Game of Death (3 page)

I don’t know what we would have done if it hadn’t been for NextLife. The company literally saved us. I was the fifteenth employee hired. When I joined, I never haggled over my
salary. The only thing I cared about was making sure that Ma would be on my insurance. They threw in the stock because that’s what they assumed everyone wanted. And they were right for the
most part; pretty much everyone else getting into the start-up was looking for the big score. Not me. I was looking for enough work to feed me and Ma. I took the stock because it was given, but I
never thought about it. Sometimes you get lucky.

Soon we’ll be able to move anywhere we want. If things work out the way everything is lining up, I’ll be able to buy Ma the biggest townhouse on the top of Beacon Hill. A place so
high up, we can look down on everyone around us. I’d like to do that for her – show her what her boy has accomplished. Ma, of course, won’t even talk about it. Like I said, she
was born in Charlestown, and she’ll die here; that’s her view and she’s sticking to it. As for me . . . well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Sometimes I think it would be
nice to go back and get my degree. It’s something that still nags at me. I hate leaving things unfinished.

I pull into the driveway of the house I grew up in. It’s a little clapboard two-bedroom set flush to the street about two blocks from the projects. The neighborhood is solid but gritty
– a lower-middle-class Irish faux-ghetto wedged in between the projects and the posh townhouses up on Monument Square. When politicians talk about ‘The Real America’, this is the
place they’re talking about, and Ma is the person they’re talking to. These days there seem to be fewer places like this, and fewer people like Ma.

I pull open the screen door and reach into my pocket for my keys, but I can see that the main wooden door is slightly ajar. I shake my head and push it in.

The television is on in the parlor. I can hear the chattering of some twenty-four-hour news channel, and around the corner I can see Ma’s feet sticking out from the couch, resting on the
ancient fraying ottoman. I grab a beer from the refrigerator and walk to the parlor entryway.

‘They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about!’ Ma barks at me. She waves an angry hand at the screen. ‘These people just don’t fuckin’
know!’

‘Ma,’ I say. ‘It’s two-thirty in the morning.’

‘That makes it alright to talk shit on television?’

‘What are you doing up?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. It’s all the goddamned pills they’ve got me on. I swear, sometimes I think they don’t know what they’re talkin’ about either, these
doctors. They’re children. They don’t understand what it is to be old.’

‘Fifty-four ain’t old, Ma.’ I slip into street dialect around my mother. It’s weird, but I think it makes her feel more comfortable.

‘It is if it’s the fifty-four years I’ve lived.’ She stirs in her chair, her hand going to her lips, forgetfully. Her fingers linger there for a moment, as though
there’s something they are supposed to be doing. I wonder: if I wasn’t there, would she still be smoking? Even with the oxygen tank strapped to her face, the tubes running to her nose,
the rumble in her chest like the approach of a loaded eighteen-wheeler, would she still be pouring the fire into her lungs? I think she probably would.

‘Help me carry this thing up,’ she says gesturing toward the oxygen tank. ‘I can’t watch this shit anymore.’ I give her my arm and pull her to her feet.
‘How’s work?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Strange business.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’ll never understand it. How do you people make any money doing what you do?’ She gives me a sharp look. ‘You make
sure they ain’t running a scam on you, you hear?’

‘They’re gonna make me rich, Ma. You’ll see.’ I smile at her. ‘I’ll be able to get you whatever you want.’

‘What would I want?’

‘I don’t know. A better house?’

‘You think there’s something wrong with this house?’ she demands. ‘I love this house.’

‘Then I’ll buy you another one, just for fun. Maybe I’ll buy you Mabel Mullarkey’s house? You never liked her, right? So, I’ll buy her house and we can tear it
down, just for spite. That’d cheer you up, wouldn’t it, Ma?’

She laughs at that. ‘It just might. That bitch, always makin’ eyes at your father.’ I follow her up the narrow staircase and into her bedroom. ‘I’ll read,’
she says. It takes a moment for her to get situated, getting the oxygen tanks and tubes set just so.

‘You want anything else, Ma?’ I ask. ‘Something to drink?’

‘I’m fine,’ she says. She looks up at me from her bed. ‘You’re a good boy, you know that, Nick? I had my doubts for a while, but you turned out okay.’

‘Thanks, Ma. I love you, too.’I close the door to her room and pad down the hallway. I have an important meeting in just a few hours and I’d like to get a little sleep before
then.

As I’m walking to my bedroom, my cellphone buzzes and I look at it. It’s an automatic notification from the NextLife system, letting me know that
De Sade
is online again.
One of the things we’ve learned in our research is that our users often go back to their favorite fantasies again and again to relive the scene – to make modifications and elaborate on
them. I’m hoping that
De Sade
likes the LifeScene I was in today enough to go back to it, so before I left work I adjusted my administrator’s settings to buzz me whenever he
goes on the site. I’m desperate to see if he’s with my girl. That’s how I think of her now –
my girl
. It’s a bad sign, and I know it, but I can’t help
myself; I have to see her again if I can. There’s a part of me, even now, when it’s nearly three in the morning and I’m fifteen minutes from the office, nagging me to go in;
torturing me with the possibility that I might be missing a chance to see her.

I dismiss the thought and climb into bed. It’s too late, and he’d probably be offline before I could even get to the office. I need sleep, so I turn off the light. I know, though,
that I will spend the hours lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about my girl from
De Sade
’s LifeScene, unable to get her out of my head.

I realize, to my chagrin, that I’ve become obsessed.

My meeting the next morning is at NextLife headquarters out in Brighton. It’s just across the Charles, a couple miles down the river, but a world away. Because of the
sensitive nature of what my research division does, we’re kept separate, in the dark isolated basement of a nondescript building. By contrast, the company’s headquarters is in a
gleaming new, twenty-story structure out by the New Balance building. It towers over the highway with spectacular views of downtown Boston to the east. A green neon sign on the top of the building
screams the company’s logo. It’s not very subtle, but that’s the way it’s always been with overnight online successes. It’s all about branding. It’s all about
getting your name out there and making it ‘top-of-mind’ for every single human being when they log onto the Internet. Building the brand is paramount. Revenue comes later . . .
hopefully.

To be fair, NextLife wasn’t initially built solely on its brand. It actually has real technology behind it. It’s an online portal that allows people to interact in ways they never
dreamed of before. It’s essentially Facebook, Second Life and Google all rolled into one. People can chat, talk, email and buzz each other. They can share interests and have video conferences
at the touch of a button. But that’s not the real draw. The real draw is the ability to create LifeScenes. In LifeScenes, people can essentially do whatever they want – be whomever they
want. They can go diving off the Great Barrier Reef, or attend a Rolling Stones concert from the 1970s, or take batting practice against Babe Ruth – either by themselves or with others online
– all while sitting on their couch. They can create other people to interact with using our templates, and they can explore their deepest dreams and their darkest fantasies in safety.

It’s not like we invented the concepts – online communities using avatars that enable people to interact in real time with each other have been popular since the turn of the
millennium. World of Warcraft had millions of users long before NextLife wrote its first line of code. NextLife, though, has come pretty close to perfecting the implementation. Our avatar
technology and sensory units represent a quantum leap forward in development. They make the user-experience so realistic it can be difficult to tell the difference between a NextLife LifeScene and
reality. Sometimes it’s disconcerting how lifelike it all seems. That is the key to the company’s success.

And the success has been astounding. The company was started five years ago; within two years the company’s estimated value rivaled Yahoo. When we added social networking as a component of
the NextLife experience, the company grew even faster. We passed AOL in estimated stock value last year, and we’re expecting to rival companies like Google and Facebook within the next two
years. It’s all been very exciting. On paper, even with my paltry holdings, I’m already worth somewhere between fifteen and twenty million dollars, depending on fluctuations in the
daily market.

Of course, the phrase ‘on paper’ is the rub. I can’t convert that to real money until the people who run the company figure out the long-term capitalization strategy. At one
point we were considering a private sale to a combination of private equity funds. We’ve grown too large for that now, though, and it’s likely that the only rational way out is an
initial public offering. It makes sense, but it has everyone at the company anxious. It’s a complicated process that involves the corporate equivalent of a proctological exam. As with all
overnight Internet successes, there’s a nagging question as to whether our valuation is rational. While we’re rapidly becoming one of the most visited websites in the world, we’re
still figuring out how to translate that into actual revenue. The founders initially had the view that any revenue model – whether it was a pay-as-you-go subscription or the clutter of
advertising – would kill the concept in its infancy. I’m not sure the word ‘profit’ was even uttered at the company for the first three years. Now that we are considering
going public, it seems that it’s all anyone can focus on.

Eight months ago the founders created a new division – the Division of Revenue Generation – headed up by Tom Jackson and tasked with figuring out the most effective way of
translating the company’s brand dominance into fiscal growth. Tom was the one who brought me into the company four years ago. He was an assistant professor at MIT, and one of my few friends
when I was in college. He used to joke with me that he and I were the smartest two people at the university and yet we were two of the poorest. He seemed to find some righteous irony in this, but
eventually watching others cash in on technological development became too much for him, and he jumped ship to the private sector to seek his fortune. When he heard about Ma’s diagnosis and
the fact that I’d left school, he pulled me into the company and has been a mentor to me since I started at NextLife.

Tom and I have worked closely on one aspect of the revenue initiative, called Project Touchpoint. The goal is to figure out what new additional sensory equipment people will be willing to pay
for. We’ve extended the gloves past the elbows and expanded the headgear to include olfactory capability and better audio. We’ve also started marketing more intimate accessories for
those who are looking for a more complete sexual experience In-World.

Figuring out what people will pay for involves digging into their most private fantasies and watching them do things they would never give permission for if they knew people were watching.
It’s a necessary evil, though. After all, you can’t figure out ways of generating revenue unless you understand how it is people use the site. Besides, no one will ever know that they
are being watched, and we take great pains to make sure no one’s identity can ever be discovered.

Project Touchpoint is the only aspect of the company’s plans that has actually managed to generate significant revenue at this point. I’ve been amazed at the rate at which people
have been willing to shell out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for the most advanced sex toys for their online enjoyment. Today’s meeting is to present Tom’s results on other
fronts. Even I don’t know what to expect.

I park my six-year-old Corolla in the lot at headquarters. I’m really looking forward to a new car. Don’t get me wrong, the Corolla’s a good, dependable vehicle. It’s
never let me down. But there are few people in the world with my technical net worth driving Corollas. I could easily get a loan for a nice car based on my holdings in the company, but that’s
not my way. I associate loans with the loan-sharking my father did, and with the spiral of failure those who take the easy option find themselves in. As a result, I won’t buy what I
can’t pay for in cash.

I take the express elevator to the twentieth floor and step out into a blinding display of corporate success. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the reception area face east, out toward Boston,
giving a sweeping view of the city. It’s only eight-thirty, so the sun still hangs over the horizon behind the Prudential Center and streams aggressively through the glass, ricocheting off
the gleaming white, frosted glass of the reception desk and the conference-room walls, attacking the eyeballs. The floors are hardwood, polished to a fine sheen. Everything is pristine. The
reception area is filled with the twenty or so top executives.

You can tell what people do at the company just by their clothes. The head of the software-development team has on rumpled khakis, New Balance 574s and a flannel shirt buttoned to the top. It
would be a quirky look even if temperatures weren’t going to reach the nineties by noon. He clearly doesn’t get out much.

The head of marketing is dressed in a lightweight suit with a cool-looking button-down shirt. His thick hair is slicked back, and he looks like someone you’d never trust, but would
probably still buy something from, if he deigned to talk to you.