Fight Song

by Joshua Mohr

  Now Dumper says, “Let’s get our company back to being the big men on campus.”

  “And one woman,” the only woman on our team says.

  “Of course,” Dumper says. “Beaucoup apologies. Anybody have another idea?”

  A normally quiet team member launches into his pitch: “What about this gem: a game called Hey, That’s My Meth Lab! You’ll be a rival speed dealer trying to blow up all of your competitors’ meth labs.”

  “How would you win that game?” the mouth-breather says, no doubt feeling competitive since his suggestion also covered narcotics territory.

  “Once everybody’s buying your crank, you are crowned the champion of meth. You are the sultan of amphetamines.”

  “No more ideas that have to do with drugs, okay?” Dumper says. “Next time we brainstorm like this, there will be a moratorium on illicit substances. Anybody else?” Dumper looks more and more like he’s regretting asking this team to think in an impromptu way.

  Another team member quickly seizes the moment to showcase his immense potential for design: “Everyone I know—and I’m right smack in the heart of the demo we’re discussing—loves conspiracy theories. So what if we built a game that’s like a puzzle to solve an ancient riddle about how extraterrestrials aren’t extra at all. They’re us; they’re terrestrials. We are all aliens, bro! Extraterrestrials are terrestrials and vice versa. Can you imagine? People would wig out!”

  “Is that what ‘terrestrial’ means? It means human?” the mouth-breather says.

  The showcaser continues: “Yeah, humans. Us. We are us, but we are also aliens. We’re all god’s terrestrials. It’s like a metaphor for racism.”

  “And why would your demo want to play a metaphor for racism?” Dumper asks.

  “Because racism metaphors don’t have to be boring. There will be kickass explosions and topless ladies, sir. Lasers. Flying, time-traveling Cadillacs. If it has the potential to be awesome, it will be a highlighted component of the game. No questions asked.”

  “So what’s the conspiracy theory exactly?”

  “We’re aliens! What’s more of a conspiracy than finding out you’re something other than what you thought you were?”

  “It’s the best bad idea so far,” says Dumper.

  “We’re all something other than what we thought we’d be,” Coffen says.

  Everybody stares at him.

  Dumper says, “So you like the terrestrial idea then, Coffen?”

  “I hate the idea.”

  “Me, too,” Dumper says. “Have you got anything that might impress the Great One? Can you astound me like you used to do back in the good old Disemboweler days?”

  All of us in this room are imbeciles, Bob thinks, working for a man-boy in a Gretzky sweater. He’s our pimp. He profits on laying our imaginations on their backs or bending them over a barrel and banging them from behind or reverse-cowgirling our imaginations until he gets all he wants, leaving them spent and soiled, discarded like losing lottery tickets.

  Coffen decides to defend his imagination’s honor by pointing out to all in attendance how vapid Dumper is: The Great One wants something to tickle the lowest common denominator? Bongs and meth labs be damned. This meeting is about to hit the basement. The denominator at the center of the earth.

  “Bestiality,” Coffen says.

  “What now?” Dumper asks.

  “What’s edgier than bestiality? I could see this becoming a cult classic. Do you know how many drugged-up undergrads would love this?”

  The team starts tittering.

  After several seconds, Dumper says, “How would it work?”

  “May I stand up to demonstrate?” Bob asks.

  “Of course,” Malcolm Dumper says, and here comes his humungous tongue, slowly slithering out.

  It takes Bob about ten seconds to jimmy his weight off of the beanbag. He’s still pretty woozy, only about twelve hours removed from the oleander incident. Jane had tried to talk him into taking the day off, but he’d insisted on coming to work. Why had he fought her to come here? For this? For beanbags? For bestiality?

  Coffen is finally standing up. His imagination needs a neighborhood watch with Dumper around, a rape whistle.

  “It would be a game,” Bob says, “without any handset controls. No, a game of this transgressive magnitude would need to work with user movements. We’ve seen Wii games where a user’s body movements can translate to the screen, the character in the game mimicking what the user is doing at home. This title would require that sort of technology. It would be an advancement for us in many ways, as we’ve never built anything in this style.”

  Bob holds his hands out, waist high, pretending that somebody—or some animal—is positioned in front of him, bent over. Then Coffen begins maniacally thrusting his hips in a coital-inspired manner. He strikes a rather rollicking pace with his thrusts and keeps them up while continuing the pitch.

  “I imagine a game where the character meanders the mean streets trying to have sex with every stray dog he can find. As the game progresses, soon the avatar has to prowl into the homes of private citizens to defile man’s best friend. Finally, for the grand finale, the sneaky, horny, mal-adjusted avatar must evade Secret Service and screw the president’s dog right in the Oval Office.”

  Coffen gets winded as he continues to give the business to the imaginary dog while talking.

  “Dude, that’s disgusting,” the mouth-breather says, smiling, “and I would play it all day, every day, until I died.”

  “What about the rest of you?” Dumper asks the remaining team members.

  “I’d totally play that!”

  “It’s awesome!”

  “My friends are gonna love this filth!”

  “What’s it called, Coffen?”

  Bob grins, plunges aimlessly into the invisible pet. “Scroo Dat Pooch,” he calls out, and the juniors clap.

  One of them says, “Dude is a genius.”

  “He was just hibernatin’ since Disemboweler.”

  Another: “It’s like watching da Vinci paint a masterpiece.”

  “The bestiality Mona Lisa!”

  “Jesus, stop gyrating like that,” Dumper says to Bob.

  Bob concludes his coital parade, sags back down into his beanbag. His head hurts. It feels good to make a mockery of this, good to suggest something so far over the line that despite the enthusiasm of the juniors, Dumper has no choice but to say no chance in hell. Edgy’s one thing, but this idea is too taboo.

  But apparently, there is chance in hell.

  Apparently, Coffen hasn’t been making a mockery of anything, at least not to the only person whose opinion on the subject matters: the Great One. Dumper reels his tongue back in his mouth, says, “Build a test level, Bob. I want to see how it plays.”

  “Are you sure?” Coffen says.

  “I’m not sure. But I’m window-shopping, snooping in the store. Now grab the bull by the horns and make the final sale. Can you do that for me?”

  “I can try.”

  “DG needs this. Our doors are getting itchy trigger fingers for some closage. Don’t let that happen. Now say it with some enthusiasm: Can you make the final sale to this window-shopper and appease our moody doors?”

  “Bob is me,” Bob says, dejected—he can’t even sabotage his job correctly.

  “Scroo Dat Pooch,” Dumper says. “Now that’s funny. Sick, but funny. No guarantees we’ll continue with it, but I’d like to see what it looks like. This might be a new direction not only for DG, but your titles, Coffen. You’ve never done anything comic before. This might be your renaissance.”

  “That’s a reasonable suggestion,” says Bob.

  “Get something rough together for next Monday’s status meeting.”

  “That’s not much time.”

  “It’s not. But you’re a pro’s pro. Make it happen.”

  Dumper and the juniors skedaddle from the conference room, leaving Bob alone on his beanbag. He stays like that for som
e time.

  Fluorescent orange

  Bob’s time of beanbag contemplation is interrupted when he sees his wife’s face pressed up against the glass of the conference room. Jane’s braids are wet; she must have come here straight from the high-priced gym where she trains. She’s working toward breaking the world record for treading water, which is currently at eighty-five hours. Her personal best is fifty-nine hours straight.

  She eyeballs Bob through the glass. There’s something unusual about her expression that Coffen can’t exactly get a bead on. He assumes it’s a face much like the Native Americans must have worn toward the early Pilgrims: curiosity and apprehension and pity.

  Seeing Jane in an office environment reminds Bob of where they’d first met. He worked at a company building web-platform games, ones to be downloaded and installed locally on users’ hard drives. She worked in the customer service department. Bob made up all kinds of asinine reasons to trundle over to CS and bug her. He’d feign interest in the customers’ problems solely to talk to her, hoping to grow the confidence to ask her out.

  He waited a long time for that mysterious confidence to swell, but it never did. He was too much of a pussy. The other guys on his team happily reminded him that he should let it go, no chance in hell he’d ever ask, and even if he did, what was the probability of Jane wanting to date Bob? In the end, he decided to build her something, knew that if he had a shot with her it would be in a different world than this one. He worked round the clock for three days building it and then emailed her the zipped files with instructions for how to install the HTML on her system to get into this new world he’d constructed for them.

  The email only said: Jane, please meet me in here tonight at 10:30.

  He sat at home, slugging Coke from a two-liter, and waiting like an antsy child who needs to take a leak but is stuck in the backseat of the family sedan. Waiting and feeling stupid for doing all this. She wasn’t going to show. Why would she show? No doubt she could do better than a bloated coder.

  It was 10:33.

  On his computer screen, Bob’s avatar stood alone in the world he’d built. He designed the avatar to look like himself, save for a smaller waistline. The avatar was on the left-hand side of the screen, standing next to an elaborate maze. There was an Italian restaurant on the other side of it.

  At 10:35 Coffen finished the two-liter of soda, which means he consumed the whole thing in a little over twenty minutes. His kidneys were not thrilled with the carbonated poison pumping through them.

  I’ll wait until 10:45, Bob thought. And if that’s not enough time for her, I’ll wait until five in the morning, but not a minute longer!

  It didn’t come to that.

  At 10:39, Jane’s avatar popped onto the screen: It was a spitting image of her. The braids on her head. The yellow cardigan she always wore to the office. The black-rimmed glasses.

  I’m here! her avatar said in a chat bubble. Sorry I’m late. Traffic on the highway was out of hand! Bumper to bumper.

  Was there an overturned big rig blocking your path?

  Toxic chemical spill.

  I hope its noxious fumes didn’t infect you with a secret government-cultivated disease.

  That’s a sweet thing to say.

  I’m a gentleman.

  Where are we?

  We’re on a date. Are you hungry?

  Starved!

  Let’s go dig in.

  Their avatars entered the maze. It took about ten minutes for them to stumble through it, making small talk the whole time, finally arriving at the restaurant. Once their avatars touched the shape of the restaurant’s exterior, the background changed. Now they were inside the restaurant, sitting at a table.

  Do you like grilled calamari? Bob’s avatar said. The chef here is known for it.

  When I was a little girl, a two-ton squid escaped from the zoo. It crawled in my window and hid under my bed. I kept it alive on saltwater taffy.

  That squid is lucky it found you.

  It’s a blessing and a curse, though. Now every single squid that escapes the ocean tries to track me down. It’s a headache.

  LOL!

  A robust, tan, mustachioed man came and took their order. Soon steaming piles of food appeared on their table. The avatars ate everything up.

  After the meal, they sat at the table smoking cigarettes.

  Jane said, I like how these cigarettes don’t make my breath bad.

  Your breath is superb.

  You’re a smooth talker in this place, aren’t you?

  No, I just like you.

  I didn’t know you wanted to ask me out.

  Bob’s avatar tamped out his cigarette. I’m shy.

  Me too. But you don’t need to be shy around me. I like you. You do?

  Everybody at work does! You build the best games. I mean, look where we are right now! You’re amazing.

  Thanks for meeting me here tonight.

  Any time! I’m going to go get some sleep, Jane said. I have a CS meeting at eight tomorrow. Will you miss me until we’re at work together?

  Of course.

  Make sure and give the waiter a big tip. He did a phenomenal job. Bye, Bob! Thanks for doing this for me.

  Hold on. My credit card was rejected. Do you have any traveler’s checks or something to pay the bill?

  LMAO

  Good night, Jane.

  XOXO

  The next day at work, there was a piece of saltwater taffy sitting next to Bob’s keyboard when he got there. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to eat it or keep it forever. Then a chat window popped up on Coffen’s screen. It was Jane.

  Want to go out for lunch? I’m in the mood for calamari

  I know a great place, said Bob.

  I mean, real calamari. Let’s me and you go out to lunch together.

  Awesome!

  And that was it. They had lunch. Then they had more meals. Nobody in the office could believe it. None of the other programmers understood how or why Jane had chosen Bob, and frankly Coffen didn’t much understand it himself. But he didn’t care. No reason to question such luck.

  Then after about ten dates, they kissed. Slowly, they fell in love. Slowly, they decided to get married and have kids.

  And now, here Bob is, staring at her through the glass.

  Jane waves and Bob clumsily peels himself off the beanbag, meets her in the doorway. They do not kiss. She smells of chlorine, which turns him on: She used to be so horny after exercise. Now its scent makes Coffen wince—when did they dissipate into their kids’ chaperones?

  She says, “You’re wearing your sad face, Mister Grumbles.”

  “You wouldn’t believe what game I have to build next. Humiliating. I don’t want to talk about it. How was your tread? How many hours did you do this morning?”

  “Not that many. I’m tapering off before I make a run at the record again on Monday.”

  “Oh, I thought that was next Monday.”

  “You can’t fit my record attempt into your grumbly brain?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s this Monday. This is exactly the behavior that I need to talk to you about.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Would I be here if everything was okay?”

  It’s a quick walk across the street to the corporate café. Their town is a patchwork of subdivisions and strip malls and office parks. It’s the kind of suburb that had such a quick population influx after the dot-com boom that its city planning had been slapdash, nonsensical. Chain stores popped up quicker than saloons in frontier towns. Competing businesses were in dangerous proximity to one another: A bagel and sandwich shop could be right next store to a sandwich and salad shop, which could be right next to a sandwich and coffee shop. That last one is where the Coffens walk into now.

  “What kind of coffee would you like?” asks Bob.

  “I had a very interesting conversation this morning with Aubrey Westbrook,” Jane says.

  “How is she?”

&nb
sp; “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “Didn’t you chat with her husband last night?” Jane asks, and of course Bob had, limping in the road, regaling Westbrook of Coffen’s immediate itinerary: going to Schumann’s and locking horns with the heavy favorite.

  The barista asks the Coffens, “What can I do to make your day even better?”

  “Black coffee for me,” Bob says, “and a latte for the lady.”

  “I don’t want anything,” Jane says. “Watching my dairy before the big tread.”

  “What kind of black coffee would you like?” the barista asks. “We have six house coffees. We feature ethically cultivated coffees from around the globe. We have blends from Rwanda, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uganda, and the Malay Archipelago.”

  “I take it black.”

  “Do you enjoy flavors of fresh-squeezed grapefruit? Because that would be the Rwandan blend.”

  “Jesus, just pour him whatever is your favorite,” Jane says.

  The barista looks disappointed but does as she’s told, setting the steaming mug in front of him on the counter.

  “Which one did you go with?” Bob asks the barista, playing good cop to Jane’s brusque one.

  “Rwandan.”

  He smells the coffee and says, “You’re right: fresh-squeezed grapefruit.”

  The Coffens pay and move to a table. A Muzak version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” trickles from hidden speakers. It had been one of Bob’s favorite songs, back when he was in high school, and now it was demoted to the barbiturate of background noise. It happens to us all, Bob thinks—we age and lose our relevance, even rock stars.