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Chapter 13: If a spinach slaps in the forest, what is the sound of one introduction happening?
July 27th, 1994
Will stared at the brown paper bag sitting on his neatly organized desk hardly believing its contents. Naught? Latte officially closed down today, four days shy of the termination of its lease. All the petitions?the stink?and it didn't matter. There weren't enough people to stop it anyway. Most of Naugth? Latte's customers were out-of-towners, people driving through and stopping for a coffee. They had a good location, so Che's didn't really have to worry about decreased business if the locals decided to boycott: there was fresh meat coming through the grinder everyday?and with a brand name, Che was sure to lure customers. People like monotony, predictability. Why drive away from home to try something different?
Che's didn't even have to worry much about the locals anyway, who would soon forget about the politics in the face of convenience and packaged slickness. Besides, there was hardly a decent alternative in Berney, was there? The crumpled, non-descript brown paper bag from Louis' Sandwich House sitting on Will's desk painfully illustrated that. It was the closest snack food alternative you could find down there. Louis made one hell of a roast beef sandwich?but it wasn't a pastry and a coffee. You could get coffee there, but it came in a Styrofoam cup. And as everyone knows good coffee doesn't come in a Styrofoam cup. You can pour the world's best coffee into a Styrofoam cup and it instantly becomes bland. Crude coffee?raw, unrefined?not like the frappaccino from Naught? Latte. No, that's not coffee?that's a cup a joe. Will sighed as he realized that even he might have to resort to reporting to Che's for his office snack food. But he'd do his best to research alternatives.
Somehow this whole thing quite unseated him. Deep down. He'd been so successful in his life?then to try and save this coffee shop and fail?well?it was an odd feeling. Maybe he should just stick to games. And that's what he was doing, anyway. Their new corporate manager, Thomas Newman, would be visiting this afternoon to lay out the groundwork for running the corporate headquarters, for letting Will get back to what he was best at, games.
Will never managed to eat the food sitting in that sad little bag until lunch. A roast beef sandwich just wasn't a breakfast kind of thing. He even reheated the coffee in the microwave. It warped the Styrofoam cup a bit. Will didn't like reheated coffee, but it seemed to fit well with the grease and mess of the roast beef sandwich.
Will was just wiping his face and looking over some sales results when there was a knock at the door. It was Newman, Interviewee #2, dressed sharply in a blue suit very similar to the one he wore to the interview?although this was more grey.
"Hi," said Will standing up to shake hands.
Newman shook back. "You're one of those office eaters, aren't you?"
Will smiled. "Yeah. There aren't a lot of places to go out for lunch around here. There's a couple of picnic tables out back, but with all the squirrels?it gets kind of messy. I like eating in my office?it's got a great view."
"It does," confirmed Newman.
"Come in," Will motioned to the chair at the other side of the desk. "I've pulled together a bunch of files you can look at and?uh?I'll get you up to speed on how things work in Redwood, recent developments and the like."
"Great." Newman set his black, leather suitcase down beside the chair.
"How're things going at the head office?" Will asked.
"Really smoothly, actually. They're almost done with the cubicles. I've drafted up a list of personnel types I need so we'll be conducting interviews all this week and maybe next week?probably do a lot of hiring the week after. I've spent most of the time in my office going over files and sitting with the accounting staff you sent down and getting up to speed on the company assets. I understand you started this whole business yourself?"
Will smiled. He knew he made the right choice. This guy was quick.
"Yeah. Well, officially. I couldn't have done it without my wife who really wrote the best-selling content?and later with the help of some of the now more senior staff. I make the final decisions on the business end but I do a lot of things by consensus."
"Hmm. Interesting," Newman said, "Well. It was certainly interesting to look over the records. A lot of abnormalities - I don't mean that in a bad way - just different ways of doing things - original ways of doing things - but great results. You have a real original touch."
Will thanked him for the compliment and excused himself to finish up the last bit of his sandwich.
"I make sure I get out for lunch, though," Newman continued. "My view isn't as nice as yours?just the tops of buildings. There are some really nice restaurants in the area."
"I'll bet," said Will and they moved on to business.
About an hour and a half later, Will took Newman around to meet the staff. It was a lot of quick introductions?mostly with the support staff who would be dealing with the new HQ head the most. The programmers greeted Newman with their usual indifference due to having their head wrapped around the latest code problem, fuelling their problem solving skills with Kepsi Kola. It was going well, for introductions anyway. Last on the list were Will's band of merry men (and women): the game designers. They would probably have the least to do with Newman, but they, as much as Will, were the bosses and owners of Madre who had built and continued to shape the company. They were Will's confidantes and co-managers, they had made half of the decisions that had brought the company where it was, they had made the best selling games, they put their retirements into much of Madre's stock. Will was obligated to introduce the new manager to them. Will wanted them to feel at ease with the new guy.
"You can't put the tentacle-pig after the crash landing! It makes no sense."
"What do you mean? It makes perfect sense."
"Not in the story line. It really breaks the continuity. Why would the tentacle-pig appear after Johnny 10-4 steals the ship?"
"It doesn't matter. But if we put it before, then the puzzle with the transporter cell is too easy. You find the transporter cell in one scene and use it in the next right after. It's too obvious."
"But it makes no sense! Are you daft?"
"Daft?! Are you some sort of retard?"
Will entered the office with Newman. "How's the game going guys?"
Tim and Geoff both looked up simultaneously and with great enthusiasm replied, "Great!" Will heard them fighting a lot. He could hear them from his office down the hall and that usually meant one of two things: Either the game wasn't moving at all and they were fighting about it, or the game was going incredibly well and they were fighting about it. Thankfully, things appeared to be going well.
"This is Thomas Newman." Will motioned to the thin, tall, balding man in the blue/grey suit beside him.
"Ah, our boss from afar," said Geoff.
Newman smiled. "Think of me more as your 'Value Added' boss," he said and shook hands with the both of them. Geoff wasn't quite sure what he meant by this, but he smiled anyway.
But Tim knew. "Like a consultant boss," he enlightened Geoff.
"I know that," Geoff said, irritated, sheepish.
"Geoff and Tim create the award-winning Sci-Fi Quest series," Will informed Newman.
"Ah yes," said Newman. "Great sales on that series," he remembered. "And a lot of threatened lawsuits," he added. Both Tim and Geoff smiled at this?they were in some way proud of the fact.
"A real variety of suits too," said Tim. "From Nebina Dog Chow to Megaduty batteries."
"And Radio Shlock," added Geoff. "We actually had to go to court over that one. Of course, we won."
"We're trying to cut back on the lawsuits, though," said Tim a little disheartened.
"It makes it a lot harder to make a game when you have to inhibit your creative spirit?you can't just let it flow. You start to second guess everything."
"Definitely." Tim agreed. It was one of the few things they agreed on.
Newman smiled and nodded.
"Just like a story. A story's got to flow," continued Geoff, cutting into Tim.
"But not if the puzzles don't make sense!" retorted Tim.
"The puzzles DO make sense!" Geoff shouted back.
The two fell into arguing again. Will looked at Newman and smiled. "The creative process," he said. Will didn't understand the creative process himself. He and Newman headed out of the office and down the hall to meet the husband and wife HomoSapien Quest team.
"It needs more plucking and less strumming than the other game," Art said. He was consulting with Henry on the game music for Swarthy Victor. A musician by trade, Art had always made music an important part of his games. He couldn't help it. Music was in him?and so it naturally played a key part in his series. Unfortunately he didn't have the time to compose the entire scores, themes and scene transition music games required now days. But Art clicked with Henry. Henry was a good musician and the music he did for the last Swarthy Victor, in Art's opinion, had been perfect. Henry was somewhat bland of personality sometimes, Art thought, but his personality seemed to come out in the music. Art was fond of saying that 'they made beautiful music together.'
"I was thinking about using a real seedy 1940s jazz bass and overlaying it with a Greek balalaika or something in the taverna," Henry thought aloud as he stood, tapping down on the keys of his computer.
"Or maybe you could do an entire, traditional jazz piece, but ONLY use Mediterranean instruments," Art suggested.
Henry paused. "That's a good idea."
Art thought so too. Henry rarely said something was a good idea?so when he did, you knew that it was a great idea.
"How are the sounds going, anyway? Did you get the spinach slap? The spinach slap is really important." Art couldn't wait to hear the spinach slap sound. There were always, of course, plenty of sex scenes in your typical Swarthy Victor game - but they were never explicit - no dirtier than an R rated movie. An R-rated cartoon at that. And they were usually silly - in the laughing-at-the-main-character's expense variety. Art and Bill had come up with a great idea for one of the sex scenes in the now officially titled 'Swarthy Victor and the Greecian Formula.' The whole thing would happen for the player in the dark - instead of seeing this sex scene, obscured by the usual suggestive, erotically placed potted plant or lamp, the player would only hear it. They'd have to let their imaginations construct what was actually happening.
And so he and Bill had had a blast thinking of sounds to throw in. It was a brilliant idea and an excellent use of new technology since they now were using real, digitized sounds in their games. Together they'd managed to come up with several sounds in a matter of minutes but they needed one more?something perfect?to really clinch the scene?but they just couldn't think of it. Art and Bill had sat in silence for minutes, trying to think of sounds, staring at the walls, drawing blanks? It was like all the creative air had been sucked out of the room by their previous efforts and now they were suffocating on thick, half-good ideas.
Then Art said it needed the sound of spinach going "Splllackkchh!" not really expecting it to be funny. Silence fell over the room again and then they suddenly were both dying with laughter. Their bodies contorted as if the souls of humour were trying to escape from their bodies, wrenching their guts, prying open their mouths and watering their eyes. It was exactly what the scene needed! It was exactly the sound they were searching for: suggestive?but stupid.
Art was really eager to hear what it sounded like?especially with all the new real-sounding digitized sound effects they could do. No longer did they rely on beeps or a quick 8-bit trill on the computer speaker or some tonal approximation of an explosion sound. Now they could actually record and play REAL sounds. They could actually slap a spinach, record it and put it into the game. What a great world we live in, Art thought to himself.
Henry just shook his head. "Yeah, I gotta go see that new sound guy," he said. Henry was, unofficially, the sound guy's boss. Since they had now gotten into digitized sound - in fact, Madre had pioneered the whole high quality computer sound revolution, at least on the software side - Madre had to hire a professional sound man. And for that they needed someone who knew about professional recording and sound making. Thus, the sound guy.
God, these games are getting expensive to make, Henry thought to himself. Once, a couple of game enthusiasts in a garage could do it all?now they needed business models and producers on top of designers and programmers and marketers. A lot of companies were resorting to investors. Gone was the day of judge, jury and executioner. So Madre had hired this guy from Hollywood - one of those guys that sits in a dark room watching silent movies and punching meat and breaking vegetables. Henry had supervised all the sound and music effects before they went digital. As the composer, it had been his job to figure out how to get a sound effect out of the standardized, rigid MIDI music set. A fat tuba combined with a high-pitched high-hat to simulate the sound of someone getting hit with pterodactyl droppings in Sci-Fi Quest 2, for example. Because of this it unofficially fell on Henry to be the boss of the new sound guy. To be honest, Henry hated the job. He was glad to see it move on to a professional. It was just that Henry didn't particularly like the professional either. And he had to deal with the professional.
"Why do you shake your head?" Art asked. "He's no good?"
"No. He's good. It's just that he's?weird."
"Everyone around here is a little weird," Art said. He was mostly referring to himself.
"Yeah, but he's annoying weird. He never has anything to say. Just 'yup' and 'nope.' Whenever he's around he's always tapping and hitting things. Listening to the sounds they make. Tang! Tok. Thup. Bannnnnnnunnnnunnnnggg. Clunk. Yup. Shpinnng!! Woogle woogle woogle. Nope. He never stops! It drives me nuts. Everything's a sound device." Henry shook his head. Art found this really funny.
Knock! Knock! A sound came from the doorway. Henry and Art looked up to find Will and a new guy in a blue/grey suit there.
"Hi," said Will. "Did the spinach thing come out?"
"I don't know," said Art. "Henry has to go see the sound guy."
Henry refrained from rolling his eyes at the thought.
"This is Thomas Newman," Will began. "Thomas, meet Art. He's the creator of our best selling Swarthy Victor series."
"Nice to meet you," Newman stuck out his hand. Art wiped his hand on his pant leg (a force of habit from shaking too many hands after having a greasy hot dog for lunch) and shook Newman's.
"I'm sure it is!" Art joked. Newman smiled but to Art he seemed like a serious guy. At least there's another bald guy at the office now, Art thought. Soon, we'll take over the world. "How many Swarthy Victor games have you played?" Art asked. He always liked to hear what people thought about his games.
"I'm sorry," said Newman. "I haven't played any."
Art was surprised. "Really? It's on every office computer in North America. It cuts into office productivity more than the water cooler!" Art was proud of this fact?or at least?probability. There was no response from Newman. Then Art realized, "Oh. You're a manager. You're the reason they all turn it off as soon as you come by."
Newman smiled.
"This is Henry Washington. He's our composer."
"Hi!" Newman's face brightened up and he eagerly stuck out his hand. "Thomas Newman."
Henry took his hand and shook but didn't have anything to say.
"So you're the composer here, huh? How do you feel about mixing the classical arts with new age entertainment?"
Henry shrugged. "It's composing?not many people get paid to compose."
"Then you're a lucky man," Newman said.
"I guess," said Henry.
"Well," Will began, "it's getting late and we've got a bunch more introductions to make?and Mr. Newman's got to head back to San Francisco."
"It was nice meeting you," Newman said, nodding to Art and Henry.
When they were gone Art said, "Well, he seems like an OK guy, at least. I think he's lying about not playing Swarthy Victor games, though. I never met a business guy who had never at least played it even once."
There was a pause as they both watched the two bosses walk down the hallway.
"I don't like him," said Henry. As soon as he said it he wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut. He didn't usually make his opinion known?only if it was solicited. But he somehow felt an affinity with Art.
Art was surprised. "Really? He seemed to like you?"
"He seemed to treat me special."
"What do you mean?"
"You know, how people go out of their way to be nice to you because you're different."
"What do you mean?"
"It's like he treated me nice because I'm a minority."
"A minority?" Art asked.
Henry couldn't believe Art wasn't following him. It had been so obvious. Henry didn't want to say anything more, though. He wasn't the kind to complain or make a stink about things. He'd rather just let it pass. But Art held his gaze and Henry felt obligated to explain his feelings now. "Because I'm black. I don't know. Maybe not. It was just a feeling I got."
Art was surprised at this comment. He didn't even think the issue of Henry's blackness had ever come up before. "No he didn't. Besides, what's so bad about being treated nice?"
"It's just the same as being treated bad for something superficial. I don't know for sure if it was that?it's just the vibe I got."
"Hmmm." Art pondered. "Maybe."
"What if everyone treated you different just because you were bald?"
"But I AM bald."
"No, but what if everyone?" Henry sighed. Majorities just didn't understand this. "I don't want special treatment. I just want to be treated like everyone else. That's what I like about this company?no one ever treated me as if I was black. I'm just another guy. Any recognition I get it's because I deserved it. Any flack I get, it's just par for the course. I'm not different, so when other people see me as different, it rubs me the wrong way."
"I can understand that I guess." Art sympathized.
"Now I'm sorry I brought it up?because it makes an issue about it?and it's not an issue."
"Honestly," said Art, "I think people don't like you because you're a composer."
Henry turned to Art and a smile broke out. He laughed. It was rare to see Henry laugh. "Yeah, well that I can understand. I don't like composers either."
Art laughed too. "Well, that's my cue to leave." He turned towards the door.
Henry followed him. He was off to see the sound guy; Art to get back to preliminary bug testing?and to sitting back, closing his eyes and imagining that spinach slap. He hoped it lived up to his fantasies of it.
From out of some path in the maze of cubicles, Tim and Geoff suddenly rushed up to them, almost as if they had been hiding in there.
"Did he talk about the bar-b-que?" prodded Tim.
"What?"
"The annual bar-b-que. Did Will mention it?"
"Damn," Art realized what they were talking about. "I was going to ask about it. That's coming soon isn't it?" Already Art was salivating. He could see Geoff and Tim were too. The great Madre end-of-summer bar-b-que. It was infamous. They knew it was coming. The question was when?when would Will mention it?
"Damn," agreed Geoff.
"Well, that's good," said Tim, "At least we didn't miss the announcement."
As it was they needn't have worried. Will posted the bar-b-que sign-up sheet outside his office that afternoon after Newman left.
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