Vaporware (11 page)

I
started in with “Well, actually the alternate guitar line on the studio outtake
version,” but the sight of her eyes glazing over brought me up short. “What
were you doing with it, anyway?” I asked. “Leon was either going to fix it or
cannibalize it for parts.”

She
fixed me with a disdainful glare. “Leon gave it back to me to give to you
because he had to take off; and for the record, he said there was nothing wrong
with it, other than a few unlabeled tracks that you’ll probably want to
generate song data for. It’s fine, and you’re crazy. At least, that’s what he
told me to tell you.” She gave me a tight little smile. “He said I could get creative
telling you that, too.”

I
picked it up gingerly and looked at it. “It wasn’t fine in the car this
morning.”

“Then
maybe your car sucks,” she said sweetly. “Not my problem anymore.”

She
cocked her head to one side. “And you should be going home. It’s getting on
seven.”

I
blinked. “It is? How the hell did that happen? I was just sitting here reading
docs—”

“And
you’ve read about two hundred pages’ worth. That’s a decent day’s work, Ryan.
Go home.” Without waiting to see if I was going to follow her advice, she left.

Leaving
me still at my desk, behind a now-broken wall of papers and looking
suspiciously down at piece of hardware that had decided to play it coy. “Let’s
see what you’ve got,” I told it, and hit play.

From
the earbuds, I could hear a tinny, distant rendition of the last good song the
Who ever wrote. It played clean, all the way through.

“Huh,”
I said, and stuck it in my pocket. It was still playing when I turned out the
lights and shut the door, and for all I cared, it could play all night long.

Chapter 9

Naked and lovely, Sarah said to
me, “I think dinner’s gotten cold.”

“I am willing
to accept those consequences,” I said contentedly, and snuggled her against my
chest. We’d made only the barest of starts on supper before making our way
upstairs, and had wreaked absolute havoc on our bed sheets and the neatly
stacked laundry thereupon. Now the tasteful cream-colored carpet was covered in
untastefully strewn colors and whites, and the sheets dangled off one corner of
the bedframe.

I stroked
Sarah’s hair a couple of times and was rewarded with a contented purr. Linus
sat on the corner of the bed, faced deliberately away from us; I snagged him
and tucked him into Sarah’s arms. She purred again and snuggled into me. “That
was nice,” she said. I nodded and kissed the top of her head.

“We should do
that more often.”

 “Start getting
home earlier and we just might.”

“I’m going to
try,” I said, not trusting myself not to turn this into another debate. “But
I’m here right now.”

Sarah yawned.
“I know. And it’s wonderful.” She yawned again, theatrically this time, with a
sound like a lioness settling in to watch her cubs. “I hear you nearly threw
away one of my presents today.”

“I did?” I
thought for a minute. “Oh, the phone? I wasn’t throwing it away, I was going to
let Leon have it if it was broken.”

“That’s
generous of you,” She poked me in the ribs. “And when were you going to explain
to me that you’d broken something I’d given to you?”

I grinned. “I
was going to buy another one just like it and never tell you, that’s how. I
liked it a lot and didn’t want you thinking you’d gotten me something that
wasn’t good.”

“That’s
sweet,” she said, sleep dulling the edge of her words. “I got an email from
Leon about it, you know. He didn’t want to play with it without asking if I was
OK with it. Are all your friends afraid of me?”

“Only the
smart ones,” I said, chuckling. “Leon, on the other hand....”

“Mmm,” Sarah
said, and then she was asleep, snoring softly against my chest. My left arm was
pinned underneath her, no doubt priming itself for the moment when it would
fall asleep, but I’d deal with that when it came. For the moment, I had her,
and she had me, and work was far away.

I decided that
it, like the dishes, could keep until morning.

*  
*   *

Six
chairs around the table in the conference room, two people in them. Eric was at
one end, hunched up in the “daddy” seat. His back was to the far wall, framing
him against one of the whiteboards. They rarely ever got cleaned, so there was
a faint halo of old dry-erase marker squiggles all around him.

“You
look like a Peanuts character.” I said, looking up from my laptop. I was on the
near side of the table but not at the end. That would have put my back to the
door. Sarah called that sort of thing bad feng shui, and so did I when she was
around. The rest of the time, I just hated having my back to the door.

“Pigpen,”
he answered, filling in the missing name and leaning back. “So who does that
make you? Sally? Charlie Brown?”

“BlackStone
already yanked the football out from under me,” I pointed out. “And I’d go for
Snoopy, but Sarah would probably think that was weird.”

“Heh.”
He kicked the underside of the table once, twice, a third time, and rubbed his
eyes. “So what’s the deal, Ryan? Are you in?”

“In?” 

“In.”
He cracked a couple of knuckles, not the complete set. “I got a call from Sarah
this morning, you know.”

“Oh
did you,” I could feel my stomach sinking. “What did she want?”

Eric
gave me a weak grin. “She wanted to know if I was going to work you to death on
this one, or if she had to go public like EASpouse did a couple of years ago.”

I
cracked a smile I didn’t feel. “She’s not shy, is she?”

“No,
and she’s not stupid, either. She also told me that you’re thinking about
quitting. Something about writing full time, or at least until you get bored
and get ready for a real job.”

“That
was supposed to stay between me and her,” I said softly. “She shouldn’t have
brought you into it.”

“No,
she shouldn’t have,” he agreed. “But now she has. And what are you going to do
about it?”

I
looked at him, licking my suddenly dry lips. “I’ve given this a lot of
thought,” I said. “A lot of thought. I thought about what you said, and about
the company. I thought about what I actually want to do. And I decided, God
help me, that I’m in.”

“Thank
you,” he said. His arms dropped off the sides of his chairs like all the bones
in them had just gone on coffee break, and I suddenly realized how nervous he’d
been about the whole thing. “We’re going to make this work,” he said, as much a
prayer as a statement of purpose. “We’ll give everyone but the leads a couple
more days to shake it out of their systems, but in the meantime, you and I lay
the groundwork for hitting the ground running next week. Once people are
working again instead of chasing their tails, we’ll be just fine.”

I
nodded. “I don’t see what choice we have,” I said, and I meant it. Either we
moved on this, or we’d die, and I’d just bet…what? My job? My career in gaming?
My relationship? I wasn’t sure, but I was reasonably certain I’d bet something
on this project, and this company.

There
was a pile of docs in front of me, the edited highlights of the stuff I’d read
yesterday. I tapped it with one finger. “I can give a debrief on what we’re
dealing with here if you want to get the ball rolling.”

He
shrugged. “Save it for when we get the leads in here.”

A
sip of coffee went down with moderate success. “And when might that be?”

Eric
made a big show of looking at his watch. “About ten minutes. You might want to
go pee or something before this one starts.”

I
blinked at him. “You scheduled that without knowing if I was walking?”

He
shrugged. “I scheduled it. If you’d walked, it would have been to discuss
finding a new CD. Instead, you get to tell everyone about Salvador, and what
cool and exciting features we’re going to get to try to cram into a last-gen
box.”

More
coffee. “Well, that starts with you and the financials. But I can walk them
through the design, maybe point out where the trouble spots are.”

Eric
nodded and stood. “Good. I’ll let you handle that, then. I’m going to go start
shaking trees to see if I can line us up something for when this particular
sleigh ride comes to an end.”

I
looked at him and shook my head. “That whole tree-sleigh ride thing is way too
Ethan Frome for me.”

“Ethan
Frome?”

“Jesus,
Eric, didn’t they make you read that in high school? One of the great American
classics, by virtue of the fact that it’s depressing and it’s short.”

He
pursed his lips. “Sounds like my kind of book. Now what does it have to do with
our project? Or is that a crack on the length of the dev cycle we’ve got to
work with.”

“Nope.
Just that there’s a sleigh ride in that one, too.”

“What
happens?”

“They
wrap themselves around a tree, and everyone’s crippled for life.”

“Heh.
Sounds perfect.” He grinned, a little bit, and started toward the door. “Just
one question,” I added. He turned to me.

“Yes?”

“Who
are the leads on this one?”

He
smiled, or at least the lower half of his face did. “We’re rotating. The art
and engineering leads on BL were both in my office this morning, telling me they’d
rather eat their own testicles than be leads on this one.”

“Charming,”
I grimaced. “Distaste for the project?”

“Burnout.
They pretty much said the same thing, which was they’d rather be doing work
than schedules and meetings.”

“Lucky
them.” I shrugged. “So you’re dropping a couple of new suckers into the barrel.
Who are they, and do they know they have to deal with the deadly combination of
you as producer and me as lead designer?”

“Leon
and Shelly are probably aware of that, yes.”

I
stared at Eric, my mouth hanging open. “Leon and Shelly?”

“What?
You don’t think they’re qualified?” The bastard was actually smirking at me
now, just waiting to see how I could dig myself in deeper.

“No!
I mean, of course they’re qualified, but the three of us? Me and Michelle? Do
you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Actually,
I kind of do.” Eric said. He sagged forward over a chair, elbows and forearms
flat on the table. “I figure you need as much of a comfort zone on this one as
any of us, maybe more. And since the heavy lifting on this one’s been done, I
can give it to you. It’s not like they’re not qualified.”

“No,”
I said, shaking my head. “It’s not that. And I’d better not get too much of a
comfort zone with Shelly or Sarah’s going to kill me.”

“No
fishing off the company pier, especially with ones you already threw back.” He
said it with grim humor. “So it’s settled, and you can give me a debrief after
you talk with your leads. Anything else, or can I go chase the almighty
dollar?”

“Chase
Euros instead,” I told him. “And could you please give me a little more warning
about stuff like that next time? Pretty please?”

“Since
you asked so nicely, I’ll think about it.” He moved to the door. “And go sit at
the head of the table. You’re leading the meeting.” A moment later, he was
gone.

I
purposefully did not watch him go, choosing instead to riffle through the
papers for the overview doc I’d written up. I’d intended it for Eric’s eyes as
a basic assessment as to the geography of the world of hurt we were in for, but
it could serve as crib notes for a briefing as well. Where to start? Well, with
an overview, I thought, and then a rundown of the features that we were going
to have to either cut, gut, or redo in order to cram a next-gen title onto an
old-gen box. That’s where the real fun was going to come in, a roll call of
doomed features that we’d have to ruthlessly execute in order to get the game
out on time and on spec. Then there was the stuff the hardware just wouldn’t
support, stuff we were going to have to rip out and rebuild from scratch—the
entire multiplayer interface, for one. Even better, buried deep within the docs
had been the hint of some additional feature requests that BlackStone clearly
planned to hit us with at the least convenient time possible. Put them all
together, line them up and call them out, and I might have a halfway-decent
look at what we were looking at going forward on Salvador.

All
of which kept me nicely preoccupied from thinking about how I felt over what
Sarah had done.

A
hard thump on the back of my chair jerked me back into the real world, or at
least the board room. I looked up to see that it was Michelle. She’d elbowed my
seat on the way toward taking the chair at the head of the table.

“Wait
a minute,” I said. “I’m supposed to be over there.”

“Were,”
she said sweetly. “You were supposed to be over here. But you aren’t. And I
am.” And with that, she dropped neatly into the seat and put her feet up on the
table. I stared at her, and she stared back. “What, is this a penis-only
chair?”

I
cringed. “Look, Shelly, I know it’s a fairly casual work environment and all,
but all things considered, I’m not sure it’s a great idea for the word ‘penis’
to come up in any conversation we have.”

“Because
she’s seen yours?” Leon ambled in and took the chair opposite me. “I mean, I
knew this was a small project, but—”

I
made rimshot noises while miming a cymbal crash. “Can we get started, or is
there anything else you want to share with the class?”

“I
got nothing,” he replied and took a pen out from behind his ear.

“Him
too.” Shelly slid a notepad across the table to him, saving one for herself and
none for me. “Is Eric going to be joining us?”

“Not
unless you start throwing things,” I told her. “Something about running the
studio in the meantime. Don’t worry, though. I’ll give him the full debrief.
That is, if we can actually get this thing off the ground.”

Leon
started to say something half-witty about my briefs, but Michelle shushed him.
“Okay, point made. What do we have?”

And
I told them, in agonizing detail. Without a build, it was impossible to be
sure, but most likely we were in for a tough, tight development cycle. The
entire multiplayer system would have to be redone, including most likely the
networking code and the UI. Textures would have to be downsampled. Objects
would need their polygon counts slashed, and not in a way that could be done
programmatically. The number of enemies onscreen would have to be drastically
reduced or else the game would slow to a zoetrope-level frame-rate flicker. And
on and on and on it went, with Leon and Shelly asking questions every so often.
Most of them I could only answer with “I don’t know” or “We’ll have to wait for
the build.” The ones where I had more concrete information didn’t make them
much happier.