Cyber

by Terry Schott

  Loredana frowned. “Were any left behind?”

  Moriko smiled. “We got them all.”

  Tears formed in Loredana’s eyes and she nodded. “Good. That’s good.”

  Ivan pulled up a dock plate and placed it in the gap between the trailer and the dock. Moriko entered the warehouse and men began offloading the cargo.

  “Take them to the far wall,” Ivan instructed. “Leave room so that we can walk between them.”

  Loredana and Moriko stood against the wall and watched. When the fourth object came off the truck, the man pulling the cart nodded at Moriko. “That one.”

  Loredana waited until the object was on the warehouse floor. The man walked back toward the truck and she lifted the tarp. An old animatronix figure—a purple fox with a large head wearing a suit vest and black pants—stood on a steel pedestal. Loredana smiled and reached up to touch the fox’s smiling face. “The programming is still installed?”

  “It is.” Moriko stood a few feet away. “It is also backed up in two separate hard drives.”

  Loredana wiped her eyes and replaced the tarp. “Good. Get a copy to Ivan. As soon as possible.”

  #16

  Loredana smiled as she stood on the stage and looked down at the people sitting in the auditorium. “I would like to thank you for attending this meeting. I know how difficult it can be to bring major shareholders of a company together, especially for a company as large as Lava Games.” She began to move across the stage, holding a remote control in one hand. “When my partner, Ivan Thorne, and I began to research game makers, we were surprised to discover just how big many of them are.” She clicked the remote and a graphic of the globe, many of the countries coloured orange, appeared on the large white screen. “Lava Games has over one hundred thousand employees worldwide with locations in over thirty-five countries.” She clapped her hands and the crowd followed suit, applauding their own accomplishment.

  When they stopped, Loredana continued speaking. “Of course, everyone here knows the reality.” She clicked the remote once more and the orange representing Lava Game’s worldwide coverage diminished until one small spot remained on the globe. “Your company builds and manufactures all over the world in order to pay low wages and avoid taxation of your products. The main talent—the brains of your company—resides almost entirely in one building located less than ten miles from where we are assembled at this moment.”

  The crowd was silent, except for the odd person clearing their throat. Loredana grinned. “Anyway, the reason I brought you all together today is to make an offer to buy your company. As major shareholders, I am prepared to buy fifty-one percent of the company’s total shares, and am offering half of current value per share.”

  The crowd burst out laughing, calling out insults. Loredana waited with a smile on her face.

  It took ten minutes for the crowd to run out of steam. When they were silent, Loredana nodded. “Of course I do not expect you to lose money. I will pay half the current price for each share I buy and let you hold on to the other half of your shares.”

  Someone stood to speak but Loredana held up one hand. “That means that if you have a thousand shares, I will buy five hundred of them at half price and you keep the other five hundred.” She nodded. “The net effect of this will be to pay you full price for your shares, and allow you to remain as investors in the company so that you can profit with us as we grow.”

  “What else are you offering?” someone called out.

  “What plans do you have for moving forward?” another asked.

  One by one, investors shouted questions. Five minutes passed in this manner. Loredana kept her smile and said nothing.

  “Why aren’t you answering any of our questions?” someone finally asked.

  “Ah.” Loredana raised one hand and pointed to the audience member. “Someone finally asks a question worth responding to.”

  The crowd laughed.

  “I am not answering your questions because, if you agree to my offer, I will own fifty-one percent of Lava Games. As major shareholder, I will not have to answer to any of you.” She shrugged. “Why waste my time now doing something I never intend to do later.”

  Members of the crowd grumbled and she laughed, holding up one hand for silence. “Look, folks, I’m not exactly a fan of the current corporate model.”

  Laughter.

  “If I had my way, I would walk in and take the company out from under the greedy stock traders and stuffed suits that have no interest in anything except getting fat off of hard-working people’s money.” Loredana shrugged. “Nevertheless, this is my offer. You can find my business card in the folder under each of your seats. Call me if you are interested.”

  She walked off the stage. Ivan put one hand on her shoulder and laughed. “That was awesome.”

  She grinned. “Think it will work?”

  “Absolutely. Those greedy little piggies will do the math and jump at the chance to go into business with the girl who earned billions with a product that cost nothing to create.”

  Loredana raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Maybe. I guess we will see what happens over the next few da—”

  Her cell phone rang. She retrieved it from her pocket and grinned. Ivan looked at the number and then peeked his head around the curtain to look at the crowd. He laughed. “Half a dozen of them have phones to their heads already. Company should be ours in less than a week.”

  #17

  Loredana Cyber, co-CEO of Lava Games, put rumours and speculation to rest today with the announcement that her company will be releasing a brand new gaming console called, ‘Magma’. The introduction of the Magma is causing tremendous buzz throughout the market. Up until now, Lava has been the leader in design and creation of video games for the three major console makers for the past ten years.

  When asked why they were dipping their toes into the very competitive and low-profit arena of consoles, Loredana smiled and declined to answer.

  The remainder of her press release stunned everyone involved in both the one-hundred-billion-dollar–a-year gaming industry and the almost one-trillion-dollar computer market.

  The Magma, said by those who have seen it, is a revolutionary product designed and created primarily by Ivan Thorne. An entire new line of games is being created exclusively for the Magma. Loredana assures us that the games will cost the same as competitor titles, while the Magma unit itself will be available for the very affordable price of zero dollars.

  Ivan stood in front of the whiteboard, tapping a blue dry erase marker against his chin as he scanned the writing and diagrams filling the board. Loredana sat at a small table, looking up and then down as she copied the notes from the board into a notebook. Ivan leaned forward and rubbed out one note, replacing it with another.

  “Hey!”

  “You already wrote it down. I peeked.”

  Loredana chuckled and set her pen down. “Tell me again why we bothered to buy a digital game company when you designed the new console entirely by yourself.”

  Ivan grinned. “To manufacture units as quickly as possible so that we might have a chance to keep up with demand.” He pointed to the word ‘free’ in the middle of the board and circled it. “Of course, I did not think you would actually give them away. That has made it impossible to keep up with demand.”

  Loredana shrugged. “Demand is good. Lines of people waiting to buy the Magma as soon as it lands is a good thing.”

  “We also needed the company so staff programmers could get to work and design games. Trust me, Lore, I only do the things that no one else can accomplish. I’m more than happy to let others help.” He grinned. “When they can. How many games are we up to now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Ivan whistled. “Game companies release a major title every six months, and usually take three to five years to create a follow up title in a successful franchise. We have put out fifteen new games in less than six months, and half of them are tied to successful franchises. See? T
he designers are motivated to impress me.”

  “Shareholders are happy, too.”

  “Who cares?”

  Loredana smiled. “Okay, let’s get to work on our real project shall we?”

  “Back to virtual reality?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Ivan grabbed a cloth and erased the board while Loredana stood and picked up her red marker from the desk. In the middle of the board she wrote the letters, ‘VR’. Immediately beside, she wrote, ‘The Game is Life’ and on the other side, ‘10min?’.

  She tapped it. “Can we make the VR experience last longer than ten minutes per session?”

  “Sure.”

  Loredana’s eyes widened. “Simple as that?”

  “Of course. Did you think it was difficult to do?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because sOar was only ten minutes.”

  Ivan laughed. “It was only ten minutes per session because that is a good amount of time for a flight simulation.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Well.” He wrote ‘sOar’ on the bottom section of the board. “After trying the flight simulation program out a few times, I realized that the thing got mind-numbingly boring at right around the fifteen-minute mark.”

  “Really?”

  “Mhmm. So I decided to make it last only ten minutes to ensure people had a blast while they were in the program.”

  “But”—she shook her head—“many people would come out and re-enter the simulation. There were multiple reports of people re-entering as quickly as they could. They didn’t seem to find it boring.”

  “Because they experienced it from start to finish each time. I know it sounds silly, but there is a certain amount of rush the senses get by entering the simulation.”

  Loredana looked doubtful.

  “No matter. We can stretch the length of time inside VR.”

  “How long can we stretch it?”

  “Until the end.”

  “Of what?”

  “Time.”

  Loredana laughed. “That’s kind of deep. I was thinking of ten or twenty hours.”

  Ivan raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “You don’t approve.”

  His expression looked pained. “This could be dangerous.”

  “How?”

  “You ever seen someone get into a game?”

  “Of course. I’ve spent a ton of time playing games.”

  “MMO?”

  “Massive Multiplayer Online?” She frowned. “No, I never played those.”

  “Okay, look.” He wrote, ‘Campaign Game’ in blue, then held his hand out for her red marker. With that, he wrote, ‘MMO’.

  He took a deep breath and nodded at the board. “Two very different types of games. The first is a campaign. Typically they last anywhere from twenty to forty hours to complete. Players do this by themselves, unconnected to the net, and they dedicate chunks of their free time and devote it to playing the campaign. This can take a couple days or months, depending on the seriousness of the gamer. Once the campaign is complete, the game is not really worth playing. They put it on a shelf and look for another.”

  “That makes sense.” Loredana nodded.

  Ivan underlined the MMO label. “This one takes a lot longer to complete. People log into a much larger and interactive digital world via the net. They play sometimes solo, but most times by joining up with other players who are also logged in. It can take months to complete the major goals of an expansion from an MMO. After the major goals are reached—very few ever do complete them all, by the way—players can still log in and do secondary quests and activities.” He underlined MMO in red. “Gamers who play MMO’s don’t log in for an hour or two. They play for an average of five to ten hours.”

  “Wow.”

  “Every day.”

  Loredana frowned. “What?”

  “Oh yeah. Every day for days, weeks, months, even years.” He ran one hand through his hair and sighed. “For a popular MMO, the company will release new content before most can complete the tasks, quests, whatever you want to call them, from the previous module. As long as there are players willing to log in, an MMO can last for years.”

  Loredana sat down, her eyes blank. “It sounds like an addiction.”

  “That’s exactly what it is.”

  Loredana looked at the red lettering on the board.

  “Loredana?”

  She looked at Ivan. “Virtual reality could be worse.” She frowned and shook her head. “We can’t let that happen, Ivan.”

  He rubbed his hand over ‘VR’, leaving a smear of blue ink. “We might not be able to stop it.”

  #18

  When the Magma was introduced a few weeks ago, everyone was excited to see what it could do. Reports are streaming in from all over the globe and everyone agrees, this console is the most incredible device to hit the markets since the computer first made its way into households.

  A PC, streaming audio box for your television, storage device for photos, wireless router to connect with the internet, if you have a Magma unit in your house you can throw all the other pieces of technology out. It is also allowing people to connect with the internet at incredible speeds, blowing all other routers out of the water.

  Even if you never intend to play a game in your life, you should still be lining up to get a free Magma unit.

  Then there is virtual reality.

  Lava Games released the word this morning. Virtual reality games are on their way, and if you want to be part of it, you will need to have a Magma unit.

  Currently in development is a virtual reality theme park based on a relatively unknown book series called, The Game is Life, by Shawn Whitehurst. Loredana Cyber and Ivan Thorne read the series some time ago and contacted Shawn immediately to secure theme park rights.

  Expected to hit the market by the end of next year, Loredana promises that sOar was the tip of the iceberg in the emerging field of virtual reality.

  “What seems to be the problem, boys?” Loredana entered the office and grabbed a bottle of water from the counter. She plopped down beside them, throwing one leg over the arm of a padded leather chair, opening the bottle and taking a long drink as she looked at Ivan and Shawn.

  Both men appeared frustrated. Shawn leaned back in his seat and looked toward the door while Ivan stared at the wall with arms crossed.

  Loredana laughed. “Looks like I got here in the nick of time. You about to kill each other?”

  “What?” Shawn shook his head. “No, of course not.”

  “I would not do well in jail.” One corner of Ivan’s mouth turned up.

  “It’s my fault.” Shawn reached down and picked up a bottle of water from the floor. “I am not really sure what Ivan or you want from me. When you bought the theme park rights to the series, I thought you would hire some professionals to read my books and come up with an idea for a theme park based on their expertise.” He took a drink and shrugged. “You know. A few different areas with different characters from the books. Maybe a park bench with the old man sitting on it feeding pigeons. Another with Trew and Danielle building a Gamer movement.”

  Ivan tipped his head back and closed his eyes, making a snoring noise.

  “Or something like that.” Shawn scowled. “Like I said, I’m not the creative genius in this area.”

  Loredana smacked Ivan’s foot. “You’re right, Shawn, we haven’t told you much about our plans up until this point, and I’m sorry for the lack of communication. We wanted to wait until we were ready to begin creating the park.” She nodded. “Which is now.”

  “It’s fine. Ivan surprised me when he started throwing out a bunch of questions I wasn’t prepared for.”

  “Ivan gets into a certain mode. Sometimes he lacks subtlety.”

  “Hey, I’m sitting right here.”

  Loredana patted his foot again. “The ten million is yours, free and clear. That pays for the rights to mak
e your universe into a theme park. I assume sales of your books are increasing even more since we announced that it will be a theme park?”

  Shawn laughed. “Yes. At first the press criticized it, wondering why an unknown book would be the subject of a virtual reality theme park. Then they began to read the series and understand that the subject was a virtual reality world.”

  “Good.” Loredana nodded. “We want to offer you an additional job as a consultant to develop the actual park itself.”

  Shawn frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I think you see it better than anyone else could. I get a feeling there is so much more to the worlds you have created than we see in the story you write.”

  Shawn nodded. “That’s true.”

  “In exchange for your help, we are prepared to offer you one percent of park admission revenues.”

  Shawn smirked. “If you sell it for the same price as the console, then that’s not a very good deal for me.”

  Loredana laughed. “We gave away the console for very specific reasons. By the time the Game goes live, I imagine that the consoles which dominated the market for decades will all be sitting in the back of closets, replaced by ours.”

  Shawn nodded. “Along with computers and television stream boxes. Every household will have a Magma unit.”

  “The Magma consoles will interact with each other, allowing for the speed of data transmission required to immerse people into virtual reality without sluggishness and lag. We intend to charge for admission to the Game.” Loredana said. “A monthly fee of ten dollars.”

  “That’s it?” Shawn frowned.

  “We expect over two billion subscribers.”

  “Oh my god.”

  Loredana’s smile widened. “That’s only the starting numbers. It will grow quickly.”

  Shawn sat with his mouth open. Ivan laughed. “Money isn’t a problem for any of us once this hits.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Shawn breathed.

  “Will you help us design the world of the Game?”