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JOANNA TWILIGHT LEAPT for the crumbling stone platform ten feet across from her and, as soon as her boots hit the lichen-encrusted stonework, she leapt again for the next one. Again, she made an accurate jump before the world spun like an old film reel and she found herself plummeting into a solid white void that had no end.
“Another bug?” the young man sitting across from Leighton Craig asked.
Leighton—who preferred to go by Lee—sighed, put his controller down, and grabbed the pen sitting on the clipboard next to him.
“Yeah. Clipping error this time.”
Jonathan, one of their quality control testers, laughed grimly.
“If I had a dollar...”
If Jonathan thought it weird the CEO of Venture Studios sat next to one of the lowest employees in the company, he didn’t voice it. Everyone knew Lee ran a tight ship and it didn’t preclude the high man on the totem pole when it came down to “The Suck,” or those manic last-hour bug squashing days before their newest video game hit release status.
They were all tired but soldiered on, fueled by coffee, sugar, and energy drinks. It was a hell of way to get something done, but the marketing department of their publisher, as usual, promised the game would be available by Christmas. The sales from the highly-anticipated Twilight Ruins game could make or break his company.
He’d be damned if his employees got pink slips for the holidays, even if it meant damn near killing himself in the process.
Lee looked over and Jonathan had gone back to playtesting his assigned level of the game.
“I’ve gotta hit the can and grab some more caffeine. You want anything?”
“Naw, man, I’m cool,” Jonathan said and then added with a chuckle, “although a raise or putting me out of my misery would be nice.”
“I’ll see what I can do about the raise,” Lee said and got up. “I’m not going to kill you because, if I gotta suffer, you do too. You get paid to put up with this. I’m just a glutton for punishment.”
He left the room and ran into Catherine, their receptionist, who, if it could be believed, looked even worse than he did. She did a wonderful job holding onto the coffee pot and canisters of sugar and cream despite his jostling.
“When was the last time you slept?” Lee asked.
“About two hours ago,” she mumbled.
Lee frowned.
“A nap doesn’t count. Go to the break room and I don’t want to see you for at least two hours. I know we’re putting in a lot of work here, but not to the point of collapse. C’mon, Cathy, no game is worth your health.”
Lee took the coffee from her and wandered down the hallway to the lead programmer’s office. Alison looked up from her screen and Gwen glanced up from the book she’d been reading to her partner. They were an odd pair. Alison came to him right out of college. Her portfolio had been a showcase of virtuoso code. However, her stipulation he hire her writer girlfriend, Gwen, as a package deal, almost cost him his human resources director.
He’d never regretted it. Alison’s work on their first game, Gutspiller, a ludicrously violent fighting game, made him a tidy sum of money. The media furor over the gruesome moves in the game sold far more copies of it than he could have alone. Gwen’s insistence upon working on the script had been another bonus. The individual fighter’s stories that played out as the game advanced, had been praised by game journalists as a step forward in game narrative. Lee knew he’d been onto something when gamers at the annual EVO fighting game championship responded very well to an early demo version of the game. Alison and Gwen made it better.
Their second game, Champagne Nights, had been a gamble. Dating games were big in China and Japan, but a niche market in the U.S. Lee turned the entire development of it over to Alison and Gwen and they’d knocked it out of the park. They’d gotten crucified by the game press who liked to claim Venture Studios was pandering to the criticism over Gutspiller. Alison and Gwen took the established formula of the Asian games and turned it on its ear. In Champagne Nights, you could play as a male or female and pursue a relationship with another man or woman. The game developed a strong female following, even more so when they’d ported the game to work on mobile phones. In short, despite the criticism, Venture Studios laughed all the way to the bank.
Now they were working on a traditional arcade platformer and it’d hit all kinds of technical hurdles. Alison worked above and beyond the call of duty. They were still behind, but Lee could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It would ship with bugs, no game didn’t. They’d be fixed with patches, but Lee wanted to make sure those errors wouldn’t mar the enjoyment of the game. Playable always trumped perfection.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Oh God, yes.” Gwen sighed and reached for her empty mug.
Alison rubbed her eyes.
“Almost done, Agent Creighton,” she joked.
Lee groaned.
“Don’t remind me. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“So have you heard anything back from your little country sweetheart?” Alison grinned.
“She’s hoping I can see her for Christmas. I’ve been to busy to think of any excuse.”
“Why?” Gwen asked. “You seem to like her.”
“Above and beyond the fact I lied about being a computer security consultant for the FBI so I could appear interesting?”
“Well, that was dumb,” Gwen agreed. “But you’re not the first person who lied on a dating site. If you come clean with her, she shouldn’t hold it against you.”
“Yeah because a guy who barely lives in his own home and hasn’t been on a date in over two years is going to attract a woman,” he groused.
“Well, you have money and own a company. Some women would find that attractive.”
“Not the kind of woman I want. I’ve been down that road. I want someone who wants me for me, not how much I have in the bank.”
****
CLAIRE WILSON SWITCHED tabs on her browser when Marcie went to the bathroom. The garish pink tones of WeLoveLove.com assaulted her eyes even as she looked to the top to see “no new messages” next to the little envelope picture next to her user name. Claire sighed. She’d hoped Agent Lee Collins would have answered her last message. It’d been over a week now with no answer. God, she must’ve sounded too desperate and scared him off. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Even the fabricated “Claire Violet” dating profile wasn’t working. The promise of a banking executive apparently didn’t hold the appeal it used to. She couldn’t even lie convincingly enough to attract a man. The dating pool in Mercy Ridge held nothing for her. The few weddings in the small town recently, all resulted from people coming into the small community. Even her boss, Jennifer Defoe, had to have one shipped in from the Navy.
There was little reason to keep torturing herself. Claire closed the tab and went back to idly trying to compose a report on the latest Rotary Club meeting from the sparse meeting agenda handout she’d been given. Geeze, she was a reporter, not a copywriter.
Her mind wandered. Maybe Lee had been sent on a secret mission. She entertained the idea of Lee in a seedy hotel room with a laptop, hacking into an enemy embassy before she loudly blew away the strand of hair that’d fallen down onto her forehead. Now she was being ridiculous. Lee probably never left a nice comfortable office to hack someone, which lent even more credibility to her not hearing from him again.
Claire reached for her diet soda and got the can halfway up to her mouth before remembering she’d emptied it a half-hour ago. It looked like it’d be another lonely Christmas for her. It was no big deal, right?
****
LEE RUBBED HIS EYES as the FTP upload dinged at 100% done. It’d been sheer hell but Twilight Ruins was now on its way to the DVD mastering facility. It’d hit the various digital download sites before the physical media hit retail stores but that’s how things worked now. They still sold plenty of discs but the number grew smaller as more gamers came to appreciate immediate gratification through downloads not restricted by store hours. And they did it with three days to spare on his already ambitious deadline.
He walked out of his office to see his staff in various stages of wakefulness in the common room. Lee couldn’t have been more proud of all of them.
“Thank you all. I wouldn’t ask so much of you if I didn’t have the utmost confidence you could pull it off. Good job. I want all of you out of here. Now. I don’t want to see a single one of you back in this office until after New Year’s Day. That’s almost an entire month, with pay. Rest up, people and have a happy holiday.”
It did his heart good to see all of those weary faces light up with surprise and grateful smiles. They milled about asking each other what they were doing for the holidays and, now that there wasn’t a monstrous deadline hanging over their heads, they took their time leaving. There was a new, rejuvenated energy to the office vibe, one Lee didn’t share. He sank down onto a couch and let out an exasperated breath.
“Are you all right?” Gwen asked leaning over the back of the couch.
“Just relieved... and tired.”
Alison leaned over the other side next to him.
“If you want our advice, don’t spend your holiday here. Get out and go see that little girl. Have some fun for once, Lee. You work too damned hard.”
Lee raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll consider it. Really, I will. Where are you two lovebirds off to?”
“England,” Gwen said, barely able to contain the excitement in her voice. “We’ve been saving up for two years now to be able to do Christmas in London.”
“Well, have fun. I expect to see pictures when you come back.”
“Seriously?” Alison said. “You can follow us online, like the rest of the planet, Lee. Sometimes you are really old-fashioned. It’s charming.”
Lee heard them gathering their things from their office and he was still there when they came back through.
“You coming?” Gwen asked.
“You go ahead. I’m going to get this place shut down and then I’ll go.”
“All right.” Alison looked doubtful. “Have a good holiday.”
Lee sat on the couch as the feeling of loneliness crept up on him after they left. Was this what his life had become? His dad had been a workaholic and, while Lee didn’t even want to think he was even remotely anything like his father that way, his thoughts went down dark paths.
After the silence became unbearable, he walked through the studio to make sure doors were locked and everything that needed to be turned off had been. No sense in burning unnecessary electricity. The last stop being his own office.
Lee sat in his chair and stared at the screen in front of him. Heck, he didn’t have any plans, there really wasn’t any reason for him to be in a hurry to leave. He reached over for the mouse to shut his computer off and, as he closed tabs on his browser, noticed the message notification e-mail from Claire on WeLoveLove.com. Even worse, the time-date stamp on it was from eight days ago.
He cursed softly. It’d been bad enough trying to come up with an excuse not to go see Claire for the holidays, but now it looked like he’d purposely ignored her. If his wishy-washiness hadn’t ruined things, not answering an e-mail probably really did put the final nail in the coffin.
He might as well see what Claire wrote so he could have some closure on this latest fiasco. If there wasn’t a “thanks for nothing, jerk” message waiting for him at the dating site, he’d be amazed. The little red dot with a damning number four on the envelope icon at WeLoveLove.com made his already frayed nerves sink. Lee clicked and steeled himself to read the messages, for his own personal penitence, if nothing else.
Please call. 509-659-5271.
The simplicity of the newest message hit him. Claire never failed to be eloquent in her correspondence with him. She was smart and a wry sense of humor always shone through her posts. They’d discussed what they liked in almost everything. Despite her awful preference for country music, they’d found so much in common. He’d even talked some about his childhood and less-than-happy upbringing. It wasn’t something he’d ever discussed with anyone and she’d been nothing but sympathetic and understanding. She didn’t press, but let him reveal what he was comfortable talking about.
The sparse characters on his screen were as clear a plea as he’d ever seen and she’d never given him her number. Lee’s hand shot out and grabbed the receiver on his phone. He felt like a complete jerk, but he had to get the game done. It was a poor excuse. Lee knew he should have made even a minute or two to send her a message explaining how busy he was, but he’d gotten too involved.
No. He let go of the phone and placed his fingers on his keyboard. A call wouldn’t make up for this. He needed to clear the air for both the lie about the FBI and his inattention. Maybe Alison and Gwen were right. He needed to let go of the job and try to find something more. He would not become like his father.
A quick reverse phone number search localized her phone number to Mercy Ridge in Washington state. Another search and he had the Wikipedia page for the small town—what there was of it. The closest airport was almost one hundred miles away. Lee was soon punching his credit card information into the airline’s website for a ticket and a rental car. It was outrageously expensive, given the short notice, but he’d a lot of being a jerk to make up for. It was only money