Enemy In the Room (4 page)

David moved through the rest of the agenda.
As he finished the last item, he pushed his papers together and
turned to Paul Burke.

But Knox interrupted. “David, I’ve got one
more thing. Our movie production here in Los Angeles is exploding.
We need to expand and vertically integrate the process, from hiring
the actors to shooting the movies to distribution. Paul has had a
team working secretly on the acquisition of ten companies. We’re
close, but we need you to assess the real estate. Paul will give
you a confidential list of the companies, and we need your input,
without anyone knowing why you’re looking. Can you do that?”

“How quickly?”

“Two weeks.”

David looked down at his papers and pursed
his lips. He turned his wedding band beneath the table. “Isn’t
President Harper going after the kinds of movies we make? I mean, I
like them as much as the next guy.” He smiled.
Particularly the
site visits
. “But aren’t she and Congress about to kill the
industry?”

Knox sat up. “Harper can try, but we have
the votes in Congress to prevent her from hurting us. She’s playing
to her political base, trying to dictate what Americans watch. What
we give them doesn’t hurt anyone.” He smiled. “The good news is
that all the talk from the White House has people in the adult
movie industry nervous, so now is the time to buy. That’s why we
need your input quickly.”

Sawyer glanced once at his colleague, then
back to Knox on the screen. “All right. We’ll get it done. When can
I have the list of the firms and facilities?”

Burke moved a folder on the table in front
of him. “It’s ready for you.”

David picked up the folder and flipped
through the first few pages. “We’ll start today, and we’ll be
discreet.”

“Good, David,” came the reply from the
screen. “Now, if that’s all the real estate, Paul and I will finish
up the budgets.”

David rose, the expanded pile of papers in
his hand. “I’ll be back to you as soon as I can.”

A few hours later Callie Sawyer and her
brother Rob were exchanging text messages.

Calliente: What’s up?

RobSaw: About to start SW 2100. How was ur
test?

Calliente: OK. But no time to study.

RobSaw: Same. History tomorrow.

Calliente: I remember Ms. Gillstrap.

RobSaw: She’s tough.

Calliente: You play videos a lot.

RobSaw: I’m good. You act a lot.

Calliente: I’m good. J

RobSaw: Hope so. When’s ur first movie?

Calliente: Not sure. Five years?

RobSaw: Sooner. U R good. ☺

Calliente: Thanks bro. How are m&d?

RobSaw: The same. Work and worry.

Calliente: OK. Gotta go. Good luck in the
street war.

RobSaw: Thanks.

Late that afternoon Paul Burke knocked on
the open door to David’s office. “About what happened in Knox’s
office,” Burke began as he walked in and took a seat. “the only
thing I knew about was the Cinema Group acquisitions in Los
Angeles. The first I heard about dumping Hong Kong was when you
did.”

David shook his head. “The good news and the
bad news are that we work for Trevor Knox. Do you think he knows
how much we’ve already invested in Hong Kong?”

“It doesn’t seem to matter. Can you make the
change?”

“Probably, but we’re pretty thin. I’ll have
to take up the slack. Kristen will get Capital Tower kicked off
here, then she’ll head to Seoul and Singapore. I gave Moscow to
Todd this morning, but now I’ll take it. I was just writing an
email to the broker who helped us last year.

“I obviously can’t ask Kristen or Cheryl to
work on Los Angeles. Kristen gets upset about the Platinum Club.
What would she say about our movie sets?” He paused. It was an
occasional discussion point among the company’s senior executives
that Knox travelled to Los Angeles more often than business issues
required; he seemed to take a personal interest in this particular
USNet product. “Aren’t our films about one hundred percent porn
now? I don’t remember them being that way when we started.”

Burke cleared his throat. “Adult films,” he
corrected, “and the profit is incredible. It’s a market that’s
exploding for us, and these acquisitions should be even more
profitable. We’re just going where our customers take us. The only
competition is the free stuff being posted on share sites. So now
we’re funding two of those as well, and sharing the income with the
people who provide the material. A regular cottage industry on the
internet.”

“I’m so proud. Well, anyway, I’ll get the
ball rolling on the movie companies in Los Angeles and then go to
Moscow. So, how are your budgets?”

Burke leaned back. “They’re fine. Quarterly
earnings will be up again. If we were a public company the Wall
Street guys would love us. But, tell me, do you need more staff
?”

David looked at his friend for a long
moment. “Paul, we need at least twice as many. You don’t just read
a book and do a multi-million-dollar lease the next day. Todd and
Chris are good examples. They’re not as far along as Kristen, but
they’re starting to be productive. What we talked about upstairs
should take a much larger team several months to finish.”

Burke thought for a moment. “Lay out the new
real estate group space in Capital Tower for twice as many people.
How does that sound?”

He smiled. “I just hope we live to see
it.”

“You’re home early,” Elizabeth said, as
David opened the door from the garage. She was slicing potatoes at
the kitchen’s central island; he walked over and kissed her cheek.
A pile of clothes spread onto the ceramic tile floor from the
laundry area behind the kitchen, the dryer whirred, and roasting
beef sizzled in the oven.

“I just felt like coming home on time.”

She stopped and turned to him. “Are you
OK?”

“Yeah…sure. I’m just a little tired after
last night, and felt like coming home at six.”

“Well, we like that.” She smiled and picked
up another potato. “Dinner’s going to be a little late. My last
client hadn’t filed her taxes for years. After you change, go check
on Rob. I think he could use some help with a big history test
tomorrow.”

“OK,” he said, heading toward their bedroom
and trying to remember what era Rob was studying.

Ten minutes later he had changed into khaki
pants and was standing outside their son’s bedroom on the second
floor. He thought he could hear Rob talking. He knocked, but there
was no response. He knocked louder. Then he tried the door.
Locked.

Inside the room, Rob was standing on a
special virtual reality floor plate. He wore a helmet and vest, and
carried a plastic gun simulator; all three were connected
wirelessly to his computer, and then to the Internet. Almost as
tall as his father, Rob’s helmet and vest made him immense; he
carried his machine gun with practiced ease. From inside his helmet
he peered around the corner of a virtual brick building in a burned
out portion of the central business district

The street he looked down was wide and
deserted, with only a few nearly destroyed cars littering the way.
The late afternoon sun created shadows on the left side and bursts
of light on the right, reflecting off the few still unbroken
windows. One car was smoldering from an earlier fire. Rob looked
across the street to his right and nodded to his best friend and
partner, Justin Napier, also fifteen. Justin had taken cover behind
a building on the opposite corner. Crouched behind each of them
were the two newest members of their team. Rob and Justin edged out
into the street on opposite sidewalks, their machine guns at the
ready on their shoulders, training them back and forth across the
cars and the open windows of the adjoining buildings. Without
looking, Rob heard the new team members taking up covering
positions behind them.

“I saw one of them run this way,” Rob said
into the microphone in his helmet.

“Yeah, a little guy with a pistol,” Justin
replied.

“There are probably more.” Rob made it to
the first car, which had apparently crashed into a light pole when
its driver was hit. No one was inside.

Justin continued down the street, while Rob
paused, using the car as cover. Rob began to train his machine gun
over Justin’s head when out of the corner of his eye he saw a
flicker of light in a second story window on his side.

“Upper left!” Rob yelled, and quickly turned
his machine gun toward the window, arcing out a spray of
bullets.

But he was not fast enough. The gun barrel
in the window flashed. Justin went down as the fiery tracers hit
all around him.

“Aagh! I’m hit,” Justin screamed.

“I’m coming,” Rob yelled, running to his
right and continuing to fire into the window, while their comrades
came up and added firepower to the melee.

“Watch our backs!” He made it to Justin and
began dragging him into an open doorway. As he did so, a grenade
floated across the street and landed on the sidewalk next to them.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Rob scooped it up and threw it back
toward the window where he had seen the barrel. Grabbing Justin, he
rolled into the doorway as the grenade exploded a foot from the
window, sending shrapnel up and down the street.

“Come on,” Rob said, as he dragged his
friend inside. Justin was holding his upper leg. Blood gushed out
around his fingers. Rob pulled out his first-aid kit and applied
pressure to the wound. “I’ll get you out of here,” he said. “You’re
going to be all right.”

A new team member—Rob couldn’t remember his
name—ran up, took one look at Justin, and quickly turned away.

“I’ll cover the door,” he said.

The door. Someone was knocking. What?

David knocked again, even louder. The door
finally opened, and his son stood before him—baggy shorts, shirt
tail out, a virtual reality helmet on his head, the visor up. “Oh,”
came the greeting, as Rob turned and walked back to his
entertainment center.

“Hey, how was school?” David asked his son’s
back.

“Huh? Oh,” he turned to his father, putting
on his virtual reality gun, toggling the connect switch, and moving
toward the USNet Virtual Reality floor plate. “Good.”

“How are you doing?”

Rob smiled from inside the helmet. “It’s
awesome. There are, like, about ten thousand of us all linked
together and we’re fighting Street War 2100. I’m on the blue team.
When you knocked I was helping Justin. He’s wounded. I gotta get
back. You ought to see this gun I’ve got.” Rob picked up a
three-foot plastic wand and plugged it into the connection point on
his belt. “This baby fires both hollow point shells and grenades.
You ought to see it splatter ‘em.”

David knew about the games that USNet
sponsored online, twenty-four hours a day. Virtual reality groups
came together from all over the world to fight epic battles, street
brawls, aerial dogfights—anything the USNet programmers could
imagine. There were now over a hundred such battles going on
continuously. Individuals logged in and out, keeping their
characters and roles intact as the battle progressed. Besides
charging well for participation in these virtual battles, USNet had
chat rooms, strategy sessions, and cyber magazines dealing with
each one; and twice a week outstanding individual efforts were
noted and the videos of their exploits replayed for the other
participants. Rob played Street War 2100 almost daily.

“I’m sure it’s awesome,” David replied. “How
you been doing?”

“I’ve been online since school, ‘til I had
to pause when you knocked, and I’ve only been, like, wounded once.
And”—he flipped his visor down to review the battle summary up to
that point—“I’ve killed five and wounded twenty.”

David spoke to the opaque visor covering his
son’s eyes. “What about school? Mom says you have a history test
tomorrow.” He glanced over at the books lying on the bed.

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll look at my notes after
supper. No sweat.” He turned back to his terminal.

“Well, you need to study, but I’m glad
you’re enjoying this stuff.”

Rob pushed Enter and then stepped onto the
VR floor plate, looking over at his father. “It’s awesome. Like,
wait a minute.” He swiveled the helmet’s microphone in front of his
mouth. “Yeah. I’ll be there in a second. Hold on.” He placed his
free hand over the mike. “Dad, I gotta go. They, like, need me. Let
me know when dinner’s ready.” He started to turn away.

“OK.”

“Blue Nine is back. Where are you, Blue
Ten?”

Rob faced away, and David watched him for a
few moments on the VR floor plate, ducking and firing his “gun” at
the enemies he was seeing in his visor. David turned, held the door
as if he were going to say something else, then closed it and went
downstairs.

“He’s having fun,” he said to Elizabeth as
he entered the kitchen, “and it’s a good way to learn that you have
to take your lumps, get up, and keep fighting.” He walked to the
refrigerator for some iced tea.

“But what about his history test?” Elizabeth
asked from the breakfast area, as she set the table.

David shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll do fine.
It’s just a break after school, before he has to study. He’ll be
OK.”

“I’m not sure. He’s a different person this
year.”

David smiled. “He’s a teenage boy. He’ll be
different every day.”

“No, I mean really different,’ she said,
shaking her head. “And isn’t that game that he plays from
USNet?”

He stirred some sweetener into the tea and
then put down the spoon. “Yes.” He nodded without looking up. “And
all of the equipment we bought him is very expensive.” He turned to
face her. “I don’t want it to go to waste. It’s just a game, made
possible by technology that our company provides to the world. I
think we should let Rob use it, and not bug him over one test.
He’ll be fine.”