Massively multiplayer, p.6
Massively Multiplayer, page 6
“Mr. Calloway, this is more than just a release party, isn’t it? I’ve overseen a lot of the new coding you had your people send us from England, and I have to say I didn’t understand a lot of the open modifications you incorporated into the new architecture. I can see how the new release will make Crucible even more expandable, allowing for new types of dynamic content, but…is that it? It’s a technological advance, but it doesn’t seem enough to merit all the press. What else should we be expecting tonight?”
To his relief, Calloway took the question in stride, simply smiling indulgently over his lemon crème. “Now Wolfgang,” he chided gently, “you’re almost as bad as the boys and girls from the media. You Yanks, no delicacy at all.” His smile broadened. “Still, you’ve been very patient until now, and I know you’ve had a lion’s job of it implementing those changes without the full picture. I suppose it’s time we got down to the entertainment.”
He stood and clapped his hands together twice, solemnly. Conversation died. The Archimago employees looked smug and well-fed. The reporters looked eager.
“My friends, ladies and gentlemen of the press, welcome. I am Vitus Calloway, head of Vital Enterprises, the parent company of Archimago Technologies, our host this evening. We are here this evening to celebrate the release of Crucible 4.0, the latest version of Archimago’s flagship product, the Crucible entertainment netvironment.”
Vitus spent a few moments outlining the history of Archimago and Crucible, a recitation nearly identical to the tour Wolfgang had offered his employer the evening before. There were few revelations during this speech, although it certainly underscored how clearly Calloway understood the operations of even so minor a part of his corporate empire. Wolfgang tasted his lemon crème thoughtfully, wondering if that were the entire point of the party, to remind press and employees alike that Vitus Calloway was still very much the “hands-on” master who had built Vital Enterprises into one of the great multinational corporations.
But even as he deduced this possibility, Vitus suddenly shifted gears, his voice now harsh, and his eyes piercing. “But I have not come to you tonight to speak of our successes. These are already known to you. What remains unexplored are the vast possibilities which have not been developed, the successes which have not yet been achieved, despite the resources which both Archimago and Vital Enterprises could be devoting to this project. We are, as stated, one of the most popular netvironments in existence, with an extremely loyal and stable customer base. Why are we not yet the most popular? More importantly, why have Archimago and Crucible remained only moderately profitable, in a business environment which rewards just such a customer base? Ladies and gentlemen, we have at hand one of the great resources, perhaps the only worthwhile resource in the modern business environment -- the undivided attention of loyal, enthusiastic customers -- and we are not exploiting that resource to its fullest. It is…a disappointment to me.”
He turned his gimlet eyes to his left, towards Howard Kipling and his management team. Kipling was Archimago’s CEO, and Wolfgang’s immediate boss, but right now Wolfgang wouldn’t have traded places with him for all the perks in Kipling’s portfolio.
“Mr. Howard Kipling and his staff have failed. They have failed Archimago Technologies, Vital Enterprises, and our shareholders. They are sitting upon a goldmine, and they have squandered their opportunities...our opportunities...for quite long enough.” Calloway smiled grimly. “During the past several months, we have discussed at length many of the changes which would be necessary for Archimago Technologies to achieve its true potential, and they have failed to take the steps necessary to achieve those goals. Perhaps more importantly, I have had our development team in Britain incorporating many of those changes into this most recent release of the Crucible project, and Mr. Kipling and his associates have failed to note this fact. Clear evidence, I think of their lack of interest in the development of our flagship product.”
Kipling had blanched, and even those of his toadies who were also being castigated were edging away from him as though suddenly discovering that he were radioactive. “Mr. Calloway, I-“
“Mr. Kipling,” Calloway continued, and his white hair now gave him the air of an extremely harsh schoolteacher. “Mr. Kipling and his staff have been a very grave disappointment indeed. Luckily, his limitations no longer concern Archimago, nor any other subsidiary of Vital Enterprises.”
He grinned broadly, leaning into the microphone. “Consider yourself sacked, Mr. Kipling.”
Kipling rose to protest, but at that moment he was tapped on the shoulder by a security guard who Wolfgang didn’t recognize, and who he had not seen enter the room. Another guard was standing nearby, pushing a dolly loaded with boxes which, presumably, contained Kipling’s personal effects. Several more security personnel waited in line behind the pair, each accompanied by a handcart stacked with boxes. Even as Wolfgang and the others watched incredulously, Kipling was ushered from the room.
He was followed shortly by the heads of finance, customer relations, and an assortment of executive vice-presidents who had been appointed by Kipling during his reign at Archimago. The guards were remarkably efficient, clearing away several years worth of upper management in just under two minutes flat.
Wolfgang swallowed nervously. It was the most severely public dressing-down he had ever witnessed. By the time the announcement hit the evening newscasts, Kipling would have difficulty getting a job managing anything more significant than a donut shop. It was also typical of Vitus Calloway’s business style, although Wolfgang had never seen the old man’s intimidatingly personal approach applied in the flesh.
He sincerely prayed that he would never become the target of the old man’s wrath. If, indeed, he wasn’t about to get the axe himself.
But Calloway seemed to be done with his victims for the evening. He returned his gaze to the assembled reporters and employees. The journalists were now looking excited, grateful for the opportunity to include the excruciating scene with the regular business news. Among other things, Wolfgang realized, Calloway had just ensured that a release party, which should have been a page-three article at best, would now be the lead item in every industry newscast for days. It was like watching a grandmaster sacrifice a rook in order to advance a pawn into the opponent’s rear rank.
He may have been alone in his admiration for the old man’s gamesmanship. The Archimago employees were looking alternately terrified and worshipful, depending on whether they thought Calloway would view them as part of the company’s problems or part of its solutions.
“Enough unpleasantness. On to our bright future. Since the departure of Mr. Kipling leaves us with an opening, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Bernardo Calloway to the position of CEO of Archimago Technologies.”
This announcement provoked mixed reactions from the crowd. Mingled gasps of surprise and relief issued from the Archimago employees who realized that Calloway senior wasn’t extending the bloodbath of the previous minutes into their ranks. The press corps seemed alternately bemused and perplexed, primarily on the basis of whether or not they’d even known that Vitus Calloway had a son.
Wolfgang did his best to maintain a facade of studied indifference, as though he’d known the appointment were coming all along; which wasn’t too far from the truth, given the broad hints which Vitus Calloway had been dropping during their tour of the facilities. But even if Bernardo’s selection didn’t come as a surprise, it still presented a number of puzzles which he had yet to solve, chief among them what type of CEO Bernardo would be. Wolfgang set down his spoon and considered the younger Calloway, who was now rising to the belated applause of the assembled guests.
“Thank you, father. Thank you everyone.” Bernardo’s British was, if possible, even more proper than that of his father, even if it lacked the energy. He sounded to Wolfgang as though he were reading from a teleprompter hanging invisibly in the air before him. Maybe he’d had one implanted on a contact lens.
“I know that I am unfamiliar to most of you -- certainly to those of you working here at Archimago -- and you are likely wondering about my background and my preparation for the work to be done here. However, I should like to focus on the future here, rather than the past. We will all have the opportunity to get to know one another before long, and I shall endeavor to earn your respect and your trust, as employees and colleagues, in the months ahead. And so, rather than go into any further detail about myself I would like to move on to the real story of the evening, the release of the new Crucible, version 4.0. I don’t mind stating that some of the central advances in this new revision of our flagship product were brought to fath-...that is, Mr. Vitus Calloway’s attention by myself, at the behest of a number of University chums from Harvard Business school, so I have had the privilege of seeing this work through from the very first day. Perhaps the success of this project will help to introduce my vision for this company, as we take the oldest netvironment in existence with us into the next decade.”
There was scattered applause, mostly, Wolfgang noted, from the middle-management of Archimago, those who hadn’t followed Kipling and his cronies out the door. It was a brilliant bit of stage-managing, he realized: after the harshness of Vitus’ pronouncements, people were prepared to meet anything from the younger Calloway as a positive breath of sunshine. And his inclusion of himself in the Crucible family -- his pointed use of “we” instead of “you” -- had likely cemented the deal in the minds of many in his audience. Bernardo and Vitus: good cop and bad cop, and it was a cinch which way the crowd would swing. He mentally recalibrated his assessment of Bernardo; inexperienced and boring as he might seem, he was obviously clever.
“There has been a great deal of speculation,” Bernardo continued, “in both the media, and within the industry generally, about this release of Crucible. The problem is that of consumer-standardization. The consumer from, say, New York has to have compatible aims for the product as one from, say, Jakarta, or else they will never be able to create what we call purchase-synergy. Simply put, if the gamer from Jakarta is used to a netvironment predicated upon inter-consumer relations, while the one from the U.S. is interested in ‘slaying monsters,’ there can be no exchange of cultural commodity. The content has to be orientation-standardized in order to maximize international marketability…”
Most of the industry reporters, Wolfgang noted, were nodding their heads sagely, though whether they understood Bernardo’s fluent marketing-speak was anyone’s guess. The programmers looked mostly baffled, while the actors and writers feigned interest while paying most of their attention to their desserts.
“Luckily,” Bernardo intoned significantly, “there are trackable geo-dependant elements which are both cross-culturally consumer-adaptive and easily commodifiable. These and other elements, then, become the primary goal-orientations of the netvironment as a whole, to be adapted for each server as an independent marketing entity, focused upon a geographically realized consumer target-group, but available to a wider audience of consumers as demand would decree.
“This, then, is our challenge: to market the Crucible brand to its full potential, to develop the product for more market-niches, to execute a radical re-invention of the Crucible engine which will make our vision a reality...”
As the reporters filed forward to ask about the specifics of the deal, Wolfgang could only notice that none of them were asking the essential questions: what did Bernardo mean about “standardization of consumers?” And what would the players think about being treated as consumers anyway? He had the nagging sensation that he’d just heard something supremely disturbing, but he couldn’t quite pin down what it was. It was like watching a poker player so confident in his game that he would play with his cards face up, sure that he couldn’t be bested...but Wolfgang couldn’t make sense of the cards, or even what the stakes were. For a man who depended on his sense of order and structure for both his livelihood and his self-confidence, it was...unbalancing. He ordered another cup of coffee, humming the first movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.
Chapter Five – People to People
Guilt is the second-most compelling emotion of which we are capable. Next only to love, that great tidal wave of the psyche, guilt obliges us to act contrary to our own minds, our own interests, and our own hearts.
Why Andrew felt guilty when he confronted his sister over breakfast was a mystery. Perhaps the abortive conversations they’d stumbled through the day before convinced him that he owed her more attention. Or perhaps it was merely the lingering effect of his encounter with Gil, the sense that he was about to be roped into something. If he was, as he suspected and as his parents assured him, without direction, ever at the mercy of others’ interests, then let him, just once in a while, at least choose whose interests he would serve.
“What are you doing today?”
Sara looked up from her meal, the reflected light of the animations on the cereal box painting her soft features. “Nothing. I was going to go to a club. Junie got me a new address for a net where she says I can download interactives.”
“Would you rather go shopping? I mean at the mall? The real mall, not online?”
Sara’s interest warred visibly with the natural suspicion of all siblings when confronted with unexpected generosity. “Why? What are you doing at the mall?”
“Nothing,” Andrew replied glibly, aiming for a trustworthy smile. “Just looking for something to do. I thought you might want to go shopping. Since mom and dad are working.” He gestured over his shoulder at the closed door to their parents’ room.
“Okay. Let me get dressed.”
And so they went shopping. Andrew surprised himself by remembering the correct code for his parents’ local shuttle service. Then he surprised himself again by enjoying the trip. After a summer spent almost entirely in the company of his computer, even the moderate physicality of a shopping trip felt novel. And his sister, usually a ready source of acid wit at home, seemed sincerely grateful for the diversion.
The food, chemically identical to that which was delivered daily to their home, seemed somehow both fresher and more authentic in the restaurant where they had lunch. As they ate, small, colorful birds flew through the tropically-themed interior, splashing in fern-edged pools only a few feet from their table. Briefly Andrew wondered whether they were holographic or real, before discounting the question as unimportant. They were amusing for their own sake, and he appreciated the opportunity to see them with his own eyes, rather than through the goggles of his computer rig.
The birds were beautiful and so, he realized after an hour of wandering, was his sister. The bright plumage of teenage fashion, augmented today by a set of holographic wings, lent strength to the resemblance. Like them, she flitted from place to place, full of an energy which made him feel, at the advanced age of twenty years, hopelessly old.
Once, he almost brought up the troubles he was facing in his game, but, ashamed at the idea of intruding into her pleasure with a tension that seemed more remote and unimportant the more time he spent away from the computer, he remained silent. Catching his hesitation, she asked him what he was thinking.
“Not much.” Realizing he sounded evasive, he sought out the trouble which seemed most real. “School, I guess. My vacation’s almost over, and then I go back and then it’s one more year. Maybe one more term after that, to catch up classes I missed earlier. And then I’ll graduate, and I’ll have to find a real job. Hah! If there is one, I mean. I don’t know, with a degree in tech-studies, maybe you’ll see me in one of these stores some day, selling virlos or something.”
She considered the idea seriously, then shook her head. “You’d be good at that. But I don’t think so. You’re too…” she groped for a word, lurking somewhere on the other side of a chasm of awkwardness, then hurdled over it: “good. You’re really good.”
The pronouncement startled him. “Good? You mean like too good for selling things?”
“No,” she shook her head, embarrassed now, but certain. “I mean you’re good. You do good things, you’re nice. Tatty has an older brother, and he’s always yelling, at everyone. Once time he gave her a burn on her arm, on purpose, with a cigarette. She had to go to a hospital. You’re the opposite of that.
“So I’m a nice guy. Thanks, I guess.”
Sara scowled, thinking deeply. “Nooo...being good is more than being nice. Anybody can be nice, they just have to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Don’t steal cars. Don’t beat up old women.”
“So I’m not a sociopath. That’s good to know.”
“Don’t interrupt. I meant that you’re more like the person who would patch up Tatty when her brother burned her arm. You’re like a person who would make sure he’d never do it in the first place.”
Sara suddenly became enormously interested in the food on her plate, and Andrew realized she was self-conscious. Stylishly jaded Sara, who regularly ran conversational rings around her tongue-tied brother, caught expressing sincere emotion. How unfashionable!
They ate in silence for a moment. One of the chittering birds darted down from its artificial tree to perch on the edge of their table. Andrew held out a soy chip, and was gratified when it pecked the morsel out of his hand. So, they were real after all. Microchips in their brains, or subtle genetic modifications, must have been used to modify their behavior, keeping them in the restaurant.
Sara interrupted his thoughts. “All I meant was that I don’t think you’ll end up selling things. That’s all. You’ll find some job where you end up helping people.”
“Like a doctor?”
“Yeah. Well, no. More like a lawyer. Or maybe a social worker. Or a teacher. Remember that time I was going to jump down the stairs?”
