Except Eliza. And except Devonte, all of them are white. No matter what they try, we aren’t obsolete yet. We’re still here, in the upper echelons, where we belong. But they’re encroaching—Devonte and Eliza are proof of that. So even though we know well that the “perks” of diversity are fake, we have to be vigilant. We don’t want us, or our representatives, taking up any fewer seats in rows like this.

  Eliza turns in her seat and looks back. The entirety of HR is comprised of women. It’s the acceptable place for diversity efforts, one that doesn’t require any hard skills. Customer service is equally split—Suzanne sits next to her co-worker, what’s his name, that fucking fruit. She nudges Devonte again. “How did they get away without telling the animators and the character designers?”

  Devonte holds a finger up while he swallows the last of his Twizzler. “They design and animate in 3-D already. We just got really specific about sizes, specs, that shit.”

  Lewis and Jean-Pascale sit down next to her. She stops talking. They sit in silence. Not a comfortable silence; imagine the silence after a beer is spilled on a laptop. That’s the kind of silence we’re talking about. Fortunately for everyone, Preston and his co-founder, Brandon, step onto the stage. The lights dim as everyone begins to clap and cheer.

  They never see much of Brandon in the office, though he is a co-founder and certainly the COO, maybe even the CFO. In fact, Eliza thinks this is the first time she’s ever seen him in person; but we see him a lot, especially those of us who have purchased stock in Fancy Dog Games—this is the man who addresses stakeholders, did all the pitches when they were gunning for VC funding, writes articles on Business Insider, Quartz and in the Wall Street Journal. He looks like he is Preston’s age, but his hair is already mostly grey. He attempts a smile—and why not, it is a very exciting day—but his face looks unused to flexing those muscles. In all his photos, his suits are bespoke expressions of sartorial grace, and the kind of skinny velvet modern that can go out of style any second. Today is no exception—a dark maroon with a coordinated (but not matching) tie and pocket square. His tie clip is a Space Invader. He looks like a J.Crew take on a classic nerd. His glasses are small and wiry, circular and very hip. Eliza touches her own black frames and hopes they aren’t returning to the style corner from whence they came.

  She blinks—she feels like something is missing from the stage. Aren’t there senior software engineers, vice presidents of such and such, to join them? At the very least, a business strategy team? Until this point, she’s assumed they have a small army running the company. Could it really mostly be the two of them, even after they’d gone public? She reels from imagining all that responsibility until she remembers the board.

  “Settle down, settle down,” says Brandon.

  “You’ll have enough cause for noise in a bit, we promise,” Preston adds. Eliza’s eyes shift to him and—

  “Oh no.” She leans her head over to Devonte. “He’s not—”

  “What?” Devonte says.

  “The clothes? Preston’s clothes?”

  Preston wears a black turtleneck and blue jeans, an impersonation of the Steve Jobs announcement uniform. To Eliza, it reeks of striving, of intentionality. “You don’t think that’s a little—I dunno, embarrassing?” Eliza whispers.

  “Why would it be?” Devonte whispers back.

  “Do you really think it’s a fair comparison?” Eliza says, and Devonte thinks for only a second before nodding an affirmative.

  “Shhht,” Lewis hisses. “Always so distracted. Distracting.” Eliza rolls her eyes while also feeling thoroughly chastised. Her stomach grumbles. Her face is burning red with embarrassment and anger.

  “Before we get started,” Brandon continues, “HR is coming around with another nondisclosure agreement and some pens for those who need them.” Papers rustle and a blonde woman appears in the aisle, smiling as she passes out forms. Smiling big, even though she has no idea what is about to be announced and she knows she is looking at a group of insiders.

  “We know, we know!” Preston says. It sounds rehearsed, like he expects there to be groans in the audience even though there aren’t any; Eliza thinks the shine on Preston might be tarnished for her, and it makes her sad. “You’ve all already signed agreements, but the following announcement is, well, it’s major. And it falls under the category of business secret. Consider this new NDA a reminder.” He winks. At what, Eliza isn’t sure, but she hears someone sigh behind her. The reedy tones of idol worship. It reminds her of wanting to dig her hands into Preston’s hair, of wanting to climb onto his shoulders. She tries to resummon that feeling with little success. Trying to be in the moment, to get swept up with JP and Lewis right next to her, is like trying to meditate in the presence of a heat lamp. It is hard to let go, be present, with the words “feminazi whore” blazing next to her. The triumphant look on Lewis’s face.

  Brandon and Preston wait until everyone’s signed and all eyes are back on them. “I’m going to keep this short and sweet,” Preston says, and everyone hushes. “This is an idea Brandon and I have been playing around with since 2012, when we attended a demonstration by a software company that will change not only our own lives but the future of gaming and storytelling alike. Because truly, that is what games are all about. Since the beginning of human existence, we’ve been creating our own mythologies. And with those mythologies eventually come exclusivity. We have come up with all sorts of gates and gatekeepers to make sure only certain people get to tell their stories. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are doing a lot to democratize that—to put the power of myth, fable and story back into the hands of the people where it rightfully belongs.

  “We think that what we—what you all—are doing is so important, so life-changing, that we wouldn’t settle fo
r hardware less stellar than that,” Brandon continues, seamless. “We want to leap forward into a new world of user experience so vivid, so real, that our heroes don’t only get to create their mythologies through play: they get to live them.”

  It is Preston’s turn again: “The technology just wasn’t there in 2012, however, when Guilds of the Protectorate made its public debut and Fancy Dog Games officially launched. At the time, they didn’t have their hardware together. We kept our promise. We didn’t settle. But we foresaw great things. We had a plan for integrating this new product, this new paradigm, from the outset.” There are murmurs once again—Eliza picks out that same sigh. “He’s so smart,” the voice says, and it is everything Eliza can do to keep her face steady, to not react.

  “When the company contacted us and officially let us know a new, updated developer kit would soon be available, we went ahead with the plan. We called together our team of developers and they began the process of building an entirely new Windy City.” Brandon tries a tight smile. He is simply not as charismatic as Preston, we think. But in the end, that doesn’t matter. He is still alpha. He is still important. It gives us hope. “Earlier this year, when the consumer version hit our hands, we knew we’d made the right decision.”

  Someone behind Eliza gasps. “The Vive,” the voice whispers to a neighbor. “It has to be the HTC Vive.” Her voice rises at the end; excitement.

  “Virtual reality support?” the neighbor whispers back. “No shit.” Eliza smiles a little. Despite her anger, her disappointment, a part of her is still excited to be here. To be a part of this. She glances over at Devonte—his smile is huge. Seeing his unfettered happiness makes Eliza’s stomach drop further; she can’t be entirely ecstatic. They’ve wrecked it for her. In this moment, she is more than a witness to history: she is making history. But she can’t feel purely electrified. And then with a pang, she realizes how unfair her feeling is. Devonte didn’t ruin it for her. And he’s been at it for so long. He deserves all that happiness. She feels like the monster we know she is. She tries to focus her attention back on Preston.