Advanced Mythology

by Jody Lynn Nye

  Mann gestured with one large hand to Lehmann, who lifted a box to the tabletop. “In there is the prototype of the GF Mark One. It doesn’t have a name yet. Name it. Give us one we really like, the one, and the account’s yours. Believe me, we’ve heard from a dozen agencies already. You can’t believe how many wrong ideas we’ve heard already.”

  Peggy smirked, tossing her long hair. “Yes, we can.”

  “Well, Gadfly was founded by people who like to work by the seat of their pants. So, we want to know if you’re like us. That’s why your creative people are here. We don’t want a big-time production until we’re sure we can work with you. I promise you, we’ve thought of as many dumb names on our own as anybody can. We don’t like one of them. We want to see how you think.”

  The PDQ staff shifted uneasily. Keith, who was already quivering with nerves, had to sit on his hands to keep from springing up.

  “Usually,” Dorothy said carefully, “you give us the details of what you want, and we bring it to you later, for your approval.”

  “Nope. Not this time. We want more. No, we want now. That’s how we work. It’s a test. We make up our minds very quickly. Inspiration’s usually the best indicator of how people think. I speak for the rest of the guys—guys being a unisex term in our office,” he said, reaching out to touch the table before Dorothy and Peggy, “so what I like here today goes. Got it?”

  “Whatever you say,” Dorothy said, looking at her fellow employees. The customer was always right.

  The PDQ staff nodded warily. Keith didn’t want to say out loud that brainstorming and quick inspiration were pretty much how he had been taught to work on ad campaigns, but the staff wasn’t used to doing it in front of the client. Though they were all seasoned professionals in their field, such a challenge put them under a kind of pressure they weren’t accustomed to handling. They accepted Gadfly’s terms, then waited as the cardboard box was passed from Theo Lehmann to Jennifer Schick.

  Keith leaned forward in anticipation. He saw some of the other, more experienced execs sitting back, seemingly cool and disinterested, but it was a pose. Were they frightened of making a bad impression, or did they really not care any more after so many years in the business? Keith hoped he’d never become that jaded.

  No such ennui plagued the people from Gadfly. They were up about their product, almost bouncing in their seats with excitement. They could hardly wait as Ms. Schick opened the box.

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen,” Bill Mann intoned proudly, “Gadfly presents the GF Mark One, the next great step in personal electronic technology. This is the One-Dee version. We’ll probably be in One-Eff by the time we go to market, but it will look just like this. Jen?”

  “This” was a small blue-gray box, about six inches long by two and a half wide by an inch high. Jen Schick turned it in her hands. One flat side of the unit was mostly made up of screen. The other had a small keypad, earpiece, and mouthpiece. “As you can see, it’s a personal digital assistant. And a cell telephone. But it has dozens of other uses. You see the modular design. It’s amazingly versatile. It can do just about anything you want it to.”

  Everyone watched her hands intently as she flipped the small device in her hands. Keith studied it with fascination. It wasn’t really a box, but a stack of very thin panels held together by tiny hinges. The other copywriters were murmuring to one another and making notes. Dorothy drew furiously on her sketchpad.

  Ms. Schick turned on the unit. The screen came to life on a crisp, colorful graphic rotating over a black background. Keith was impressed by the sharpness and resolution. So were the others. The technician grinned at their coos and hums of admiration.

  “High-res monitor,” Lehmann said. “We got tired of screens where you couldn’t see the small details.”

  “User interface is multiply configured,” Ms. Schick continued. “With the stylus,” which popped out of the side of the unit, “you can use it as a normal palmtop. The screen is touch-sensitive, so you can pull down the menus, or doodle on it, write in the character box or touch the character keyboard that pops up. But what sets this little guy apart from the others—among many other innovations—is the keyboard.” Jen Schick held onto the screen and flipped the rear portion down and away from the rest of it, pressed a minute catch, and opened out two of the panels, which turned into four, snapped out flat. “This one is big enough for even a touch-typist with big hands to use. We recessed the keys slightly so you get a slight “reward” action when you press each solenoid. There are several PDA units out there with keyboard peripherals, but they aren’t integral to the unit. Closed up, some of them are bigger than their PDAs.”

  Theo Lehmann spread out his hands side by side. “You can use your thumbs across the breadth of the keyboard, but you don’t have to. The majority of the workforce does not need to be retrained for this platform.”

  An approving hum rose from the PDQ executives. Even Dorothy was nodding to herself. Keith couldn’t take his eyes off it. He thought it was wonderful.

  “Memory?” asked Rollin Chisholm, his voice husky.

  “Four hundred gigs running on a 12.8 GHz FlagChip IC, in the original configuration,” said the engineer. “The next generation will have more. It runs real Windows or Linux or any other system you want to install—with its own mini CD-ROM, you don’t need a docking station. It’s an extraordinary device. It deserves extraordinary treatment.”

  “We agree,” Dorothy said. “It’s amazing.”

  Keith watched the engineer fold and refold into different configurations. Ms. Schick flipped the keyboard shut but left the unit folded out into two panels so the telephone keypad was beneath the screen. She set it down on the desk, where it stood by itself.

  “This little ring here,” Jen Schick went on, twisting a stubby cylinder that was mounted along one end of a long edge on the upright portion, “is a camera eye. The GF Mark One will take over 600 pictures on a memory stick or ten times that on a writable mini-CD. It can record an hour of video or more, depending on how much resolution you want. The drive is back here. You can see that we’ve reduced the drive size so that it doesn’t add bulk. The drive is Theo’s baby. We’re ready to license out the patent to seven other companies, but we want to get our own unit to market first.” Lehmann tilted his head with a modest expression.

  “Incredible,” murmured Allen. “The disk drive is thinner than a checkbook.”

  “The camera lens will swivel in any direction. You can use it as a digital video camera and record on a disk or stick, or send streaming video over either your wireless phone line or the Internet. Of course it’s fully Internet compatible. One of the things we thought the camera feature would be good for is teleconferencing. You just point the lens back at yourself while looking at the person you’re talking to on the screen. Of course there’s a wireless headset so you can set the unit down or have it on your lap. It makes the Mark One’s uses almost infinitely expandable. It’ll share data through the usual modem configuration, but there’s an infrared eye right here,” she pointed to a minute square of dark plastic at the rear of the screen section. “You can make your own videos and send them out on the web in no time. It could revolutionize newsgathering. It’s got clip art and moving clips you can use to customize your video. The character generator works off the word processing system. But look at this.” With the stylus she scribbled out a command, and the image on the little square screen changed to show a pair of spaceships zooming through the black void shooting red laser bolts at one another. “It updates high-res video instantly.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Keith said. “Is it real?”

  “You mean, is it a working prototype? It is. Here. Look. I’m running a computer adventure game. The processor is very fast, but it consumes very little energy.”

  Several of them leaned forward. Doug had his hands stretched out as though he’d like to get them on the little unit, but they let the marketing director continue to demonstrate the device.

>   “You can watch movies on it—the power-saver feature can run the hard drive flat out for more than twenty hours, and it can record from over-the-air signals. You can download books from the net. It’ll hold a library’s worth, including illustrations. It can store MP3 files, or play music recorded on mini-CD. It’s practically a whole personal entertainment system. Everything but the dance floor,” Jen Schick added.

  “Do you want us to use that?” Janine Martinez asked, pausing from making notes. She put the end of her pen in her mouth, raised her eyebrows quizzically. The crew from Gadfly looked at each other, exchanging silent questions.

  “Maybe,” Mann said, cheerfully. “Give us a name first, and we’ll go for the whole download.”

  They seemed outwardly to be happy-go-lucky, casual people, but underneath they were watching and wary, steel-lined, not going to take anything they didn’t like. They hadn’t gotten to be a multi-million-dollar venture without being determined.

  “So,” Mann asked, “what do you think?”

  “I am in love,” said Doug Constance. “It’s so small, but it’s got everything. It’s amazing.”

  “Other handhelds have these features,” Schick admitted, “but no one unit has them all incorporated into one. We do.”

  Keith just stared raptly, watching them turn the little screen around to face the keyboard, flip up so the digital camera eye is pointing at one of them, the little screen out to the side to use as a viewfinder, back again to use as a palm-top surface.

  “What about wireless Internet?”

  “At present the Internet function is disabled, but it’s ready to go as a telephone and wireless browser,” Mann said. “I’m not letting it connect because I just don’t want anyone lurking on the web to scope out the configurations prematurely. This is a big deal for us.”

  “Of course,” Dorothy said. “We’re all enormously impressed.”

  “Touch the Internet icon, then write in any URL,” Lehmann said, pointing over Keith’s shoulder, as he took the device around the table, demonstrating it for each PDQ staffer in turn. “You’ll be able to web surf in full color with practically no lags. The important things about it are the long battery life and the thinness of the components. They’ll bend but not break.”

  Fold, flip, turn. Keith saw his own eyes stare back at him from the little screen. They were wide with excitement. This was the most exciting techno-toy he had ever seen. He had to have one for his own.

  “Factotum?” suggested Jason Allen.

  “Oh, come on,” Doug Constance said. “Half the people out there will have no idea what that means.”

  “Packhorse? Mule? Suitcase?” suggested Rollin Chisholm. “I’m throwing out ideas here—Office Entertainment System?”

  “Nope,” said Mann, tersely.

  “Smartpack?” Janine Martinez offered.

  “No way.”

  “Palm Pro?”

  “Too close to the competitors,” Paul Meier said. “Fingertip?”

  “Uh … nah.”

  “Encyclo-PDA?”

  “Y’know, every single agency in Chicago has come up with that one.”

  “Really?” said Peggy Gilmore, narrowing her eyes. “I thought that one was pretty clever.”

  “We really ought to try New York, too,” Lehmann said to Mann. Dorothy stiffened. Paul leaned over and put a hand over hers.

  Lehmann noticed the gesture and seemed genuinely abashed. “Sorry. We think out loud too much. Corporate culture.” He pointed a finger at his head pistol style, and pulled the imaginary trigger. “You know, no people skills.”

  “This thing doesn’t need a campaign behind it,” Paul said admiringly. “The thing writes its own ad copy. Just write down everything it can do.”

  “Use the list as wallpaper,” said Doug excitedly. “Transparent, over a photo, maybe the user’s hand and a train window in the background. It’d make a good and sticky ad—one that keeps your eyes on it for a long time.”

  “Yes,” Dorothy said, sketching the unit in Lehmann’s hands and filling in scribbles around it to indicate words. “Good.”

  “HE for Home Entertainment?” suggested Chisholm. “HE’s the one you want to take everywhere with you? Turn HE on, and HE’ll turn you on?”

  “No,” Paul said. “Male customers will think it sounds like they’re taking a guy on a date.”

  “Okay, SHE? Single Home Entertainment? Women are less sensitive about hanging with other women.”

  “PE?” added Parks. “Personal Entertainment?”

  “No,” Mann said. “PE sounds like gym class. It’s still going to be the Gadfly Mark One no matter what handle you hang on it.”

  The Gadfly guys seemed nonplussed by the babble going on around them. They couldn’t be impressed, having heard initial pitches from a dozen companies. They listened as the staff threw out idea after idea, saying “no,” or simply shaking their heads.

  “Everyone will want one of these,” Constance said. “Can you think of one single person in the world who won’t want one? This will galvanize the industry. Gadfly could sell a million of these in the first week.”

  “But it needs the right approach,” Paul Meier said.

  “The right name,” said Mann.

  Keith sat watching Ms. Schick manipulate the Gadfly unit while the others argued over his head. He wasn’t the only copywriter that Dorothy had brought in, but she trusted him. She wanted him to succeed for her. He was grateful for the chance. He didn’t want to let her down.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off the device. The flat hinges allowed the PDA to be turned inside out and upside down, revealing more and more uses. An infinity of utility. He didn’t even notice Dorothy’s desperate eye, so intent was he on the device. It bent every which way, like someone folding a piece of paper.

  “Origami,” he said, dreamily.

  “How about the Pocket Secretary?” Chisholm proposed.

  “Too much like an infomercial,” said Lehmann.

  “The Office Box?” Constance offered.

  “What?” Mann asked. “What did you say?”

  The blond executive started. “The Office Box? I know it needs work.”

  “No, him, the bug-eyed one,” he said, pointing at Keith. “What did you say, son?”

  Keith grinned, embarrassed. “I said ‘origami.’ The Japanese art form. That’s what it reminds me of. They can take a piece of paper and fold it into anything you want. It just made me think of it, the way you can twist that around into so many different shapes. It can be about anything you want it to. Can’t it?”

  The executives smiled slowly at one another.

  “Dude,” said the president of Gadfly Technology, “you’re the man.”

  ***

  Chapter 7

  “… And they said right there and then that PDQ had the account,” Keith said. He sat perched on the arm of an old couch at one side of the barn workshop next to Holl’s worktable. He just couldn’t stop talking. The whole world had changed so much in a single day. “Mr. Mann kept repeating it over and over: ‘Origami.’ It just came out, but he really liked it. Ms. Schick called their office and cancelled all the other appointments. They want me to start full time on the project, effective yesterday. We’re all supposed to start thinking of how to make the campaign work. Dorothy was really happy.”

  “And you, too, I should imagine,” Holl said, continuing to plane a board glass smooth. He ran his finger along the surface, and attacked an invisible rough patch with a cloth coated with jeweler’s rouge. A splinter of the wood grain lifted and snagged the cloth. “Pah.” With the most delicate touch, he sent a tendril of power into the wood, causing the grain to adhere together more strongly. He gently eased the splinter back into place. The board was a mite too well-seasoned for fine carving. Tiron had warned him that the storage area in the barn was too dry, but Holl had disagreed. He’d checked it himself not a week before. It had been all right then. At least, he thought it had been. If this piece was a representati
ve sample the room was too dry. From then forward he’d better check more closely. The Folk couldn’t afford to lose all their quality hardwoods, not with winter order season nearly upon them. “It helps to speed along your dreams, doesn’t it?”

  “It sure does,” Keith said, slinging himself backwards into the depth of the couch. All around them, the Little Folk were working on wooden boxes, lanterns, jewelry, and ornamental pieces, raising their heads to listen occasionally to Keith. “You’re going to be amazed—PDQ is offering me $200 a day as a freelancer.”

  “Very generous.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Keith said happily, watching Holl’s hands. “You can’t believe how amazing this Mark One is. It has every single thing you can think of. It’s set up for interactive games on the wireless web. It could be used as a smart card. Pay your bills. Buy movie tickets. Invest in stocks. All from a handheld computer that I could put in my pocket. It’s got a mini-DVD. That’s going to be the hard sell. Since people are already investing in full-sized DVDs they probably wouldn’t want to buy all their movies in the miniature format, but for the road warrior, you know, the traveling executive …”

  “Ugh!” Dola exclaimed, throwing up her hands. She sprang up from the couch. “I have heard all this nonstop all the way from Chicago. At least spare the repetition until I have gone again.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” Keith said, tweaking a lock of her hair. “I know I bent your ear about it, but I’m in gadget-lust. I want one of these things, Holl. I don’t care what it costs.” He dropped into a reverie, seeing one of the shapely units in his own hands. “It’s a full personal computer that receives television, radio, and shortwave signals along with digital/analog telephone. And a pager. You can web surf for hours and listen to, say, the BBC World Service at the same time. It’s designed so well that the transmission signals don’t interfere with one another. The TV doesn’t get lines across it from the shortwave radio band. It can handle wireless fax. It’s got DVD, infrared, serial, and parallel connectors and a USB port. It’s set up for GPS, walkie-talkie, still and motion picture camera, voice recorder, video games with stub or touchpad joystick; it’s got e-book capability, and it can carry up to 20 amenity cards—like grocery store and department store passes—in a password-accessible database. Practically every electronic gadget there is, in miniature. They’re working on scanning capability, too. I think,” Keith said, dreamily. “I’ll call her Doris.”