The gamers among you will see immediately that I have taken a liberty with the gaming technology of that time- it is a science fiction story, after all.

Chapter Four

The next day I was up and dressed in exercise gear when the guard opened up at six, going for a run around the suburb. When I got back to the cabin I got myself some breakfast before showering and dressing in sneakers, jeans and a colourful top. I then went over to the main building and turned everything on, making sure that I filled the coffee maker first.

It wasn’t long before the rest of them arrived and we all made ourselves some coffee and went to sit in the rest room for a meeting. We split the tasks as per our skills. I was told that I would be the overall developer of the look and feel of the game. Janet was the draughtsman in the group and would put together a story-board with me. Butch was a keen photographer as well as a competent draughtsman so would look into motion capture techniques while both Geoff and Terry were the code writers with some years of experience between them.

I told Butch where a studio in Los Angeles was developing motion capture and he went off to call them to see if he could learn something about it. I asked Terry and Geoff if they could go through the programme for the five minute segment and find places where we could insert choices for the gamer to pick his weapons. We also needed a sub-routine that disabled the weapon once he had run out of bullets. I told them that we should have a ‘reload’ command which pulled the sights out of the eye-line for around five seconds, during which time the gamer would be defenceless. I said that we should make it so the weapon needed another command to jack a round into the breech if the gamer had totally used up his bullets. It should allow the weapon to be fired immediately if the reload was done while there was still one in the breech.

Janet and I then took the original segment and ran through it to see where we could improve the look of the action with furniture. We discounted the ‘baddies’ for the moment as this would be looked at later. While we worked she told me that Geoff had been vocal in trying to get this sort of change going for a while but the executives had the idea that the gaming craze would never last so were loath to throw more money at it.

Butch came back to us to say he would be going to Hollywood in the afternoon and would see us in a week or so. After he had left Janet told me that Butch was totally gay and that she was sure he would have fun in tinsel-town. I then got the low-down on the other two guys. Geoff was a married man with a couple of children but had been known to play the field, while Terry was a total hippy and very much into smoking pot but had no desire to move on to anything stronger. The real hunk of the company was Roland, who was well-off, single, and wanted to bed any woman who came his way. I was told that, as a new body in town, I was to expect to be hit on quite soon.

Over the rest of the week we got on very well and when Butch came back he had a new camera with him as well as the software and the spotty suits needed to achieve the effect. Before the end of our first month we had the cartoon characters moving in a very realistic way and the boys were getting very good at tactics, ducking down behind pieces of furniture to reload. We had initially set a maximum total of ten magazines but pulled it back to six as they got better. This would make the game attractive to the thinkers out there.

In the second month we redrew every character as a proper person and used photographs of people in the street as the basis of their faces. We did what we had to do with a week to spare so we added a minute to the start where the gamer arrives at the house with the rest of the Swat Team and the game properly started when the order was given ‘weapons at the ready.” We also spent some time making the hits look real with spraying blood and spatter on walls if the target has one behind him. We were ready on time and all went out for dinner, now a true team and happy with the result.

It had been a good two months. I had learned a lot from watching the others and they had taken my suggestions seriously, especially once they could see the progress we were making. I had also suffered through my first two periods, found my voice and discovered that I really enjoyed being a girl the night that Terry ‘inadvertently’ found himself locked in after eight. He wanted me to share his weed first but I declined. He must have reported that I was all right in bed as Geoff pulled the same stunt a week later. He was disappointed when I told him I didn’t go with married men and made up the bed in the spare room for him.

The following week we had an appointment to show our result to Roland and the executives. We set up a screen and computer in the boardroom and added a rudimentary controller that we had designed should anyone want to see how it really was to play. The company had set its sights on just selling to PC gamers and we all knew that we had to move into a controller system if we were to be part of the future.

When everyone assembled in the boardroom I noticed a guy who joined us who did not seem to fit the executive mould. I asked Janet who he was but she said she had never seen him before. Once everyone was seated Roland took them through the process of the original piece. He said it had taken four months and the last two months had added another five minutes to it. He then played the ten minutes of the set game with the computer doing the playing. At the end of it the company guys looked pleased, along with the ‘sour’ group who did a couple of high-fives. I noticed that the stranger looked remarkably unimpressed.

We then took the point and Geoff explained that we had produced a six minute piece with the original five minutes as the basis. I saw the stranger roll his eyes at that. He then told them that we had written it for PC playing but that we had also set it up for a controller we had developed. The stranger perked up at this. Geoff set the game going and that’s when everything got serious. The secretary taking notes of the meeting slumped off her chair in a dead faint three minutes in and one of the older executives lost his lunch at the five minute mark. I looked at the stranger and he was smiling broadly now. Roland was the first to speak at the end. “I knew you said it would be more realistic but I feel like I have been in a war zone for five minutes. That was fantastic but will it sell?”

The stranger then spoke for the first time “You bet it will sell, that’s a work of art you have there and I want it for my company. I was prepared to walk out of here with nothing to show for my time but I will be happy now to negotiate to buy this for our new platform.” Our group now did our own high-fives and Roland asked us to go to a separate room to wait for him. We sat around discussing what had just happened and wondered who the stranger was. We found out when he was accompanied by Roland and the MD when they joined us. The MD was still looking ashen but the stranger was beaming. We found out that he was a leading executive of Sony US and that he was going to recommend our product to Japan as a game to grace their new platform. He said he was particularly interested that we already had started development on a controller but that his company was already well down that track and that we would be given all the software specs to allow us to create our game to be played on a new release called PlayStation when it was released later in the year.

The MD and Roland told us that we were now in for hard work as we now had to produce a complete game for Sony but we would have a full team at the main building while we would stay at the remote site to take the steps needed to a Swat Raid 2, with whatever tweaks we can come up with. I was already considering the possibility of multi-player gaming but kept my peace.

When the Sony guy left with the MD to talk money Roland said he would take us all out for a meal which was very boisterous and went until late. As it was well after eight, I was given special leave to stay at a city hotel and get myself a nightie on the company, Roland coming with me to check in and giving them the card to record details, telling them that anything I bought was on that card. He couldn’t stay the night but did give me a kiss before thanking me for choosing his company to work for. I then looked in the hotel shop and bought a very sexy satin nightie and gown set that I thought was astronomically priced but they did give me a wonderful night of dreamless sleep.

The next morning I had a good breakfast and took a taxi back to the cabin. In the workroom I met up with the others as they staggered in. We talked about the way we would go in the future and it was decided that we would have to train our new team members in what would be something alien to them before we could get going on our own development. This would mean that the others would need to go into the main office for a few weeks and asked if I minded staying at the cabin. Janet said she would come here and we could develop a storyboard for the new game.

That night I reported our activity to the aliens and they were very happy that we would be having a world-wide release so quickly. They had thought it may have taken up to five more years. They asked me if there was any of the team who would be improved with a bit of brain tweaking in the spaceship and I said I would let them know. I wasn’t sure which one would be suitable so suggested they go looking for someone in Japan who already worked for Sony.

They told me to be outside at ten and I would get an update. They beamed me up and I was given some new alien technology to help me over the next few months. I was also given a little bodily tweaking to wake up in the morning with a slight improvement to my bust and hips. That was a nice gift to be given but it did need me to go shopping as soon as I could.

Marianne G 2020