The Game Within

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2022 4:57pm

Five Years Ago

The Macallan finished supremely as that first sip slid down her throat. It had been a present from somebody richer than her. Patrice couldn’t remember who. It was nice, but wasted on her. She wasn’t much of a scotch drinker. Across the table Marcus and Adam seemed to enjoy their first sips much as she did, impressed more by the price tag than the finish. They all exhaled that way people do when they sip whiskey and pretend they know something about it. Patrice smiled as the boys leaned back, gazing at the bronze liquid as if it was speaking to them. It was all very formulaic and fabricated. Neither of them gave a damn about scotch either.

“To a good day,” Marcus said, holding his glass up and waiting on the others.

“To a good day,” Patrice and Adam echoed in unison.

Patrice took another sip and set the glass carefully on the table between them. She didn’t think she would need anymore, but you don’t spill The Macallan 25-Year-Old Sherry Oak, not with that price tag. The boys set their glasses down after her. Perhaps everyone recognized the need to savor the moment. The sun set outside, and the room grew dim. The silence shared between them, their individual thoughts of the day held secret, stretched the moment until it became uncomfortable, until nobody wanted to be the next to speak.

“I’m still shocked—”

“What should we—”

Patrice and Adam paused, graciously or awkwardly for the other. Marcus smiled and reached for his glass again. The others followed his lead.

“Well, we’re a talkative bunch,” Marcus said after swallowing another sip. “Must be the scotch. You might want to go easy on this stuff, Patrice. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

Now Patrice smiled.

“I’d have more than you, now wouldn’t I, Marcus.” She raised her own glass as Adam laughed. “Come on, boys. Another toast.”

Adam grabbed his glass, and they all raised them. Patrice continued, “to people with money, so glad we know a few.”

“Here, here,” Adam answered.

“To people with money,” Marcus echoed.

And they drank, setting their empty glasses down hard on the table. They stared at each other and smiled. Patrice poured another round before capping the bottle.

“We’ll save the rest of this. Still plenty of work ahead of us before any serious celebrating.”

They all sat back in their chairs, sipping the expensive liquor. They deserved it. All of them.

“So what next?” Adam asked before the silence grew awkward again. “Now we have some real money. How to proceed?”

“Speed remains a problem. Bandwidth really. We need to put some of that cash toward better load balancing and better distribution,” Marcus said.

“But don’t forget pure rendering power, Marcus,” added Patrice. “We’ve got an awful lot of people pushing the edges of our space. Real time rendering while continuing to fabricate new terrain and keep some semblance of reality going has to be near the top of the list. We need to provision GPUs better. I think we’re throttling that to save cash. Time to stop that behavior.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We can go a little overboard now. Good point.”

“Adam,” Patrice continued, “what other negative feedback did you get out of that last set of users? Did they mention stuff beyond the rendering? Anything about story lines or character development? What about difficulty?”

Adam stared at her, shifted his gaze to Marcus, and back to Patrice. Nobody talked for a minute.

“Adam, are you with us?” Patrice asked.

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Adam said. “Rendering? Distribution? Provisioning? Are you serious? This is how you would spend the $25 million we landed?”

Patrice looked at Marcus, hoping he might have a response. She didn’t understand Adam’s line of questioning.

“Do you work for this company?” Marcus asked with a smile. “Of course this is how we’re spending the money, Adam. What else do we do? The whole point of seed money is to improve our product, respond to the customers, get more customers, make more money. Come on, you’re supposed to be the business guy here.”

“I am the business guy,” Adam said, no amusement in his voice. “That’s something you two should remember.”

“Excuse me,” Patrice said, “do tell us, oh brilliant one. Where should we invest our new found wealth?”

Her handoff lightened Adam’s stance. Patrice smiled as he continued with a little less stick up his ass.

“Well, let me explain how this works to you lesser types,” he said. He took another sip from his glass before continuing. Marcus sat up straighter, going along with the show. “You see, my friends, all your technical prowess and high math doesn’t pay the bills. What pays the bills, what puts eyes on the screens is marketing.”

He paused for effect. Patrice caught Marcus’s mouth fall open, and she almost laughed scotch up her nose. Adam continued unfazed.

“You don’t get it, but that doesn’t matter because I do. We’ve got the tech down already. Those guys today wouldn’t have signed over that money if you didn’t. But now they want results, 20x results. To turn that kind of profit, we need people in this new world you’ve created. We need to amp them up, make them beg for access. We need them telling their friends, ignoring their parents, strapping cheap visual-only rigs on their little brothers and sisters.”

Patrice couldn’t help but take notice even as she disagreed with what he said. Adam was good at this stuff. She looked at Marcus finishing his scotch. He wasn’t as impressed with the performance as she was, but he wasn’t disagreeing and that was rare.

“You guys want to improve the experience,” Adam continued, “and we will. We’ll do all the stuff you want. Make this so lifelike people will forget they’ re in a game. We’ll do all that and more. Just not yet.” He paused. Patrice assumed it was for effect. He was in full sales mode now. “First, we need real numbers. A thousand users is a proof of concept. It’s curiosity. Ten thousand users means we’re serious. One hundred thousand makes the money guys sleep again. So we need users. Lots of them. Any spending on tech improvements before we have people to appreciate it won’t get us there. No, we need to breed users like rabbits starting right now.”

“Wait a second, Adam,” Marcus interrupted. “I’m with you on the users, but we aren’t managing ten thousand or a hundred thousand users with our current systems. The latency alone will kill the experience. There’s only one first visit, Adam. What brings disappointed people back?”

“Come on, Marcus. Your stuff is beyond everything else out there. Didn’t we blow the socks off some very rich people today? Haven’t we convinced them this thing is the future of entertainment? Aren’t we holding more money than we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes? This is big leagues now. This is the real deal. We don’t keep this moving without taking chances. Risk is the business we’re in. Gambling is what these people are buying. They don’t want safety or patience. They aren’t looking for guarantees and test cases and error handling. This is about money. They’re betting on this thing like they’re holding a full house in a high stakes game. But the hand’s not over yet. There’s more betting to do. Increased user count keeps them at the table and that’s where we need them.”

He paused again, almost out of breath. Adam’s ability to sell the story always impressed Patrice. His argument was reaching her. Her own heart was pumping faster.

“Sure, Adam,” Marcus was saying, less excited. “Let’s gamble with them, with their money. Let’s grab up some users and their siblings. We’re sure to get all those holes out of our prototype as we scale. Let’s throw them all into this thing and hope we can keep it running.” Now Marcus paused. “I get what you’re saying, Adam. I really do, but I can’t get comfortable opening the floodgates if we can’t catch all that water. We need to take a breath, solve some problems and confirm this thing is really what we hope it is.”

“So do it already,” Adam snapped. He stood up, grabbing The Macallan and spinning the cap off. He splashed a tall pour into his glass and took a swig, coughing as he downed the liquor.

“Just do it. There’s no reason you can’t be tweaking systems and cleaning code while I’m out building this business. Remember, this is about numbers. Big numbers. We don’t make money, we don’t stay alive without big numbers. So balance those loads, provision those servers, render those damn graphics. But do it now because tomorrow morning I’m selling tickets to this circus and the people will be showing up in droves.”

“You can’t do it, man,” Marcus said, but Adam didn’t even slow down.

“It’s done already, Marcus. Don’t you get it? People love this thing. They love it. Once people experience the inside, they forget the outside. You did that. You won. You got them. Why are you questioning that?”

“It’s not ready, Adam,” Marcus said. Patrice could see him working hard to control his anger.

“Adam, we have some time,” she said. “Sure, the clock’s ticking. These guys want their money working for them yesterday. And we do have some excited users, maybe even some rabid fans. That’s all good and we’ll give them all what they need. But this has to be done correctly.”

“The right way. The steady choice. The slow, methodical road to failure,” Adam said, swallowing the rest of his scotch, turning and pacing away from them. “You two are quite the pair, you know that? Why don’t you want this? You walk right up to the man, tell him your story, and take his money. And then what? You just stop? You start to doubt? What the hell is that? We can’t stop. We are already in high gear. You know we are. Talk to your users. Talk to your coders. This thing is on fire and it wants to rage. So let it rage.”

He turned, looking back at them. The anger was becoming desperation. His eyes were now pleading with them.

“Adam, we’ll get there,” Patrice said, a finality in her voice. She didn’t want to lose him, but she needed him to find some clarity. Some caution. They had been running fast and long, driving the technology beyond recognized norms. They were pushing up against some dangerous edges with the AI and that slope could get slippery. Marcus understood that. His brain worked that way. But Adam was different. He was the biz dev guy. He was the wheeler dealer. The smile. The handshake. He was the closer. To him that was all that mattered.

She looked at him and saw the passion bleed away. Hopefully he was only giving into their recommendations and would still find that fire to push this thing to market. Everything he said was true, was something they needed to do. But not until the system was ready.

“Sure,” Adam said, almost too quiet for her to hear. “I get it. We need it to be right.”

Patrice stole a glance at Marcus, but he didn’t see her. She looked back at Adam, trying to understand the decisions he was making.

“It’s all going to happen, Adam,” Marcus said, standing now and moving toward his partner.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Adam replied. His head down, the confidence turned off. He set the bottle and his glass on the table, leaned back taking in a deep breath and stretching. “I’m going home to get some sleep,” he said.

“Adam,” Patrice started.

“We’re good, Patrice,” he interrupted, holding out his hand to stop her, the slightest edge still rising in his voice. “I understand everything you two are saying. I get it. Besides, two against one, right?”

There was something cold in that statement and Patrice felt Marcus turn to her. She didn’t dare look back at him though. Instead she stared at Adam. The calm demeanor he was expressing now was the real show and Patrice realized this discussion being over in no way meant they were aligned.

“It’s not about numbers, Adam,” she said. “We need to be coordinated on this.”

“We do, Patrice,” he said, stepping closer to her. His voice was steady now, any emotion gone. “We all want to do this right.”

He was standing right in front of her now. It was uncomfortable. Patrice didn’t want to move, didn’t want to expose her nervousness or show he was eliciting such a reaction. But her fear was misplaced. He just extended his hand and shook hers.

“Congratulations again. Job well done today.” He smiled, and she shivered. He held her hand and her stare just long enough to be disconcerting. Then he dropped his grip and turned to Marcus.

“Marcus, tomorrow,” he said, waving.

Marcus nodded without speaking and Adam turned to leave. Patrice needed to say some last thing, some throw away comment to ease the tension.

“Adam,” she said, and he turned, “it’s going to be great. Watch and see.”

He stood there a second, smiling now, shifting his focus between her and Marcus.

“You have no idea,” he said, almost in a whisper. He turned and left the room and Patrice didn’t move until she heard the front door open and close behind him.

Marcus was beside her when she turned.

“You ok?” he asked. “What’s with that guy?”

The scotch was swimming in her head and she sat. Marcus sat next to her, leaning toward her chair. Why wasn’t he concerned about this?

“I’m fine. He’ll be fine, right? I mean he’s with us in this, isn’t he?”

“Adam? Of course he is. He just gets blustery. You know that. He’s anxious, that’s all. Besides,” he said, leaning closer, “this thing is going to kick some serious ass.”

Marcus laughed at that and reached across to the bottle. “Now come on, Ms. Dillon. One more for the road.”

Patrice smiled enough to appease him and watched him pour more scotch. She leaned back in the chair and tried to relax. But those emotionless eyes, that final, flat stare. You have no idea. The real statement behind those words. The promise he was making, or the threat. That wasn’t going away.

Adam pushed through the heavy door into the parking level and stopped. The door slammed into the concrete wall, the handle digging deeper into a crevice already formed by countless other such encounters. The impact of steel on concrete broke the silence with an echo of the rage spilling out of Adam. He wanted to scream. He wanted to grab the heavy door and slam it into the concrete again. Instead, he stood there, listening as the door retracted with a metallic thud, his anger bleeding away with the dying sound.

Was it possible he was wrong? Was it possible they weren’t ready? The few times he’d gone into the game had been early in the prototyping and even then it had transformed him. How did they not see it? They were creating a world nobody had ever experienced. Why were they so afraid?

“Mr. Spencer,” came a voice behind him. It pulled him out of his thoughts, back to the dark garage. A large man appeared from the shadows. He stood just far enough from Adam to keep his face hidden.

“Who are you?” Adam fired back, feigning strength to cover the fear he felt twisting his stomach.

“That’s not important just yet, Mr. Spencer. What is important is you and your position.”

“My position?” Adam asked, looking around, ensuring there were multiple escapes if he needed them.

“We have a proposition for you, Mr. Spencer,” came another voice behind him. This one was female.

Adam turned, almost tripping on his own feet. She stepped out of the shadows, less afraid of being seen.

“Proposition? What proposition?” he asked, looking back and forth between them.

“Is it true?” the man asked.

“Is what true?”

“We’re told the experience is astounding,” said the woman.

“You mean the game,” Adam said.

“Yes, Mr. Spencer. Is the rumor true?”

Adam looked around to confirm nobody else would be joining them. Who were these people?

“It’s sublime,” he said in a whisper. “There are places so real you forget it’s just a game.”

The man and woman just stared at him, nodding their heads.

“Almost like real life,” the man said.

“No,” Adam answered, “exactly like real life, but in places you thought you’d never go.”

The couple looked at each other, sharing some private secret.

“Who are you people?” Adam asked. “What is this proposition you were mentioning?”

“We have a vested interest in your company, Mr. Spencer,” the woman said.

“A twenty-five million dollar interest,” the man said with a smile. “It provides us with, an opportunity.”

“What does that mean?” Adam asked.

“We need things go in a certain direction at Trident, Mr. Spencer,” said the woman. “Can you help us with that?”

“What direction? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing dramatic, Adam. Can I call you Adam?”

“Sure. And what do I call you?”

“In time, Mr. Spencer,” the man said, stepping forward. “For now we’d like you to keep us informed about the development efforts in your company. Can you do that for us?”

“So this is the baggage your investment buys. Is that it?”

“No, Adam, an opportunity,” said the woman. “You will be a very wealthy man.”

“Or not,” said the man ominously. “It’s up to you.”

They stood waiting, as if Adam was supposed to confirm something, but he wasn’t sure what was happening.

“We’ll contact you again,” said the man. “For now, let’s keep this discussion just between us. Is that understood, Mr. Spencer?”

He had moved within a few inches of Adam. He was a couple decades older than Adam at least, but still a formidable presence.

“Of course,” Adam said. “We haven’t discussed anything, now have we?”

“That’s the spirit,” the man said, clapping a hand on Adam’s shoulder.

The hand was heavy, the grip strong. Adam had to concentrate not to crumble. He needed to stand up to this man, show a strength he didn’t have. This was a decision point, for them and him. They were testing him, looking for confirmation, making sure he would be up to their plan.

“When will I hear from you again?” Adam asked, speaking slowly to be sure there was no quiver in his words.

“We’ll find you, Adam,” said the woman. “In the meantime, just keep about your business. We don’t want to attract any attention. Understood?”

Adam just nodded.

“Good. Have a pleasant evening, Adam.”

The man released Adam’s shoulder and the two of them walked away into the gloom of the garage.

Adam’s anger faded, replaced with a strange mix of excitement and sheer terror. What were these people planning? The mysterious meeting suggested their goals were not entirely pure. As their footsteps faded into the darkness and the caress of silence wrapped around Adam again, he decided he didn’t care.