PopCo

by Scarlett Thomas

  Chapter Four

  Although I have many anxious dreams about sleeping through lunch (after arriving here, so conspicuously, four hours early, that would surely be the last straw), I am awake, washed and changed by half-past twelve. One of the miscellaneous objects I have with me is a small inflatable bag with suction pads attached to it. This was a prototype for a product that was never made, which was due to be called Hide It! or something else with an exclamation mark. (We’ve gone a bit exclamation mark crazy recently, I think because of some ironic, or even post-ironic, Japanese connection.) The idea with this product is that you put things in it, squeeze out all the air, then use the suction pads to stick it somewhere secret, where the enemy won’t see it. It failed product testing because if you put too much stuff in it the suction pads don’t work. It’s a shame because initial focus groups loved it. The bags were originally going to be included with my KidTec, KidSpy and KidCracker kits, each one decorated accordingly with different types of camouflage, but the one I still have is just a see-through prototype. I put my credit card and a couple of other important things in it and stick it to the underside of the wooden cabinet. If it turns out that I really am staying in a dormitory with other people I may have to take other measures, but this will do for now.

  I have no idea where lunch is. Maybe in the main building, the one Mac described as having some kind of ‘grandeur’. I decide to go there to find out. As soon as I leave the barn I run into a bunch of people arriving with bags and cases. The mist has gone and it’s not quiet any more. You wouldn’t be able to hear the soft, breathless sound of the Kid Lab games now, what with all the extra sounds of people talking, coughing, arriving in taxis. I don’t know any of the people who are walking towards me.

  As well as involving the whole of the Battersea ID team, many of whom I only know to say ‘hello’ to, the POW event aims to bring together unique teams from other parts of the UK (like the videogame creatives, I suppose, although I don’t really know) and the English-speaking ID teams from Iceland and Spain. I learnt this last week from an ‘All Departments’ e-mail forwarded to me at home. The group walking towards the barn are, at a guess, from Iceland. One girl in the group has pink hair, tied up in pigtails. She’s wearing an obscure indie band T-shirt and a studded choker. Her rucksack has badges stuck on it, and various candy-coloured objects dangling from it: key rings, ribbons, a small soft-looking monkey toy. Just as she is about to make eye-contact, I spy Dan walking behind them, gesturing at me. A couple more hand gestures later, we are fleeing in the opposite direction.

  ‘Where’s your bag?’ I say to Dan, once we are halfway up the hill behind the barn.

  ‘In my room,’ he says. ‘I came to find you. You were on a list.’

  ‘Why are we running away?’

  ‘Escape is the only option,’ he says.

  Among a few other things, Dan and I share a love of military strategy and commando films. For me, it started with all the war stories my grandfather told me when I was growing up. For Dan, I’m not sure. At work, when we’ve had enough, we say things like, ‘Escape is the only option’, or ‘Eject’, and so on. We’re not having sex, despite what people sometimes think. We once spent a whole night watching free porn just after Dan got cable TV but when I tried to get into bed with him afterwards he told me he was gay-ish. I don’t know what gay-ish is. We’re just friends, anyway.

  ‘What’s up here?’ I ask him.

  ‘According to my map? An old hill fort.’

  ‘You have a map?’

  ‘Oh yes. And a compass. Just in case.’

  I wish I had my survival kit. ‘Won’t we miss lunch?’

  ‘No. We’ll just see this and then we’ll go back down.’

  At the top of the hill there is indeed a group of stones, some whole, some broken, arranged in a shape that could be a circle but is maybe actually a square. You’d have to go higher than this to see exactly what shape it was originally supposed to be, although there isn’t anywhere higher than this in sight, that being the point, I suppose, of a hill fort.

  ‘You can see everything from up here,’ Dan says, although he doesn’t really have to. Hare Hall now looks like a structure made from PopBrix (our version of Lego, although you’re not really allowed to say that). I can see the large, grey structure that is the main house, and the little annexe that is joined to it. Closer to us is the top of the barn in which I am staying, grey slate on grey brick. There are other large PopBrix structures scattered around: various old barns; and a flat-topped, whiteish structure that must be the Sports Hall Mac mentioned. Being up here is actually useful, in terms of working out the layout of this place and what might be close by. Although in terms of what is close by, there doesn’t really seem to be anything at all. There are no neighbouring structures or other houses that I can see. There is a stream off to the right and a thin, reddish-brown track to the left. As we watch, two taxis come down the track: more people coming to the POW event, presumably. Dan seems to get bored with looking down at Hare Hall, and soon starts to examine one of the stones instead. Then he lays both his palms flat against it and closes his eyes. I notice that he has a slightly pained expression.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying to connect,’ he says seriously.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I say, laughing.

  ‘Shhh. I’m concentrating. Becoming one with the rock. I see … a battle. Many warriors coming up the hill … We must hold them off! Hand me my arrows! Hide yourself!’

  ‘Stop it. Tell me what you know – seriously.’

  Dan breaks out of his trance. ‘Hill forts are characteristic of the middle and later Iron Age,’ he says. ‘500BC to AD50, roughly. They are supposed to be the fortified settlements of the Celtic people. At least twelve hill forts survive on Dartmoor. This isn’t one of the twelve most people know about. This hill fort actually belongs to PopCo.’

  ‘You’ve got a book, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Can I borrow it?’

  ‘Indeed. But only if you tell me where you’ve been for the last two weeks.’

  ‘Ideation, baby,’ I say. ‘Survival.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll explain later. What time is it, incidentally?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Shit. I thought you had a watch.’

  ‘Nope.’

  We scramble into lunch with about thirty seconds to spare. It isn’t even where we thought it would be. When we got to the Great Hall in the main building we were shooed away by a stern-looking woman who crisply informed us that lunch was being held in the ‘cafeteria’. It didn’t seem like a good idea to ask her exactly where that was, so, remembering the Kid Lab noises I heard earlier, and, crucially, the smell of food cooking, I led Dan in the direction Mac had pointed then. After walking past the full-sized Sports Hall, a cottage, and a smallish modern-looking structure, we eventually found this place. Presumably constructed from the remains of a large agricultural building, it is now a vast, modern rectangle, all white inside with exposed chrome pipes and fittings. It should feel like a school canteen – that must have been the idea – but it is way too glossy for that. The tables are laid out in a regular fashion, but are themselves irregular orange plastic designer shapes with Go boards etched into them. In one corner there is a DJ booth. One wall is taken up with a large plasma screen, currently showing kids playing with some PopCo products in slow motion. On the other side is a raised area with two more plastic tables, probably for Mac and his ilk. At the far end of this is – oh, my God – a flip-chart. In this business you can never entirely escape the flip-chart.

  Dan and I are now standing in a queue, holding trays.

  ‘What is this all about?’ he says, looking around. ‘Is this some kind of school-dinner thing?’

  ‘Mmm. I think so. It’s concept-driven, anyway.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Many of the expressions Dan and I use originally started off being things th
at other people said that we made fun of. Ending sentences with the word ‘baby’ was something that Carmen-the-first’s assistant, Katerina, used to do. She was Russian and in the middle of an extreme love-affair with Western capitalism. When she came back from shopping (AKA ‘research’), you wouldn’t have to ask her what she’d bought because she would come into the office holding up paper carrier bags and saying ‘Levi’s, baby’, with this proud smile on her face, like she was a feral dog returning with a bloody chicken. ‘Concept-driven’, ‘High concept’, and ‘Conceptled’ are forms of criticism that emanate from Richard Ford, Carmen the second’s boss. His role in the company is to come into Battersea every so often and trash all our ideas. ‘It’s got an intriguing feel,’ he will say. ‘But ultimately it’s too concept-driven.’ Nobody has ever worked out what he means by this, or why it’s a bad thing. Surely kids’ toys are always concept-driven? Although I occasionally see Dan outside of work, we haven’t got together that often since the cable TV incident. As a result, our friendship is strictly work-bound, full of references to work and office in-jokes. We are probably the closest thing to ‘best friends’ inside the office but outside we are still little more than strangers.

  I am now at the front of the queue.

  ‘Vegetarian or meat?’ a woman asks, abruptly.

  Dan pokes me. ‘Go for veggie,’ he hisses. ‘Veggie. Veggie.’

  ‘Ow! Sorry. Vegetarian,’ I say.

  The woman sighs, and then passes me a cling-filmed plate of sandwiches and salad. ‘Next,’ she says, and then gives Dan the same thing. It turns out that the non-veggies are being given an evil-looking stew.

  ‘How did you know that?’ I ask Dan. ‘About being a veggie?’

  ‘Ex-girlfriend. Boarding-school stories.’

  This is the thing about Dan being ‘gay-ish’. He only ever seems to have ex-girlfriends, never boyfriends. It’s intriguing.

  Because we were almost the last in, we are virtually at the end of the queue. The only other stragglers are the two people behind us, neither of whom I have ever seen before. As we are ushered over to the last free table by a woman wearing a blue boiler suit and headset, I try to work out where they might be from. The girl has long fawn-coloured hair, and is wearing a brown shift-dress and earrings made out of dark brown feathers. The guy is dressed all in black cotton, or possibly hemp: combats and a short-sleeved shirt. Are they Berkshire people? He has three biros in his top pocket, one green, one red and one blue, and is wearing black-rimmed glasses. Our eyes meet for a second before we sit down. For a moment I misread his expression and think he is about to say something to me, so I open up my face and half-smile. Then he looks away and says something to the fawn-haired girl instead. The connection, if there ever was one, is broken.

  We are barely in our seats before the music starts.

  ‘Oh Jesus. Please no,’ Dan says.

  It’s this weird bouncy music I have never heard before. Or is it slightly familiar? I don’t think so. ‘What is this?’ I ask Dan.

  ‘You don’t know? Oh yes, your TV thing. Lucky you.’

  My ‘TV thing’ is that I never had a TV growing up and, although I have one now, I only really use it to watch videos or play videogames. I assume that what is playing is some sort of TV theme tune, in that case. I look over to the DJ booth and the source of the music becomes clear. I nudge Dan, but he’s already watching.

  ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘It’s Georges. I might have known.’

  Georges Celéri is the Creative Director of PopCo. He is like the company whirlwind, or perhaps our poltergeist. He’s the PopCo prankster, the guy who really loves toys rather than business; the guy behind the ecology stuff. We know him as the sender of our weekly corporate e-mails, which often come with huge JPEG attachments or inappropriate jokes. He is also the director most likely to turn up on site just to ‘see what you guys are up to’, and then take the whole team out to dinner and a strip club. He is either French and grew up in Japan, or Japanese and grew up in France. I can’t remember. He looks vaguely Japanese, is between thirty and forty, and has a good haircut. Like Mac, he has an accent stranded somewhere in the Atlantic.

  ‘It’s school dinner time!’ Georges says into the microphone. I notice that Mac is standing next to him, holding a glass of wine, laughing. ‘So, everyone … I’d just like to welcome you to the PopCo Open World Event. Don’t drink too much over lunch, because there’s a lot in store for you all this afternoon. Oh yes – the CEO’s presentation, and after that, the games! Please meet at the sports field at four o’clock, dressed appropriately for running around. The theme of this conference – sorry – event is becoming more like children. Forget that this is work. We are PopCo! This is fun!’

  Mac takes the microphone from Georges. ‘Yes, welcome. Enjoy lunch,’ is all he says before the two of them join the other directors, PAs and senior non-creative staff on the raised tables. Some people clap. A minion wearing a headset takes over the DJing, and, after the weird bouncy music finishes, a recent pop album comes on, at a lower volume. I notice that a couple of bottles of wine have been placed on our table; one red, one white. Dan has already filled both our glasses with red and I immediately gulp most of mine down.

  ‘I needed that,’ I say. I hate this already. The guy wearing black glowers slightly at us, presumably since we have hijacked the red wine. He fills his own and his companion’s glass with white, wrinkling his nose slightly as he does so.

  Over the rest of lunch, and while Dan eats my sandwich crusts, I explain to him about my recent ‘ideation adventure’: that for the last two weeks I have been at home, barefoot, reading about survival for my new kit. I don’t go into too many details, it having been a calming, somehow private exercise. I also don’t tell him I met Mac this afternoon. He’d probably get all excited about it and I am just not in the mood for that.

  Ideation is an odd process. There are, of course, lots of ways of generating ideas. Ordinary people, stuck for ideas about normal things, like what colour to paint the sitting room, or what flowers to have at a wedding, may well decide to simply sit around and wait for inspiration, or use commonly available stimuli like magazines and shop displays in order to jog that inspiration into life. When you are in the ideas industry, however, there are a vast number of techniques for ideation that you will just know. You will use these techniques not just at work, but in normal-life situations as well. You will know what sorts of results to expect from brainstorming, matrices, mind-mapping and so on, and if you want stimulating material you are more likely to rely on a trend-spotter or a fact-seeking expedition to somewhere bizarre, because it’s just what you do. Last year at Battersea a couple of women ran these singles seminars after work in which, using flipcharts, matrices and mind-mapping, they came up with ideas as to how to find the perfect man. It was all a bit yucky. Dan and I called them the Shagiators, which was funny at the time.

  There are several ways of becoming good at ideation. The first way is to be born with the gift. If you have been born with this gift, you are the type of person who will always be the one to say ‘What if …’ in any kind of situation. You will be the person who suggests the most outrageous idea to solve a problem, and you will find that, rather unpredictably, these sorts of ideas often work for you. You may believe you are lucky or even blessed with magical powers, but in fact you are just a natural ideator. The second way of becoming good at ideation is to spend a lot of time reading books written by creative or business gurus, or attending seminars and workshops either devoted to just ideation, or, more usually, to ideation and team-building. There are many books of this nature lying around the homes and offices of PopCo employees, recent hits including Unleashing the Ideavirus, Creating Ever-Cool, a Marketer’s Guide to a Kid’s Heart and Funky Business. Many industries use ideation techniques nowadays, often calling in a facilitator to help their employees bond, solve business problems or come up with a design for a new product. This is the realm of the flip-chart, the marker pen, lateral thinki
ng puzzles and, of course, the Balloon Game.

  If you have never played the Balloon Game you have played it twelve times less than I have. The basic idea is that a group of people – your team – are in a hot-air balloon which has become unstable and will crash if some people are not thrown out of it. The Balloon Game thus involves a debate about who should stay and who should go. This enforced suicide/murder ritual is supposed to help your team ‘bond’. It is less disturbing if all the people in the game take on the personae of celebrities or politicians or something, so that begging for your life exists at one remove, but the whole experience is still rather disturbing. It’s a particularly strange choice to use for team-building, as several people in the group will certainly have to (metaphorically) die in order that the team can prosper. I have heard of the Balloon Game being used in situations where companies are just about to lay people off. Apparently some companies deliberately use it to convince people that lay-offs are justified. Also – and this may actually be an urban legend – there was recently a fad in the City for Human Resources managers to watch through one-way mirrors and decide who to lay off as a result of the Balloon Game.

  This isn’t the most disturbing use of one-way mirrors I have ever heard of, though. PopCo was responsible for that. It involved six-year-old girls in a focus group testing a new cosmetics range for children. As far as I know, no one else apart from me was offended by the idea of various executives and marketers watching in extreme close-up while these little girls used the mirror to try out the lipsticks and eye shadows which, incidentally, never went on the market in this country but do pretty well in the US. Perhaps other people were offended but didn’t say anything. Let’s face it, I didn’t actually say anything. I wouldn’t have known what to say.