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Chapter 18
Galileo came out of the test room just as I turned the corner to the row of rooms we lovingly called ‘The archipelago’.
“Get rid of Frost, he’s not adding anything. It stretches on too long in the time-frame, not everything has to be a Tuesday.” He looked at this watch. “Granted, today is a Tuesday.”
Galileo had been the most assiduous creator in the paradoxia project and I still remembered the first day we met. He’d come in wearing his usual shorts and T-shirt, the “magic-circle” one. He had a habit of making his own T-shirt designs. None of them would ever make any money, but he never tried to sell them.
“Yes, sir. And the AI?”, I asked hopefully.
“Good, I like her. She’s conformity and character, a fair balance. Develops a bit, humanises in a way. Gets implicated into the darkness, never a damsel in distress. Maybe she’s too cold a portrayal for today’s market do you think?” Galileo’s attention went on to his memory. “I’ll have to check the chip’s data.”
“You know it’s not a chip right, that’s not how computers work.”
“Don’t try and teach me, just put the sound files in a folder on my desktop.” He was a long way from computer literate outside the simulation. Inside, with the AI, he could get things done at a remarkable rate. The intuitive design methods of his brain were phenomenal.
“Well, Sophie called while you were in there. She wants you to get some shopping on your way home.”
“That’s destined to fail miserably.”
“I spent ten minutes painfully writing down the exact products, names, weights and everything you’d need.” It always amused me that he was so incapable at the most basic things. I’d seen him on more than one occasion give up on eating solely because he could not decide what to eat. Twice, he’d got lost in the simulation and ended up stuck in a glitch in dead-space.
“Alan, please. I’m not that hopeless” He replied.
I passed him the list, the fact that he required such a detailed itinerary of shopping was another of his peculiarities. However, as good as the list could be, inevitably Sophie would receive a call from a distressed and confused Galileo. He’d spent ten minutes deciding on which soup to buy when they had no chicken, ten minutes after which he dutifully phoned for advice. He returned home with no soup and made the valid point that stew with dumpling was, if anything. a better kind of soup.
He looked back to the training room and ran his hand through his brownish hair, “We’re getting there.”
“Locke is happy with it” I said. Roger Locke was our creative director, there were three teams in Paradoxia Games each of us working on a title for the new immersive console. Locke was in charge of all three, he sometimes came down to test-play but he was primarily interested in the developer’s comments. Galileo’s ‘underwhelming’ would probably warrant an encouraging talk and at worst a team-building exercise.
“We need to dumb it down.” He passed me a short manuscript. I read it and shook my head.
“Get rid of Frost, he’s not adding anything. It stretches on too long in the time-frame, not everything has to be a Tuesday.” He looked at this watch. “Granted, today is a Tuesday.”
Galileo had been the most assiduous creator in the paradoxia project and I still remembered the first day we met. He’d come in wearing his usual shorts and T-shirt, the “magic-circle” one. He had a habit of making his own T-shirt designs. None of them would ever make any money, but he never tried to sell them.
“Yes, sir. And the AI?”, I asked hopefully.
“Good, I like her. She’s conformity and character, a fair balance. Develops a bit, humanises in a way. Gets implicated into the darkness, never a damsel in distress. Maybe she’s too cold a portrayal for today’s market do you think?” Galileo’s attention went on to his memory. “I’ll have to check the chip’s data.”
“You know it’s not a chip right, that’s not how computers work.”
“Don’t try and teach me, just put the sound files in a folder on my desktop.” He was a long way from computer literate outside the simulation. Inside, with the AI, he could get things done at a remarkable rate. The intuitive design methods of his brain were phenomenal.
“Well, Sophie called while you were in there. She wants you to get some shopping on your way home.”
“That’s destined to fail miserably.”
“I spent ten minutes painfully writing down the exact products, names, weights and everything you’d need.” It always amused me that he was so incapable at the most basic things. I’d seen him on more than one occasion give up on eating solely because he could not decide what to eat. Twice, he’d got lost in the simulation and ended up stuck in a glitch in dead-space.
“Alan, please. I’m not that hopeless” He replied.
I passed him the list, the fact that he required such a detailed itinerary of shopping was another of his peculiarities. However, as good as the list could be, inevitably Sophie would receive a call from a distressed and confused Galileo. He’d spent ten minutes deciding on which soup to buy when they had no chicken, ten minutes after which he dutifully phoned for advice. He returned home with no soup and made the valid point that stew with dumpling was, if anything. a better kind of soup.
He looked back to the training room and ran his hand through his brownish hair, “We’re getting there.”
“Locke is happy with it” I said. Roger Locke was our creative director, there were three teams in Paradoxia Games each of us working on a title for the new immersive console. Locke was in charge of all three, he sometimes came down to test-play but he was primarily interested in the developer’s comments. Galileo’s ‘underwhelming’ would probably warrant an encouraging talk and at worst a team-building exercise.
“We need to dumb it down.” He passed me a short manuscript. I read it and shook my head.
By the law of probabilities, he had to be right but then again there would be a chance he could be right in any given situation. What that must mean for philosophy, he couldn't quite understand. Yet, somehow, he felt mankind indebted to him for thinking it and carried on his way in self-satisfaction. The aggrandisement affecting his preconscious led to great displays of futuristic generations veneration him with magnificent bronze statues, already work had begun on cloning him. In some non-descript lab of science looking things, a man peered into a Petri dish. He was there. Then suddenly, he was a boy growing up in a lab, researchers teaching him from a young age. Making sure never to tell him of his previous incarnation, one day a heartfelt nurse confided in him. Her sincere adoration had waned on her clinical detachment. Then he knew of himself and vowed to rise above and eclipse the past. However, he soon found the original miraculously surpassed him. Raising himself from obscurity and poverty to greatness. And somehow the resentment burned to his very core.
“Not a chance Galileo. The hotel works, the general idea is solid the characters are pretty unique. We’re not starting a new sub-quest. Just make a finished product and then patch in the additional content after. You know that’s what they want.” Galileo looked disapprovingly whenever I mention what ‘they’ wanted. “You know this is the start of Feburary and we have to get this thing finished by the start of November. No time for meaningless sub-quests when you’ve not finished the narrative.”
“Nevermind that. There’s a problem near the start, the butler starts moving and then talks after. Also, I said The Pandlebrook song would be the first DLC. I just want a poorly sketched out Easter egg for what will come after. I’ll hide it somewhere in the program, maybe if you choose to ride the bike.” He began to walk away from the test rooms and back towards his office. He stopped at the door looking at the shopping list, he tapped around his pockets a bit before walking in and shutting the door. I walked over to the coffee machine. It wasn’t a bad sim, it was definitely not the horror they expected him to make. Not the demon filled mayhem they had in mind. He’d played them until it was too late. He’d deliberately began on she and the hotel first before building the narrative around it. By the time it was ready for the first play-through they had to admit it was actually pretty damn engrossing. They asked Don Parka’s team to try and darken up their FPS with a little more fantasy gothic and he’d naturally acquiesced. Don was pretty weak when it came to creative direction, he just followed what marketing wanted. It worked, he was responsible for some of our best sellers. Galileo only had one directive for us to follow. ‘make it real’. The guy had made his wife a character, based near enough everything on real things. He played with the meanings a lot and loved to sneak in the obscure references to butter or nursery rhymes. I had lost where most of them went. This was his first real AAA title, the earlier Isla Maatru was his own independent work, it was bought up by the company before it was finished, and he released it with a much higher budget than he could ever have dreamed. The success of Maatru was in its absolute dedication to building a dystopia in paradise, the global high-scores were dominated by players whose single-minded exploitation of its digital inhabitants was profoundly efficient.
I went down the stairs to the floor below in search of Cynthia, I needed to tell her about the recent test. Cynthia Doller had been our social media and marketing manager. She had weathered the very dark, very hate-filled storm that came with the absence of diversity in the game. They almost cancelled the project but Galileo, or at least everyone assumes it was Galileo, released a pre-alpha build with just enough story to get people excited. The detail on the environments and the amazing affectual resonances captivated the audiences that played it. Soon demand overwhelmed the voices denouncing the hateful rhetoric of the game and the head company forced Galileo into an AMA to defend his position. He simply said he lacked the necessary skill to be an “affectual woman”, “I can be an inhuman woman, or a cyborg woman but I can’t be a real woman. I just wasn’t made that way”. They decided afterwards that all post from Galileo’s twitter would first be passed through Cynthia.
“Cynthia, latest test underwhelming. You want to post that, or should I?” I smiled a forced grin.
She looked at me and languidly rolled her blue eyes. “A direct quote?”
“Straight from the horse’s ass my dear.” I sat down in the vacant chair of her assistant and rolled myself over. Cynthia was pretty, amazingly poised and incredibly serious. On more than one occasion she beat Galileo with a rolled-up magazine for saying something inappropriate. His response was to make Cynthia the AI say “I don’t understand the implication” as her default phrase. Many, many beatings followed after the AMA debacle, she had opposed a live-stream quite vehemently, but he insisted.
“Well, I posted a picture of him in the test room an hour ago making those pears. Put a little comment about them being more like Squ-ears. That’s the kind of lame pun he’d like” she said rocking the biro between her fingers.
“Sounds better than the original.” I replied nodding.
“Good…Oh yeah, who won the bet?”
“You did.”, I still couldn’t see how he noticed it.
“Shouldn’t have moved the ants, you know how he likes them.” She held out her hand as I begrudgingly handed over my wallet. “oh my, you were one off another coffee. Too bad Alan.” She said, handing it back minus my Greggs card.
“Nevermind that. There’s a problem near the start, the butler starts moving and then talks after. Also, I said The Pandlebrook song would be the first DLC. I just want a poorly sketched out Easter egg for what will come after. I’ll hide it somewhere in the program, maybe if you choose to ride the bike.” He began to walk away from the test rooms and back towards his office. He stopped at the door looking at the shopping list, he tapped around his pockets a bit before walking in and shutting the door. I walked over to the coffee machine. It wasn’t a bad sim, it was definitely not the horror they expected him to make. Not the demon filled mayhem they had in mind. He’d played them until it was too late. He’d deliberately began on she and the hotel first before building the narrative around it. By the time it was ready for the first play-through they had to admit it was actually pretty damn engrossing. They asked Don Parka’s team to try and darken up their FPS with a little more fantasy gothic and he’d naturally acquiesced. Don was pretty weak when it came to creative direction, he just followed what marketing wanted. It worked, he was responsible for some of our best sellers. Galileo only had one directive for us to follow. ‘make it real’. The guy had made his wife a character, based near enough everything on real things. He played with the meanings a lot and loved to sneak in the obscure references to butter or nursery rhymes. I had lost where most of them went. This was his first real AAA title, the earlier Isla Maatru was his own independent work, it was bought up by the company before it was finished, and he released it with a much higher budget than he could ever have dreamed. The success of Maatru was in its absolute dedication to building a dystopia in paradise, the global high-scores were dominated by players whose single-minded exploitation of its digital inhabitants was profoundly efficient.
I went down the stairs to the floor below in search of Cynthia, I needed to tell her about the recent test. Cynthia Doller had been our social media and marketing manager. She had weathered the very dark, very hate-filled storm that came with the absence of diversity in the game. They almost cancelled the project but Galileo, or at least everyone assumes it was Galileo, released a pre-alpha build with just enough story to get people excited. The detail on the environments and the amazing affectual resonances captivated the audiences that played it. Soon demand overwhelmed the voices denouncing the hateful rhetoric of the game and the head company forced Galileo into an AMA to defend his position. He simply said he lacked the necessary skill to be an “affectual woman”, “I can be an inhuman woman, or a cyborg woman but I can’t be a real woman. I just wasn’t made that way”. They decided afterwards that all post from Galileo’s twitter would first be passed through Cynthia.
“Cynthia, latest test underwhelming. You want to post that, or should I?” I smiled a forced grin.
She looked at me and languidly rolled her blue eyes. “A direct quote?”
“Straight from the horse’s ass my dear.” I sat down in the vacant chair of her assistant and rolled myself over. Cynthia was pretty, amazingly poised and incredibly serious. On more than one occasion she beat Galileo with a rolled-up magazine for saying something inappropriate. His response was to make Cynthia the AI say “I don’t understand the implication” as her default phrase. Many, many beatings followed after the AMA debacle, she had opposed a live-stream quite vehemently, but he insisted.
“Well, I posted a picture of him in the test room an hour ago making those pears. Put a little comment about them being more like Squ-ears. That’s the kind of lame pun he’d like” she said rocking the biro between her fingers.
“Sounds better than the original.” I replied nodding.
“Good…Oh yeah, who won the bet?”
“You did.”, I still couldn’t see how he noticed it.
“Shouldn’t have moved the ants, you know how he likes them.” She held out her hand as I begrudgingly handed over my wallet. “oh my, you were one off another coffee. Too bad Alan.” She said, handing it back minus my Greggs card.