PopCo

  Dan is smiling at Esther. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Exactly! It doesn’t exist.’

  ‘So you’ve basically done some artwork for a non-existent game?’ she says, but with a cute smile like the thin rucksack girl-sprite from Dan’s notebook. I notice that Esther has not changed her clothes since this afternoon but has changed her make-up. Now she has two very small spots of pink glitter at the top of each of her cheekbones, and two tiny blue smudges in the outer corners of each of her eyes. Apart from that there is no other colour on her face. I realise I am staring at her and glance down towards the end of the table instead. The guy in black seems to be staring at us/me but quickly looks away. He resumes a deep-looking conversation with his companion.

  ‘You go to a dome,’ Dan’s saying. ‘And the game is inside it …’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Hang on.’ He pulls a cheese board towards him. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this? You might think it’s a bit lame.’

  ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘I like domes.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Esther. ‘I loved your drawings.’

  ‘The idea of the game … It’s like a thought experiment. Look,’ he pulls out the notebook and starts flicking through it. ‘Here’s the dome. OK, so you go to the dome and walk in.’ He flips to another page. ‘Everything changes. The climate is different, the vegetation, the light source … It’s like being on another planet, or maybe a simulation of another planet. Perhaps there are different moons and so on, which you can see at the top of the dome … I haven’t done much work on the sky yet. There are just a couple of images so far. Anyway, you walk into the dome and you’re wearing a special suit which is so skin-tight you could actually forget you’re wearing it. It could even be painted on. Hmm. Don’t know about that.’ He coughs. ‘Anyway, you wear clothes over this material, whatever it is. The clothes are probably classic role-playing stuff: leather armour, leather boots and so on, certainly to start off with. The dome is huge, by the way, like half the size of Dartmoor or something, and you start wandering around waiting for someone – or something – to attack you or help you. You don’t have any money at this stage, or any good weapons, so the best thing to do is find a friendly encampment and offer to do work for them in return for shelter. Alternatively, you could lay traps for another player, or ambush them and take their money and weapons. So far, this is like any other RPG …’

  ‘Except that you’re literally walking through a real-time environment,’ Esther says. Dan nods enthusiastically. She frowns. ‘How do you fight and stuff?’

  ‘Ah. Good question. Well, the suit you wear is programmed in a particular way. This is where it starts to get a bit complicated. Your suit contains information about your …’ he flashes me a look, ‘life-meter and all your other stats. As you progress through the game your life-meter grows, so it can contain more life and you become stronger. Also, you have a certain amount of magical ability, and this, also, can grow if you put the effort in and learn a lot of spells and so on. When you battle, the suit registers any injury you receive …’

  ‘Like paintballing,’ Esther says.

  ‘Sort of. Except that if you take a blow to the leg, for example, you really can’t move your leg for a while – say until you have it healed, or rest, or take a potion. The suit stops you.’

  ‘God, I love words like “potion”,’ I say. I haven’t played any sort of videogame for a long time. I played a lot when my grandfather was in hospital and I’d come home and literally not be able to do anything else. I would spend every Wednesday night haphazardly setting the crossword he was supposed to be doing (they didn’t know until much later that it was me, although the people who actually did the crossword regularly had spotted the switch immediately), sweaty and pissed-off, and then for the rest of the week I would just let myself melt into the games the way I assume people melt into drug hazes or peaceful sleep. I don’t sleep peacefully myself; I never have. Anyway, it’s funny that from what are essentially memories of a bad time, good images occasionally do resurface – like the idea of potions – reminding me, I suppose, of what was comforting about the games in the first place.

  Dan’s still describing his game. ‘There is a central hub, a bit like a computer server or something, which bounces all the information backwards and forwards. All the people in the game are attached to it, like being on a network, and it updates your skills, life, magic energy, resources, relationships – everything – in real time. Maybe you find a healer to fix your leg. Well, the machine sends a signal to your body suit and your leg suddenly works and some healing energy is taken away from the person who has helped you. Oh – and you know how in games you have to sleep to replenish your energy? Well, in my game you really do have to go to sleep for that to work. The suit takes information from your brain and when you get into that deep state of relaxation – something to do with beta hertz, I think – it triggers a signal back to the central hub and your stats are reset to the maximum.’

  ‘So it’s basically a way to properly “live” a videogame?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ Dan says.

  Esther visibly shivers. ‘And the hub is like God.’

  At the end of the table, the guy and the girl laugh. I glance over at them but they’re not looking at us.

  ‘I read this article in a science magazine,’ Esther says. ‘It really fucked with my mind. It was like … There actually are theories that our world is a videogame or simulation constructed by higher beings or – and I couldn’t get my head around this bit – by the human race in the future. Like we evolve to the point of being able to create artificial intelligence, so we do, and then we learn how to create worlds, so we do … We learn how to become Gods. We create a little self-sufficient world and then move on. Then the beings in the world we’ve just created, well they start progressing towards their own artificial intelligence projects and the whole thing starts again. Kind of fucks with your ideas about God. It would be … It’s basically your game. It would work in the same way.’

  ‘It wouldn’t, though,’ Dan says, shaking his head. ‘It can’t. That’s why the game is only a thought experiment. Where would the energy come from really? How would you generate all that power to run something like that? Who would build the hub? It’s insane. It’s why we don’t have magic, for one thing. Look at the laws of thermodynamics if you want to know how the world works, not crazy theories about artificial intelligence. Start with entropy; that’ll tell you all you need to know.’

  Esther looks unconvinced.

  ‘Maybe we are actually a thought experiment then,’ I suggest. And although it’s meant to be a joke, it comes out a bit wrong and sounds more sinister than I intended it to. It’s too late to add a smile. No one says anything for a few seconds and it all feels a bit ghost story-ish

  ‘Anyway, sorry, folks,’ Dan says, eventually. ‘Didn’t mean to do the whole meaning of life thing over dinner. I didn’t even mean to show anyone the notebook. Fuck it. It’s just a game, anyway.’

  ‘So why the weird non-existent project anyway?’ I say to Dan. I decide not to mention that I was thinking about life being like a videogame less than an hour ago, when we were in the queue. Normally I would: it’s an interesting coincidence. But I feel Esther may start talking about glitches in the Matrix and so on if I do, so I’ll tell Dan later if I remember.

  ‘Don’t know, really.’ He shrugs, thinking about my question. ‘I was thinking about AIs anyway after that memo from Georges but the main thing is that I really wanted to design something that wasn’t just pictures. When I did, and when I started thinking about it and playing with ideas, I realised that this thing without pictures, it can’t exist. All we can ever really create is pictures. So I drew pictures of a world that can’t exist.’ He laughs. ‘I was pretty fucking bored at work when you were away, essentially.’

  What was the memo from Georges? I didn’t get that. Hmm. Pictures. I think about houses and chimneys and railway lines and boats and step-ladders and chairs and I
wonder how much of it really is just pictures, in the end. The Bumblebuzz Babies; Moo Moo and Li Li and all the other toys that we – people sitting in this room – design, they’re just pictures in the same way that videogames are. The plastic shape does the same job as the binary code; it stimulates the imagination, desire, pleasure … Whatever. We know that: it’s OK. They always say that nowadays we just sell an image, an idea, anyway. The product doesn’t matter. Manufacturing doesn’t matter. Manufacture something and then add meaning later with marketing and tie-ins and promotions. Or maybe this is just a PopCo thing; PopCo-overload. Maybe it’s working here that makes you think that all the world is just a cardboard box waiting for a plastic insert and some pictures on the front. I mean, my products aren’t like that: they actually have substance, they really do. And, apart from the products on the K website, I don’t know anything we produce for kids older than ten that doesn’t have intrinsic value. And, as someone comes around clearing the tables, I still can’t stop thinking about pictures, pictures that don’t exist, and in an instant my memories plughole away from me, whirling towards a phone call I wish I could make, and memories of a book with pictures that didn’t make any sense at all, not even to my grandfather.

  Chapter Eight

  Mac leaves the cafeteria on his own, carrying a slim folder.

  ‘Shit,’ says Esther. ‘The big showdown.’

  ‘What?’ Dan says.

  ‘Mac. We’ve got to go and see him, haven’t we?’

  It’s not that I’d forgotten about seeing Mac, or that I haven’t been wondering about what sort of trouble we’re in and whether or not we will in fact be sacked, not at all. It’s just that today’s been so full of other things to think about that I simply haven’t found time to properly worry about this. As we get up from the table I push two fingers into my skirt pocket to check that the PopCo With Compliments slip is still there. It is. The pockets on this skirt are not at all deep and I really don’t want to lose this piece of paper. I so desperately want to know what it says, perhaps even more then I want to know what Mac is going to tell us. Perhaps with a less complex code I could have just slipped into the toilet during dinner and cracked it. This, unfortunately, is likely to need more than just vague frequency analysis and crossword-solving skills.

  As we leave the cafeteria we are issued with torches from a big box by the door. Outside, it is now dark, and I can hear an owl hooting somewhere on the hill behind the PopCo complex. There are small lights fixed on the outsides of several of the barns, but the hazy glow they cast is not bright enough to really see by. All they seem to do is tell you that a building is there, or vaguely illuminate a door. I wonder if we have left too early: no one else is out here on the path. Something like a bird flutters in the dark, a fast vibration of black wings in the still air and then it’s gone. Esther squeals.

  ‘Fucking shit, what was that?’

  ‘A bat,’ I say. We had bats in the village where I lived with my grandparents. ‘It won’t hurt you.’

  ‘You can get rabies from bats,’ Dan says.

  ‘Only if you’re really unlucky,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t they fly in your hair and stuff?’ Esther says.

  ‘No. They have sonar. They can hear your hair from ten miles away.’

  With only the light from our torches, we make our way over to the Great Hall. Somehow, we are not the first to arrive; there are maybe ten people sitting on the seats near the stage. Mac isn’t here yet. We all sit in an almost reverential, or perhaps just nervous, silence as more people enter the hall, and this feels like a church gathering, or maybe a meeting of a secret society or cult. For the second time in twenty-four hours I feel like I should be wearing an odd hat. I’m watching the door, looking for people I recognise. There’s a PA from our office, and this eccentric guy from the next floor up who is still wearing the tracksuit from earlier. Most of the people, however, I don’t know. There’s a Chinese-looking girl who is dressed like a Goth, walking with an attractive, tall guy. The girl with pink pigtails comes in, walking arm in arm with another cute Scandinavian boy-girl. Then there’s a tough-looking black guy in a pale-blue T-shirt, his various ethereal tattoos giving the impression that he works as a bouncer or a hit-man at night while studying art or philosophy in the day. He’s with a group containing a guy in a retro grey suit who looks like a social worker on heroin, a guy with long, strange-coloured hair and thick-rimmed glasses, and a tall blonde girl with lots of make-up. Then – and they seem to be the last two people to come in – the guy in black and the fawn-haired girl from our dinner table. The guy makes brief eye-contact with me, raises his thick eyebrows slightly and then sits down and starts cleaning his glasses. Moments later, Mac walks onto the stage, accompanied by Georges and a woman from the PopCo Board called Rachel Johnson. She’s in Human Resources, or whatever they call it now. The three of them sit down on chairs in a slightly too-casual formation. I wonder how they knew when to make their entrance. It’s so PopCo to have everything timed correctly. They probably pay someone to stand in the shadows and count us all in or something.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Mac says, his voice echoing in the large hall. ‘And sorry for all the mystery. I’ve heard a few rumours about why you all think you’ve been asked to come here. The most common is a fear that you are going to be sacked …’ We all laugh nervously. ‘Then there are the variations: you are in trouble, you are being relocated, your brands are being discontinued, and so on. It’s interesting how rumours start, and how many people are touched by them. You will be learning about networks and rumours in due course.’

  What? My brain says. I don’t understand. Networks and rumours? OK.

  Mac continues. ‘I suppose I should get quickly to the point, after all this accidental mystery.’ He glances at Georges and Rachel. ‘Well. Over the last six months or so one particular consumer has consistently been an issue for those of us on the PopCo Board. This is a consumer who is difficult to understand, difficult to pin down and incredibly complicated in terms of taste and desire. This consumer is one for whom we haven’t catered very effectively at any time in our history. To be blunt: we are just not selling products to this person, however hard we try. Who is this mysterious creature? Yes. The teenage girl. No surprises there. As you know, the Star Girl and Ursula videogame sales have been disappointing, and we had to withdraw the planned Ophelia Dust titles at the last minute. Teenage girls don’t want videogames. They don’t want trading cards. They don’t want gadgets to zap their friends with. Too bad, really, because they are the most independently wealthy of all the under-eighteen demographics. They are likely to earn their own money earlier than boys, and they are also more likely to actively enjoy spending it. Where a teenage boy will tend to pre-order the latest mainstream videogame release in the most convenient way possible, the girl will browse in shops, looking for items that will give her positive peer recognition, enhance her looks or popularity. This much we know. But – even knowing this – do we have any products out there that will appeal to this girl? We do not. And that’s where you guys come in.’ He nods at us and then gestures to Georges, who now starts speaking.

  ‘We suck at selling to girls,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘The good news is that Mattel and Hasbro and all the others haven’t cracked it either. Should we celebrate? No. We all suck. And that’s not good enough for us. Name me a craze,’ he says, pointing randomly at the PA from Battersea.

  ‘Oh. Um, Pokémon,’ she says.

  Georges points at someone else. ‘Another one.’

  ‘Power Rangers.’

  ‘Good. You.’ He points at Dan.

  ‘From the toy industry?’ Dan says.

  ‘No. Anything you like,’ Georges says.

  ‘OK, um, skateboarding, then.’

  People mention some other crazes. Most of them are built around specific brands although some, like skateboarding, are sports or leisure pursuits that inspired many tag-along, parasitic brands. As soon as someone says Hello Kitty, George
s holds up his hands.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘If I was a teenage girl, I would only just have woken up. Thank God someone out there is speaking to me. Sanrio seems to be the only global company that knows anything about creating a craze among teenage girls. But is Sanrio actually about toys, or is it just merch?’ Merch is short for merchandise, and has become a fashionable term lately. I think it originally came from the live music circuit, where it refers to all the T-shirts and CDs and badges sold off little tables during gigs. ‘Let’s face it,’ Georges continues. ‘You can’t really play with Hello Kitty products. The whole thing is actually more of a fashion phenomenon than a toy craze. You can wear the stuff, you can collect it, but it doesn’t do anything. There is no game play; no actual fun. So although it looks like a toy craze, it isn’t really. But I am not going to bore you with the scientific details now.’ He grins, and I imagine him off duty, in the back of a company car … Stop it, Alice. ‘You still don’t know why you’re here, but perhaps you are beginning to hazard a guess. And you’d be right. You are our new crack team, our advanced squadron unit, our … OK, I’m running out of metaphors …’ He laughs.

  ‘Our élite,’ Mac says, standing up, smiling. ‘Here’s the deal. You have all been selected from the PopCo Europe ID teams particularly for this project. Your brief is to design a new product, with specific potential to become a craze, for teenage girls. In order to help you do this, we have designed a programme of seminars, talks and ideation classes – as well as some other treats. You will encounter new methods of ideation as well as learning about how teenage girls operate and the networks they create. You will have access to cutting-edge research that hasn’t been published yet. You won’t be going back to your offices for a while, however. The deal is this: you stay here on Dartmoor. We feed you, look after you, stimulate you – pay you a bit more than your usual salaries – and you simply think. You think and plan and discuss and collaborate and wander in the grounds until – zing – you have the killer idea. We want to make something here that is more viral than SARS. Nothing of any use has been coming out of big cities for some time now. The good ideas are all coming from more remote ideas labs, and we just can’t ignore that any longer. Perhaps there is too much stimulating material in places like London and New York, or perhaps these are now just places for old things: old ideas, old buildings, old products. Culture there, it’s not rotting – it’s actually dead. There are no nutrients left in the soil. We took them all already. So, breathe the clean air here and enjoy the countryside. I’ll be around for at least the first week. Georges will put in less regular appearances. There will be lots of other people to help you.’