Omnitopia Dawn (10 page)

Rik put the dreams on hold and killed the link, vanishing.

Outside the huge floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, the Sixth Avenue traffic was pouring past as usual, and the sidewalks just outside were full of the normal crush of midtown Manhattan lunchtime pedestrian traffic. But the sidewalk traffic was moving a lot more slowly than normal due to all the people who’d pushed up against the glass to stare in at the TV lights and strobe flashes illuminating the brightly decorated, neon-lit acreage inside.

The whole front half of the huge ground-floor display space was crammed with hundreds of people—disproportionately teenage and male—crowded around neon-decorated fixtures that incorporated gaming control consoles and wide-screen plasma displays. High over their heads, completely ignored, hung slowly rotating neon-and-strobe signs declaring INFINITE WORLDS—
MAKE THEM YOURS!
Here and there some local TV station’s camera crew tried desperately to push through the crowds around the gaming console, but they were making slow work of it: potential players were stacked six deep around the consoles, each one waiting for the five minute play-period that they’d been allotted on making it in through the front doors. Outside, the line went halfway around a long Manhattan block, and no one who’d made it in this far was going to take the chance of moving an inch and losing their chance to be one of the first to get his (or occasionally her) hands on the game. Thumping rock music blared over everything, even its insistent
now!now!now!now!
beat almost drowned out by the shouts of the game players as they hammered at the controllers, lost in the furious excitement of mortal combat in a brand-new world.

Past the triple line of game consoles, a wide cordon of gaudy advertising flats fronted by goodie bag tables and booth babes stretched from one side of the space to the other. In the middle of the cordon was a gap guarded by a platoon of intimidating black-clad bouncer types, most standing in faux-Secret-Service at-rest poses while a couple of their number checked press passes and hologrammed invitations and waved the fortunate few through. On the far side of the cordon there was a little more room to move and breathe. More camera crews and representatives of the print and electronic press, along with various Band C-list celebrities, jostled for access to the bars on either side and the tables with swag bags that contained merchandise more valuable than the advertising-laden “nickel bags” being laid out for the fans in front. The contents of most of those bags—for the early possession of which the fans out front would probably have committed any number of misdemeanors—would be for sale on eBay within hours, and the host of the party knew this and didn’t care. It would be great publicity that was what counted.
And thank God this is almost over.

At the back of the exhibition space, beyond the bars, behind a velvet rope and another line of bouncers, was a dais backed with more plasma screen and holographic signage repeating again and again the trademark violet Mobius-infinity symbol, rotating serenely once every two seconds on every screen. On the dais, the last crowd of press people who would be granted admission were shouting questions, and flashes were going off with near rock- concert frequency in the face of the tall, husky, dark-haired, smiling man with his arm around the shoulders of a cardboard stand-up of himself holding a copy of the
Infinite Worlds: Threefold
game package.

“Mr. Sorensen! Mr. Sorensen!”

“Phil! This way, please, Phil!”

“How many DVD units do you expect to move this weekend, Mr. Sorensen?”

“In excess of five hundred thousand. Give or take one or two—”

“What about downloads?”

“It’s hard to tell, but the projections suggest somewhere in the neighborhood of three million.”

“Will you break Omnitopia’s record?”

Phil chuckled. “The question is, can they match ours?” he said. “We’ve got a tried and tested gaming platform that eight out of ten gamers say they prefer to less structured and more unpredictable forms of gameplay. Of course dedicated gamers want something new and exciting. But they also want a robust platform that they can depend on, and a game at an affordable price point, not one that’s had its buy-in costs inflated by some executive’s desire for the world’s most advanced filing system.” Phil paused for a breath and got the laugh he was waiting for. “Serious gamers want to buy
games
—not vapor-ware, not research that may never pay off. And they want to know that they’re going to
get
what they think they’re paying for! That’s what Infinite Worlds is all about. This Threefold expansion gives them the chance to have their virtual cake and eat it too—new play modalities in a landscape that’s both familiar and all new, with a rock-solid game engine and dependable server structures worldwide. When other so-called innovations have gone the way of the dodo, Infinite Worlds will still be here, always growing, but always giving the world’s most loyal gamers what they expect from Infinity Inc.—affordable action!”

More questions were shouted, and Phil kept answering them, smile in place—all but the one that one ill-advised reporter kept repeating: “Do you have a statement regarding the rumor that you’re trying to bury the hatchet with Dev Logan and merge with Omnitopia?” Phil simply ignored that the first couple of times; but after the third repetition, he glanced off to one side, where Deirdre, his PR chief, was standing, and put one hand casually in his pocket. She instantly turned to quietly give the high sign to the stage manager and the bouncers that this final press access of the day was over. One of the bouncers immediately unhooked the velvet rope as Deirdre came over to Phil and said, “Mr. Sorensen, your four-thirty—”

“I know, Deirdre. Thanks. Sorry, folks, we’re done. Thank you, everybody,” Phil said, turned his back on the press, and made his way toward the back of the dais.

His own security people were waiting for him there, four large dark-suited and Ray-Banned gentlemen who surrounded him and walked him out of the back of the Infinity Inc. store’s display space, past a jumble of temporarily stored display flats and shelving, then out to the utility entrance behind the building. His limo stood under the carport, its door open. He got in and pulled out his PDA as the door was closed, flipped its lid open, and brought up Reuters Financial to see what his stock was doing.

He swore as the limo’s other door opened and Deirdre got in. The door was closed for her, and she put on her seat belt and said nothing as the car started up.

Phil exhaled. “Well?” he said.

“Well what, Mr. Sorensen?”

Her tone was defensive, as well it might have been. “Sorry,” he said. “Not your fault. Who was that?”

“The reporter who kept asking about Omnitopia? I don’t know.”

“Find out.”

“I will. Whoever he is, we won’t be credentialing him again. I’ll see who in my department gave him a pass and make sure they tighten up their requirements.” Her mouth was set tight: an uneasy, unattractive look on what was usually such an untroubled face. “He was probably just some blogger . . .”

“It doesn’t matter,” Phil said as the limo pulled away from the building. “What I’m interested in is the source of the rumor. It’s information that could be useful. See what you can find out.”

“Of course, Mr. Sorensen.”

He sighed and leaned back against the cushions as the limo turned onto Fifty-fifth Street. Phil gazed out the selectively polarizing smart glass windows at the traffic and the buildings, at the curious faces gazing at the limo’s windows (ebony dark to them) and wondering
Is that somebody important?
It was only a few minutes’ drive to the building that housed Phil’s corporate offices, but all the while he could feel Deirdre getting more tense. “Listen, Deirdre—”

“I should have stopped him,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“If it hadn’t been that guy, it would’ve been someone else,” Phil said. “You heard someone mention Omnitopia just a few moments before he did. This is the press we’re talking about. If they can’t find a fight, they’ll manufacture one. It’s their job. Peaceful relations between competitors don’t sell any papers.”

His PR chief said nothing for a moment, pretending to be distracted by the horn of a cab changing lanes and veering too close to the limo; and her tension in no way ebbed. “You’re right, of course,” Deirdre said, as the limo pulled up in front of Infinity Inc.’s New York headquarters.

Phil said nothing. The security guy riding shotgun got out and opened Deirdre’s door. “Thank you,” Phil said. “Listen, call my PA in the morning and let’s make some time to look over the schedule for the next few days. I’m going to want to make some changes.”

“Of course, Mr. Sorensen. Have a good evening.”

The door closed. The security man got in again, shut his own door, and the limo started up. “Hartnell and Wise, sir?” the driver said over the speaker.

“That’s right.”

The car purred through the early rush hour traffic, stopping, starting again, turning for the journey crosstown. Phil stretched against the cushions, pulled out his PDA again, checked his stock one more time.
IICC now down four points.

He frowned, put the PDA away, and—having nothing better to do—pondered Deirdre’s uncharacteristic nervousness. After a little while, the answer came to him.
She was freaked because what happened there would normally have made me go ballistic when we were away from the cameras. And this time it didn’t.

Phil smiled—a smile that the people he worked with would normally have found most disquieting. Deirdre had no way of knowing that there was about to be a big change in her boss’ attitude toward Omnitopia—bigger than almost anyone who worked closely with him at Infinity Inc. would have believed possible.
So much is going to change. And when it does, the annoying questions are going to stop at last.

The midtown traffic now left Phil a good few minutes to contemplate, with increasing pleasure, what that was going to feel like. Finally the limo slid up to the curb and stopped. The security guard got out and opened his door. Phil stepped out in front of a Park Avenue address that looked much like its neighbors to either side: a discreet white limestone edifice four stories high with a gilt- and-iron gate protecting a beautiful beaux arts walnut door. As he crossed the sidewalk, the inner door swung open, and the gate buzzed and unlatched.

Inside the door waiting for him was the handsome silver-haired assistant who managed the outer office of Hartnell and Wise. “Miss Wise is waiting for you, sir,” she said, and led the way up the marble staircase to the office at the top of the landing.

The assistant opened the door for him and stood aside to let Phil step into Morgan Wise’s office. Normally in a brokerage of this age and exclusivity, the partners’ offices tried to suggest a tradition of discretion and reliability by affecting a lot of leather and heavy wood paneling. But this space was light, bright, and nearly bare: white-walled, floored in blond wood, with one white desk, a single understated chrome-and-rattan Eames chair on each side of it, and a single white flat screen monitor standing on the desk.

Morgan Wise was standing behind the desk waiting for him: tall, slim, her shoulder-length dark hair swinging free above the jacket of a dark-skirted suit. She reached out across the desk to shake his hand as always, then sat down again while the silver-haired office assistant shut the door. “So,” Morgan said in that soft, sultry voice that always made Phil think she would do well as a late-night radio host if she ever wearied of working the markets. “You have some news for me?”

Phil nodded. “The timings have come through,” he said.

Morgan tapped the desk briefly and a keyboard appeared in its surface. “Is the date still the same?”

“Yes.”

More tapping; then she looked up. “So?”

Phil pulled a piece of note paper out of his inside jacket pocket, handed it across the desk to her. Morgan looked closely at it and tapped again at the keyboard, pausing once or twice to check the figures written on the note. “All right,” she said, pushing the note back to Phil. “I’ll have my silent colleagues in the Far East start bracketing our shell companies’ buy orders around those times. After that—” She folded her hands above the keyboard, rested her chin on them. “I think the twenty-first is going to be a very busy day for you. Because in the wake of the day’s events, I’d say you could be majority stockholder by . . .” She studied her monitor for a moment. “Let’s say midnight.”

Phil smiled. “That’s when their rollout party is supposed to start,” he said softly. “Won’t it be interesting if the company has a new owner by midnight their time?”

Morgan smiled. “We’ll see how it goes,” she said. “But if the share price reacts as emphatically to what’s about to happen as our calculations suggest, it could happen even sooner. All we can do now is wait.” She arched one eyebrow. “Always the hardest part.”