Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 23 - The Phase 3 Magic Theater: Strategizing on the fly

This is Episode 23 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 Phase 3 Magic Theater: Strategizing on the fly

The next day, for eight hours, my colleagues spoke to each other over the partitions. Someone had officially leaked the rumor: The mass firing would begin on Friday, two days away, twelve days before Thanksgiving. The managers would slice each department across-the-board by 30%. Three out of every ten of us would have our lives disrupted. I calculated the list of probable names in my department. Surely they put me on the list. Much more than 70% of the people had more experience, more awards, and more value to Magic Theater, the company’s final effort to save itself.

“I’ve heard from two separate sources that they’re switching to an ad firm in Tokyo,” someone said over the walls. “One guy told me they’re cutting our department in half.”

“Maybe the Tokyo company would hire us.”

“Everyone knows that the commercials are dull. I heard that the Tokyo people specialize in TV ads. But how could they justify a layoff when Magic Theater is making a profit?”

“They said it’d be worse if it wasn’t selling. They need to replace the cash used to develop the software.”

Being fired would release me from my burden. It would free me from laboring for money and for a purpose that emptied the cafés and beaches. I hated convincing people that the solution to boredom was connecting to the new communal experience.

Later that morning, I tapped my keyboard to respond to a dye-blond, brown-eyed secretary two floors below me. To avoid the newly installed corporate system censors, the electronic note held hidden meanings under its business-related guise. Several marketing-related messages remained flagged on my monitor as unread. Unopened sales reports and blank advertisement sheets filled my desk. A stack of sealed brown envelopes lay there. An open sports magazine sat on top of the company document that I feigned reading before the beep signaling the arrival of the bored secretary’s message.

Perry Farrell’s nostrils peeked over the cubicle.

“Jonathan, can you support a meeting in about ten minutes in the conference room?”

“Sure. What’s the occasion?”

“Bender’s looking for some data on our sales, demographics, etc., for the Christmas season. You’ve been looking at that, right?”

“Okay. Who’s gonna be there?”

“Bender, another guy, and myself. They’re hurtin’. They’ve been putting off decisions. We need a data dump from you. This week’s the deadline.”

I gathered some notes.

I invited them to fire me, it seemed. Finally, I would unveil my indifference. Warmth flowed through me. I lacked the courage to admit my apathy. The indignity of being fired became real. I would miss the pay. I should pretend.

Ten minutes later, I followed Farrell, Bender, a red-faced man, and their coffee mugs and notebooks into the same conference room where Lana and I spoke our last words. This time the blinds folded down to block the sun and to deflect any view of company secrets we might flash on a wall.

“Perry, our problem is simple,” Bender said as his mug thudded on the table in the dim room. “The holiday shopping season’s here. I believe our commercials are lacking. It’s time to start up our next campaign. We’re all very pleased with sales for the past thirty days, but we need to re-assess what they’re telling us. If we do change direction, it needs to happen now.”

“What about ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,’ Ted?” Farrell said.

“We’re fairly certain this area’s broken,” the red-faced man said. “And don’t forget: Continuous improvement is our business policy.”

“Jonathan, tell them what you’ve seen,” Farrell said.

I rustled my papers. Drips trickled down the sides of my shirt. For the first time, they would listen to my ideas. And I had none. Pretend. “The data are telling us we’re losing the age eleven-to-twenty-five market.”

“That doesn’t agree with the numbers I’ve seen,” Red-face said. His badge read “Red Burns.” “I show gains in all age groups and genders.”

“Hold off, Red,” Bender said as he made a “T” with his hands. “If he has numbers on the eleven-to-twenty-fivers, then we should take note. Those youngsters are the ones who’ll take us farther into the 21st century. They’ll be the ones holding the purse strings. Our staying power depends on them.” Bender slurped his coffee and continued, but I deviated from this thought. To re-direct this age group...

“We need to target them for the remainder of the Christmas season, and probably into spring,” I said. “The current tactics are being rejected. Ever since we submitted the latest round of commercials, sales to this age bracket have increased slower than they did the previous month.”

“How much slower?” Farrell asked.

“It’s significant. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I believe it’s a five to ten percent difference.”

“If our increases keep decreasing at that rate, we’ll lose several million dollars by the end of the fiscal year,” Red said.

“Clearly the Percy plan is not working,” Bender said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said as I cleared my throat. “The plan needs fine-tuning. We can continue with our store displays and the free network hours we’ve been offering with the hardware purchases. They work well.”

“And I doubt anyone can find fault with our trade show efforts,” said Farrell, leaning back with his hands behind his head.

“We’re not getting enough name recognition out there,” Red said.

“They’re associating our products with the other guy’s name.”

“Our goal should be to change the language of the culture,” Bender said. “Look at the Wavy-Doo’s. People now call jet-ski’s ‘Wavy-Doo’s.’ We want to replace the word ‘television’ with ‘Magic Theater.’ It’ll be a specialized system of hardware. Other companies will add their pieces to the system: the 986 chip, the high-definition monitor, the built-in television satellite dish, Surrounder speakers, and access to the information networks. We’ve teamed with these companies, but we never agreed how to market it. It’s our Magic Helmet, our Magic SensorSuit, our Magic Glove, our network boards, and our Magic Theater software downloaded from the server through our partner providers. Those will make or break the profits. The public should call the entire system ‘Magic Theater.’ That’s what we’re looking for.”

I bit my lip. “And that’s my point.”

“If he says our name recognition is decelerating with the eleven-to-twenty- five’s, we’re in big trouble,” Red said.

“We need to talk budget,” Bender said as he tapped a pencil eraser on the table.

“First we need to talk ideas,” Red said. “How do you intend to reach them? What’s the new approach?”

“We need to saturate the computer networks,” I said. “If they’re entertaining enough and if we can create enough hysteria, they’ll read our ads when they’re surfing the ‘net. These are the buyers we want.” But another idea gestated...

“So, we advertise better on the Wide World Web about the new games we develop?”

“Right. This is inexpensive. Still, most kids watch television. This is where we need to hit them.”

“We’ll drag the computer nerds to our server on the Web,” Farrell said. “But the main thrust should be the non-computer user?”

“I’d suggest changing the television commercials.”

“Do your data say we need to target better quality time slots?” Bender asked.

“We should also change the content. We need to change people’s whole lifestyle. We need to appeal to their sense of hipness and change their notion of what’s cool.”

“Yes, an endorsement,” Farrell said as he flipped pages in a notebook. “I have some data on which current celebrities have the best ratings with the under-thirty crowd.”

“Instead of blowing our budget on some famous athlete who’s never seen a data glove, I suggest using the classic one-of-us character. We need to look at who they think’s cool at the moment, but it needs to be someone attainable. It needs to be someone who’s popular and who’s believable as a Magic Theater user.”

“You’d have four or five that fit the cultural categories,” Red said.

“I would think so,” Bender said.

“You’d have high school students, college students, and professionals,” I said. “For each one of those, you’d have a white and a minority, and a male and female. That’s twelve characters.”

“Cut that down to six,” Bender said.

“Okay, six cool characters,” Red said. “Six who represent what’s cool.”

“I’ve already written the ads, but they’re only in draft form,” I said.

“I’ve costed them too. I can present them early next week. All we need are some actors, some studio time, some air time, and some dollars.”

“We have budget we need to spend. Can you tell us more about these commercials?” Farrell asked. “How do we know they’ll represent popular people?”

“I did some work in college researching what constitutes cool.”

“What does this cool person look like?” Bender asked as he crossed his arms. “What does he say?”

“Okay, here’s one: the collegiate. We want few complete sentences and a tilted camera angle. Show him in his dorm in the helmet on a study break. Show him at frat parties with girls. Show him wearing the helmet in the glory of a victory. Show scenes from Texas Sniper. We need quick, two-second video shots. The guy talks all the way through. We need pithy pearls of wisdom not only about the games, but about his cool life. None of the pearls should relate to one another. The whole ad is disjointed. Kids can become attuned to the commercial in the middle and not miss anything.”

They stared at me unconvinced.

“This is what they’ll share. The television commercial is all they have in common anymore. They don’t read newspapers, magazines, or books. They watch different television shows. Even their Magic Theater games go in different directions. But they get the same commercials.”

“Can you recite some of the dorm guy script?” Red asked.

“Okay. Off the top of my head. ‘Hey, my parents tell me I don’t study enough. But what’s college without play? Everybody needs a study break for the weekend. My roommate’s a dweeb. He listens to his parents. He loves my Magic Theater, especially when he wants to study. He hates my guitar. My girlfriend loves my Magic Theater, especially when she’s out of town. She doesn’t like my fraternity’s little sisters. My friends love my Magic Theater, especially when I play against ‘em in three-on-three. They hate my twenty-footer. My goal in life is to have the most fun with the least work. How can you beat Magic Theater? My parents hate my Magic Theater.”

“Perfect,” Bender said. “That’s the best we have. It’s worth finding actors for.”

“But, um, we need the scripts before Friday,” Ferrell said.

“I can finish them early next week.”

“Yeah, what’s the hurry, Perry?” Red said. “Then we need to test it out.”

“Focus groups?” Bender asked.

“I agree with what Ted and Red said,” Farrell said, without even smiling. “But the timeframe is...”

“Right, we don’t have much time to meet the season,” I said. “I recommend a two-week turn-around, for the writing and set-up, before filming.”

“You’re right,” Bender said. “We don’t have time for a focus group or a test market. We barely have enough time for production. We need to turn this out by Thanksgiving. If not, we should bag it.”

“We can make that deadline,” I said. “And the cost’ll be low.”

“But we do need more people to look at this,” Bender said. “Pertival needs to see it. Also, those Dakota guys need to converge products to these ads.” He pointed his finger down into the table. “They’ve been proceeding without our inputs. I’ve had it. I’ve dealt with him for the last time.”

The tension between the two locations always stunned me. Even today, the distance between them obstructed communications. Geography justified their hatred for the others.

I compelled myself toward Vincula’s product for the next three days, laughing like a comic book villain or a poet. The scripts and budgets spurted out of my fingers onto the keyboard.

On Friday, they must have struck my name from that list of obsoletes so I could finish my effort to change the ads. Managers notified several hundred people that their loves, endeavors, and aspirations were no longer worthy of the company. I learned that a problem should exist for there to be compensated work. One often must create a problem where none exists. I devised one with a solution that I hoped would turn a growing success into a sweeping failure.

***

Thanksgiving passed without a hitch for Maureen and Winnie. Their friends migrated back to family. Winnie had none close enough. Maureen ate dinner with her uncle.

But the significance they attached to the holiday fixated on days off work. Maureen had too much time to mull over the pain dividing her. She had no one to hash it out with. No one could know she loved Winnie, and no one could know that she felt like showing her love to Winnie. No one could know how strongly she resisted what her body seemed to tell her to do.

Often she drifted to her habits: she talked with Mary in heaven. The conclusion always poured in: You are self-centered; you’re wasting your thoughts and anxiety on inauthenticity. The dilemma now facing her seemed self-constructed and unimportant and base, especially in comparison to other things, like the suffering she knew the nearby cities had.

One weekend in early December, Winnie took Maureen’s hand while they stood in the kitchen, ready to re-stack clean dishes in cabinets. Winnie poured a fizzing diet soda into a glass. “You must try these games. Do you want to finish the one I’m playing now? It’s called Soccer Terrorists. You’ ll love it.”

“It doesn’t sound exciting to me.”

“I know it seems weird, but once you try it, you’ ll never go back to plain old TV.”

“I don’t watch much TV now.”

“It’s much better than reading, for sure. C’mon, haven’t you seen the new commercials? ‘You should try everything once.’ ‘Everyone loves Magic Theater.’ C’mon. You like guys again, right?”

“Winnie!”

“The SensorSuit I have accommodates this game called Cleopatra’s Slaves. It’s better than any man I’ve ever had.”

Maureen pulled her hand away and reached for some pots. “Winnie, I have a lot to do. I need to cook for the rest of the week. And what about Scott Bering’s party tonight?”

“I don’t think I’m going,” Winnie said.

“It’s even a Magic Theater party, whatever that is. What’s the matter with you lately? Ever since our little talk about being discovered, you’ve seemed cold to me.”

“Me? Look in the mirror, Maureen.” Winnie spun toward the kitchen window. Maureen stared at her curls. What was she talking about? Was I less affectionate now?

“Winnie, can we talk about this?”

“Not now. I’m a little edgy today. The holidays always bother me. People make such a fuss over a day. And I’m dreading going back to Texas for so long.”

“Yeah, it’ ll be empty here without you. But your mom’ ll be glad. Why do you dread it? Is it because of what Robert told her?”

“No,” Winnie said as she rolled her eyes. “That’s not a problem. I’ ll be bored. Mom doesn’t even have a PC. And I’ d really like you to come.”

“I need to work on my mom’s old house over the break. My uncle says people are asking about buying it. And I just couldn’t handle meeting your mom right now. I hope you understand.”

“No, I don’t. What’ll you do if more people find out?” Winnie spun around and walked past her. “They’ ll find out. It’s inevitable... unless we end it.”

“No,” Maureen said. “I’ ll work it out.” She sighed.

“What’ ll people say at your little company Christmas gala in a couple weeks?” Winnie said from the living room. “When we show up together, they may think something’s happening.”

“I doubt it. Are you still going with me?”

“Have you changed your mind? Is the invitation still good?” Winnie returned to the kitchen, eyes down.

“Yes,” Maureen said as she slid a pan between prongs in the dishwasher grate. “It’ ll be fun.”

“You don’t make sense, but I’m glad we can stop talking about it.” Winnie finished draining the can into the glass of settled soda.

“Winnie, I want you to understand something. These last two months have been some of the happiest in my life. It’s because of you. I’ve felt free. And you value what I try to do for you. I’ve never felt that from anyone else.”

Winnie drank half the glass.

“Listen, Winnie. During the summer, I learned what love is. This fall I experienced it, with you.”

Winnie stared ahead.

“Please look at me. This is important. We haven’t really talked in weeks.”

“Okay, okay. What did you learn?”

“It’s the freedom that’s wonderful. But it’s the riskiest thing we do. Humans have no more frightening experience than loving. It’s the furthest from the body, from cheap desires, and from conformity. That’s why I’m having a difficult time with us. Conforming is much safer.”

“I still don’t understand why acting this out in public is so hard for you.”

“I’m not sure. Here.” She plucked a scrap of paper from her jeans and unfurled it on the counter. “I found these poems this summer. This one shows how I feel about what’s important.”

Winnie turned to her.

“Okay. Here it is.” Maureen sighed, then slowly read:

“When man’s soul lacking she does heist,

The beast within is sacrificed.

Man’s frightful freedom will occur,

The soul unfettered flees to her.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Winnie said. “I was in the middle of the second half. The snipers are moving into position.”

“Winnie, can you feel how powerful this poem is? Do you see how much the writer’s trying to bring his lover, or love itself, to life? I have more.”

“No.” Winnie turned and left the kitchen. “I don’t understand it.”

“Okay. But I’ d like you to try it, to listen. I’ ll read it again later when you’re in a better mood.”

Next week: Episode 24 - The Herald: Meeting Greeley

Copyright © 2022 Christopher Rogers.

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