Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 7 - The Department Strategy Meeting: Strategizing Magic Theater market penetration

This is Episode 7 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store (at a lower price than Amazon!).

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

The Department Strategy Meeting: Strategizing Magic Theater market penetration

Chapter 2(A): Purpose – Create: In which Jonathan seeks to know the purpose of the Holy Trinity (and humans), by means of conceptualizing It by analogy and by humbling himself

Before that night, I knew little of Lana Schon’s actual life. I knew she was Executive Director of the Human Development Department, which the company formed in the merger of the Human Resources (formerly called Personnel) and the Training and Development Departments, during the most recent restructuring. Management positions survived despite early plans, but the number of departments decreased. A vice-president selected Lana for this position. Others who had more experience and possibly more talent did not protest. Few knew that executives rated each other for their performance in promoting women to middle management. Besides, Lana performed her duties well, and everyone seemed to consider her a near-celebrity, the most famous among the obscure.

The next morning, at the Motley Cow café near her house, she told me more. After college, the progressive spirit of her times inspired her to become a social worker. Using her education and experience, she learned to recognize psychological traits and predict actions based on them. But she developed a distaste for becoming involved in the economic and emotional problems of the underclass. Their problems never resolved, despite the payments. The 1980s corporate world, newly recovering and inhabited by ambitious people with normal neuroses, lured her. After taking a few courses, the company hired her. She adored her co-workers, as she asserted several times. Her model-like face and body and self-confidence fed on their adulation and grew exponentially as her ten-year career rose into management.

On Sunday afternoon, I went back to her house near the town. Taller, older palms and live oaks shadowed the house. This allowed her to refrain from air conditioning and impress friends who nursed environmentalist politics. She always kept nearly every window and curtain open. The boyish thought of spying her undressing swelled in me.

That afternoon in her upstairs bedroom, I used one eye to catch onlookers from outside her open window. I used the other eye to regard the classic, ideal female body bathed in sunlight and ocean breezes. Her delights were my delights, the pleasures of generosity and male pride. Still, I sank when she denuded my conscience in her talk. She seemed to enjoy this most directly after we had sinned in the window. This almost seemed like a way to distract me from learning that eternal she was similar to.

“I feel I might’ve been wrong about your dedication and talent,” she said later. “You’re too introverted to sell Magic Theaters, but your face, and build, will make up for it.”

“Oh? You’re approving my Phase 3 access?”

“Guardedly. You won’t need to do much selling anyway. Now your primary job is testing the games.”

“That’s the primary job?”

“That’s right. You’ll need to follow our very stringent policy on validating trial, that is, Phase 3, games. You need to sign some papers.”

“I know. I need to agree to stay here for three years.”

“Did I already mention that? You’ll also agree to let us monitor you for five years after you leave us, if we think it’s necessary. You act surprised. Jonathan, we want to make sure this technology remains proprietary, and American.”

“It’s okay. Do you have a Phase 3 access?”

“Me? No. Only a few people do. If I had Phase 3 access, I’d play the games, of course. That’s in the agreement.”

“What is?”

“That you play the games. You need to log several hours per week.”

“Really? How many?”

“I’m not sure. About 20 to 30. Jonathan, are you reluctant? We need your complete commitment to this. I need it. Do you know the risk I’m taking by approving you? You’re nearly below company criteria, and I’m risking my career being with you.”

***

That week, Lana and I signed the appropriate forms. At college, professors had presented case studies proving that few restrictive agreements between capitalist employers and employees were binding. Besides, I doubted the test Magic Theater games could be much more innovative than the Phase 2 games I had read about the previous week. After all, Lana needed only a few hours of lovemaking to entrust Phase 3 to me. I still questioned why they allowed such secrets to exist within Vincula. I could now discover the answers, if any existed.

During the next week, a couple of days after the mid-week July national holiday, on the ninth floor of the glass tower, I attended the monthly meeting of the Entertainments Marketing staff. Managers and marketers filed into the dark, mahogany-colored room. Drapes covered the wall of windows, presumably so no competitor helicopters could see their presentation slides.

Again, coffee sat ready in the room, and most attendees indulged this time. Its vapors carried through the blustering air conditioning, cranked up to raise alertness and the coffee consumption, which also raised alertness. Someone had arrayed a hundred or so adjustable chairs behind four rows of long tables in the front, then in eight rows without tables toward the back.

This arrangement punctuated the hierarchy to which those who called the meeting clung. Those at the tables arrived earlier and grabbed those seats, or de facto owned the location due to tradition. The table sitters had space to place books and notepads, which they spurned anyway because they showed low memory skills. But they had a place for the coffee. They leaned forward, as needed, toward the main business. The backbenchers leaned backward, or if they leaned forward, it was over nothing. They placed drinks underneath them, next to the five chair leg spokes, which often would yaw around when one moved and spill the drink on the ground. But if one held the drink, the danger of an expansive spill rose if one nodded off.

I bristled: my first exposure to the larger group. None of them had Phase 3 access, although most pretended to know the basic concept of each new game. I wondered if Olson would wield any power to question the products.

As I waited, the short, round man in front of me spun around. He had few hairs and a pitted face. He repeated the formula, “How’s it goin’?”

“Fine. We haven’t met, have we? I’m Jonathan.”

“I know. I’m your new supervisor. My name’s Perry Farrell.”

“I thought Daniel Olson was--”

“Yes, but I’ll be running the Magic Theater effort. Are you acclimatizing

to the new job?”

“Yeah. Actually, I’ve been a little confused about it. I’ve tried to put out a report, but I doubt anyone reviewed it.”

“I haven’t seen it yet, but I haven’t heard anything negative.” His finger scratched his eye. “I haven’t gotten any comments from anyone, except Daniel. In fact, another group was working on the same thing.”

“You might try getting guidance from the other guys.”

“I was hoping for responses to my paper.”

“By the way, you’ve got another way to get visibility. You look like an athlete. You might want to sign up for our golf tournament. That’d help your presence. It’s two months away, so sharpen your swing. That’s the most efficient way to network, and it’s fun too. You need to get a life. I hear you’re working too hard.”

“We have a hefty agenda,” the leader of the meeting said above the mumbling din as he stood. It was Ted Bender, our vice-president. “Basically, in our games business area, we’re in over our heads. We don’t have a defined plan to market our company’s new flagship product, which is nowhere near ready for us to package and sell. We’re falling behind Megendo. For a Japanese company to gain household-name status is extremely embarrassing for us. We must get the ball rolling, or it’ll be our heads that start rolling, literally. I mean that. I’m afraid the staff cutbacks will happen. Oh, Olson, did you have something to say before we start?”

“Yes, Ted,” Olson said as he stood. “I’d like to introduce the newest member of our section, Jonathan Hannah. He finally got his Phase 3 access this week.”

I raised my hand. Only a few of the group of fifty or so tapped their hands together.

“I’ve heard this young man’s been spending a lot of time at work lately,” one older man said. “Let me tell you, he’s been doing a great job so far. I’ve heard some great things from Personnel.”

I knew, however, that I had done little valuable work yet. I reviewed documents, as Olson had instructed. As I told Perry Farrell, I created a report on one of the games, a terrorist sniper attack at a woman’s championship soccer match. It continues through gunfire and carnage. The user is the goalie. She must dodge bullets and bodies, rescue reluctant Amazon-like players, and kill the dozen Mediterranean-looking snipers. Meanwhile, she must block shots on goal. If not, the chances of survival diminish since fans begin throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at losing players.

My report contained the outline for a television commercial. Since I wanted praise from my supervisors, I dismissed my reservations about promoting such insipid entertainment. Instead of applauding me, however, Olson asked me to be patient. They wanted me to proceed slowly until I completely understood the system and its games. Besides, I later heard that the Sales department had already worked on the commercials for this potential international masterstroke.

“The next agenda item is the long-range plan for the month,” Bender said. “We need to give those developers up north something to work toward.”

“My question is,” someone said, “are the broadband providers and our desktop hardware sufficient?”

“I think so,” another said. “The network’s downloading programs with little delay to our devices. And our profit per software line of code is triple what it was with the disks or cartridges.”

“That’s right. We’re also finding that the subscriptions are causing more people to buy our product upfront and stick with our games. The typical user develops terrific product loyalty. We haven’t figured out how to capitalize on this yet.”

“Mark’s right,” a balding man said. “But once we sell a certain number of subscriptions, sales flatten. Repeat buying of the software is unnecessary with the network setup. The strategy should be to hit them with our own hardware upgrades that run improved software.”

“Then we raise subscription rates for the new software.”

“Right. Do we have a feeling for what the upgrades can be costed at?”

“We can raise the price based on demand and still make profit, given the demand we’re expecting.”

“You actually believe we can make a profit despite the huge costs Development is incurring? Are you gonna tell the bean counters that?”

“Look, Bob, the guys up in Development say we have no increased cost. In fact, their production costs per line of code decrease more and more every day. They’re developing more than ever now.”

“But it’s without direction,” Bob answered as he took off his reading glasses. “They’re not developing marketable games that’ll bring in upgraded subscriptions down the road.”

“Customers will need to upgrade their subscriptions at significant price increases. Marketing must provide the data: How sellable is an upgrade that’s 40% higher in price?”

Order disintegrated. Opinions and quips floated around.

The room was filled with silver-haired men at the crest of their creative lives. They were like Olson, although white. Their careers had leveled out. They had little production left. Being in the middle of the corporate hierarchy, they had to justify their jobs and salaries by embellishing annual projections of labor and capital needs and by overspending one year’s budgets to justify the following year’s extension. Only a few were deluded enough to believe those above rated them on underspending. The men’s hair was grayed and strung in wisps across their sunburned heads. Their waists broadened and draped over their belts. I could see pain in their peevishness. Maybe they resented the bodily decline of their wives; maybe their sons deserted their households and rules; maybe their daughters let other men’s sons ravage them. In these men, I beheld my prescribed future.

Other than that crankiness, they were not burdened or depressed. They were confident in their technical expertise, finances, and nearness to retirement. They fulfilled what they had foreseen at the beginning: the necessary life. They occasionally sold or built a useful system. Also, monomaniacal endeavors pacified them. They devoted time outside work to some singular passion or project that afforded both mastery and amusement. They identified themselves with these pastimes. Most never uttered a word about religion, or its demands and joys, ever.

Often they longed to leave the labor force, to be subsidized by pensions and regular payments from the government. If they lived long enough, this income would far surpass what they originally paid. They must also dread abrupt death. Freedom from employment loomed large, but would they soon feel their hearts constrict, or a lump swell? Would their liberty end too early or be filled with pain? Would they spend their freedom underground?

I had never entertained the questions that I presumed engaged these old soldiers of technology work, my future. In classifying these men, I determined my own life. Was this life suitable? Did it match what my dead sister had intended for me? It had been lived millions of times and had one ending. I once heard a liberal arts teacher advance this question: If God had determined the exact fates of the species and the planet, what was the purpose of His creation? Similarly, why live life if one knew its events and conclusion? Did this life contain the events and conclusion that I wanted, or that my sister might have wanted?

Several people gave others “actions” to make decisions after the meeting. Several more plugged opinions on different issues.

“Development needs some ideas for games,” a middle-aged man said, boldly returning to the original subject. “We’ve been running some good ideas up the flagpole here, but we need to send them up north. We need to get those guys nailed down on a two-month completion date.”

“F.Y.I.,” the balding man said. “They ignore any ideas we ship up to them in our long-range plans.”

“And if they do accept our suggestions, we don’t get a release date on a preliminary package for six months after the two-month schedule we recommend.”

Again, the meeting broke into disarray.

“Alright, time out,” Bender said above the melee. “I feel the need to summarize. We believe that this network subscription is a win-win. Those development guys are geniuses, but it’s our responsibility to get them to make games that the public will want.”

“They sure don’t know,” a red-faced man said. “Did they actually think the Texas Sniper in King Authur’s Court game would sell? The user-sniper could never get past the Wizard to climb the castle clock tower. If they made it easier to get into position and fire the AK-47, then maybe it would’ve gotten a better reputation. Maybe it would sell.”

“We require something the buyers will not only want, but need,” Bender said. “This is a booming market, but it’s very competitive. We all need to think outside the box. The strategy is to sell something that people compete with each other to buy. Then we have an established product. That’s job security. It’s happened in every entrenched market.”

“And a few good ideas come from the developers,” the middle-aged man said. “This concept of the death-journey is good. The sports ones always do well. That Moon Volleyball is doing excellent. So is Miniature Manhunt, if we can get the midgets and the feminists off our backs about the name.”

Another man with strings of hair lining his scalp was livid. “We must get some better ideas to them. They’re not producing enough quality, so we must be proactive. Some of these games are too intellectual. They keep telling us the games are ‘not for everybody,’ but games like that are not gonna sell enough to recoup the development costs. We need a plan to sell a set of games that’ll get people in the door and get them subscribed. Without it, this company’ll be in major trouble.”

“We’re not gonna solve this here,” Bender said. “Farrell, this is for your people to take offline. We’ll give you an action to come up with a plan.”

“Alright,” Farrell said.

“Why don’t you assign the plan to Jonathan?” red-face said.

“That’s something that makes sense,” Bender said. “We’ll have someone who knows what’s coming down the pipe planning our marketing strategy. Olson and Farrell will need to guide him.”

“I say we continue our present course,” Olson said in his slow twang.

“In my view, these subscriptions are doing very well. And my staff is doing a fine job writing the preliminary ads.”

“Yes, they are. I noticed that your people have been overloaded making ads, supporting the trade shows, and finding test market data. Jonathan will be swamped, too. We’ll need to get some more bodies. We’ll look into it.”

Olson cringed and shook his head slowly. I realized that Olson had made his weak move to slow sales. He tried to provide false optimism for a bleak situation. He was unable to fight for his beliefs against his career.

Next week: Episode 8 - The Career Advice from Lana: Building Corporate Performance

Copyright © 2022 Christopher Rogers.

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