The Housewife Assassin's Killer App

by Josie Brown

  Unlike me, she’s got Barbie proportions and doesn’t need to wear a bra or Spanx, because she’s perky in all the right places, including her attitude.

  When she stays around the house, she tackles the dishes, vacuums, bakes, goes to the grocery store, does the laundry, tends her garden, and cleans out the cupboards.

  Sometimes she hops into her mommy-mobile (the one I covet—Emma’s Yukon Denali XL hybrid) to carpool, buy groceries, and shop to her little heart’s content.

  In fact, hearts are more than the name of the game. Like the old television show Queen for a Day, accomplishment of household tasks are rewarded with tiny hearts that can be traded in for stuff like high-tech appliances, make-up, or dresses, shoes or other accessories—all the latest-and-greatest, all top-of-the-line name brands—or girls-nights-out with celebrities. The grand prize is a mystery date with an actor of the player’s choice.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Emma mutters in my ear.

  “You’re not still going through morning sickness, are you?” I ask.

  “No! It’s just that this game is so stupid and boring! My God, is this what it’s like to settle down?”

  No arguments there.

  “By the way, I’ve already found the A-bug and fixed it. Between their ADD issues, looking at online porn, and screwing around with their Google Glass apps, your team is too distracted to focus on a line-by-line code check.” I can imagine her rolling her eyes.

  “So, how do we fix this game?” I ask.

  “I’m no miracle worker. If this is as good as it gets in the real world, I’m surprised real women aren’t throwing themselves out of their sparkling clean windows.”

  “That’s just it, Emma—real life is much more than this! Women have doubts about themselves, and their relationships. They have fears—for their children, their significant others, and for themselves. It’s the joy of finding your true love, of marrying him, and having children with him. And it’s not just emotional highs, either. Sure, women worry if they’re gaining weight or if they spot another wrinkle or gray hair. But they also get cancer, or have to deal with aging parents, or are juggling part-time jobs, or losing their jobs and homes when the economy tanks. If Shazaaaam wants them to play this game, it’s got to resemble real life, not the games we played when we were ten, when we didn’t know any better.”

  “Donna, was that enough for you?”

  Her question stops me cold. “What do you mean?”

  “I guess what I’m trying to ask is whether or not you’d prefer everything you just mentioned. In other words, reality.”

  I snort. “As opposed to what, this super-saccharine fantasy?”

  She pauses as she searches for the right words. “By that, I mean as opposed to some of the excitement you’ve had since becoming an assassin.”

  “Yes, okay, to be honest, when I was a full-time housewife, I never felt I was living up to my full potential. When Ryan asked me to join Acme, I had a mission—I wanted to avenge Carl’s death. Now I do it to prevent him killing others. Each mission puts me into situations that challenge me—emotionally, mentally, and physically.” I sigh. “To be honest with you, I’ve never felt as alive as I do right now.”

  “Because of the danger you find yourself in at every turn.” Emma’s presumption comes out in a quiet whisper.

  “No,” I insist, “Because the stakes are so high—my children’s lives, Jack’s life, the world we live in. I fail, I lose it all—this ‘normal life’ we take for granted.” My voice is trembling, but I can’t make it stop. “But, Emma, the way Queen of Hearts depicts real life is far from it! All life is always a challenge. We grow, we change, and we mature. The rosy happily ever after isn’t the journey. It’s the reward.”

  Emma is so quiet that I can’t tell if we’re still connected until she practically yells into my ear, “That’s it, Donna!”

  “Ouch! What are you yelling about?” I swap the bud from one ear to the other in order to save my hearing.

  “I’ll re-code Queen of Hearts to resemble your life—and by that, I mean everything! The kids and the dogs, as well as the bad guys. Avatar Donna not only has to do carpool, she has to save the world too.” I hear her clicking away on her keyboard. “She’ll get her missive via interesting drops—the ice cream vendor, the librarian, in a bouquet of roses, whatever. The clock is always ticking against her. Can she stop an assassination before she has to put dinner on the table? Can she disarm a bomb and still take her daughter to ballet? The hearts she wins will be purple, for valor and bravery. And the men in her life are—well, they’re complicated. They’ll be sexy and romantic and adventurous—but at the same time, they have hidden agendas. She won’t know if they’re good or evil.” Emma is so excited, she’s practically squealing. “Oh, my God, I think I can pull this off before you get to work tomorrow morning.”

  “Emma, you’re pregnant, remember? You need your sleep! Take some down-time tonight—with Arnie.”

  “Are you kidding me? He just texted me that he’s got other plans for the evening. Apparently, Nymphette and a group of his new coder buddies are staying on campus after work for a special showing of Blade Runner. Harrison Ford will be taking questions afterward. So that everyone gets into the vibe, Shazaaaam has hired salon stylists to give the female employees blunt cuts, just like the replicants in the movie.” Her laugh is harsh. No joy there.

  “Maybe I should text him to remind him why he’s really here—to break into Roger’s email and files,” I mutter.

  “He did that about an hour ago. I’ve already lateraled the intel to my SignInt and ComInt teams for cipher analysis. One thing’s for sure—Roger is anxious about Comic-Con. Reading between the lines, his role in our little drama is certainly taking place there—all the more reason you have to be there too.” She sounds deflated. “Donna, please don’t worry about me. Until this baby comes, I’m on the job. And besides, I haven’t coded a game in a while. It’ll be fun.” But her tone is anything but fun as she adds, “Oh, hell!”

  “What’s happened now?” I force myself to keep my eyes on my laptop screen as opposed to turning around to look into the group pit.

  “They’re dissing you again.” She forwards their latest group text:

  Fu Manchu: UR telling me. She got any real creds?

  Zhao: Supposedly cromulent.

  Roger: Affirmative. Even so, we’re taking someone else as QoH’s booth babe. Need a livewire. A hottie.

  Ichabod: Ditto! This one is too much of a dweebette!

  Wise Ass: Nah. Chobo!

  Bollywood: LOL! Right, n00b.

  Fu Manchu: Nah. N00bette! Gotta say, though, she embiggens my handheld.

  “Does that mean what I think it does?” I growl.

  “You don’t want to know,” Emma responds. “How dare that idiot Fu Manchu call you a n00b!”

  “You’ve got that right!…Um…how bad is it?”

  “Let me put it this way—he did it with two zeros as opposed to two o’s.”

  “Oh! Well, since you put it that way.”

  “Trust me, it’s an insult. Worse yet, they’re talking themselves out of taking you along as their booth babe.”

  Oh…shit.

  “That does it,” she declares. “I’m going to turn this housewife into a woman, and load you up with a couple of backdoor assets that kick ass.” I hear Emma clicking away furiously on her keyboard. “After work, meet me back at your place, in the bonus room over the garage.”

  So much for TGIF.

  If Emma is in for a long night, then I am too.

  Chapter 10

  Avatar

  Some of the most enticing apps you’ll find for your high-speed tablet or smart phone are games—all sorts! You can choose from gory action games that test your survival skills (okay, really your ability to whip your joystick into a frenzy), or narrative-driven puzzles that take you on fantastic adventures through sinister environments, fighting off lifelike villains and monsters.

  A
nd if it’s an MMOG—that is, a “massively multiplayer online game—you can compete, and triumph over tens of thousands of others as you collect points, gobble up loads and loads of calories, and live vicariously through a prettier, sexier animated version of you.

  There is some important online gaming etiquette to follow. For example…

  1: Don’t cheat! Using the exploits planted throughout the game is akin to starting a race and taking a shortcut. In other words, it’s not about winning, but how you play the game. (Really, it’s about how you look playing the game, so the sexier the avatar, the better.)

  2: Be a good sport! No one likes a player who flings around negative emoticons and harshes everyone else’s mellow. Having a sexy avatar only buys you so much love and respect. You must earn the rest.

  3: Don’t be a “camper!” Staying put in one location in order to spawn points or corpses with your high-damage weapon demonstrates one of two things: either laziness, or fear. Remember, for every supposedly happy camper, there’s a lumberjack just waiting to blow you away with some bigger, badder gun, so get it together and move on.

  On a final note: Concerned that the avatar you’ve chosen might mislead your new comrades-in-arms as to how you really look? Not to worry! Recent surveys show that nine out of nine avatars never look like the players they represent.

  While Emma works almost nonstop to turn Queen of Hearts into an obsessively immersive, heart-pounding adrenaline rush of a game, I run warm baths for her, make her some hot home-cooked meals, and tuck her into the bonus room’s feather bed when she’s too tired to keep her eyes open.

  I also bake like a fiend: chunky chocolate chip cookies, butterscotch brownies, and my chocolate-filled cronuts.

  Mary and Trisha are fascinated to hear she’s working on a new online game aimed at women. When they show up in the bonus room with a plate of the homemade chunky chocolate chip cookies they made themselves, Emma is so touched that she shows them how the game works.

  “Can you teach me to code a game?” Mary asks hopefully.

  “After this assignment, sure, I’m all yours,” Emma promises.

  As they leave her to continue her work, she murmurs to me, “I’ll never be as great a mom as you.”

  “Yes, you will,” I assure her. “Kids are intuitive. They can sense when someone they respect is hard at work and needs some space—not to mention a little tender loving care.”

  Emma nods. I’m sure it’s imagining what random acts of love her own child will show her—not a sugar rush—that puts the smile on her face.

  I love this game.

  It takes Emma twenty-four hours to tweak the development hardware so that the visuals are smooth and eye-poppingly realistic. Can you free hostages at a world peace summit in time to save even one from being killed—and before picking your daughter up from soccer practice? Can you disarm a bomb before your pie has to be pulled out of the oven?

  The game’s sound effects, which come at the players from all directions, are easily recognized by any mother, and yet give her reason to pause before jumping into action. Do you dodge a bullet, or hush a crying child? Do you shoot your target, or flatten yourself against a wall before a speeding train hits you?

  And yes, there are spies who love you. Who do you trust, and why?

  Especially in this game, where there’s more to a dossier than meets the eye—especially now that Emma has also loaded Oculus support into the code.

  The overworld map Emma built is truly a game changer. The homes of virtual Hilldale are filled with people who laugh, cry, kiss and make up, or make love and war. Some of your neighbors unwittingly hold clues that will make the world safer. Others could be terrorist cells, waiting for the attack signal.

  Even without ethereal costumes and fantastical flora and fauna, the game is a thing of beauty.

  It is real life.

  Not yours perhaps, but mine.

  Welcome to my neighborhood. But beware of smiling strangers bearing gifts. Pies may be poisoned, or perfectly delicious. The most harmful thing in a bouquet may be the thorns on its freshly cut roses. Then again, it may contain a bomb.

  “I’ve even built in facial recognition software, so that the player’s features are projected onto the avatar’s face.” She shows me, using my face.

  “Wow! I look great in animated Three-D!”

  Emma nods proudly. “Oh! And best of all, no more Barbie dimensions!” She pushes a button and changes the 36-17-34-inch dimensions on my avatar to—

  Well, to mine.

  So long, seventeen-inch waist. Hello, too much real junk in my animated trunk.

  “Hmmm.” How do I put this to her? “So…is there a Spanx store in virtual Hilldale?”

  Emma rolls her eyes, but puts me back into my fantasy shape.

  “Okay, now it’s time for a wider Beta test,” Emma proclaims.

  “How do we do that?” I ask.

  “We’ll announce an open Beta through some of the more popular gamer loops and community forums—for example, on Steam and Kongregate. Also, I can hit up Geek & Sundry, as well as Friends of Comic-Con. Everyone who responds will be given a beta key for entry, and so that we can track their moves and responses. But, considering this has got to be ready by Monday morning—less than twenty-four hours, I’d better do so pronto.”

  A few clicks of her keyboard, and the game is locked and loaded.

  A few hours later, there are a couple of thousand players singing the game’s praises.

  By five in the morning, we have over two thousand reviews and comments.

  Emma hacks into Shazaaaam’s mainframe as Fu Manchu and uploads the game.

  Confused, I turn to Emma. “Why are you letting him take the credit?”

  “Because he’s a guy. Trust me, if they think you did it—or anyone with double-X chromosomes—it will be rejected out of hand. Sexual and verbal harassment are both rampant in the industry. Female players receive three times the number of abusive comments as males. We get called sluts, whores, and cunts.”

  “I imagine it’s easy to be an abusive little troll when you’re anonymous, and your victim is miles away and an animated avatar,” I murmur.

  “Worse yet, sometimes they roam in packs. You feel as if you’ve been emotionally gangbanged.” I can tell she’s speaking from experience. “Sadly, it’s just as bad if you work in the industry. Female designers can’t catch a break. If they work for a Triple-A developer, their games are less likely to get produced.” Emma shakes her head in disgust. “And, if their company does peer reviews, they are less likely to have their male coworkers sing their praises. It’s like Survivor, when others can vote you off the island. Gaming is big bucks. I guess guys feel if someone is to get promoted over them, it better be another guy who played just as dirty.”

  “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” I’m about to go on a rant, when a thought hits me. “Hey, won’t Fu Manchu blow a gasket when he sees his code has been changed?”

  Emma giggles gleefully. “No way. The last thing he’ll want to admit is that some bug fairy dusted his game. And besides, with the rave reviews the game got in Beta, he’ll want to take all the credit.”

  I shake my head in awe. “If it’s a hit, the credit should be yours, you know.”

  Emma shrugs. “Don’t worry. Shazaaaam’s stock is at an all-time low. I just bought a chunk of it, so if the game hits it big, I’ll make back my time and effort that way. As for the gaming industry, why do you think I approached Acme instead of doing this for a living? In hindsight, it was the best move for me. Taking down bad guys in the real world is so much more fun!” She pauses. “Speaking of peer review, Shazaaaam works that way too—so watch your back.”

  My cronuts are a big hit—with the wrong guys.

  On Friday, Fu Manchu was the first to leave the office. Now that it’s Monday morning, he’s the last to come into it. Too many replicants, so little time. Case in point: the Blade Runner retrospective was so popular that it was shown in three
Fun Huts at the same time.

  However, the rest of the Queen of Hearts team is already seated at the group table. As they go through the game, they are so engrossed that they don’t realize that they’re dropping cronut crumbs and droplets of their favorite gourmet coffee blend all over their T-shirts. The avatars they choose for themselves are a projection of their dream lives. Whereas Wise Ass and Bollywood take studly he-man icons, Ichabod and Zhao put on dresses, heels, and give themselves forty-inch boobs.

  When Fu Manchu finally shows his face, I stand with the rest of them and give him a standing ovation.

  Roger is curious enough to look up from reading Tesla Motors’ forum blog, where he’s been trolling for women who troll for male Tesla owners.

  Yes, he is a proud owner of a Tesla.

  “What’s all the clapping about?” Roger scratches under his topknot, a nervous habit, I’m sure. Frankly, because of him, I’ve quit fun-bunning altogether.

  I sweep my arm in Fu Manchu’s direction. “He succeeded in cleaning the A-bug out of the game. Not only that, tested it through the roof with the Betas!”

  Fu Manchu glares at me. “What the hell? You put the game out to Betas—before one last QA run through?”

  I bat my eyes at him as I hand him a cronut. “You can’t improve on perfection, can you?”

  He stares down at it, but he ain’t biting. “Says who?” he growls.

  I swipe the plate of butterscotch brownies out of Wise Ass’s paws and wave it in front of Fu Manchu’s nose with a smile. “Says the twenty-two hundred married women between the ages of twenty-five and forty who beta-tested it over the weekend, that’s who! Here are their comments.”

  I text the QofH team a PDF and watch their faces as they scroll through the comments. With a four-point-seven rating out of five, and comments from all the players, most of the raves use exactly the words I’ve said.

  “Isn’t it great?” I exclaim. “It’s everything we want it to be! It challenges. It fills players with fear, and dread—and hope. It’s got bad guys, and naughty men.” I wink at Roger, who preens at the thought that I think he’s anything but a creepy man-ho. “It excites, and makes women feel sexy. It is now the ultimate MMORPG for any woman. It’s realistic. It’s engaging. And most importantly, it’s addictive.”