Vaporware (16 page)

The
ringing stopped for an instant, then fired back up again. “Great,” I said out
loud, “A persistent one,” and turned my attention to the screen. Blasting
ensued, explosions exploded, and somewhere in there the phone stopped ringing
again. “Good,” I said, and returned my attention to darting out between buildings
and strafing enemies who, lacking full AI implementation, didn’t have the
tactical sense God gave a cheeseburger.

As
if on cue, the phone jangled once more, somehow louder than the action
onscreen. It was enough to get me to look over at it, to make sure it was
really the phone making all that noise, and as I did so I got the sudden, sharp
jolt from the controller that told me something had blown Salvador’s electronic
head off.

“Well,
shit,” I said, and let the controller drop. It hit the thinly carpeted concrete
of the floor with a crack that was a little too loud, and I said something else
not nice. The impact had yanked the controller cable out of the console,
leaving the game frozen. The ringing of the phone filled the sudden silence,
painfully loud.

“Fine,”
I snarled, and grabbed the receiver off the hook. “What?”

“Ryan?”
It was Sarah’s voice. “Is that you?”

I
blinked. “Sarah, honey? How did you know I was back here?”

She
snorted. “Well, I knew you were at work, and where else would you be besides
your office?”

“That’s
not right,” I said, and meant it. “I’m not in my office. I’m in the back,
testing the build.”

“Right.
Whatever.” She sounded unhappy. “I don’t know the numbers on any other
extensions. Your office number is the only one I know.”

“I’m
serious,” I said. “I’m not at my desk.”

“Like
it matters. Maybe Eric put in call forwarding or something. And it wouldn’t
have mattered if you’d answered your cell phone the six or seven times I
called.”

“I
didn’t get any calls.” I shoved the receiver under my chin so I could dig my
cell phone out of my pocket. “It’s…oh, crap. The battery is drained.”

The
exasperation in her voice was palpable. “Of course it is. Tonight, maybe you’ll
remember to plug it in?”

I
took a deep breath. “I plugged it in last night to recharge. This afternoon,
when you called to tell me you'd be working late, it still had three bars on
the power meter.”

“If
you say so.” She sighed. “Look, I know I said I'd be late, but this is
ridiculous. It's eleven thirty, Ryan. There can't be anything that important at
the office right now, can there?”

I
rubbed my eyes, and was surprised to find that they stung like hell. “That
late? Christ. I had no idea. I'm just going to wrap this last test up, and then
I'm coming home.”

“You
promise?”

“Promise.”
A sudden noise distracted me. I turned to see that the game had reloaded and
restarted, even though the controller was unplugged and by all rights it should
have been frozen. Multiple explosions detonated onscreen, deafeningly loud and
too virtually close for comfort. “Shit, shit, shit!” I dove for the controller
to pause things, the phone tumbling out from under my ear to crack against the
desktop. Grabbing the controller, I mashed the pause button, only to realize it
was still unplugged and that pressing the buttons would have no effect. “Hang
on!” I shouted over the onscreen din, reaching out to shut off the television
before it blew out my eardrums.

The
power switch clicked. Abruptly, there was silence, except for the low grinding
of the disk drive in the guts of the debug kit. I'd shut that off in a minute,
I decided, and reached for the phone instead.

It
dangled off the edge of the desk, the cord sawing back and forth as it did.
Gingerly, I picked it up, holding it between two fingers like it might jump out
of my hand if I held it too tightly. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“What
the hell was that?” Sarah's voice had managed to shed any of the gentleness of
a minute ago. “It sounded like a bomb going off in there.”

“Technically,
it was a series of cluster grenades—” I began, before realizing too late that
the question had been, at best, rhetorical.

“Whatever.
Come home when you feel like it, once you've finished playing.”

“Sarah,
I—”

There
was a click. The line went dead.

“Crap,”
I said out loud, then hung up the phone. It didn't feel sufficiently dramatic,
so I walked over to the television. “It's your goddamned fault, you know. If
you'd just stayed paused, none of this would have happened.”

The
television didn't say anything, but the debug kit kept making chunking noises,
the sign of a hard drive that was thinking hard about ending it all. I turned
and glared at it instead. “And you were supposed to stay paused, jackass. What
the hell happened?”

Stooping
down, I picked up the stray controller and pulled the cable in. Regardless of
my personal feelings, it still needed to be connected, if for no other reason
than to get it ready for the regular crew in the morning. Walking over to the
debug kit, where it sat humming and sassy on the desktop, I reconnected the
cable and set the controller next to it. My finger jabbed out at the power
button....

...and
then stopped. Maybe it would be best to give Sarah some time to cool down.
There was no sense rushing home just to walk into a fight. I could wait until
she was asleep and then come home. I could even do something nice for when she
woke up in the morning.

The
more I thought about it, the more I liked that plan. There was a 24-hour Harris
Teeter on the way home. I could stop in and get flowers and maybe something for
breakfast. And, if I tiptoed in and didn’t make any noise, then maybe I could
arrange the flowers in a way where she’d see them before she saw me in the
morning, and….

Without
really thinking about it, I grabbed the controller, then turned the television
back on. The game sprang back into life, even as I settled down into my chair.
Just a little while longer, I told myself, and as long as I was here, I should
at least get a little more done on the frame rate testing.

In
front of me, a brand new Salvador materialized onscreen, glistening and ready
for battle. I gave him my full attention.

Chapter 13

It
wasn’t the pounding on the door that woke me up the next morning. It was the
pounding on the desk next to my head.

“Whurr?”
I said, or at least I think I said, as I began the laborious task of
extricating my face from the slightly sticky puddle of drool in which it had
become stuck. My eyes opened roughly at the same moment I realized that A)my
head was on something much harder than my pillow and B)there was a really loud
noise being generated somewhere very close to my poor, tender skull.

Trying
again, I came up with “Whaa?” at least until I got my head off the desk and
myself sitting vaguely upright. In front of me, I could see Eric, or at least
the section from waist to mid-torso. Any more would have meant opening my eyes
wider and that wasn’t a challenge I was really up to at the moment. “Good
morning?” I finally croaked, and rubbed my eyes. “It is morning, right?” I
swear, crinkling up my forehead to think about that made an actual sound.

Or
maybe it was just my imagination, and anticipation of what I knew was coming.

I
managed to pry my eyes open a little wider. It wasn’t a win. Eric did not look
happy, and since he was looking in my direction, he specifically did not look
happy with me. “Yes, it is morning,” he said. “And by the…looks of you, you’ve
been here all night. Is that the case?”

Slowly,
I nodded. “I think so, yeah. I was doing some frame rate testing, and I got
caught up in it, and then before I knew it, it was late, and I was just going
to write some emails, and...oh my God.”

Eric
sighed. “At least you didn’t fuck up the coffeemaker this time.”

I
thought about that for a second. “That’s because we switched to the single cup
packets.”

He
snorted. “Yeah, well, that was because you kept on letting the pot boil dry and
stinking up the whole building. So I have to ask, what the hell were you doing
here?”

“I
told you,” I began, but got no further. Eric’s warning hand was up and that was
the end of that.

“No,
you gave me an excuse. We’re still way early in the project, Ryan. What the
hell are you doing pulling crunchtime hours?”

“I
just thought—” I tried to interrupt, but he barreled right over me.

“No,
you didn’t. If you’d thought, you’d have realized that if you’re pulling
all-nighters, then you’re going to burn yourself out before there’s a need for
you to be doing that. Even better, you’re going to get other people thinking
that if you’re in, they have to be in, and they’ll burn out, too. Is that what
you want?” He was practically shouting now, and if the veins in his forehead
weren’t actually throbbing, they were at least stretching and warming up to do
so.

“Jesus,
Eric. I was just trying to get a little ahead of the curve.” I was honestly at
little shocked by the vehemence of his tone. Eric was one of the good guys, as
far as employers in the industry went, but even he wasn’t exactly the sort to
complain when guys wanted to put in a little extra work.

“It’s
still early days,” he said, exasperated. “There isn’t that much curve to get
ahead of, especially with half the team still beat to shit after the hours we
were running on Blue Lightning.” He grabbed the back of his neck and started
rubbing it, eyes fixed and staring at the floor. “Was anyone else in that
late?” he asked. “Just tell me. They’re not going to get in trouble. I just
don’t want them doing it until it’s called for.”

I
racked my brain, trying to bludgeon it into looking at its tape backup of the
evening before. “The last thing I remember,” I said carefully, “was someone
leaving around nine thirty, maybe ten, and then the building going quiet.” I
thought about it for a minute more. “Terry. Terry was the last one out. I
remember him saying something about good luck with whatever I was doing, and
then hearing the door slam. There wasn’t anyone after that, at least not that I
heard.”

Another
noncommittal nod. “Do you know what he was here working on?”

I
gave my best “dunno” gesture, hands spread wide. “I couldn’t tell you. For all
I know he was downloading buckets of hamster porn.”

Slumping
back in my chair, I started cataloguing my aches and pains. A throbbing between
my shoulder blades reminded me that I’d slept awfully funny, and the pounding headache
that had just managed to manifest myself was chiming in with the fact that
there hadn’t really been that much sleep involved. All of a sudden, I was out
of one-liners. “If you’re that worried, why not ask him what he was doing? As
far as I know, he’s getting his work done, right?”

Eric
coughed, gently, into one fist. “According to Leon, he’s not. He’s already a
week behind.”

“A
week?” I sat up in a hurry. “We haven’t been at it enough weeks for him to be a
whole one behind.”

The
smile Eric gave me was not a pretty thing. “Now you’re getting it. Plus, he’s
been coming in late, calling in sick a lot, and generally acting like he’s
exhausted. I was wondering if he was following you around, but from what you
say, that’s not the case. But whatever he actually is working on, here or at
home, needs to stop because he’s paying too much attention to it and it’s going
to get him fired.”

I
rubbed my forehead wearily. “Why are you telling me this?”

“So
you don’t get any surprises,” he said, his voice a little softer. “Go home.
Take a shower, take a nap. Come back in after lunch, assuming Sarah hasn’t
changed the locks.”

“Don’t
joke about that,” I warned him, but he was already walking out the door and
pretending he couldn’t hear. A minute later, he was gone, and I heaved myself
out of the chair.

Moving
meant air moving around me, which meant getting a whiff of myself, which in
turn was a seriously bad idea. Eric was right; home and a shower was definitely
on the agenda. I sent a quick OOO email to the team list stating where I was
going (home for unspecified reasons), when they could expect me back (after
lunch) and how they could reach me in emergency (cell or text or email), then
shut everything down and headed out the door. A quick check of the now
plugged-in cell phone told me that it was 9:30. Core work hours didn’t start
until 10, so the building was still mostly empty, with the occasional slam of
car doors outside providing counterpoint to the ping of machines booting up.

I
didn’t see Terry out in the parking lot as I headed to my car, not that I was
expecting to. From what Eric had said, he’d probably be pushing the 10 AM
buzzer, if not going past it, and waiting around on the off chance I’d run into
him before Leon or Eric did struck me as a lousy idea. In theory, we had a
mandatory 8-hour work day with core hours between 10 and 4. Folks could come in
when they wanted and leave when they wanted as long as they put in their time
and were there during core so other people could find them or schedule meetings
as necessary. In reality, it meant that the engineers started coming in around
seven and the artists started coming in around nine-thirty, and while most
people put in their hours, there were always a few who came in around ten, took
an hour lunch, and left before five in hopes that no one else in the building
could actually do the math.

Folks
like Terry, apparently. Odds were he was still taking the whole Blue Lightning
cancellation pretty hard, but sooner or later you just had to snap out of it
and move on.

Unless,
of course, he wasn’t moving on. The thought stuck with me as something to
explore when I got back in.

After
a nap and a shower, though. Definitely after a nap and a shower. And with that
thought, I got in my car and went home.

*  
*   *

Sarah
was not at the house, which did not surprise me. That indeed had been my hope
and the reason I'd stopped off at a supermarket to pick out what looked to be a
reasonably healthy bouquet of roses to set in a vase, half peace offering and
half apology. What did surprise me was that there was a small vase on the table
in the breakfast nook, which someone had filled with carnations. Next to it was
a note from Sarah, faintly perfumed.

Ryan,
it read, Sorry I snapped last night. I should know better by now that sometimes,
things just happen. Let's make it up tonight. Love you—Sarah.

I
screwed my eyes shut tight and held onto the note tight enough to feel it
crumple under my fingers. She was apologizing to me? It made my head spin. If
anyone should be apologizing, it should have been me, on bended knee and—

A
sharp pain in my hand told me that the note wasn't all I'd been squeezing. I'd
apparently gotten a good grip on the roses as well, and the thorns had
punctured my palm and fingers in a half-dozen places.

“Heh.
Stigmata,” I joked to myself, then put the note down gently on the table so
that I might better ponder the problem of the roses. Taking the carnations out
of the vase seemed like a poor idea, and putting another vase of flowers next
to them seemed worse. Instead, I ended up taking a lemonade pitcher from the
cabinet, then trimming the rose stems and setting them in there with a healthy
dose of plant food and some Sweet'n'Low. Sarah had told me once that adding the
stuff to cut flowers helped them last longer, so I added a packet's worth, and
then put the empty paper next to the pitcher on the counter. Its mission was to
serve as evidence that on occasion, I did indeed listen.

A
cup of coffee, a shower, another cup of coffee, and a quick bowl of cereal
later, I felt somewhat closer to human. The clock over the kitchen sink told me
it was still a quarter to eleven. The shower and associated ablutions had taken
less time than I thought, and I could get back into the office without missing
much of a beat.

My
feet took a couple of steps toward the door, and then stopped. I realized I
didn't need to be back into the office until around one, possibly even later. I
could go in, but I'd given them all night. They could spare me for another
couple of hours, and the place probably wouldn't explode in the interim.

My
head felt oddly clear, as if it were suddenly unfogged with caffeine and sweat
and stale air and all the other smells that intrinsically, subconsciously, told
me that here was a place of work.

“I
could stay home for a little while.” Hearing the words aloud, surprised me, so
I said them again. “I could stay home for a while.” I could smell the perfume
from Sarah's note, drifting up from my fingers and across from the table. There
were roses in the mix, too, and the faint leftover scent of last night's
cooking, and meanwhile sunlight was making golden diamonds on the kitchen floor
as it spilled in through the half-drawn blinds.

My
cell phone buzzed. I pulled it out and looked at it. One of the level designers
was calling, no doubt with a question of supreme importance having to do with
box placement or how many exploding barrels to put in. Holding the
still-vibrating thing up, I told it, “Sorry, I'm in the shower,” and tossed it
on the counter next to the roses. It shook once more, then was silent. After a
minute, the message notification came up. I turned the phone over, so I
wouldn't have to see it if I came back downstairs, then grabbed a can of Coke
and headed for my office.

The
fact that the phone had been completely drained of juice twelve hours ago never
crossed my mid.

*  
*   *

I'd
been telling people about the novel I was writing for about as long as I'd been
in games. They'd been nodding and rolling their eyes for almost as long, once
it became clear that the odds of my ever finishing anything were worm's-belly
low. Still, it was a much-cherished dream, and one that I took out occasionally
to see if I could breathe some life into it. There was a large crossover in
ambition between writing and game design, or so I'd noticed at various
conferences and conventions. Writers always wanted to get their books made into
games, and game writers and designers always wanted to write novels. On the
designer side, I'd chalked it up to auteur syndrome, the desire to do something
creative that didn't require committee meetings and approval stagegates. For
the writers, I mostly figured it was about money. Beyond that, I had never
given it much thought, except to sit down occasionally and try to hammer out
something of my own.

The
Novel Projects folder on my system looked like an untended graveyard when I
booted the machine up. Folders marked the graves of a dozen or more projects,
lined up neatly to show where they'd fallen. And at the bottom of the list,
tagged Active with a splash of red, was the one marked CURRENT PROJEKT. Inside,
was a single document file, named CHAPTER ONE.

With
a look at the clock—it was now almost eleven—I opened the file, and started
writing.

*  
*   *

The
front door cracked open at twelve thirty, shocking me out of what had been a
pleasant writerly fugue. “Hello?” I called downstairs, and did a hasty save,
just in case. “Hello?”

“Ryan?”
Sarah's voice floated up the stairs. “Is that you?”