Game of Death (4 page)

The finance guys are in pinstripes. They’re dealing with investment bankers just about every day now, and it’s like they’ve been infected with some weaponized germ developed in
the back rooms at Goldman Sachs. They’re turning into the corporate Borg before our eyes.

I look down at my own clothes and wonder what people assume about me, from the outside. I’m wearing jeans pulled down over the old leather boots I’ve had since I was eighteen. I was
self-conscious enough when I left the house to put on a button-down shirt, and my leather jacket is old and beaten enough to look intentionally stylish. Beyond that, I still have the hard-raised
look of a street kid.

The door to the conference room is closed, and those of us in management’s second echelon mill about exchanging nods and smiles. The company has become so striated that I don’t know
half of their names. They look at me warily; they know I run what is known affectionately here at corporate as the ‘black-ops’ end of the business. I stand against the wall, letting the
low hum of polite conversation blend with the song from the car radio that is still caught in my ear.

Suddenly there is a shout from behind the conference-room doors. It’s an angry bark, the tone clear even though the words get lost in the thick oak. The executives waiting for the meeting
go silent and look nervously at each other. Faces flush and eyes turn toward the floor.

Another shout follows, and then a tirade with the rhythm and intensity of the ocean beating on the shore during a hurricane. Now the uncomfortable smiles on those around me have turned to
anxious frowns. Everyone is staring at the door, but no one is moving. I step slowly forward and those around me move back, their cowardice outbattling their curiosity. For me, that’s a
battle curiosity wins every time, sometimes to my detriment.

I am nearly to the door, and the shouting continues inside. As I draw close, I can make out a word here and there, but the nature of the conversation is still lost in the wood paneling. I reach
out for the handle that runs the length of the door, and just as my hand touches the cold brass there is a crash from inside the room. It’s like an explosion and I pull my hand back
involuntarily. Everyone behind me gasps. I hesitate for just a moment, looking at the door. The shouting has stopped. I reach out again, grab the handle and pull.

The door comes open easily, pushed from behind, and Josh Pinkerton, the CEO and one of the founders of NextLife, stands in the door smiling, his arms wide, the reflection of the sun off his
teeth bright enough to blind.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he calls to everyone in the reception area. ‘Thank you for coming! Please, come in.’ He looks over toward the receptionist. ‘Louise, we lost
a vase. Can you have someone come in and clean?’

I am standing there, my hand still on the door handle, less than a foot from Pinkerton. No one in the reception area has moved. Pinkerton looks over at me, the smile still on his face, and I
want to duck to avoid the reflection. I don’t, though. Instead I flash my merely mortal smile back at him. It seems a poor trade, and Pinkerton claps me on the shoulder. ‘Nick!’
he says with more enthusiasm than is necessary. ‘So good of you to crawl out of the basement for this! Please come in.’

‘Thanks, Josh,’ I say. ‘Glad to be here.’ I walk through the doors. Tom Jackson is in the room, as is Dr Santar Gunta, the mastermind behind NextLife’s technology,
and Heinrich NetMaster, NextLife’s Dutch head of security. NetMaster is the name he chose when he came to this country, several years ago. He is an intimidating presence at six foot six
inches tall and over 300 pounds. The rumor is that he got his start in security working with organized crime in Amsterdam.

I glance at Tom, and he flashes me a warning look that tells me I don’t want to ask any questions. I take a seat at the long conference table, and watch as the others stream in and take
their own places. The receptionist hurries in with a broom and a dustpan and quickly sweeps up the vase that lies broken in the corner like a murder victim no one wants to acknowledge.

It should be an interesting meeting at least, I figure.

‘We’re close,’ Pinkerton says. He looks out at those around the table, smiling again, making eye contact with everyone. The sun has risen enough that as it
streams through the window it no longer flashes from his teeth, but still casts a warm glow on his permatan. It makes him seem almost human. ‘We’re very, very close.’ He looks at
Tom Jackson. ‘As you all know, eight months ago I appointed Tom Jackson to head up a new Revenue Generation Division. His first undertaking, Project Touchpoint, has been an enormous success,
and the growth in our sensual hardware line has quadrupled the company’s overall revenue. Of course, hardware will only get us so far, right? We need to generate other forms of revenue as
well. We all know what the ultimate goal is: to launch our IPO as the most highly valued company in history. We can meet that goal if –
and only if
– we can show Wall Street
enough income to justify our current value estimations. Tom, do you want to tell them where we stand?’

Tom clears his throat. ‘Obviously revenue generation in an environment that is, by its design, as completely organic as NextLife, is a challenge. From the company’s founding we have
recognized that traditional methods of revenue generation are incompatible with the entire notion of what it is that we offer. Advertising, in the traditional sense, is likely to clutter both the
site and the experience for our users, and turn people off. Similarly, a pay-per-use or paid membership scenario would, by our estimates, cut our users by seventy percent. That would be devastating
to our profile at this crucial high-growth point in the company’s history. We don’t even know if the company would survive long-term in such a scenario.’

‘We all understand the challenges,’ Josh says sharply. ‘What are the solutions?’

‘We have several that are in development,’ Tom says. ‘The first is a new spin on advertising. It would be an ad-insert tool that would allow us to actually place product
endorsements within users’ LifeScenes – advertising which the user wouldn’t even know was placed there. They could be walking down the street in the LifeScene, and a
sponsor’s car could drive by. It would blend into the scene, but give advertisers a way of reaching subliminally In-World. A sign on a wall in someone’s LifeScene would have one of our
advertisers’ ads. It would also be targeted based on the information Nick Caldwell and his black-ops team could supply about particular users and groups of users, so that someone who is an
outdoor adventurer in the LifeScenes would be matched with outdoor products, while someone who attends virtual concerts would get music-related advertisements.’

‘What have advertisers’ reactions been?’ Pinkerton asks. I can tell he already knows the answer.

Tom hesitates before answering, glancing at Josh with impotent frustration. ‘It’s been luke-warm. But I think it will grow . . . ’

‘Just give us the numbers.’ Josh’s words are like tacks from a pneumatic gun, pinning Tom to the wall by his clothes.

Tom looks around the table. I can tell from the expressions that the primary sentiment of those seated is relief that they are not Tom at this moment. Tom takes a deep breath. ‘Six percent
on the high side.’

‘Is that number for potential interest, or actual purchase?’

‘That’s interest,’ Tom says heavily.

‘And purchase? What’s that number?’

‘It’s not something we have pushed . . . ’

‘What’s the purchase number?’

Tom pauses for a long moment. ‘Zero.’

‘Zero,’ Pinkerton repeats. The word falls like a dead skunk on the table. Everyone just stares at it, their eyes glazed, their collective breath held.

Josh Pinkerton stands, walks over to the window and looks out at the Boston skyline. No one speaks. His hands are behind his back, and he is rocking back and forth on his heels. Finally he
begins, his voice so quiet that I think at first he’s talking to himself, and those around the table have to lean in to hear.

‘I could blame Tom.’ I look over at Tom and watch his head fall. ‘That would be the easy thing to do. Blame Tom. Fire him. Tell the world that we are waiting another year to go
public. I could do that, but it wouldn’t be fair.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Do you know why that wouldn’t be fair?’

No one responds. After a moment he turns and looks at those gathered around the table. ‘Because incompetence at this level cannot be blamed on one person,’ he says with a quiet
intensity. ‘Tom’s failure is your failure. Each and every one of you shares in this, and if I fire him, I will have to fire every single one of you, do you understand?’ He just
stares at us, moving from person to person, meeting everyone directly in the eye. Then he walks slowly over to the table in the corner of the room and picks up a vase on the table next to the
window – it looks like the twin of the one carried out in pieces a few moments before – and he hurls it across the room. It misses the head of one of the finance guys by a couple of
inches and explodes against the far wall.

‘As of this moment, revenue generation is priority one for everyone around this table, do you understand?’ he asks in a voice so soft I can barely hear him. ‘We don’t
need much; the Street has a hard-on so fucking big for this company, it’s ready to cum cash all over us. All we need to do is show them there is a chance – some possibility that we will
eventually be able to generate revenue. We have more traffic than most sites in the world, and if you people can’t figure out how to translate that into revenue, you don’t deserve to be
here.’

With that, Josh Pinkerton, the CEO and founder of NextLife, walks out of the conference room. NetMaster follows him. Slowly the people around the table start to get up to leave. ‘I need to
see all department heads,’ Tom Jackson says. ‘Downstairs in ten minutes. We need to map out a strategy.’

No one responds. I walk over to Tom and pat his shoulder. ‘It’ll be alright.’

He nods. ‘It will be.’ He doesn’t sound convinced. ‘Ten minutes? Downstairs?’

‘I’ll be there.’

I walk out of the conference room and head toward the elevator. As I pass the receptionist’s desk I look at her. ‘Louise,’ I say, ‘We lost another vase in
there.’

‘Two vases?’

Yvette and I are sitting down at the edge of the harbor in Charlestown in the old Navy Yard, near where the USS
Constitution
is docked. The
Constitution
is the oldest warship
still in commission, having been the pride of the fleet during the Civil War. She stands at her dock like a proud Brahmin looking down her sails with disdain upon the newer, flashier yachts that
surround her. Yvette, who is in starve-mode, has a giant coffee on the bench next to her and a newspaper spread out on her lap.

‘Two vases,’ I confirm. ‘One before the meeting, and one just before he walked out.’

‘Shit!’ she says. ‘That’s bad.’

I shrug. ‘We’ll get it figured out.’

She takes a long, scrutinizing look at me. ‘You really don’t care about the money, do you?’

I scoff. ‘I’m as interested in a buck as anyone else.’

She shakes her head. ‘No, you’re not. You’d be happy with the money, but it’s not what drives you. In fact, I sometimes think you’re afraid of the money.’

‘You think?’ I consider it for a moment, wondering whether she’s right. ‘So, what drives me, then?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out, yet.’

‘Fair enough. You’ve only known me for two decades. Give it time.’

She chokes out a laugh. It’s a distinctively unladylike sound, but it’s conspiratorial and sexy. Two middle-aged men jogging along the pier hear it and look at her, their glances
lingering as they approach. She is
dressed for the heat
, as she likes to say, which is a polite way of saying she is wearing very little. An extremely short, light cotton sundress hangs
lazily from her shoulders, draped over her bra-less chest, revealing the athletic body she is secretly proud of. The joggers are enjoying the view, and I think she appreciates their lascivious
stares.

‘Keep going, boys!’ she calls to them as they pass. ‘You’ve got a lot more running to do!’

I laugh as they move on. ‘You’re a hard woman.’

‘I am. Speaking of that, don’t even think about backing out tomorrow.’ I say nothing. It’s been on my mind all day. ‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘If I
show up there and I’m alone, I’ll kill you. Literally hunt you down and put a bullet in your head.’

‘You don’t own a gun.’

‘No, but I could find some other creative ways to bump you off. Seriously, you’ve got to face this, one way or another.’

‘I’m not sure why.’ She glares at me until I crack. ‘I’ll be there.’

She goes back to her newspaper. There is something intoxicating about sitting in public with an attractive girl, even if she is only a friend. Every man who passes thinks you’re having sex
with her, and the envy radiates from them. It makes you feel powerful.

I lean back into the bench and sip my coffee, looking out at the Boston skyline. I sometimes feel as though I’m always looking at the city from afar – like I’m here, but
I’m not really a part of it. As someone who grew up just outside of the city, I idealize Boston. I look at the crisp, clean lines of the buildings rising from the edge of the water and I
wonder what it would be like to really belong in a place like that. Boston is for other people, I think. Better people.

‘Holy shit!’ Yvette exclaims, disturbing my idle self-doubt.

‘What?’

‘Look at this.’

She holds the paper up so that I can see the headline. ‘
Model Murdered
,’ I read. There is a blurry newsprint photo of a young woman, and I squint to make out her features. I
don’t recognize her. She is attractive, but not my type. ‘I don’t get it,’ I say.

‘You don’t get it?’ Yvette grunts, turning the paper back around so that she can read the story aloud to me. ‘Listen: “The body of Amanda Hicks, 26, a part-time
model and waitress, was discovered yesterday morning in her West Roxbury apartment. The specific cause of death is unknown, but the police are treating the matter as a homicide. Ms Hicks’
body was found by a neighbor bound to a chair, covered in feathers.”’