We Are Watching Eliza Bright

by A. E. Osworth

  It is an ambitious climb up her Career Tree, she and Preston both agree. “You’ll need to have a wide perspective on the business, I think. I was impressed with your coding test—you’re teaching yourself?” he asks as he prints her a copy.

  Eliza nods.

  “Brilliant!” Preston continues. “A stint in development, so you know what’s possible. Starting next week, I think. You already have the QA—brilliant, brilliant job debugging the Medusa Lovely arc, by the way! Details!” He whips into his next thought, so smart, able to turn on a dime. Every word from his mouth sounds like a staged monologue. No ums or uhs. Full-throated and fully thought out. “Details are so important. In the meantime, try your hand at designing a tabletop game. Really, in the end, it’s all about gameplay, and nothing gets that across better than not having pretty graphics to fall back on.”

  “You want me to design a tabletop game here?” Eliza asks.

  “Ha.” Preston’s laugh is a bark, a sound made only by someone unafraid to take up space. “No, no, not for here, I don’t think we’ll be expanding to tabletop just yet,” he chuckles. “I mean on your own time. To get the experience of it, the feel for it.”

  “Right, of course,” Eliza says, feeling the tiniest touch of red spread across her face and up her nose. Or she blinks, doe-eyed, coquettishly LARPing a damsel in distress.

  “Listen, I’m going to give you some real earnest advice. It’s why I talk to everyone personally, mentor them. Give it some real thought—do you want this? Because if you really want to be a decision maker, a game changer, in this company and in games, you have to eat, sleep, breathe and live Guilds of the Protectorate. You have to understand how everything works from all corners. You have to totally immerse yourself. And that’s not even counting the semi-magic creative factor in all this. Even if you ascend in the ranks, it doesn’t guarantee the muse will visit you. It has to be something you have to do.” Preston ends his speech seated calmly at his desk, hands folded, with the kindest eyes. The buttery sunlight makes his very-windowed office feel corporate, happy and chic. He looks like the startup superhero, exactly the kind of person who should be featured on the cover of Wired with the headline “Hacking the Gaming Industry.”

  “Do you want it?” he asks. “Do you want it badly enough to do all that, to not have a life outside of this for years, and then to potentially fail at it because the muse didn’t catch the right train?”

  Eliza is breathless, her heart beating quickly. She licks her lips. “I want it, yes. And I will not let you down.” Then, wait—“Mr. Waters?” She’d never called him by any name before, never addressed him directly.

  “Call me Preston. We’re not a ‘Mr. Waters’ kind of company, Eliza, get a grip.”

  “Right, yes. Preston? Did you just promote me?”

  “Yes, I did. You’ve earned it.”

  Eliza rocks back in her chair. Did she? Did she, though? “I, uh. Wow. Thank you.”

  “Oh,” says Preston as he reaches beneath his desk. “And one more thing.” He slides a brand-new nondisclosure agreement across the glass.

  “But I already work here? I mean, I’ve signed this already.”

  “We’re asking all devs, every team, to sign it again. Your colleagues already have. Just a precautionary measure. A reminder.”

  “Oh—okay?” Eliza says, but she signs it nonetheless. A quick dash off with a blue Bic and Preston taps his nose. “Come with me,” he says. He retrieves a box from his desk and stands. Eliza is bewildered.

  He leads her to the elevator and, taking his badge from his pocket, he waves it in front of the small black square affixed under the buttons. Eliza’s eyebrows snap together. “But we don’t have any keyed floors,” she says.

  “That,” says Preston, enjoying the delivery, the suspense, “has changed.”

  They shudder down to floor three, which we are not supposed to know about. But of course we do. Fancy Dog, like every other organization of human beings, has the structural integrity of a sieve. Rumors fly. The doors open; a plain, concrete room stands before them, solid and entirely nondescript. There are no windows. At the corners where the walls meet the ceiling are what look like security cameras. Green lights wink down at us as we look around, follow Eliza’s gaze, imagine the floor into existence based solely on descriptions and disparate nuggets of experience with expensive technology.

  At the edge, a high table; it’s one long standing desk, unused charging cords neatly protruding from organized square holes. A large monitor attached to a short tower are the only items currently sitting on the surface.

  Preston leans against the table and slides the closed box—about the size and shape of a boot box—across the table at Eliza. “Okay. Now you can open it.”

  She does and: “Preston. Oh my God. Are we—?”

  Preston nods. “Yup. This is now your equipment. That’s what your colleagues have been working on for months and months. We’re going to announce beta testing publicly—very soon, actually. Right now, only developers and a few key departments, a few necessary people, know what’s going on. Not even all the narrative designers are in the loop. We have a very lean set of devs acting as high-level QA. A difficult decision, to be sure, a risky one—it’s made our lives much harder, but we don’t want any leaks. We’ll take it to the rest of the company in the next week or so, so you won’t have to keep the secret for very long. It’s been killing your friend Devonte.”

  Eliza lifts the lid on the box and slams it shut again. “That’s—that’s— oh my God that’s so cool.” She paces around in a tight circle. “Oh man, Preston—can I play with this? I mean, is it already possible to play Guilds with this?”

  Preston pushes off the table and walks into the center of the room, empty for such a clear reason now. “That’s why I brought you down here. It’s an entirely new software, rebuilt from the ground up, so we’re still working out the kinks. Play for now, but not too long! Be ready on Monday for full speed ahead. You’re really going to have to hit the ground running! Now normally I’d have new people pick a project to bring to their team—it’s kind of a team building exercise—but considering the amount of work you’re going to have to do for this announcement—”

  “No wait, Preston. With this—I have a brilliant idea. Something people have been requesting forever. I know there’s some half-baked plans for it already, but with this it’s even—”

  “You’re not going to have time.” Because of course she won’t have time. She can barely code as it is, and her co-workers are going to have to teach her everything.

  Eliza glances down at her phone to look at the time and pushes her glasses up on her nose, ignoring her own incompetence. “If we email them this morning, I have all afternoon. All evening. All weekend. I can basically do the bulk of it. Just hear me out.”

  “Okay. But I can’t get you on the server until Monday morning.”

  Chapter Six

  At this point, we should talk about Preston Waters, co-founder and CEO of Fancy Dog Games. Preston is a golden boy with a very symmetrical face and thick, brown hair that waves over his right eye in a natural 1940s swish. A quick glance back even further and we can see him grow up with his mother insisting, loudly and publicly, that his face is so perfect it should be on a coin. His father takes that to mean he should expect the boy to be president. Preston is the kind of guy who, no matter how much time he spends at the computer and no matter how many cookies he eats, still retains a healthy layer of muscle. He is never effortful nor effortless, hardworking without being a try-hard. Never too serious nor too frivolous, always the right amount of lulz. His jawline is as sharp as his intellect. He commands respect without asking for it.

  We watch for his character in Guilds constantly. The original, the proto-character: Human Man. So clever, to name him something so close to Everyman. Anyman. Preston Waters is all of us. Any single one of us could become him if we follow his pattern closely. And his superhero persona is an extension of everything classic ab
out Guilds. It isn’t hard to emulate Human Man; Guilds’ default settings match Preston’s character, such that anyone who is eager to get playing makes an exact copy of Human Man. Middle skin tone, middle brown hair, the standard red unitard and cape. He is, therefore, invisible by default. His neutrality grants him anonymity.

  He is asked about it on his Daily Show segment, from way back when—“Of course, those are the default options, those are my favorites!” he says as we hit the play button again and again. “I almost named my character Superman but—” He stares at the camera, eyes wide. An expression jolts across his face. Excitement. He is in the process of revealing his genius on national television. We would get a boner too, if it were us.

  He comes back to himself. “It didn’t sit right with me, ripping off Jerry Siegel like that.”

  “Jerry Siegel?” asks Jon Stewart.

  “He was one of the great men who created Superman. But I wanted to pay homage to an icon.”

  “So, you went with—Human Man?”

  “Human Man! I sure did.”

  We memorize his answers. He only sleeps four hours a night, so we try this. He carves out bandwidth for his ideas by replacing most of his meals with protein shakes, anytime he doesn’t get takeout. This is appealing. Who wants to think about food ever? It takes up too much time, the maintenance of a body. We buy Vitamix blenders. He devotes an hour every morning to brainstorming the next big thing before he hits the Starbucks for his morning coffee; we do too, and we buy apps for mindmapping and transfer our thoughts to slide decks. We understand Preston Waters with the precision of a collective of naturalists or devout monks. We are ready for our own success. We are ready to join his ranks.

  “We didn’t know it would be this popular,” Preston continues. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re glad it is! And we’re working full speed ahead! We’re hiring more and more people even as I sit here!” The only thing we do not understand is what he sees in Eliza Bright. Why he promotes her when the world is full of us, those that wouldn’t need to ask him a single question because we can telegraph his every thought.

  Chapter Seven

  JPDes: hey, Eliza, just curious—what games do you play?

  JPDes: like outside of this one?

  EBrig: Oh it varies! Comes and goes, whatever I’m interested in. Mostly I play this one, but I’ve been really into that Stardew Valley thing that came out in February

  JPDes: the farming game?

  EBrig: yup!

  JPDes: you don’t think that’s a little boring?

  EBrig: oh not at all—especially for someone who lives in a city.

  EBrig: plus that guy is super cool—he made it entirely by himself! that’s exactly the kind of thing I want to be able to do. in the context of a company I want to be a lead designer, but I want to be able to make the whole thing myself start to finish.

  JPDes: good for you.

  EBrig: thanks

  Chapter Eight

  JPDes: fucking STARDEW VALLEY

  LFleis: figures

  JPDes: she couldn’t name any others

  LFleis: figures.

  JPDes: lolololol

  LFleis: she probably plays the sims or some shit. fucking girl games. and her code is all fucked up too wtf is she fucking doing here

  LFleis: why do u think they promoted her?

  JPDes: numbers

  LFleis: ?

  JPDes: to have women n stuff

  JPDes: so we dont look liek sexist assholes

  LFleis: fucking takeover

  JPDes: ya

  LFleis: wait

  JPDes: ?

  LFleis: u think she fucked somone?

  JPDes: ?

  LFleis: like fucked somone to get the job?

  LFleis: liike the women who traded at yr school?

  JPDes: that would make me really angry. i thought i was done with that bullshit when i graduated

  JPDes: i cant sleep with someone to get promoted

  LFleis: lol unless preston is gay or somthing

  JPDes: lolololol

  Chapter Nine

  Someday, Preston often says, he’d like to have a campus with a café on it, like Apple has. Preston is obsessed with the café on the Apple Campus. But until then, Fancy Dog has catered lunch three times a week. It is the first time Eliza isn’t the pickiest eater, and she revels in the consistently present vegetarian options, not pescatarian, which is cheating (and she is allergic to fish, this we know for sure).

  Let’s watch them eat, that afternoon after she logs into the server with her shiny new credentials for the first time. She sits down with her lunch next to her own personal Guild, the employees The Inspectre calls “the Diversity Squad.” Devonte (Runner Quick) is a gameplay developer but has been temporarily reskinned as high-level quality assurance, and Suzanne (Chimera the Protector) is one of only a handful of customer service employees and nominally in charge of them all. These three, while they have never all sat together at one desk or been on the same team in the office, are near-constant G-chat companions. Inseparable in the digital world, seriously lacking in physical hangout time outside of work. They cling to each other, labeling the rest of us outsiders. If we were back in middle school, they probably wouldn’t let us sit with them. Who the fuck do they think they are, to ostracize us?

  Devonte is already sitting; he tilts his head toward the empty seats around him. Eliza slides in, but Suzanne remains standing and yawns. She drinks her chocolate milk while balancing it on her dull cardboard takeaway container, a harbinger of a desk lunch.

  “Up late playing?” Eliza asks.

  Suzanne shakes her head, her mouth still sucking the straw rising from her chocolate milk, her full lips pouty or smirking. “Nope,” she says when she finishes. “I dealt with a particularly nasty fucker yesterday on the phone, complaining about normal-ass regular shit that happens in a game.” She snorts. “Play late. Just because you have to ‘eat, sleep and breathe’ the game doesn’t mean we have to. Some of us would rather just eat, sleep and breathe.”

  We’ve never seen Suzanne Choy without eye makeup that looks professional, as though hours of watching YouTube makeup tutorials have transformed her technique. Some of us wonder why she doesn’t record a few of them herself; it would let us watch her more. Something to rip to our computers. We’d have to take her swimming on the first date, to check. To make sure. Make sure she looks like she says she does. Her skin is luminescent, golden and always blemish free or covered in those dishonest cosmetics. She wears glasses most of the time, because touching her own eyeball freaks her out. She does not like her glasses. She does not like her cheeks—she thinks they look stuffed, like those of the viral video hamsters eating tiny burritos in the cutest corners of the internet. She does like her hair, which seems to rebel against her mother’s and her mother’s mother’s hair: it falls in soft waves instead of pin straight. She always lets it air-dry. No curling iron, no hairspray. In short, she is beautiful and we imagine Eliza is jealous.

  “We’ll get you at dinner then?” Eliza asks.

  Suzanne raises a well-defined eyebrow. “If I finish my Helpfulness Target. And my second-in-command’s Helpfulness Target.” She rolls her eyes. Suzanne is not a team player. It isn’t his fault that CS dude number two has to leave for a dentist appointment. And she should be grateful to work at Fancy Dog. What a demanding witch.

  Eliza looks to Devonte, who takes a giant bite of his sandwich. Devonte Aleba is tall and gangly, with just the barest hint of muscle suggesting perhaps he doesn’t spend all of his time at the computer, just most of it. He does not have the ability to grow more than a skinny mustache. When he tries, Suzanne likes to attack him with a tissue and try to rub it off. “Not cool,” he says, and he bats her away. He has an impressive collection of snapbacks and sneakers, his peacock plumage. The collections each grew more impressive when he graduated from Stanford with a degree in computer science and went straight for Google. He’d been snatched away from Silicon Valley by a very shiny relo
cation package from Fancy Dog when they needed to scale up fast—they had the resources to make it worthwhile, it was closer to home and he’d always wanted to work in games; who wouldn’t want to?

  “So how is it?” Devonte says around a mouthful of sandwich.

  “Good. I think.”

  Devonte raises his eyebrows. “You think?” He takes a bite out of his banana.

  “I mean, yeah, I think.” Eliza pauses. “I dunno, Jean-Pascale and Lewis seem weird.”

  He snorts. “It’s a game studio. Everyone’s weird.”

  Eliza smiles. “Yeah. I dunno. They seem like they’ve got their own little bubble and I’m not allowed in.”

  “Well you’re new,” Devonte says. “It’ll happen.”

  “Like, they have their own language. It’s like feral twins. They have this thing they mark code with? Do you guys use the number 80085 for anything?”

  Devonte, still eating his banana, slows his chew down. His eyes unfocus. “Did you ask them about it?” Devonte says, careful, like he is picking his words out of a case filled with bone china or camera lenses.

  “I emailed but they haven’t responded. I’m supposed to know stuff. They’ll think I’m an idiot if I ask again. I’ll figure it out.”