Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

"Well," Michael began, and then he raised an eyebrow as if he was about to propose something a little bit risquй, a threesome among the Jell-O molds. "What if, at six o'clock, you decided to make fish tacos for dinner. But you have no fish. You have no tortillas. You simply touch a computer screen and a company fills your entire order, swings by the fresh fish store and the grocery store and delivers your entire order to your door within twenty minutes. And what if the computer knows you and knows what kind of milk and bread you like, and what if it's hooked up to your refrigerator, and it instantly checks every store in the city until it finds the best prices for your particular milk and bread, and what if you are delivered your personalized groceries for less than you would have paid to gather them yourself? What would you say to that?"

"I'd say… What are the odds?"

"Exactly!" Michael said.

Dana must've caught my sarcasm because she looked down at the table.

"We tell investors that we aren't just interested in making money," Michael said. "We're idea farmers. We plant them, grow them, and water them. We want to build a forest of ideas, up and down the West Coast. And that's where you come in."

"I come in?" I asked.

"We're well positioned in the valley," Michael said. "We've worked with eighteen start-ups, linked them with venture capital and larger investment bankers. We've already had two successful IPO's. But there are two axes of technology on the West Coast and, frankly, we have no penetration in Seattle at all."

"Penetration," I repeated.

"We're looking to expand, looking for someone to help us identify and contact start-ups here." He leaned forward, as if he were about to confide something in me. "I was assuming we'd find someone with a tech background, but Dana pointed out that we have the tech backgrounds. What we need is a lawyer, someone who can write contracts. And then she thought of you. She said you were always a real go-getter in high school."

I shuddered like an addict when he said "go-getter."

"I know it's probably not as rewarding as fighting for Indian tribes or going to Portugal, but it could be exciting. And profitable.

"I'm not just talking about a job," he said. "I'm talking about a chance to maybe find the next Microsoft, to be in the center of the next big thing. I'm talking about changing the world, Clark, charting a course into the twenty-first century."

I must interject that this was 1994 and such metaphors were being mixed up and down the West Coast; idiot Utopians were emerging everywhere, and a fair number of them were becoming profanely rich. As for my own actions that day, I was not motivated by money, even though that lunch would end up making me – making us all – a great deal of money. No, what I said next was really no different from my lie about practicing constitutional law, or moving to Portugal, or getting married. I was just trying to impress an old flame and her new husband, trying to reclaim something that I'd lost in Dana's eyes, trying to be part of another club – the club of high-tech entrepreneurs. I could have said, No, I'm committed to moving to Portugal, but instead I began talking out of my ass.

"I represent a company like that," I said.

"Here?" Michael asked.

"No," I said, panicking, thinking they'd want to see it. "In Spokane."

Dana looked up suddenly, as if I'd finally gone too far.

"A start-up?" Michael asked, and leaned forward on the table.

"Yes," I said, making a mental note to find out what that meant.

He leaned forward. "Anything you can talk about?"

"Michael," she snapped. "Slow down. He doesn't work for us yet."

I made eye contact with Dana then, and it occurred to me that she wasn't really irritated with Michael, but was trying to keep me from digging this hole any deeper, that she knew I was lying, that I'd been lying since we sat down at lunch, that I could no more do the job they were talking about than I could speak Portuguese. I saw the old disapproval in her eyes, and I guess it pissed me off.

"No, I don't mind," I said, and cleared my throat to give myself some time to invent a high-tech company or two. "Well," I said, and like an angel, our waitress arrived with our food and I had another minute to think. And I don't know why the solution popped into my mind just then. Maybe it was seeing Dana or thinking about the last time I'd seen Ben, or maybe it was Plato's fault.

"It's a game," I said. "A character-driven, interactive thing."

"VR?" Michael asked.

"Virtual reality," Dana translated.

"No," I said, and when Michael looked disappointed, "Not yet, anyway." I went on to describe a game in which people's real lives intersected with the game, until the lines blurred and it was anyone's guess which realm was real.

Michael was intrigued. "How long until it's ready to test?"

"Oh, they're playing it now," I said. "A test group."

"Really," he asked. "What's it called?"

"Empire," I said. "It's called Empire."

What happened next could only have happened in those money-drunk, speculative, E-topian days of the mid-1990s. Based on my ridiculous description, Michael and Dana agreed to come to Spokane in two weeks to have a look at the progress that the Empire research and development team was making. If things went well, they said, they knew an impatient investor who desperately wanted to give seed money to some kind of new interactive, character-driven game, something more involved than Duke Nukem, and more ambitious and darker than the recently released Sim City and Myst, a game that could be accessed at some point in the future by way of something I later found in my notes scribbled as the "Inner Nut."

You might assume that a young man living in Seattle in 1994 would have at least a working knowledge of computers – if he wasn't already toiling away on his own start-up. I offer no apologies for coming late to that party. Yes, I lived in Seattle, but that was no ticket to awareness by itself. There are auto mechanics in Seattle, too. Hell, I'd also missed Nirvana (I prefer my punk smart and clean – R.E.M. and the Talking Heads). At that late date of spring 1994, I still owned no stock in Microsoft or Intel or AOL. What did I own? A 1974 Audi Fox, a bicycle, several shelves covered with books, four suits, some other clothes, a coffee maker, and a couch. But I had no stocks, no computer, and, like most people in 1994 – even in Seattle – I couldn't have found the World Wide Web if you spotted me two W's and a backslash.

So I was relieved to find that Eli at least owned a computer – even if it was an ancient Radio Shack TRS-80. And I was happy to find that Empire was still being played, nine years after Ben and I had eavesdropped on it, although only two original members were left (Louis being one of them). Total membership had increased by only six in all that time, from fourteen to twenty.

"I do appreciate your interest, Clark, and it sounds like a great opportunity," said Eli as we sat outside the Orange Julius he was managing then. "But Empire isn't even a game, let alone a computer game."

"But you just said you use a computer."

"Yeah," Eli said. "I store the information on it, but there are no graphics or anything. Empire is up here," he said, tapping his head. "It's just a series of actions and reactions and decisions, and then we record everything that happens – mark territory, assaults, and retreats on a map. Stuff like that. People buy and sell land and weapons. They hoard food and destroy crops. They get involved romantically and betray each other, make war and have to surrender and build up from scratch. It's all very ethereal."

"It sounds perfect," I said. "Just what this company is looking for."