“Meryl said you were in here,” Gordon remarked skeptically.

  “Well, here I am.”

  Apparently satisfied, Gordon entered my office.

  “She also said you were working,” he said with a smile so wide I wanted to punch him.

  I clenched my teeth.

  I don’t know why Gordon was at the office that day. It was the day after Dexter’s funeral, and several staffers had taken the day off. We were running on a skeleton crew. I had come in early to prepare for David Hayward’s visit, but it hadn’t been a productive morning.

  “Is this Tomb Raider?” Gordon asked.

  I nodded. The game had caught Dexter’s eye at the Consumer Electronics Show a year or so back, and I’d always meant to play it, but hadn’t found the time. For some reason, that morning it leapt out at me from my game shelf. I was looking for any excuse not to work.

  “Looks good,” Gordon grunted.

  Onscreen, my character danced through bullets as my aggressor pressed his attack. I couldn’t spare the concentration needed for a conversation.

  My digital counterpart was an athletic female archeologist named Lara Croft – a combat gymnast. Together we performed physics-defying acrobatics. These digital catacombs were our stage, and I directed Lara in a ballet of bloodshed. A killer performance where she was the only actor left to bow as the curtain fell.

  I was a good choreographer, and Lara was good at taking directions.

  My reward for being such a skilled director was to have this power taken away from me. An animated cut scene interrupted my game, wrestling the story back onto prescripted rails. It was a reminder that I was not the architect of this show. I was a player. Less than that. I had been relegated to viewer.

  “Well, you have my total attention now,” Lara said pointing her gun at a downed opponent. “I’m not sure if I’ve got yours though. Hello?”

  Our defeated assailant sat at Lara’s feet. She wanted to press him for information. I wanted her to pull the trigger, but she wasn’t taking directions from me anymore.

  There was a time when I had enjoyed scenes like this. I thought they made games more cinematic – made them more mature. Over time, I realized my ignorance. The art of good gaming isn’t found in emulating other mediums. That would be a back-step in the evolution of the form. The real substance of a video game is its interactivity.

  Humanity loves to interact with its entertainment. We are social creatures – it’s in our genetics. For centuries, our primary source of entertainment was telling interactive stories around a campfire. During the height of classical theater, audience participation was encouraged. People rarely watch TV linearly. Viewers flick through stations compulsively, creating their own shows that are part sitcom, part football game, and part news program all within the span of a single timeslot.

  People respond to interactivity. It’s why games can achieve a level of intimacy with their audience that other art forms lack. It’s also why, when developers remove that interactivity – when they pare games back to pure cinematic sequences – they neuter the one element of a game that defines it.

  I spun around in my chair and started picking at the remnants of some leftover lo mein that I’d had for breakfast.

  Gordon was transfixed by the game.

  “This is some impressive tech,” he said.

  I shrugged, wiping away a splash of sauce from a rice noodle that had whipped across my cheek.

  Behind me, the scene played out.

  Lara’s assailant, a man with a bloody arm and a terrible Texas accent, spoke about the whereabouts of an ancient artifact and the man who’d taken it.

  “Hah, you ain’t fast enough for him.”

  “So you think all this talking is just holding me up?” Lara asked.

  “I don’t know where his little jackrabbit frog legs are running him to.”

  I shook my head while stabbing at a piece of chicken with my hashi.

  “This is cheesy,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Gordon agreed, snapping out of his transfixed stare. “But I always appreciate the creative strides taken to make the absurd sound clever.”

  “Reality rarely functions in amusing metaphor,” I returned grumpily.

  “Yeah, but then again, entertainment isn’t reality.”

  It was a good point.

  “Whatever,” I shrugged.

  I turned off the game and hit the switch for the recording equipment before I remembered that it wasn’t on.

  “Kind of dark in here,” Gordon glanced around as if he’d just noticed. “What are you, a troglodyte?”

  He turned on the lights, and I winced like a vampire under their power.

  “Morning, sunshine,” he added perkily.

  “Gordon, why are you here?”

  “Remember when you asked me about that art Dexter wanted for Shrine?”

  “Yeah.”

  I frowned. I felt sick. Exhaustion had me in a death grip. It was the morning after my first real night of sleep in almost a week. My body hadn’t wanted to get up that morning. Now that it had tasted sleep, it wasn’t going to forgive me for the punishment I’d put it through. Some art request Dexter had made weeks ago didn’t seem relevant anymore. All I wanted to do was stay in my office with the shades drawn and stare at the walls.

  Fortunately, I have a habit of not doing what I want.

  “Do you still want to see it?” Gordon asked.

  “Yeah,” I grumbled.

  I forced my body erect, and followed Gordon out the door and down the hall.

  In the art department’s bullpen, I leaned over a row of monitors that lined the top of Gordon’s desk. The average gaming industry employee probably has half a dozen toys on their desk. Gordon made up for those of us who didn’t. He was the poster child for geek, with every action figure – from Voltron to Spawn to Dr. Who – blanketing his work area. One absurdly expensive Robbie the Robot figurine held a place of honor in front of Gordon’s three monitors.

  Beside his desk stood a bookshelf filled with art resource books – a range that varied from human anatomy to children’s picture books to books of classic and historical architecture. A mini-fridge, well-stocked with frozen pizzas and Mountain Dew, sat within impulsive reach. From a framed movie poster, a chainsaw-handed Bruce Campbell surveyed Gordon’s entire domain.

  Gordon cracked his knuckles before sitting down to pull up the files.

  “Okay, this is the Shrine art Dexter wanted.”

  Gordon’s monitor slowly put together a very ornate marble fountain. A stone figure of Galatea bathed in the center of a large basin.

  “The texture resolution is too high, and the poly count is too big. Basically we felt that this fountain was too expensive, so we changed it,” Gordon finished.

  In virtual modeling, all objects (statues, buildings, people, etc.) are built out of simple geometric polygons. Simple math. But even the fastest computer processors in the world have limits to how many simple mathematical shapes they can process at any given time. Therefore, in a game, we set a limited polygon count. We call this maximum processing limit our “budget,” and it’s something we have to stay under in order to keep the game running at a playable speed.

  An alarm went off inside my head. I had been thinking about Pygmalion since Dexter’s funeral, but I hadn’t been able to figure out what it meant. Something about his reference still nagged me.

  “A couple days ago, you said this was from the Pygmalion myth.”

  “Yeah?” Gordon raised an eyebrow.

  “So, Pygmalion and this goddess were lovers?”

  Gordon tilted his head to the side. My understanding of Greek myth gave him genuine pause.

  “You could say that.”

  I hesitated.

  “Did she kill him or something?”

  I should have stopped guessing. That would have hidden my ignorance.

  “Well, first of all, Galatea wasn’t a goddess. Why does everyone keep saying she was a goddess? She was a statue.”

  “Uh huh,” I answered in a counterfeit tone of recollection.

  “If I recall correctly,” Gordon started, “Pygie made the most beautiful sculpture of a woman anyone had ever seen. She was hot. Imagine Ava Gardner to the power of Farrah Fawcett.”

  “Okay, let me guess…he fell in love with his own work?”

  “Hey, you know your mythical tropes.”

  Gordon nodded as he bent down and opened the mini fridge. He tossed me a can of soda, then cracked one open for himself.

  “Hey, I’m not going to judge him,” Gordon continued. “He was probably a lonely guy. Maybe he still lived in his mother’s basement. Anyway, the gods saw that he was in love with his own creation, and they felt bad for the guy, so they decide to do the whole Pinocchio thing.”

  “They make her a real boy,” I added.

  “Right. A real girl anyway. Think of the whole story as a kind of freaky Grecian Frankenstein, except with sexual undertones and nude wrestling.” Gordon gulped down half a can of soda. “Anyway, I can pull up the current version of the statue, so you can see the changes. I cut the polys in half and–”

  “Hold on.”

  I grabbed his shoulder then pointed at the fountain’s base, which sat suspended in otherwise empty space.

  “Is that a plaque on the base of the statue?”

  Gordon looked it over.

  “Looks like it.”

  “I think something is written on it. Can you zoom in?”

  “Ahh, designers…” Gordon sighed, shaking his head with mock disapproval. “You either overlook the fine details or obsess about them.”

  Gordon rotated the model to give us a better viewing angle and then zoomed in on the plaque.

  It read:

  Behold True Beauty, Cast In Stone

  Sparked Real Love, Caused Much Upheaval

  Drove Men To Kill And Gods To Moan

  This Water Of Galetea’s Evi

  “What is this? Some kind of Warren Robinett?” Gordon asked.

  Gordon was referencing an Easter egg from an Atari 2600 game called Adventure. In the early days of video game development, programmers didn’t receive credit for their work. In 1979, a programmer named Warren Robinett got fed up with this and hid his name inside a secret area within a game called Adventure. He expected that no one would ever find it. Of course, hundreds had.

  “This isn’t an Easter egg, Gordon. It’s a message.”

  “To who?”

  “To me.”

  Gordon raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, the rhyming scheme is off, and he forgot to put the ‘l’ in evil.”

  “No, he meant to say Evi.”

  A thrill ran through my chest.

  “Are you sure? What’s an evi?”

  “‘This Water Of Galetea’s Evi,’” I said, reflecting on the poem. “Evi is in here.”

  I tapped the screen excitedly. Gordon must have thought I’d cracked.

  “Evi was Dexter’s Galatea, and he hid it inside our game,” I said.

  I stared at Gordon with wild-eyed amazement as it all unraveled. He had no idea what I was talking about. I ran my fingers through my hair.

  “God. Shinji’s anomalies,” I exclaimed, finally putting puzzle pieces together that I’d been staring at for days.

  Dexter had implanted a copy of the Evi program inside our game. It explained all the problems Shinji was running into. I was so dense not to realize it before, but had Dexter expected me to find it?

  I needed to talk with Shinji right away. I didn’t even say “bye” to Gordon as I sprinted across the bullpen towards Shinji’s cubicle.

  Someone shouted my name as I ran, but I ignored it.

  “Dexter was a genius,” I said breaking into Shinji’s cubicle.

  Shinji slowly turned to face his intruder.

  “I mean, he was an idiot for killing himself, but he was a programming genius,” I started to ramble. “Remember that mysterious code you said looked like gibberish – the AI bots that have been doing weird things all week?”

  I was talking too fast.

  “Yes,” Shinji nodded, adjusting his glasses.

  “Have you isolated it?”

  “Yeah, but that was never the pro–”

  “It was Dexter,” I blurted.

  “Jack,” said a quick-tempered female voice running up behind me.

  I ignored it for a moment.

  “Dexter put that code in there. I need to see it.”

  Shinji started to fumble around his desk.

  “Okay, I can–”

  “Jack!”

  I looked over my shoulder to see Meryl’s frown poking into the cubicle.

  “Jack, we need you up front,” she said.

  “In a minute, we’re in the middle of something.”

  “Jack, now!”

  I’d never seen Meryl so anxious.

  “Mr. Hayward’s assistant is here.”

  I stared at Meryl for a second, then turn to Shinji.

  “Pull it up, I want to see it when I get back.”

  I turned and followed Meryl’s heels to the front lobby. I was still a little dazed by my discovery, but I could tell by her manner that something was wrong. When we got to the front door, Emmerich was busy dictating orders to four burly men in movers’ uniforms.

  “Take everything that’s plugged in,” he said.

  My breath smelled like soy sauce. I was sure my hair was a mess. And I hadn’t had time to change into a dress shirt…I was still wearing a paint-stained hoodie I’d thrown on after my brief morning shower. This was not the impression I wanted to give David Hayward’s right hand. Nonetheless, I approached Emmerich with as much professional confidence as I could muster.

  “Mr. Emmerich, we weren’t really expecting you for another hour–”

  I paused as the movers breezed past, shuffling deeper into our office.

  “What’s going on?”

  Emmerich grabbed my hand and shook it. His mouth twitched into a cocky half-smile.

  “Jack, you doing okay buddy? You look like you woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning.”

  I had woken up in the wrong bed that morning.

  I frowned. “Why are there movers in my office?”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  Emmerich’s casual tone belied his insidious intent, though he didn’t hide that for long.

  “Mr. Hayward has decided to close down the studio until he has time to review its assets. He apologizes for not coming himself. Unfortunately, he got caught up in some last minute business.”

  “I’m sorry?” I tried numbly. “You said ‘close down the studio?’”

  Meryl stood behind me, arms crossed, two glaring eyes fixed on Emmerich. One foot tapped maliciously against the carpet. She was waiting to see what I’d do. She must have already had this conversation with Emmerich.

  “With Dexter’s passing, all his stocks have been inherited by his father. D.B. Hayward Networks is now the primary shareholder of Electronic Sheep. The business will be audited, and its economic viability must be reviewed…”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. He was talking too fast.

  “Wait a minute; I don’t think Mr. Hayward can–”

  “Actually, he can,” Emmerich said, stopping me in my tracks.

  Emmerich reached into his briefcase then – with the speed of a machine – withdrew a large folder.

  “David would like you to review your original contracts, if you have any questions. He also wanted to remind you that you signed documents stating that if Electric Sheep Inc. did not achieve a projected profit performance…”

  He spoke as though he was reading from an invisible legal document floating in front of his eyes. I tried to listen to the words and failed. If I did understand any of what he was saying it was immediately forgotten. I was vaguely aware of what the original contracts said, and I thought I remembered something about profit performance and corporate buyouts, but at the time it had all seemed like legal filler – the kinds of standard clauses those types of contracts automatically had. I’d taken the business relationship with David Hayward for granted, because he was my best friend’s father. Surely, he wouldn’t screw us over.

  “… in your last two fiscal years, and thereby must make up the loss with sales of corporate stock,” Emmerich finished. “Mr. Valentine, Electric Sheep Inc. is now a property of D.B. Hayward Networks LLC. Deal with it.”

  “Hey, I said you can’t take that!”

  Gordon came barreling out from the bullpen, following two movers whose arms were overflowing with computer equipment.

  “Jack, they’re taking our computers,” Gordon said as if I had somehow failed to notice the two men walking past me.

  Meryl looked at me expectantly. What did she want me to do? What could I do?

  “What’s going on?” Gordon asked, staring at my dumbfounded expression.

  Emmerich answered for me.

  “I’m afraid Electric Sheep will be going through some structural changes, Mr. Freeman.”

  His talent for remembering names really was impressive.

  Emmerich pointed to the folder in my hand.

  “Employee compensation, during the interim, is detailed inside. You will find that everyone will be well cared for.”

  He smiled. I had never seen him look so evil.

  I stared at the weight in my hand. It seemed heavy for such a tiny object.

  “If you would like to meet with David to discuss the future of the company, call me later in the week and we can set up an appointment.”

  I nodded distantly.

  Emmerich started for the elevators with the movers.

  “Wait a minute,” I called.

  I chased after him, grasping hold of the elevator door before it closed.

  “You can’t do this.”

  Emmerich pushed the button for the ground floor.

  “Well Jack, I’m not doing it. David is.”

  “But…I mean…Mr. Hayward can’t do this.”

  He casually opened his PDA and started making notes.

  “Jack, I believe I’ve already explained why he can, and is, doing this.”

  I tried to think of some argument that would make this all go away. One of the movers sneezed. An elderly couple boarded the elevator on the fifth floor. I fumed, but remained quiet until we reached street level.

 

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