The Parable of Myst II

And now what?

Success, it turns out, isn't a place. All that happens is that everything gets more intense and harder to comprehend -- and keeps going.

It's spring 1995, and Cyan, a little family of 10 people, is in its lowly converted garage beside Chris Brandkamp's home on five acres of ponderosa pines north of Spokane, out past the U.S. Border Patrol office and the taxidermy place. Space is so tight that when Rand hums the "Mission Impossible" theme song, the others chime in from their cubicles. In the center of the office, a statue of "Seinfeld"'s Kramer stands like the Statue of Liberty, holding aloft a little can of rubber cement.

They're facing a hiring crisis. They've already spent a year planning the new CD down to the last detail: now they need to build digital computer models of all five islands in "Myst II," rendering more than 5,000 views. Without the right artists, they'll never even get close to finishing in time for the 1996 holiday season. There's work enough for a dozen artists, which means they're 10 short. Everything is uncertain. Everyone's behind schedule. Everyone's overworked.

Robyn's in a state of hypnotic concentration when you poke your head into his cubicle. The furnace, which serves as one wall, bears a sign that says: "Warning, Electrical Hazard."

You ask, "How's it going?"

He goes rigid, staring at his computer, not saying a word. Finally, after an agonizing silence, he says, "I'm busy right now."

The task ahead gives some of the staff the twitchy, vacant look of people who've gone off their mood stabilizers a little too long. If the family can't grow, it's all over.

Rand's on the phone to their agent. "We've got a headhunter in the San Francisco Bay Area," Rand says. "We're looking at people from Industrial Light & Magic. We thought we'd have more from ILM, since they're flush with that kind of person."

"You could go to another software developer," says the agent.

"That's right, we could. But we want the best. We're concerned the best ones are going to ILM and Disney. We don't care what it costs. We want the best people in here. The guys doing computer graphics in movies, they're doing real stuff, not stereotypical computer graphics. That's what we're doing. We're building these worlds to make them look real."

"What can we show from your next project?"

"There's nothing concrete to sell yet. It's air and relationship at this point."

"Well, remember, when we meet with some of these people, they'll want to see the principals of the firm, not flaky stuff."

"I'll just be wearing my khakis. You have to understand, that's how flaky we are."

The hiring begins slowly. Rand and Robyn stumble upon Richard Vander Wende by accident at a trade show in California. Richard sits in his cubicle beside a Silicon Graphics computer so powerful engineers could use it to design a nuclear reactor. He uses it to create animated worlds. He's 34, tall and thin, a sort of elongated and ethereal figure out of an El Greco portrait, wearing a Mickey Mouse watch.

"Industrial Light & Magic was fun. I was a kid. George Lucas and Ron Howard presented the story for "Willow" to us. I think what we could visualize was much cooler than what the film turned out to be. Then I left ILM for Disney. Everybody warned me: you don't want to go there. It's a political snakepit. The first project they had me on was a rough script for "Aladdin." I tried to extract recurring themes from "The Arabian Nights" sketching, painting, pinning everything onto cork boards. I became chief designer for the film: custodian for all visual aspects. We had 500 people drawing the movie.

"After four years, I quit. I took a year and a half off. Only two things got me excited: "Jurassic Park" and "Myst." I got a computer, all the applications. I went to a trade show, and recognized Robyn Miller from the CD. He said they weren't looking for anybody at that point, but he'd like to see my stuff. Robyn understands my stuff. The atmosphere here is completely different. This studio is a lot like the early days at Disney."

To become another Disney: nobody says it, for fear of jinxing it. In the hallway a poster of Mickey Mouse hangs behind glass. It's the original, grunge mouse: a skinny rodent, shaking things up. On the glass someone has planted fifteen lipstick kisses. No one knows how big Cyan may get. They aren't ruling out any possibilities. Somebody has been kissing up to Mickey, just in case.

It's December 1995. Hiring is almost complete. Rand sits in his office, checking over his e-mail messages.

They're in the strip-mall offices, temporary but spacious, waiting for the new million-dollar headquarters to be completed -- a structure that looks like a cross between a huge CD player and Frank Lloyd Wright's homage to Spokane's geology. They've staffed up to the point where the computer models for two of the five islands are done.