without answers and wanted to see this place. Come on, let’s look at the exhibits.”
A banner reading NEOSA-NORTHEAST OHIO SOFTWARE ASSOCIATION was hung along the far wall. At least fifteen booths lined all sides of the hall, each decked out with colorful displays and plenty of video and stereo equipment. A cacophony of sight and sound, letting everyone know that things were happening, and they were happening in Cleveland.
Theresa followed her daughter around the booths, knowing that Rachael would not have to feign interest in the career options presented. Only some of the firms present dealt with video games; they also met a woman from the fastest-growing bioscience firm in the country and watched a man demonstrate how to turn lake water into drinking water almost instantly. Theresa’s mind wandered through a Web-development display, but she forgot why she had come when they found a compendium of items useful to law enforcement, including a wireless camera shaped like an egg that could be tossed through windows to provide a 360-degree video of the room.
Halfway through the room they found Kovacic’s own booth. Rachael tried out a demo version of Polizei while Theresa read the display board. A photo of Evan and the slim black man, shorter than Evan and wearing a New Mexico sweatshirt, had been affixed to the center top. The caption identified the other man as Jerry Graham, Evan’s business partner. The brief bio said the two were both originally from Cleveland, but had met in class at MIT. Jerry concentrated more on hardware and had a patent pending on a virtual-reality helmet. Neither bio mentioned wives or other family. Perhaps they figured personal details would not be of interest to their young and largely male clientele. They did mention their favorite foods (fresh perch, beer, edamame, and more beer), hobbies (snowboarding, spelunking, and miniature golf), and favorite place to pick up girls (the E3 Summit).
“It’s the most popular PC game in the world right now.” This information came from an older man wearing a tie, the first such item she’d seen that day. He also wore his short hair neatly combed, which set him apart from most of the other males in the room, even more so than the tie.
“PC game?”
He leaned toward her slightly, as if to protect her secret from the crowd. “You’re not a game player, are you?”
“Not since I finished Riven.”
When he stopped laughing, he explained, “PC games come on CDs and are played on the computer. As opposed to console games, which are put in cartridges that get plugged into a home system and are played on your television.”
“Oh.”
“Polizei is available in either format. But I keep telling Evan to design an MMO version-a massively multiplayer online game. That’s where the real money is these days. You don’t just have millions of people buying one cartridge. You have millions of people paying to play it, the same people, month after month.”
“You know Evan Kovacic?”
“I finance him. Cannon, Jennings, and Chang.” He pulled a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Venture capital.”
His business card repeated this information, and identified him as the first of the three names. “You lent Evan the money to buy this factory?”
“Mostly we lent Evan money to produce the next version of Polizei. He could have done that in his living room and then outsourced the hardware, but apparently he has bigger plans.”
Over his cologne, Theresa caught a whiff of motive in the air. “You’re worried about your investment?”
“I always worry about our investments. That’s my job. But I don’t think this one can lose.”
Rachael looked up from the demo monitor long enough to swat her mother’s arm. “This is cool, Mom!”
The man tilted his head toward the girl. “See what I mean? We’ll get our money back in spades once Evan’s up and running. But I still think he could do an MMO at the same time.”
The man in question interrupted them. From the dais at the end of the room, he announced into a microphone, “The time has come for me and Jerry, your humble hosts, to demonstrate our wares. But to do that, we’re going to have to take a quick walking tour of the currently underutilized Kovacic Industries campus. Zip up your coats and follow me.”
Theresa turned to the financier. “What
“You’re about to see.”
“Did you come here to find out?”
He chuckled. “No, I already know. I’m here to remind Evan that he’s missed two release dates. Your daughter might want to see this. I don’t want to leave out any potential customers.”
“Tear yourself away, Rachael. We’re moving on.”
The vendors at the other booths watched in resignation as the customers filed out, though a few used the break to put their feet up and open Styrofoam containers of lunch. Theresa and Rachael followed the crowd through a set of double doors at the rear of the building and past a crowd of smokers braving the below-freezing temperatures to satisfy the nicotine craving. The scent of tobacco followed her, tempting and taunting. But if Paul’s death hadn’t pushed her back into the comforting arms of burning tobacco, nothing would. It wouldn’t get worse, right?
“I want to buy that game, Mom. They’re having a sale.”
“Good idea.” Perhaps she could deduct it as a business expense.
“The main character is Captain Alastair, and first he has to lead his team around these really cool cliffs to get to this castle, and there’s these branches that come off the side from the trees above you and form sort of a tunnel, and you think they’re just roots, but then when you’re about halfway through-well, after you kill the troll-they come to life and you have to figure out how to get them to stop-”
Theresa’s mind wandered back to the idea of venture capital as she took in deep breaths of frigid air, noting the architecture surrounding them. Eight rectangular, barnlike buildings, including the one they had just left but not including the fancy offices/apartment building near the street, lined the fenced property. The sounds of traffic and the rapid transit rolling past faded quickly, dampened by the thick snow. A brass plaque, turned green with age, hung on the wall of the next structure; it told her the National Carbon Company had been established in 1886. That sounded terribly old, though beyond the peeling paint and rusting metal fixtures, the walls seemed sturdy enough.
She didn’t interrupt her daughter to tell her that the carbon company had been instrumental in creating Lakewood. They needed a workforce and encouraged the influx of Slavic immigrants, saturating the area around the turn of the century. The company provided homes within walking distance, and the surrounding streets, with names like Thrush and Quail, became known as Birdtown. It had been a time of great opportunity. Of hope.
The walking tour skipped the closest building, and moved through heavy steel doors into the one beyond it. It smelled like dust and metal, the air turned to a shade of gray by the combination of overcast outdoor light and high windows that hadn’t been cleaned since, perhaps, its original construction. The entire building existed as a single open space with catwalks running the two-hundred-foot length on either side. Whatever carbon-processing equipment it had once housed had been removed, leaving only pits and discolorations in the concrete floor and three vast metal silos in the southeast corner, but the two cameras mounted above them, in opposite corners, appeared quite new. Closed in by a metal-mesh cage, the silos bore faded labels in red paint: NCC, N2, and even a haphazardly drawn smiley face. Remnants of the past. In the center of the building, however, stood the future.
A gray gyroscope, at least nine feet in diameter, stood balanced on black rubber supports. The beams crisscrossed each other, interrupted here and there by protrusions or short cables. On either side of this sphere computer monitors balanced on stands, displaying the Polizei logo.
The crowd gathered around this centerpiece, talking rapidly but not with the reverence Theresa expected to hear. “It’s a virtual-reality sphere,” a waif of a girl declared to her companion. “I saw one at the tech show in Columbus last month.”
“Cool but way too pricey,” a boy to Theresa’s left intoned.
“I did this at the carnival last year,” Rachael told her mother. “That was just a ride, though. I think this one is meant to be used with a video helmet.”
“A what?”
As the last of the crowd drifted in, Jerry Graham stepped into the sphere, moving gingerly until he strapped his feet into two of the protrusions on the inner frames. Then he plucked a set of goggles from a bracket at the top and a gun from another at the side. The gun-or plasma rifle or phaser or whatever futuristic weaponry it represented-
